President under Fire: Confederate Raid on Washington
Two weeks later, Lincoln’s anxiety increased when Jubal Early’s 15,000 Confederate troops swept down the Shenandoah Valley and seriously menaced Washington. On July 6, Early crossed the Potomac, brushed aside a Union detachment along the Monocacy River, and within days was a scant 4 miles from the Soldiers’ Home, where the Lincolns were then staying. The capital was so panicky that U.S. Treasurer Francis E. Spinner bagged up all the money in the Treasury Department vaults and arranged to have it transferred to a tugboat. The incursion threatened not only Washington but Lincoln’s political standing. Franklin B. Sanborn, a Radical journalist, thought “it shows that Grant’s campaign has had no substantial results. If this is made to appear clearly, it will be fatal to Lincoln’s reelection.” Sanborn feared that “we are to suffer the penalty of Lincoln’s misgovernment for years and years.”53
On July 10, Stanton became alarmed for the president’s safety and dispatched a carriage to bring the First Family back to the White House. The secretary of war himself arrived around 11 P.M. to demand that Lincoln return. The president with some irritation “said he didn’t think there was any danger,” but he complied.54 He was also annoyed upon learning that Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox had stationed a small boat in the Potomac to whisk him to safety in case Early’s men penetrated the city’s defensive cordon.
When Grant offered to direct the defense of Washington, Lincoln replied that “we have absolutely no force here fit to go to the field. … Now what I think is that you should provide to retain your hold where you are certainly, and bring the rest with you personally, and make a vigorous effort to destroy the enemie’s force in this vicinity. I think there is really a fair chance to do this if the movement is prompt. This is what I think, upon your suggestion, and is not an order.”55 Grant thought better of it and instead sent his finest unit, Horatio Wright’s Sixth Corps, scurrying northward to confront Early. While it was en route, an improvised force of 8,000 militiamen, dismounted cavalry, invalids, government clerks, convalescents, and regular troops assembled to man the city’s fortifications, including Fort Stevens on the Seventh Street road, down which Early was marching. By July 11, the Confederates came within a few hundred feet of that bastion, but the arrival of the Sixth Corps gave Early pause.
That day, eager to observe the action first-hand, Lincoln hastened to Fort Stevens, where he became the first and only sitting American president to come under serious enemy fire. (He had been exposed less dangerously during the Norfolk Campaign in the spring of 1862.) As he gazed at the skirmishing from the parapet, a soldier rudely instructed him to get down lest he be shot. He did so. Excited, Lincoln returned to the War Department and vividly described the action. That evening he was in an exceptionally good mood. Hay recorded that he was “not in the least concerned about the safety of Washington. With him the only concern seems to be whether we can bag or destroy this force in our front.”56 The next day, he revisited Fort Stevens, accompanied this time by his wife. As he once again watched the action from the parapet, an army surgeon standing nearby—Dr. C. C. V. Crawford of the 102nd Pennsylvania Volunteers—was shot in the thigh. At the urging of General Horatio Wright, Lincoln descended from his exposed perch.
