The Union had had some queer heroes, but none as unlikely as the one on whom, after three years of war, its ardent hopes were fixed. Grant had been a taciturn boy, who liked farming, and went to West Point only because his domineering father got him the appointment. He had never enjoyed military life. In the Mexican campaign, he had served as a quartermaster, hating the war. It was in Mexico that he began to drink. He was not a boon companion, but took his whisky in morose solitude. Later, in the desolate life of a western Army post, the habit had grown on him until it became subversive of discipline, and he was forced to resign. Grant found himself a penniless civilian. He made fumbling attempts at farming, and then at business in St. Louis. The disgraced ex-soldier was going downhill fast, when his father made a place for the family failure in the family leather store in Galena, Illinois. Grant did not like the work, but he had a wife and four children, and he was glad to get it. He was there, thirty-nine years old, when the fall of Sumter awoke the Union to civil war.
Captain Grant, as he was called, assisted in drilling the Galena volunteers, but was not elected an officer in the company. He followed the boys to Springfield in his civilian clothes, and got a clerkship at the State capital. Having received his education at the Government’s expense, he felt it his duty to offer his services, but the letter he wrote to Washington, rather diffidently suggesting that he was fit to command a regiment, was never answered. At last, he was given a chance in Illinois. A regiment of mutinous volunteers behaved so badly that they drove their colonel to resign, and Grant was put in his place. He soon whipped the regiment into shape. His former neighbor, Congressman Washburne, got him a brigadier’s commission. The “unconditional surrender” at Fort Donelson made him a national figure.
Accidentally, in middle age, Grant discovered his one great aptitude: for dogged and obstinate fighting. He had a superstitious aversion to retracing his steps. It was not always an advantage in his military campaigns, but it was a new fault in Federal generals. The sentence in his dispatch to the Confederate commander at Donelson, “I propose to move immediately upon your works,” is one of those phrases which echo coldly down the aisles of history, without seeming to have earned the right to be remembered. It thrilled a nation in the spring of 1862.
The clamor for his removal after the slaughter at Shiloh was drowned in the cheers for Vicksburg, and Chattanooga made him the unrivaled military leader of the Union. Although, when he was nobody, Grant’s character had not seemed in any way remarkable, it became invested with power as soon as he was famous. His very ordinariness appeared marvelously sound. He was the apotheosis of the plain man, and the plain man admired and trusted him. His uncouthness was no handicap. Grant was in the American tradition. He had pluck and persistence and common sense, qualities which a young country understood and respected. There was no nonsense about him. He had no airs or falderols or highfalutin talk. He had, in fact, very little to say, either in speech or on paper. The Union, surfeited with boastful promises, liked his reticence. During a serenade at Willard’s in March of 1864, Congressman Washburne introduced Grant as a “man of deeds, and not of words.” The crowd cheered the inarticulate soldier to the echo.
Grant had come to Washington by order of the War Department. He had never before set foot in the capital; hated and feared the place, and did not mean to tarry there. Sherman had dinned into his ears the dangers of its intrigues, and the corrupt moral atmosphere of its politics. “For God’s sake, and for your country’s sake,” Sherman wrote his friend, “come out of Washington.” Grant did not need this plea to stiffen his resolution. He was too diffident to find enjoyment in public receptions and ovations. He had no taste for a fine office with a Brussels carpet, preferring a wall tent, with a narrow bed and a rude pine table for his maps and papers. He was accustomed to planning his own campaigns and keeping his own counsel. With a soldier’s dread of political interference, he, as well as Sherman, had marked the influence of Washington on other military men—McClellan, Pope, and Halleck.
