Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  The next morning he was, he said, “in the dumps.” He got up deeply depressed, conscious that he would have to ask the cabinet, which met at noon, for a final judgment on whether attempts should be made to relieve Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens. Each member—except Cameron, who was absent—gave a written opinion. Seward remained obdurately opposed to sending an expedition to provision or reinforce Sumter because it would precipitate a civil war, but sensing that the President was determined to take some action, he favored holding Fort Pickens “at every cost.” Caleb Smith agreed. Bates also thought Fort Pickens must be held “at all hazards” and on Fort Sumter offered the unhelpful opinion that “the time is come either to evacuate or relieve it.” But now Chase and Welles came out unequivocally for reinforcing Sumter, and Blair threatened to resign if the President followed the advice of General Scott.

  The advice of the majority of the cabinet reinforced Lincoln’s own view. He had already asked Fox for a memorandum of the ships, men, and supplies he would need to relieve Sumter, and he now directed Welles and Cameron to have an expedition ready to sail from New York by April 6. To organize the fleet Fox was sent to New York with verbal instructions to prepare for the voyage “but to make no binding engagements.” The strain under which Lincoln labored in arriving at this decision was immense. All the troubles and anxieties of his life, he told Browning, did not equal those he felt in these tense days. The pressure was so great that Mary Lincoln reported that he “keeled over” and had to be put to bed with one of his rare migraine headaches.

  A decision had been reached, but Seward was not willing to concede defeat. In the week between the crucial cabinet meeting and the date for the sailing of the fleet, he tried, with a growing sense of desperation, to reverse Lincoln’s course. In the hope of avoiding hostilities, he had, through intermediaries, been in touch with the official commissioners the Confederate government sent to Washington in order to negotiate terms of separation, and he had given his word that the troops would be withdrawn from Fort Sumter. He was still confident he could negotiate a settlement of the crisis if Anderson’s garrison was evacuated. Now he was trapped between his pledge and Lincoln’s determination to proceed with a relief expedition.

  Seward first sought to escape his dilemma by bluster. On April 1 he handed Lincoln a memorandum headed “Some thoughts for the President’s consideration.” It began with the pronouncement, “We are at the end of a month’s administration and yet without a policy either domestic or foreign.” From there the Secretary went on to urge that the question before the public be changed from slavery, which was a party issue, to “Union or Disunion.” In order to bring about this shift Fort Sumter should be evacuated but Fort Pickens and the other minor forts in the Gulf of Mexico should be reinforced. Public interest should be diverted from domestic quarrels to foreign policy. In order “to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence,” he would demand explanations from Spain, which had sent troops to assist rebels in Santo Domingo, and France, which was showing too great an interest in Mexican affairs; he even added Great Britain and Russia to his list. If the French and Spanish governments did not give satisfactory answers, he would convene Congress and declare war against them. “Whatever policy we adopt,” the memorandum concluded, “there must be an energetic prosecution. . . . of it Either the President must do it himself... or Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. . . . It is not in my especial province. But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.”

  Lincoln left no record of how he felt about this extraordinary document, which he must have been tempted to dismiss as an April Fool’s Day joke. Certainly he recognized it as another of Seward’s attempts to play the role of premier in the administration. What hit a nerve was the Secretary’s assertion that the administration had no policy. Others shared this opinion. Senators Sumner and Fessenden were convinced that Lincoln had “no fixed policy except to keep mum and see what end those seceding states will come to.” Carl Schurz warned of general discontent throughout the North because Lincoln lacked leadership. Everybody, Schurz told the President, felt that “any distinct line of policy, be it war or a recognition of the Southern Confederacy, would be better than this uncertain state of things.”

  Touchy on this subject, Lincoln stiffly pointed out to Seward that he did have a policy, announced in his inaugural address, of holding, occupying, and possessing the forts and other property belonging to the government. (Rightly interpreted, that meant a policy of not evacuating Fort Sumter.) This policy, he reminded the Secretary, had Seward’s “distinct approval at the time.” Ignoring Seward’s warlike threats against European powers, Lincoln turned to his concluding observation that either the President must energetically prosecute whatever policy he adopted or delegate it to some member of the cabinet. Lincoln’s answer was unequivocal: “I remark that if this must be done, I must do it.” Then, recognizing how sharp his reply was, he probably did not send it. He kept the only known copy in his files and most likely discussed the memorandum with Seward, managing to combat its arguments without hurting the Secretary’s feelings.

