Lincoln’s view of the war as simply a domestic insurrection was also contradicted by the naval blockade he imposed on Southern ports. As both Secretary Welles and Charles Sumner advised, under international law his proper course was to close all Southern ports. A blockade was an instrument of war between two belligerent powers; by imposing it, the President was tacitly recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent. But Lincoln was convinced that an order closing the ports would be repeatedly tested by foreign vessels and that conflict with the European naval powers would result, and he ordered the blockade. Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the Pennsylvania Republicans, ridiculed this as “a great blunder and absurdity” because in legal terms it meant “we were blockading ourselves.” When he angrily confronted the President over this issue, Lincoln put on his best simple-countryman air and said, “I don’t know anything about the law of nations, and I thought it was all right.”
“As a lawyer, Mr. Lincoln,” Stevens remarked, “I should have supposed you would have seen the difficulty at once.”
“Oh, well,” the President replied, “I’m a good enough lawyer in a Western law court, I suppose, but we don’t practice the law of nations up there, and I supposed Seward knew all about it, and I left it to him.” “But it’s done now and can’t be helped,” he added to Stevens’s fury, “so we must get along as well as we can.”
With these exceptions Lincoln adhered to his definition of the war, and throughout the next four years the implications of his decision were far-reaching. Because, in his eyes, the Confederacy did not exist, there could never be any negotiations leading to recognition or a peace treaty. Because the insurrection was the work of individuals, not of any organized government, the states of the South remained in the Union throughout the war, fully entitled to all the protections guaranteed by the Constitution. Those guarantees covered the right of private property—including slaves. Punishment for participating in the rebellion could be inflicted on traitorous individuals, not on the states in which they resided, and when victory came to the Union cause, the Southern states would be, as they always had been, equal to all others in the United States.
Lincoln’s July 1861 message, together with his proclamations, also made it clear that he considered the prosecution of the war primarily a function of the Chief Executive, to be carried out with minimal interference from the other branches of the government and without excessive respect to constitutional niceties protecting individual rights. To carry out his duties as commander-in-chief, he believed that he could exercise powers normally reserved to the legislative branch of government. Proclaiming a blockade, extending the period for volunteer enlistment to three years, increasing the size of the regular army and navy, and entrusting public funds to private persons for the purchase of arms and supplies would ordinarily require the prior approval of Congress, but the emergency required the President to act before such authorization was granted. “It was with the deepest regret,” he explained, “that the Executive found the duty of employing the war-power, in defence of the government, forced upon him.” “These measures, whether strictly legal or not,” he informed Congress in July, “were ventured upon, under what appeared to be a popular demand, and a public necessity; trusting, then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them.” “It is believed,” he added, “that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress.”
Even touchier was his decision to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, an action that touched on the power both of the legislative and the judicial branches of the government. In neither law nor precedent was it clear where the authority for such suspension lay. The constitutional provision concerning suspension appeared in Article I, detailing the powers of Congress, but whether the Philadelphia convention had placed it there to identify it as a purely legislative function or for stylistic reasons because it did not fit elsewhere was unclear and subsequently became a matter of great controversy in the Congress and among legal experts.
Belief that only Congress had the right to suspend the writ was the basis for Chief Justice Taney’s fulminations against the President in his Merryman ruling. Lincoln made no reply at the time, but in his message to Congress the President pointed out that the Constitution was silent as to who was to exercise the power of suspending the writ and claimed that in a dangerous emergency when the Congress was not in session the Chief Executive was obliged to act. “It was not believed that any law was violated,” he added. Then he went on to suggest that “such extreme tenderness of the citizen’s liberty” as Taney had shown could lead to the danger of allowing “all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated.”
The next years would see greater infringements on individual liberties than in any other period in American history. Repeatedly the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in localities where secession seemed dangerous, and on September 24, 1862, and again on September 15, 1863, Lincoln suspended the privilege of the writ throughout the country. Initially control of the arbitrary arrests of civilians was given to the Secretary of State, and by the best count, 864 persons were imprisoned and held without trial in the first nine months of the war. After February 1862, when such arrests became the province of the Secretary of War, the number of cases greatly increased. Most of the persons so arrested were spies, smugglers, blockade-runners, carriers of contraband goods, and foreign nationals; only a few were truly political prisoners, jailed for expressing their beliefs. It was nevertheless clear from Lincoln’s first message to Congress that devotion to civil liberties was not the primary concern of his administration.