On the day after Grant’s arrival, he was formally presented with the commission of lieutenant-general. The grade had been revived by recent act of Congress, with the tacit understanding that it would be bestowed on Grant. It was high military honor from a republic which had been chary of permitting its heroes to place a third star on their shoulder straps. To witness the presentation, Grant brought along his son Fred, a boy of fourteen, who had been through the siege of Vicksburg. He was also accompanied by two aides and by General Halleck, who had all but forced him out of the service in 1862. The President and the gentlemen of the Cabinet assembled, and, in reply to Mr. Lincoln’s short speech, Grant painfully stammered out a few lines he had penciled on a half sheet of note paper. In his embarrassment, he seemed scarcely able to read his own writing; but the composition, with its reference to his heavy responsibilities, the noble armies of the Union and the favor of Providence, was entirely original with himself. He had omitted the compliments to the Army of the Potomac, which the President had asked him to pay.
The next day Grant paid a visit to General Meade’s headquarters at Brandy Station. Mr. Welles, observing him at the Cabinet meeting on his return, found him deficient in military bearing and dignity, but more businesslike than he had formerly appeared. Grant had been fortified by a great decision. He had completely changed his plans, abandoning his cherished intention of leading the Western armies on a campaign to Atlanta. The President had told him that the country wanted him to take Richmond. Grant said that he could do it, if he had the troops. In his stubborn heart, he felt the strength to resist the political pressure of Washington, and he had resolved that his place was with the Army of the Potomac. On the third evening after his arrival in the capital, he left for Nashville, to sever his relations with the troops which he led to victory. As he traveled westward on the cars, the orders were issued which placed him in command of all the armies of the Union.
Grant’s trip to Brandy Station disappointed the Washington public, for it had been advertised that he would accompany the President to a grand gala performance in his honor at Grover’s, where the famous tragedian, Edwin Booth, was playing a four weeks’ engagement. The theatre was lavishly decorated with flags. The names of Grant’s victories, elaborately inscribed, were hung on the boxes and the dress circle, and across the front of the stage ran a banner painted with the golden words, “Unconditional Surrender,” adorned with the flag and the eagle. On a stormy night, Booth gave his admired impersonation of Richard III to a house packed to the doors, with standing room sold out. The President and Mrs. Lincoln and Secretary Seward sat in the flag-draped boxes, but the crowd had come to see Grant. Leonard Grover stepped on the stage to explain that the military chieftain had been obliged to leave town, but would positively attend Booth’s performance of Hamlet the next evening. The Chronicle understood that Grant telegraphed this assurance to Grover, and reported that throngs again rushed to the theatre on the following evening, only to meet with a second disappointment, as Grant had left for the West. Mrs. Lincoln had arranged a military dinner in his honor, and it was said that the President had urged Grant to stay.
Two rooms on the second floor of Winder’s Building were fitted up for the commanding general, but he spent little time in them, making his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, far from the center of the military telegraph. He left the multifarious details of the army headquarters to General Halleck, who on Grant’s elevation to the chief command assumed the position of national chief of staff. From the field, Grant made four flying trips to Washington in late March and early April, for conferences at the White House and War Department. Each of these visits was the occasion for an outbreak of deputations, receptions, presentations and serenades. Crowds tailed Grant, whenever he went out. In the hall of Willard’s, where he lodged, men avidly stared at his ordinary face, with its protruding stump of cigar. No uninformed stranger could have imagined that this plain-looking soldier was the commander of nearly nine hundred thousand m
en. He had, however, gained composure. There was a reassuringly quiet and self-possessed look about him. His cold blue eyes were clear, and his features wore the impassive expression which had become familiar to his soldiers on the battlefield.
Throughout the Union, the news that Grant was commander-in-chief had inspired a joyful expectation that the war would soon be won. The national morale needed this vitalizing hope in the early months of 1864. An attempt to occupy the interior of Florida had proved unsuccessful. A movement up the Red River in Louisiana, under command of General Banks, was a failure, and a sudden fall in the river imperiled the fleet which co-operated in the expedition. Fort Pillow on the Mississippi was captured by the Confederates, and the massacre of Negro soldiers and their white officers set the Union calling for retaliation. Reports of the sufferings of Federal prisoners of war in the South added urgency to the desire for decisive military action.
