For his part, Henry Raymond returned to the front only one more time—the following January—when he received notice to claim his soldier-brother’s body in Belle Plain, Virginia, after the Battle of Fredericksburg. Assuming his brother had been killed in action, Raymond promptly embarked on the mournful journey, but when he got there, found to his shock and joy that his brother was alive and well. It seemed that the telegraph operator had garbled the message: Raymond had been summoned to meet not his brother’s corpse, but his corps. The incident may have taught the editor yet another valuable lesson about the unreliability of dispatches by wire.38
• • •
By far the biggest news story to come out of the stalled 1862 Union offensive was the March 9 battle between the ironclad vessels USS Monitor and CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads. Northern and Southern competition to put an iron warship into naval service had hardly been a secret. For months, the press had breathlessly reported rumors about secret construction projects on both sides. Reflecting undisguised concern that Union ship designers were losing this vital race, the Times even ran a public notice urging that proposals for new “iron-clad steam vessels-of-war” be sent to the Navy Department.39
Then on March 8, the newly refitted Confederate ironclad Virginia steamed into Hampton Roads and, impregnable to return fire, wreaked destruction on the helpless, all-wooden federal fleet. Fortunately for the Union, the quickly built, more technologically advanced, and far sleeker Monitor arrived on the scene from Brooklyn just hours after the Virginia’s rampage. The following day, the two ironclads met in one-on-one combat and fought to what amounted to a draw—though the mere fact that the smaller Monitor halted the Virginia’s brief reign of terror was hailed as a victory in Northern newspapers.
Lincoln, who had intuitively encouraged fast-track construction of the Monitor, rushed down to the front after the battle to get a firsthand look at the modern marvel. There, both the president and the “cheesebox on a raft” attracted further attention from reporters, including celebrated author Nathaniel Hawthorne. “It could not be called a vessel at all,” Hawthorne dismissed the Monitor in the Atlantic Monthly. “It was a machine . . . for lack of a better similitude it looked like a gigantic rat-trap.” Hawthorne, who retained an admiration for Franklin Pierce, the dignified former president who had appointed him to several federal offices, had a similar reaction when he applied his “ambitious vein of description” to the current chief executive (Ben Perley Poore, “note book in hand,” joined the rare interview). Hawthorne produced such a frank description of the homespun Lincoln that his Atlantic editor deleted it from the published article, going so far as to apologize in a footnote: “The sketch appears to have been written in a benign spirit . . . it lacks reverence.”40 A resentful Hawthorne confided, “what a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little truth in this miserable humbug of a world.”41
Unfortunately for the Union side, the Monitor-Virginia duel proved the high point of the Peninsula Campaign. By midsummer, Raymond was back home and McClellan on his way to failure at the hands of a freshly promoted Confederate general who ascended to top command after the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31. The “new” Confederate defender was a previously overlooked, fifty-five-year-old veteran named Robert E. Lee. He had been ignored by the press for so long that even Richmond’s Southern Illustrated News, in belatedly publishing his portrait in December, remained unaware that Lee’s hair had turned snowy white and that he had grown a soon-to-become iconic beard; its outdated front-page woodcut showed Lee dark-haired and clean-shaven save for the black mustache he had worn during the Mexican War. As McClellan busied himself organizing an orderly retreat from the Virginia Peninsula, the New York Times concluded that the Union’s “military and naval operations seem everywhere to have come almost to a dead end.”42
• • •
So, nearly, did the administration’s recently improving relationship with Horace Greeley. In late March, Greeley launched a series of heated attacks on one of Lincoln’s favorite companions, his old Illinois law crony Ward Hill Lamon, now serving under a presidential appointment as marshal of the District of Columbia. The gigantic “Hill,” as the president called him, was a treasured member of the White House inner circle, not only a friend and occasional bodyguard, but one of the few intimates capable of deploying a joke or song to snap Lincoln out of the grip of melancholy. In taking him on, Greeley ran a huge risk of permanently alienating the president.
Lamon was also a loyal Republican, but critics like Greeley believed that in his official post as a federal marshal he had become overly enthusiastic about pursuing and confining fugitive slaves who streamed into Washington seeking protection. General James Wadsworth, the new military commander of the District, complained to the president in the strongest terms that Lamon was detaining fugitives in the Washington prison on only the flimsiest of suspicions. Congressional Republicans agreed, threatening to abolish the post of marshal altogether and require the election of a sheriff. Lamon was clearly no Benjamin Butler when it came to contraband slaves, and reports of his unseemly zeal outraged Greeley, who published a series of attacks on the marshal.
In April, Lamon responded by filing a libel suit against the Tribune editor. James Gordon Bennett chortled, “H.G. is beginning to reap the reward of his labors. He finds that impudent and unwarranted assaults upon honest officials for partisan purposes may not always escape punishment. He will probably ere long pay a compulsory visit to the District, if he should not . . . fly the country.”43 Instead, on April 8, four days after a grand jury indicted him for “malicious libel of public officers,” Greeley admitted to his bureau chief, Samuel Wilkeson: “I stay away from Washington because I’m afraid to go thither. If there was the least chance of a fair trial I of course would not mind going, but there isn’t. Lincoln has disgraced himself so much by appointing . . . [that] vagabond Marshal; that I presume there is no chance that he will ever remove him.”44 He never did.