As Early withdrew on July 12, Lincoln wanted Union troops to “push our whole column right up the river road & cut off as many as possible of the retreating raiders.” Though he pressed Halleck, who had become chief of staff of the Union armies when Grant was named general-in-chief, to see that it was done, the Confederates managed to slip across the Potomac unmolested, to the president’s visible disgust. Sarcastically, he remarked that General Wright had halted his pursuit and “sent out an infantry reconnaissance, for fear he might come across the rebels & catch some of them.”57 Shades of McClellan after Antietam and Meade after Gettysburg! He was also mad at Halleck, remarking that Old Brains’ “manifest desire to avoid taking any responsibility without the immediate sanction of General Grant was the main reason why the rebels, having threatened Washington and sacked the peaceful farms and villages of Maryland, got off scatheless.” Lincoln often cited Early’s escape as one of the most exasperating developments of the war.58 He had predicted a day before Early entered Maryland that “with decent management” Union forces could “destroy any enemy who crosses the Potomac.”59
Lincoln once confessed to Noah Brooks “that he lacked physical courage,” but added that “he had a fair share of the moral quality of that virtue.” Brooks considered the president’s action at Fort Stevens “ample proof that he would not have dropped his musket and run, as he believed he certainly would, at the first sign of physical danger.”60
Early’s men had burned Montgomery Blair’s elegant home in Maryland, causing the postmaster general to declare that “the officers in command about Washington are poltroons,” that “there were not more than five hundred rebels on the Silver Spring road and we had a million of men in arms,” and that “it was a disgrace.” Taking understandable offense, Halleck wrote a heated letter demanding Blair’s dismissal. When Stanton handed that document to Lincoln, the president replied firmly: “I do not consider what may have been hastily said in a moment of vexation at so severe a loss, is sufficient ground for so grave a step. Besides this, truth is generally the best vindication against slander. I propose continuing to be myself the judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall be dismissed.”61 He penned a similarly stern memo for the cabinet as a whole: “I must myself be the judge, how long to retain in, and when to remove any of you from his position. It would greatly pain me to discover any of you endeavoring to procure another[’]s removal, or, in any way to prejudice him before the public. Such endeavor would be a wrong to me; and much worse, a wrong to the country. My wish is that on this subject, no remark be made, nor question asked, by any of you, here or elsewhere, now or hereafter.”62
Mary Lincoln shared her husband’s irritation at Early’s escape. When Stanton told her that he intended to commission a painting of the president on the ramparts of Fort Stevens, she snapped: “That is very well, and I can assure you of one thing, Mr. Secretary, if I had had a few ladies with me the Rebels would not have been permitted to get away as they did!”63
Like the Lincolns, the country was disgusted by Early’s escape and by the lack of military success elsewhere. In Washington, a Treasury Department clerk lamented that “we are humbled in the eyes of the world. Everybody here feels it,” and an attorney declared that “[w]e have now to be laughed at, as there never was a greater scare.”64 If Lincoln did not do something “to retrieve this blunder of omission,” Benjamin Brown French predicted, “he will find ‘a hard road to trabbel I believe,’ to get, again, into the Presidential chair. The curses all around are long and deep as to the inefficiency somewhere, and I have had quite a talk with the President since the invaders left, which was anything but satisfactory to me. I do not think the President regards the whole affair with sufficient seriousness. He talks and laughs, and tells stories just as if nothing of moment had happened. I am warmly, most warmly, his friend, but would, were it proper, pray him to weigh this matter with all the seriousness that so grave an affair deserves.”65 From New York, George William Curtis reported that as a result of the Confederate incursion, “the sense of absurdity and humiliation is very universal. These things weaken the hold of the administration upon the people and the only serious peril that I foresee is the setting in of a reaction which may culminate in November and defeat Lincoln as it did [James S.] Wadsworth in this state [in 1862].”66
In late July, Early’s forces inflicted additional humiliation by burning the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, after its residents failed to meet a demand for $50,000. This further eroded support for Lincoln. A lawyer visiting the capital observed of the president: “These raids hurt him badly, and his star is declining.”67
Voter Disenchantment
On July 30, Northern spirits were further depressed by the