On the political horizon, the clouds were dark and heavy. It was election year. Washington was in a ferment as the nation, in the midst of war, became embroiled in the distractions of the Presidential canvass. On the floor of the House, Copperheads clamored for a change of rulers and a peaceful settlement of the war, demanding the recognition of the independence of the Southern States. Citizens of the Union had been shut in military prisons for uttering sentiments far less treasonable than those which the people’s representatives boldly shouted at the Capitol. The acrimonious debates recalled the days of secession excitement, and the galleries were again crowded with spectators. Motions were made to expel some of the more reckless Democratic extremists, but they dwindled, after heated oratory, into resolutions of censure.
Although the State elections of the preceding autumn had sustained the Republicans, the opposition was formidable. Copperhead cries for peace found sympathetic listeners in the war-weary nation. Secret orders, actively engaged in discouraging enlistments and agitating resistance to the draft, had mustered a large membership. Many viewed with alarm the President’s assumption of war powers. The great hope of the Democrats lay in the division within the Republican party. The powerful radical leaders, though informed of Lincoln’s popularity in the country, were passionately opposed to his renomination. The President had repeatedly proved too strong for them. He had emancipated the slaves when and how it pleased him. Worst of all, he had issued a proclamation of amnesty to rebels who should take the oath of allegiance. For Chief Magistrate during the next four critical years, the anti-slavery cabal wanted a man of their own faction who, once the war was ended, would carry out a vengeful program of abolition and subjugation in the Southern States. Lincoln’s views on reconstruction were infused with moderation and generosity to the vanquished. He was as incapable of vindictiveness toward the Southern people as toward his own Secretary of the Treasury, that pious double-dealer, Mr. Chase.
Even Lincoln could no longer pretend to be unaware of the Presidential aspirations of his radical Cabinet minister. While Chase sat, irritably and intermittently, in Lincoln’s council, a circular advertising his claims went broadcast over the country, and eventually appeared in the press. A great silence greeted the movement for Chase’s nomination. From Republican caucuses and conventions in various States came expressions of loyalty to the President. The radical politicians of Congress read the portents with mounting blood pressure. Republicans vied with Democrats in railing against Lincoln. In the anteroom of his office, the President was openly assailed by senators of his party, while they waited for an interview with him. Washington Republicans shared in the stormy altercations which preceded the holding of the party’s convention—designated, not the Republican, but the National Union Convention. The delegates from the District were chosen in an atmosphere of quarrelsome debate. Lincoln supporters maintained that Washington delegates, the constant witnesses of the President’s patriotism, should speak with an unwavering voice; but they went uninstructed to the convention at Baltimore in early June.
In the midst of the commotion, an artist had set up a studio in the state dining-room of the White House. Mr. Francis B. Carpenter, a portrait painter from New York, had been granted permission to carry out his ambitious project of depicting the President with his Cabinet at the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Pencils, brushes and paints littered the dining-room table, and a large canvas was stretched to catch the light from the windows. In the blaze of the great chandelier, Mr. Carpenter often labored until dawn.
The artist had also been given the freedom of the official chamber, which was to form the background of his painting. There he sat for hours on end, making pencil studies of “accessories” and staring at Lincoln’s face. Sometimes a caller who wanted a private word with the President would look hesitantly in Carpenter’s direction. “Oh, you need not mind him,” Lincoln would call out heartily; “he is but a painter.”
Lincoln took an innocent pride in Carpenter’s work. He was devoid of aesthetic appreciation, but this was a picture he could understand. He found the painter congenial, too. Carpenter was painfully earnest and humorless, but he was a gentle, thoughtful fellow, and he conceived a worshipful admiration for the President. Though he spelled art with a capital A, Carpenter was predominantly concerned with its moral purpose. He was also a stickler for historical accuracy: pen and paper, books and chairs all had to be painstakingly represented; and he even tossed into one corner of his picture a newspaper “studied” from a copy of the New York Tribune. He tried to explain his artistic aims to the President, but did not capture his attention. For Lincoln, the painting was a point from which to take off on reminiscences of the Emancipation Proclamation. The moralist in Carpenter reveled in the rattle of breaking chains. Conscious that this was history and a noble thing, he listened more eagerly than a better artist might have done, and wrote down everything he heard.