Ward Hill Lamon, marshal of the District of Columbia—and longtime friend of Lincoln—who sued Greeley for libel in 1862.
The president did, however, eventually negotiate a truce that spared both Lamon and Greeley further confrontation and embarrassment. After Lamon dropped the libel suit at the end of 1862, Greeley thanked Lincoln for his “interposition,” confessing that he could not have found either the time or money to stand trial in the capital. Yet the editor could not stop himself from smugly adding: “Still, that suit has done me good service. It has saved me several journeys to Washington on other folks’ business,—business to me most irksome, yet which I could not have refused without offense; yet which I could not be expected to undertake at the expense of a month or so in your crowded and not too cleanly jail.”45 Lincoln was no doubt gratified that Lamon’s lawsuit had at least kept the unmanageable Greeley out of the city for the better part of a year. As for General Wadsworth, until his transfer in September he continued to pressure Lamon to liberate confined African Americans, but Lincoln never publicly admonished his old friend over the issue.46 The War Department ultimately ordered Wadsworth’s successor as military commander of the District of Columbia to bow to civil law on such matters—meaning to the ultimate authority of Ward Hill Lamon.
• • •
During the Peninsula Campaign, Lincoln had confronted not only McClellan’s inertia but one more attempt by a field commander to seize the initiative, and the commensurate publicity, on emancipation. On May 9, General David Hunter, one of the officers who had acted as a bodyguard during Lincoln’s inaugural journey, unexpectedly declared enslaved people in his department—embracing South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida—to be “forever free.” Ten days later, responding just as he had to the earlier Frémont proclamation, Lincoln revoked the order, insisting that the freedom power “I reserve to myself,” not to “commanders in the field.”47
The New York Herald responded to this latest incident with a stinging editorial demanding an immediate overhaul of the “misman
aged” War Department. Seward and Chase had backed off from “the nigger business,” Bennett railed. “Who then remains? Only Secretary Stanton, to whom both Seward and Chase have thrown their dirty linen—the newspapers and the niggers.” Inaccurately, Bennett believed Stanton had urged Hunter to issue his emancipation order as a kind of stalking horse. Now the editor warned Lincoln that if he did not oust Stanton from office, the president might be forced from his. Bennett’s ugly diatribe prompted another of those ingenious personal replies from Lincoln, who gently thanked the editor “for the able support given by you, through the Herald, to what I think the true cause of the country, and also for your kind expressions towards me personally.” Lincoln offered only the mildest of rebukes: “I wish to correct an erroneous impression of yours in regard to the Secretary of War. He mixes no politics whatever with his duties; knew nothing of Gen. Hunter’s proclamation. . . . I wish this to go no further than to you, while I do wish to assure you it is true.”48
Once again, another of Lincoln’s masterful private letters to an editor had its desired salutary effect. Bennett replied that he believed Stanton to be “a gentleman and a patriot” after all, adding: “Be assured it has been my constant desire ever since this unhappy war broke out to aid and assist your government in all its wise and important measures—Your success in the terrible crisis has been wonderful, and I have no doubt now of a successful and brilliant termination to the struggle. . . . On many occasions I have found myself groping in the dark in endeavoring to sustain your administration, but generally try to come out right.” Bennett even proposed a “short visit in Washington in order to have a full and confidential conversation with yourself.” A relieved Lincoln managed to dodge Bennett’s latest request for a face-to-face meeting, but resumed paying attention, of course, to the editor’s patronage appeals.49
Not everyone proved willing to cheer Bennett’s support for the administration. Boston Republican Edwin Wright reminded the president of the “negrophilism” of “the old traitor of the N.Y. Herald.” And New Yorker James W. White warned that the Herald was still “doing infinite mischief . . . stirring up all the hatred and bitterness that it can in a manner the most malignant,” adding: “No act of stern justice would be hailed by more satisfaction by all the loyal people of New York than the suppression of the Herald.”50
The paper’s latest rants also prompted reform-minded minister William Goodell, editor of the small New York weekly Principia, to caution Lincoln that Bennett’s “pestilent sheet” could never be fully trusted. Controlled by “well known Secession-Sympathizers” who continued to use it to alienate “the ignorant and most vicious and evil-disposed portion of our city populace,” Goodell warned, the Herald remained capable of endangering peace and safety in the city. Loyal New Yorkers had neither forgiven nor forgotten “that the Herald was preparing to raise the Confederate flag, on the fall of Fort Sumpter, that it had long been openly pleading the Confederate cause, for the purpose of carrying into effect Mayor Woods [sic] exhortation to the citizens of New-York to Secede.” Circumstances since may have compelled Bennett to “hoist the Union flag, and, in a degree, to change the tone of his paper.” But “whether flattering or threatening the Administration, his one evident aim is to control or influence it, in the interest of the Confederacy, or, if unsuccessful, to overthrow it by violence.”51 Ignoring these alarms, Lincoln continued to court Bennett; in a crisis, he confidently believed he could control him.