  Certainly Seward was not at all disheartened by the rejection of his memorandum, and he continued to urge the President to explore face-saving solutions to the Sumter crisis. Anxious to avoid war, Lincoln willingly joined in these efforts. One possibility was an agreement to surrender Fort Sumter in return for a pledge of unconditional loyalty on the part of Virginia. There was nothing inherently implausible about such a deal. Though many Virginians sympathized with the states of the lower South, most were loyal to the Union, and Unionists had a clear majority in the state convention, which was still in session. The President hoped to confer with George W. Summers, the leading Unionist in that convention, but Summers declined to come to Washington. Instead, he sent John B. Baldwin, another Unionist, who had a long secret conference with Lincoln on April 4. What the two men said became a matter of dispute, but according to the most reliable account the President promised: “If you will guarantee to me the State of Virginia I shall remove the troops. A State for a fort is no bad business.” Whether intentionally or inadvertently, Baldwin misunderstood the President, and nothing came of this offer.

  Another of Seward’s schemes was to deflect the Sumter expedition by the successful reinforcement of Fort Pickens. That, it appeared, could be done without provoking hostilities with the Confederates. In his March 29 cabinet memorandum Seward proposed—in lieu of reinforcing Sumter—to call on Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, the army engineer in charge of construction at the Capitol, to organize an expedition to relieve Pickens. That same day he brought Meigs to the White House. Fort Pickens, the President reminded the captain, had been virtually under siege since the secession of Florida. President Buchanan had sent two hundred additional soldiers to the fort on the warship Brooklyn, but they had not been permitted to land. Under an informal truce the Confederates promised not to attack the fort if it was not reinforced. On the day after his inauguration, Lincoln gave a verbal order to land the troops aboard the Brooklyn, only to discover, like many another President, that it was one thing to give an order and quite another to have it obeyed. On March 11 he renewed the order in writing, and Scott dispatched a vessel to direct that the troops be landed. Lincoln still did not know what had happened, but, he told Meigs, he guessed his order “had fizzled out.” Now he asked Meigs, who was already familiar with the Florida forts, to organize a relief expedition.

  Thus two projects got under way at the same time. The Sumter mission, pressed chiefly by Welles and Blair, was largely a naval expedition commanded by Fox; the Pickens expedition, sponsored by Seward, was an army affair led by Meigs. The task forces preparing these fleets worked in secrecy and, partly because of interservice rivalries, partly because of antagonisms among cabinet members, each was kept largely in the dark about what its rival was doing. Inevitably there were contests for the limited resources available for these projects. Welles intended the navy’s most powerful steamer, the Powhatan, to
be part of Fox’s fleet, but Seward wanted it for Meigs’s expedition. Placing an order assigning the ship to the Pickens fleet before the President in a pile of other documents, he got Lincoln’s signature. On learning what had happened, Welles dragged Seward to the White House, where, though it was nearly midnight, Lincoln had not yet gone to bed. Confronted with the problem, “he looked first at one and then the other, and declared there was some mistake.” Assured that there was no error, the President, as Welles remembered, “took upon himself the whole blame, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part” and that “he ought to have been more careful and attentive.” He directed that the Powhatan be restored to Fox’s expedition.

  Even then there was further evidence of the total confusion that characterized the administration. Seward reluctantly telegraphed the President’s message to New York, but the directive reassigning the ship was signed “Seward.” Lieutenant David D. Porter, in command of the Powhatan, received the new order just as he was leaving the New York harbor but declined to follow it; a directive from the Secretary of State could not supersede his original orders signed by the President of the United States. Consequently the Powhatan sailed off to assist in the Pickens expedition, where it was not needed, and Fox’s Sumter fleet was weakened through what Fox’s wife called “this cruel treachery.”

  On April 4, Lincoln decided to send Fox’s expedition to Fort Sumter, and he notified Anderson that the fleet would attempt to provision the garrison and, in case it met resistance, to reinforce it. He had taken a decisive step, but not yet an irrevocable one. Since the fleet did not actually leave New York until four or five days later, he had a little more time for maneuver. That was cut drastically short on April 6, when he learned, as he feared, that his order to reinforce Fort Pickens had not been carried out. Meigs’s expedition could not possibly reach Fort Pickens before Fort Sumter must be reinforced or surrendered.

  By this time Seward was almost reconciled to the inevitable, but he made one more attempt to avert hostilities. Because he had given his word to the Confederate commissioners that Sumter would not be reinforced without notice, he wrung from the President a promise to warn South Carolina officials before sending a relief expedition. On April 6, Lincoln sent Robert S. Chew, a clerk in the State Department, to Charleston with orders to inform Governor Francis Pickens that “an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made, without further notice.” Intended to avoid provoking South Carolina authorities, this message destroyed the slight possibility that Anderson could be secretly reinforced.

  The President had little hope of results from Chew’s mission; he knew from Hurlbut’s report that the South Carolinians would attack any Union ship, even one known to contain only provisions. But, in addition to giving Seward’s schemes a last chance, he was building a historical record to prove his peaceable intent throughout the crisis. By this point he was fairly sure that the Sumter expedition would lead to bloodshed. When the governors of Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and Pennsylvania suggested the desirability of putting their state militias in fighting shape, he replied, “I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it.”