Only second in interest to the President in the artist’s mind were the gentlemen of the Cabinet. Caleb B. Smith was missing from the roster of the historic occasion. He had died in Indiana. His pictured face was dim, but scarcely dimmer than the part he had played in Washington. His successor, Mr. John Usher, must have felt quite left out, as the others sat for their portraits and hurried down to Brady’s to have their photographs taken. Mr. Carpenter enjoyed meeting them all, and faithfully transcribed their conversations. He could not fail to be aware that serious differences existed among them, but he did not permit facts to intrude on his idealistic conception of his subject. The President’s advisers, who had never acted in harmony, were now in the snarling temper of a cage of wildcats. Carpenter united them on canvas for posterity, like Sunday-school children grouped around their teacher. Old Mr. Bates, somberly ruminating, and Mr. Seward, the profile of an antique dictator, were well enough. But the stormy petrel, Montgomery Blair, looked as acquiescent as the wraith of Mr. Smith. Cross Mr. Welles seemed to have his eyes fixed on a vision of the Apocalypse. Mr. Stanton sat slumped in a benevolent collapse; while, behind the President’s chair, as firm as the rock of ages, stood Mr. Chase, ready to die for his leader.
Chase was almost never at the Cabinet meetings as the National Union Convention approached. His position was an equivocal one, and his relations with the President were growing strained. He had many worries. His greenbacks had depreciated as, in a wild wave of speculation, gold mounted sky-high. The Treasury Department was the subject of other criticisms than the animadversions of sound-money men. Stories were circulating of fraudulent operations, of flagrant improprieties. Chase had felt constrained to make an inquiry, and he had asked the War Department to assign Colonel L. C. Baker to him for this purpose. As Treasury officials were clapped into the Old Capitol, Chase must have rued the day he invited the highhanded detective to wash his dirty linen. The scandal did not stop with exposures of dishonesty. The most sensational charges were those of immoral relations between certain Treasury employees and their female clerks. Congress appointed an investigating committee, which included enough Republicans to insure a majority report favorable to the d
epartment. Baker was charged with conspiracy against the officials he had named. The publicity, however, could not be recalled. While Washington held its breath, waiting for the thunder of guns from Virginia, barroom loafers sniggered over the means by which the Treasury girls augmented their earnings. The shining walls of the Extension—as white as Mr. Chase’s personal life—were popularly believed to shelter a kind of Government house of ill fame, where pretty women toiled until morning over ale and oyster suppers.
Early in April, General Grant wrote his orders for the simultaneous advance of all the armies of the Union. The two main movements were those of the Armies of the Cumberland, the Tennessee and the Ohio, united under the command of General Sherman, against the forces of General Joe Johnston in Georgia; and of the Army of the Potomac under General Meade against the forces of General Lee. Primarily, on the latter movement rested the hope of a decisive victory for the Union. It had become evident that the war must be won in Virginia. Three years’ fighting had produced little change in the relation of the opposing armies. Stubbornly facing each other across the Rapidan, they still defended the terrain which lay between them and their respective capitals.
Grant’s plans were laid in strict secrecy. The censored newspapers were silent. Government officials had never been so reticent. At one of the Washington parties, a lady frivolously asked Mr. Seward which way the army was going. “Madame,” the Secretary of State is said to have replied, “if I did not know, I would tell you.” Mr. Seward, however, was actually not so wise as he appeared. For the first time, the Government had completely entrusted its military operations to a military man. Grant had carte blanche to act, without political interference, advice or consultation. The President was done with meddling in army matters, and assured the commanding general that he did not want to be informed of his plans. Mr. Stanton and General Halleck had both cautioned Grant against confiding in Lincoln, on the ground that the President might be amiably indiscreet. Grant made no confidences to Stanton or Halleck, either.
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