Then the Tribune made its own misgivings public. Conceding Lincoln’s authority to rule on all military matters, including emancipation decrees by renegade generals, Horace Greeley nonetheless called on the president “to consider and act upon the manifest necessity of having a definite, unvarying, clearly understood policy with regard to this subject.” The Gilmore news agreement notwithstanding, Greeley was again losing patience with the president. Exiled from Washington, the frustrated editor put his famous literary flair on display to declare, with more accuracy than Lincoln would yet publicly admit: “Slavery, and its doom, is sure. Every gun fired in this struggle, no matter on which side, no matter what else it hits or misses, lodges a ball in the carcass of the writhing monster. Man may hesitate or vacillate, but the judgment of God is sure, and under that judgment Slavery reels to its certain downfall.”52
• • •
Not long after Greeley’s prophetic words appeared in print, Lincoln decided to look to an old warrior for advice on the frustrating military situation. Late in June, he embarked on one of his exceptionally rare trips outside Washington to consult McClellan’s predecessor, Winfield Scott, at his retirement home at West Point. It was the only way Lincoln could again engage Old Fuss and Feathers, for the bloated veteran no longer had the stamina to travel. More than willing to suspend protocol and travel north for the visit, Lincoln may have particularly relished the chance to escape the relentless Washington press corps for a few days. For this, his only presidential trip to New York state, Lincoln took with him the outspoken General John Pope, rumored to be lurking in the wings to succeed McClellan if the Peninsula Campaign collapsed. Correspondent George Townsend, who knew both men, observed that Pope “had all of Mr. Lincoln’s garrulity (which I suspect to be the cause of their affinity), and none of that good old man’s common sense.”53
Lincoln caught the capital’s newsmen completely off guard with his unannounced outing, which remained cloaked in secrecy even after it commenced. Slipping out of Washington aboard a private railroad car, he arrived in New York City around 1 A.M. on June 23, and changed trains there undetected by Gotham’s dailies, too. Not until the 24th did the Tribune finally break the story, announcing almost sheepishly: “It is stated on the authority of passengers from West Point today that President Lincoln and General Pope arrived at Cozzen’s Hotel, West Point, at an early hour this morning, and the fact that a special train passed over the Hudson River Railroad after midnight leaves little reason to doubt the truth of the report.”54 Wondered the acerbic Herald: “Has Old Abe taken another clandestine flight in Scotch cap and military cloak?”55
The reading public never learned the details of Lincoln’s five-hour conference with Scott. The general wrote up a summary of the meeting, but shared it with Lincoln alone.56 The only thing the president ever said publicly about his mission provided instead a bizarre public acknowledgment of the government’s hard policy on an entirely different matter: newspaper censorship. Despite all his years in the political arena, Lincoln remained uncomfortable speaking extemporaneously. So when a small but insistent crowd finally caught up with him while he paused to change trains in Jersey City on June 25, he agreed to speak but went decidedly, perhaps intentionally, off topic, apparently still delighted that he had outwitted all the reporters who made it their habit to follow his every move. This time, however, journalists were on hand to transcribe every word.
“When birds and animals are looked at through a fog they are seen to disadvantage,” Lincoln began his disjointed greeting to the puzzled knot of well-wishers, “and so it might be with you if I were to attempt to tell you why I went to see Gen. Scott. I can only say that my visit to West Point did not have the importance that has been attached it. . . . The Secretary of War, you know, holds a pretty tight rein on the Press, so that they shall not tell more than they ought to, and I’m afraid that if I blab too much he might draw a tight rein on me.”57 On this occasion, Lincoln “blabbed” hardly at all.
As always, the president told the press exactly what he wanted them to hear, and not a word more.
• • •
Once back in Washington, Lincoln not only reshuffled the army high command, he also attempted to rekindle recent antislavery momentum by summoning Border State congressmen to the White House to press his compensation plan. The officials listened respectfully, but after caucusing independently, voted overwhelmingly to reject the president’s offer.
“Can you enlighten the people in regard to the real object and purpose of the Administration at Washington
in relation to the Rebellion?” an impatient reader calling himself “Enquirer” wrote Horace Greeley after this latest emancipation initiative collapsed. With the “great army of the Potomac” now “hid away,” the “President with full power to act, & with a force, ever ready and willing & anxious to be called upon and by & through which the rebellion could be crushed suddenly and surely”—meaning African-American recruits—“hangs back, hesitates, & leaves the country to drift away to certain destruction.” The Tribune’s managing editor, Sydney Howard Gay, forwarded the complaint to the White House, noting ominously, “I am receiving daily many similar letters. . . . I do not publish them because I know they would exercise a most serious influence upon the public mind.” Lincoln responded by inviting Gay to “come and see me at once; and, if possible, bring your correspondent with you.” But “Enquirer” decided “it would be a mere waste of time & money” to undertake such a trip. Besides, he sneered, “I understand the policy is now finally settled that none but white men are to be allowed to give their lives for the preservation of the country. This is our weakness as it is the strength of the rebels, and with this policy we shall fail in the end.”58
Lincoln and the Power of the Press The War for Public Opinion Page 52