  On April 12, while the Union fleet lay helpless offshore, the Confederates began bombarding Fort Sumter, and after thirty-four hours Anderson and his garrison were forced to surrender. The war had begun.

  XI

  Afterward Lincoln gave several explanations of his course during the Sumter crisis. In his July 4 message to Congress he spoke of his decision to supply Fort Sumter as contingent on the reinforcement of Fort Pickens. The Sumter expedition was “intended to be ultimately used, or not, according to circumstances.” He implied, though he never quite stated, that he would have canceled this expedition had he been able to reinforce Fort Pickens. Success at Fort Pickens “would be a clear indication of policy,” which “would better enable the country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter, as a military necessity.” But this interpretation was not supported by contemporaneous evidence. In none of Lincoln’s letters or messages between his inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter was the relief of the two forts linked. In all probability his memory failed him, and the policy he described to Congress in his July 4 message more accurately represented Seward’s tactics rather than his own.

  While Lincoln was preparing this message, Browning visited the White House, and the two old friends naturally talked about how the war began. According to Browning’s rather arid diary, Lincoln did not denounce the Confederates, who after all fired the first shots, nor did he express any feeling of regret, much less of guilt, over his own role in bringing on the war. He mentioned the terrible stress of the weeks between his inauguration and the attack on Fort Sumter and spoke of his physical exhaustion, but he did not acknowledge that his ineffectual leadership contributed to the crisis and made no mention of divided counsels in the administration, inadequate preparation of the relief expeditions, and bureaucratic snarls and interservice rivalries. He probably remembered an instructive letter that Browning wrote him before his inauguration: “In any conflict... between the government and the seceding States, it is very important that the traitors shall be the aggressors, and that they be kept constantly and palpably in the wrong. The first attempt... to furnish supplies or reinforcements to Sumter will induce aggression by South Carolina, and then the government will stand justified, before the entire country, in repelling that aggression, and retaking the forts.”

  That was the scenario Lincoln had followed in sending the Sumter expedition. “The plan succeeded,” he told Browning. “They attacked Sumter—it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could.” These were not idle words. When Gustavus Fox, bitter over the failure of his expedition to relieve Fort Sumter, asked for endorsement from his commander-in-chief, Lincoln responded, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.”

  These cryptic utterances did not mean that Lincoln sought to provoke war. His repeated efforts to avoid collision in the months between his inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter showed that he adhered to his vow not to be the first to shed fraternal blood. But he had also vowed not to surrender the forts. That, he was convinced, would lead to the “actual, and immediate dissolution” of the Union. The only resolution of these contradictory positions was for the Confederates to fire the first shot. The attempt to relieve Fort Sumter provoked them to do just that. Had the expedition been successful, the fort, which had no military value to the United States, would eventually have been abandoned because it could not be defended against a determined Confederate assault. In that sense, as he told Browning, by falling, the fort “did more service than it otherwise could.” And, to use a phrase from his letter to Fox, “the cause of the country would be advanced” because everybody had to recognize that he did not start the war but had war forced on him. After the attack, he told the Congress, “no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A People’s Contest

  The attack on Fort Sumter cleared the air. The news revived the Lincoln administration, which had appeared indecisive and almost comatose, and gave it a clear objective: preserving the Union by putting down the rebellion.

  Many Northerners were euphoric at the outbreak of war, confident that the Union with its vast natural resources, its enormous superiority in manufactures, its 300 percent advantage in railroad mileage was bound to prevail. Surely its 20,000,000 inhabitants could easily defeat the 5,000,000 in the Confederacy (which grew to 9,000,000 after the states of the upper South seceded). Seward thought the war would be over in ninety days. The Chicago Tribune anticipated success “within
two or three months at the furthest,” because “Illinois can whip the South by herself.” The New York Times predicted victory in thirty days, and the New York Tribune assured its readers “that Jeff. Davis & Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington ... by the 4th of July.”

  The President was not so optimistic. Overhearing boastful contrasts of Northern enterprise and endurance with Southern laziness and fickleness, Lincoln warned against overconfidence. Northerners and Southerners came from the same stock and had “essentially the same characteristics and powers.” “Man for man,” he predicted, “the soldier from the South will be a match for the soldier from the North and vice versa.”

  I

  On April 15, 1861, the day after Fort Sumter surrendered, Lincoln issued a proclamation announcing that the execution of the laws in the seven states of the Deep South was obstructed “by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings,” and he called for the states to supply 75,000 militiamen “in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.” At the same time, he summoned a special session of Congress, to meet on July 4.

  A tidal wave of approval greeted his proclamation. “Cincinnati sustains proclamation great and universal enthusiasm,” wired William M. Dickson. “Nothing can exceed the enthusiasm,” two New York City merchants reported. Large Union demonstrations assembled in nearly every Northern city. Typical was a public meeting in Pittsburgh where thousands of citizens, disregarding all partisan feeling, vowed undying fealty to the nation and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defend their country.