battle of the Crater at Petersburg. There troops from the coal mining regions of Pennsylvania had dug a tunnel, placed kegs of gunpowder directly beneath enemy lines, and detonated a huge explosion, whereupon 15,000 Union troops blundered by poring into the resulting crater rather than around it. The Rebels easily slaughtered them and stymied the attack. Like the country, Lincoln was deeply disturbed. The following day, he met with Grant at Fort Monroe for five hours. They evidently discussed the need to find a new commander to deal with Early in the Shenandoah Valley, where Franz Sigel and David Hunter had conspicuously failed. Among the possibilities considered were Meade, McClellan, and William B. Franklin. Despite great pressure to restore McClellan, Lincoln passed over him and those other senior generals in favor of the very junior Philip Sheridan, only 33 years old. (On July 21, Francis P. Blair, Sr., had urged McClellan to announce that he would not run for president; in return, Blair would recommend that Lincoln give Little Mac a command in the field. Blair insisted that he acted without the president’s knowledge or authorization. When informed by Blair of this action, Lincoln responded courteously but indicated neither approval nor disapproval.) From his conference with Grant, the president emerged optimistic, for the general had confidently predicted “that he should meet with several rebuffs but that he would finally get the place [Richmond].”68 After the meeting, Grant assigned Sheridan to pursue Early “to the death. Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also.”69
Lincoln was delighted with those instructions, but he feared that the War Department, which looked askance at the appointment of so young a general, might not be fully cooperative. So he wrote Grant on August 3: “I have seen your despatch .… This, I think, is exactly right, as to how our forces should move. But please look over the despatches you may have rece[i]ved from here, ever since you made that order, and discover, if you can, that there is any idea in the head of any one here, of ‘putting our army South of the enemy’ or of ‘following him to the death’ in any direction. I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.”70 A few days later, Grant told Lincoln that he was reluctant to break his hold on the Confederate army at Petersburg. The president replied in a way that spoke volumes about his indomitable resolve: “Hold on with a bull-dog gripe, and chew & choke, as much as possible.”71
Lincoln may have felt better after his July 31 visit to Grant, but the voters did not. As public morale sank, the president began to worry about his reelection chances. Gloomily, he predicted to General Andrew J. Hamilton, provisional governor of Texas, that “unless some great change takes place,” he would be “badly beaten.” The people of the North, he told Hamilton, “promised themselves when Gen. Grant started out that he would take Richmond in June—he didn’t take it, and they blame me, but I promised them no such thing, & yet they hold me responsible.”72
Radical Challenge: The Wade–Davis Bill and Manifesto
Among those most disenchanted with Lincoln were congressional Radicals, who passed a bill written by Senator Benjamin F. Wade and Maryland Congressman Henry Winter Davis laying out a Reconstruction program different in some ways from the president’s. Both plans shared in common the requirement that the Confederate states must emancipate their slaves, and both stipulated that the federal government would appoint governors to preside over the Reconstruction process. Neither plan allowed blacks to vote. Unlike Lincoln’s scheme, which called for military governors to be appointed by the president, the Wade–Davis bill authorized the appointment of civilian provisional governors. Passed on July 2, the bill mandated that when armed resistance ended within a state, the provisional governor (named by the president) was to enroll adult white males and permit them to take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. Once a majority of those registered (not 10%, as Lincoln’s plan called for) had taken the oath, the governor would facilitate the election of a state constitutional convention. Only those taking an “iron-clad” oath that they had never fought against the Union could vote in the referendum on the constitutions or serve as delegates to the constitutional conventions. (This was much more stringent than Lincoln’s plan, which called for an oath of prospective, not retrospective, loyalty.) The new constitutions must repudiate all debt incurred in support of the war, disqualify from voting and officeholding all high-ranking members of the Confederate military or civilian governments, and abolish slavery. (The Wade–Davis bill also denied all citizenship rights to prominent Confederates who continued supporting the war after the bill’s adoption.) Once these requirements were met, the state could be readmitted to the Union, vote in presidential elections, and choose members of Congress. Under Lincoln’s plan, blacks were to be educated and their rights protected, but the states were to determine how these goals were to be met. Congress demanded that blacks and whites be treated equally before the law, that blacks enjoy the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and that white kidnappers of blacks be harshly punished.