In his July 1861 message Lincoln palliated such transgressions of constitutional niceties because of the importance of the struggle in which the country was engaged. At issue in the contest was more than the fate of the United States. Anticipating a phrase he would use two years later in the Gettysburg Address, he suggested, “It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people—can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.” More, even, than that, it was a struggle for the rights of man. “This,” he told the Congress, “is essentially a People’s contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
III
The Congress that heard Lincoln’s message on July 5, when a clerk read it in a dull monotone, was controlled by members of his own party. After the withdrawal of Southern senators and representatives, Republicans held large majorities in both chambers—32 out of 48 members of the Senate, 106 out of 176 members of the House of Representatives. Congressmen from the border slave states who called themselves Unionists generally cooperated with the Republicans during this session. Only about one out of four members of either chamber belonged to the Democratic party, decimated by secession and demoralized by the unexpected death, on June 3 of Stephen A. Douglas, who might have led a loyal opposition to the Lincoln administration.
The reception of the President’s message indicated that party lines were, for the moment, unimportant. Few had the heart to engage in partisan bickering, and “irrepressible applause” greeted Lincoln’s recommendation that Congress appropriate $400,000,000 to sustain an army of 400,000 men. Converting itself, as one member said, into “a giant committee of ways and means,” the Congress promptly went beyond the President’s requests and appropriated $500,000,000 to field an army of 500,000 men.
In the country, too, the message was greeted with enthusiasm. Most commended the President’s seemingly straightforward account of the events leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter. Several editors noted with pleasure that Lincoln made no mention of slavery
or the extension of slavery in the national territories but put the issue before the country simply as one of Union versus Disunion. It was no surprise that a Republican paper like Greeley’s New York Tribune praised the message for avoiding “episodes and circumlocutions” and going “straight to the hearts of the patriotic millions,” but it was a sign of the times when the Democratic New York World commended “this excellent and manly Message,” which contained “more unborrowed and vigorous thought” than any presidential utterance since the days of Andrew Jackson.
Promptly Congress moved to pass bills retroactively approving most of Lincoln’s extraconstitutional actions. There was dissent only on the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, which made many Republicans, as well as nearly all the Democrats, unhappy. Senator John Sherman of Ohio best captured the feeling of many congressmen: “I approve of the action of the President.... He did precisely what I would have done if I had been in his place—no more, no less; but I cannot here, in my place, as a Senator, under oath, declare that what he did do was... strictly legal, and in consonance with the provisions of the Constitution.”
Such discord was muted because the Union army was preparing to advance while Congress debated. Pressure for an offensive had been building ever since Lincoln’s initial call for troops, though nobody had a clear idea of what strategy should be followed. Initially Lincoln, who made no pretense of having military knowledge, thought the troops should be used to repossess Fort Sumter and other captured federal installations along the Southern coast, but this thoroughly impracticable scheme would have required large amphibious operations far beyond the competence of either the army or the navy in 1861. General Scott, the most revered military expert in the country, offered what was described as an “Anaconda Plan,” which called for cordoning off the Confederacy with a tight naval blockade while advancing with an army of perhaps 85,000 down the Mississippi River from southern Illinois. The plan had some merit—but it rested on the remarkable assumption that the Confederate army in Virginia, which even Scott granted might total more than 100,000 men, would remain idle while the Union forces were advancing in the West. Montgomery Blair believed that “a very inconsiderable part” of the Union army could put down the rebellion by distributing arms to the Union men of the South, who were at present “overawed by the armed marauders that Jeff Davis has sent throughout the country.” George B. McClellan, the hero of small engagements in western Virginia, proposed to gain victory by marching an army of 80,000 up the Great Kanawha Valley, across the Appalachian Mountains, to seize Richmond from the west. His scheme showed the ignorance of topography that was to characterize his subsequent campaigns.
Despite the absence of clear strategic plans, the demand for a Union advance became explosive after federal troops suffered several minor setbacks during the early months of the war. The most conspicuous of these occurred on May 24, the day after Virginia formally ratified its ordinance of secession, when Lincoln directed federal troops to cross the Potomac and occupy Alexandria. Moving stealthily, Union forces, including the Zouave regiment that Elmer Ellsworth had recruited in New York, compelled the Virginia troops to withdraw. Flushed with victory, Ellsworth spotted a secession flag flying above the Marshall House—a flag the President could see with his spyglass from the White House—and dashed up the stairs to tear it down. On his way down the hotelkeeper shot and killed him. Ellsworth’s death deeply grieved Lincoln, who thought of this young officer as almost another son. The funeral ceremonies were held in the White House, and afterward the President wrote the young man’s parents of their shared affliction: “So much of promised usefulness to one’s country, and of bright hopes for one’s self and friends, have rarely been so suddenly dashed, as in his fall.”
The tragedy—one that would have gone almost unnoticed in later years, when deaths were reported by the thousands—reinforced the drumbeat of politicians and newspapers calling for action. Up to this point Lincoln had favored delay, but he now ordered an advance against the Confederate army near Manassas, Virginia, where it was a constant threat to Washington.