The requirement that a majority had to take the oath effectively meant that Reconstruction would be strictly a postwar enterprise; Lincoln wanted it implemented while the fighting still raged in order to help shorten the war. The retrospective oath dismayed Lincoln, who objected in principle to “an oath which requires a man to swear he has not done wrong” because it “rejects the Christian principle of forgiveness on terms of repentance. I think it is enough if the man does no wrong hereafter.”73
The Wade–Davis statute did not satisfy many abolitionists, who objected to its failure to enfranchise blacks. Wade explained that while he supported black suffrage in principle, he opposed an amendment providing for it because he feared that “it will sacrifice the bill.”74 Senator John P. Hale voiced the sentiments of many fellow Radicals when he expressed disagreement “with those who hold that the right of voting is a right which belongs to the catalogue of a man’s natural rights & that it is quite as wrong to withhold that from him [the black man] as it is to keep him in a state of bondage. That is not so, it is not a natural right but a political one bestowed by those who frame the political institutions of a Country. If it were a natural right it would belong to women as well as to man, & society in forming its institutions and organizations has a right to with-hold it from any person or class of persons who it believes cannot exercise it understandingly & in a manner that will subserve and promote the best interests of society.”75 (As already noted, Lincoln at this time was, behind the scenes, pressing the Louisiana government to grant at least some blacks the vote.)
When rumors circulated that Lincoln might veto the Wade–Davis bill, congressmen and senators, among them Sumner, Davis, Thaddeus Stevens, and Zachariah Chandler, expressed their dismay to the president. On July 4, as Lincoln sat in the Capitol affixing his signature to various bills, Chandler accosted him, saying a veto “would make a terrible record for us to fight.”
“Mr. Chandler, this bill was placed before me a few minutes before Congress adjourns,” Lincoln replied. “It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way.”
“If it is vetoed it will damage us fearfully in the North West. It may not in Illinois, but it will in Michigan and Ohio. The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed states.”
“That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act.”
“It is no more than you have done yourself.”
“I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress.”
(Lincoln was not being entirely candid. The bill had been passed two days earlier and had been under discussion for months.)
When Chandler left, Lincoln told three of his cabinet members, “This bill and this position of these gentlemen seems to me to make the fatal admission (in asserting that the insurrectionary states are no longer states in the Union) that states whenever they please may of their own motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Now we cannot survive that admission I am convince
d. If that be true I am not President, these gentlemen are not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid that question ever since it first began to be mooted & thus to avoid confusion and disturbance in our own counsels. It was to obviate this question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery .… I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends, as to whether certain states have been in or out of the Union during the war: a merely metaphysical question and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion.” When John Hay opined that the Radicals had lost touch with public opinion, Lincoln said: “If they choose to make a point upon this I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly to me & I don[’]t know that this will make any special difference as to that. At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right: I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself.”76
When they realized that the president was not going to sign the bill (thus killing it with a pocket veto), the Radicals erupted in indignation. On the House floor, a wrathful Henry Winter Davis excoriated Lincoln. To one journalist, Davis seemed “to be ever wandering about dragging an imaginary coat upon the floor of the House and daring any one to tread upon it,” and a fellow Maryland Radical exclaimed that the congressman “lives on wormwood & gall and aloes!”77 The self-righteous, vain, and impulsive Davis regarded those who disagreed with him as “fools,” “chattering, whining, and timorous merchants,” “mutton heads,” and “rattlesnakes.”78 In November 1864, Lincoln remarked that Davis “has been very malicious against me but has only injured himself by it. His conduct has been very strange to me. I came here, his friend, wishing to continue so. I had heard nothing but good of him; he was the cousin of my intimate friend Judge Davis. But he had scarcely been elected when I began to learn of his attacking me on all possible occasions.”79 The president, with characteristic magnanimity, said of Davis’s assault against him, “it appears to do him good, and as it does me no injury, (that is I don’t feel that it does) what’s the harm in letting him have his fling? If he did not pitch into me he would into some poor fellow whom he might hurt.”80
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2 Page 118