Since Scott was too old and infirm to take the field, Lincoln put General Irvin McDowell, a forty-two-year-old West Point graduate who had served with distinction in the Mexican War, in charge of the advance. On June 29, Lincoln met with his cabinet and military advisers in the White House to discuss McDowell’s plans, which were simple and direct. Believing that General P. G. T. Beauregard had about 35,000 men at Manassas, he proposed to attack the Confederates before they could be reinforced. Scott demurred because he believed in “a war of large bodies,” not “a little war by piecemeal,” but the President and the cabinet overruled him, and McDowell was authorized to begin his campaign on July 9.
It was not until a week later that McDowell was ready to move—a very costly week’s delay that gave the Confederacy a chance to reinforce Beauregard’s army with Joseph E. Johnston’s troops from the Shenandoah Valley. Slowly McDowell’s army began to march out to meet the Confederate army at Manassas. (That is what the Southerners called the place; Yankees found that one undistinguished Southern crossroads looked much like another, and they called the field of engagement Bull Run, after the creek that meandered near it.) McDowell’s plans were widely known in Washington, and his invading army was accompanied by six United States senators, at least ten representatives, scores of newspapermen, and many of what a reporter called “the fairer, if not gentler sex,” who often brought picnic baskets in their buggies.
Assured by Scott that McDowell would be successful, Lincoln quietly went to church on July 21. In midafternoon he went to Scott’s office, only to find the general-in-chief taking his afternoon nap. When the President woke him up, the general said that early reports from the battlefield signified nothing and before dropping off to sleep again predicted McDowell’s victory. But by six o’clock that evening Seward came to the White House with the news that McDowell’s army was in full retreat. At the War Department the President read the dispatch of an army captain of engineers: “The day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of this army.... The routed troops will not re-form.” All evening the President and the cabinet members clustered in Scott’s office, hearing more and more alarming news. That night, stretched out on a couch in the cabinet room of the White House, the President listened to firsthand reports from terrified eyewitnesses of the defeat. He did not go to bed that night.
The next day Lincoln began to assess the damage. He learned that many of McDowell’s troops had fought bravely and well. The Union army would have won the battle except for the unanticipated arrival of Johnston’s forces from the Valley. Even then, facing overwhelming odds, most of the volunteer Union regiments had retreated in good order, and the demoralized mob described by so many witnesses was largely composed of teamsters, onlookers, and ninety-day troops whose terms of enlistment were about to expire. The army was defeated but not crushed, and McDowell’s troops were fed into the substantial fortifications on the south side of the Potomac. By nightfall Cameron wired to worried New Yorkers, “The capital is safe.”
The immediate political reaction to the defeat was to rally behind the President. In order to make that support clear, both houses of Congress voted almost unanimously for John J. Crittenden’s resolution declaring “that this war is not waged... for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing ... established institutions [meaning slavery]... but to defend... the Constitution and to preserve the Union.” That resolution echoed the pledge in Lincoln’s inaugural address not to interfere with slavery within the states.
But such unity was only a façade. Bull Run was a severe Union defeat, and finger-pointing and recriminations inevitably followed. McDowell unfairly received a good share of the blame. Scott, too, was condemned for allowing such an ill-prepared campaign to get under way. Restive under criticism, the old general made an apology that was more like a defense when he talked with several Illinois congressmen in Lincoln’s presence two days after the bat
tle. “I am the greatest coward in America,” he announced. “I will prove it; I have fought this battle, sir, against my judgment; I think the President of the United States ought to remove me to-day for doing it; as God is my judge, after my superiors had determined to fight it, I did all in my power to make the Army efficient. I deserve removal because I did not stand up, when my army was not in condition for fighting, and resist it to the last.”
The President interjected, “Your conversation seems to imply that I forced you to fight this battle.”
Scott avoided a direct response by saying, “I have never served a President who has been kinder to me than you have been.”
Unlike the general, Lincoln was willing to assume the blame for the defeat. Coolly reviewing the evidence, he concluded that the Manassas campaign, though unsuccessful, had not been ill advised. He knew that Union soldiers were raw recruits, but so were their Confederate opponents. On neither side did commanding officers have experience in conducting large-scale engagements. A crushing defeat of the Confederate army at Bull Run could have ended the war.
The President moved immediately to remedy the causes of the Union defeat. To boost morale he visited the fortifications around Washington and assured the troops that as commander-in-chief he would make sure they had all needful supplies. But he also recognized the need for better discipline. When he inspected the troops at Fort Corcoran, a disgruntled officer complained that Colonel William T. Sherman had threatened to shoot him like a dog for planning to go to New York without a leave. In a stage whisper that the other soldiers could easily hear, the President said, “Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it.”
Clearly a new commanding general was needed, and on the day after the battle Lincoln summoned George B. McClellan from western Virginia to take charge of the forces around Washington and to build a new army out of the three-year volunteer regiments that were just beginning to arrive in the capital.
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