Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  Seward’s bellicose memorandum of April 1, 1861, forced the President to take a more active interest in foreign policy, which increased when he read a warlike dispatch Seward proposed to send to Adams in May. Angered by the decision of the European powers to recognize the Confederates as belligerents—an entirely proper step and one in conformity with the actions of the Lincoln administration in blockading, rather than closing, Southern ports—Seward blustered that British intervention in the American conflict would mean that “we, from that hour, shall cease to be friends and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain.” Troubled, the President called on Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for advice. With Sumner’s enthusiastic approval he excised the more offensive statements in Seward’s dispatch and then directed that the revised document was for Adams’s information only, not to be read or presented at the British Foreign Office.

  From that time Lincoln consulted Sumner on all major questions relating to foreign policy. The two men formed an odd couple. Good-looking, Harvard-trained, and world-traveled, Sumner was the exact opposite of the homely self-educated President. With a decade’s experience in the Senate, Sumner regarded the untried Lincoln as “honest but inexperienced.” A compulsive worker, proud of his prompt and efficient attention to his official duties, the senator thought Lincoln’s “habits of business... irregular” and felt that the President “did not see at once the just proportions of things, and allowed himself to be too much occupied by details.” Sumner was proud of the purity of his diction, and he was pained when the President called secession “rebellion sugar-coated” or said that the Confederates “turned tail and ran.” Lacking a sense of humor, he found conversation with Lincoln “a constant puzzle,” even though the President tried to be solemn and took his feet down from the desk when Sumner entered his office. But these two radically different men came to respect and ultimately to like each other. Lincoln knew the senator was incorruptible, if often irritating; Sumner found that the President wanted “to do right and to save the country.” Lincoln turned so frequently to the senator for advice on foreign policy that Seward grumbled that there were now too many secretaries of state in Washington.

  In the Trent affair Lincoln needed all the advice he could get. His initial reaction to the capture of Mason and Slidell was one of pleasure. At a time when Union victories were few, here at last was a success. Every member of the cabinet shared this view except Montgomery Blair, who immediately warned that the captives must be released. After the initial applause for Wilkes’s bold act died down, thoughtful public opinion came around to Blair’s assessment. To remove the Confederate diplomats from a neutral vessel was a clear violation of international law, and it contradicted the long-established American opposition to search and seizure on the high seas. Apart from legalities, Wilkes’s boarding and search of the British mail packet had to be disavowed because it was an insult that no government in London could tolerate.

  Greatly preoccupied with other matters, Lincoln did not recognize the seriousness of the Trent crisis until Sumner returned to Washington in late November. A regular correspondent of John Bright and Richard Cobden, the great British Liberal leaders, Sumner brought news of the immense anti-American excitement in Great Britain because of Mason and Slidell, and he had a letter from the Duchess of Argyll, whose husband was in Lord Palmerston’s cabinet, calling the seizure of the two envoys “the maddest act that ever was done, and, unless the [United States] government intend to force us to war, utterly inconceivable.” Moved and astonished by these reports, Lincoln began to meet almost daily with the senator to assess the latest news and consider the danger that this disagreement with the British might drift into conflict.

  “There will be no war unless England is bent upon having one,” the President assured the senator. Vexed that European governments misunderstood the pacific temper of his foreign policy, he offered to ignore bureaucratic protocol and talk face-to-face with Lord Lyons, the British minister. “If I could see Lord Lyons,” he told Sumner rather wistfully, “I could show him in five minutes that I am heartily for peace.” Sumner warned of the impropriety of such a step but, encouraged by John Bright, asked the President to think of submitting the issue with Great Britain to arbitration, either by the King of Prussia or by a group of learned publicists. Seizing upon Sumner’s idea, Lincoln began drafting such a proposal. He was convinced, he told Browning, “that the question was easily susceptible of a peaceful solution if England was at all disposed to act justly with us.”

  But from all sides the President received warnings that there was no time for arbitration. Thurlow Weed, who was working in behalf of the Union cause abroad, told of steps the British government was taking toward war. Eight thousand soldiers were being sent to protect Canada, and an embargo on the shipment of saltpeter and other war materials to the United States was in place. From France, Minister Dayton reported that the government of Napoleon III would stand by the British in this crisis. When Lord Lyons on December 23 presented the formal British demands for the release of Mason and Slidell and for an apology from the United States government, they were hardly a surprise. Informally the British minister also let Seward know that unless a satisfactory answer was received within seven days he had instructions to close the legation and leave Washington.

  With that deadline in mind Lincoln summoned a cabinet meeting on Christmas Day, to which Sumner was invited in order to read the most recent letters he had received from Bright and Cobden urging the release of the Confederate diplomats. All realized that the decision they made on this historic occasion would determine “probably the existance [sic], of the nation.” It was essential, everybody agreed, to avoid war with Great Britain, and the President said he had to avoid the folly of having “two wars on his hands at a time.” Seward, who had finally awakened to the gravity of the crisis, read a paper he was preparing that would explain how Captain Wilkes had violated international law and why therefore Mason and Slidell must be released. The argument was hard for the other cabinet members, except Blair, to swallow. Chase said that it was “gall and wormwood” to him. Even the President resisted giving up the envoys, though he realized that they had become white elephants. The meeting ended without agreement on anything more than that they must meet again the next day.

  After the others left, the President said: “Governor Seward, you will go on, of course, preparing your answer, which ... will state the reasons why they ought to be given up. Now I have a mind to try my hand at stating the reasons why they ought not to be given up. We will compare the points on each side.”

  By evening the President gave up on his self-appointed task, and he told Browning that there would be no war with England. The next day when the cabinet reassembled, Seward read his final version of the reply he intended to give to Lord Lyons and it was endorsed with some expressions of regret but without dissent. After the meeting adjourned, the Secretary reminded the President, “You thought you might frame an argument for the other side?”

  “I found I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind,” Lincoln replied with a smile, “and that proved to me your ground was the right one.”

  With that decision the gravest threat that the American Civil War would become an international conflict was removed.

  IX

  Lincoln’s domestic crises in the winter of 1861–1862 were almost as severe. Frustrated over the failure of Union armies to advance and angry over mounting expenses, Congress moved rapidly to take charge. On the day the session opened, even before the President’s message was heard, Trumbull gave notice that he would introduce a bill for the confiscation of the land and slaves of all persons who were in arms against the United States or who aided or abetted the rebellion. The Illinois senator, once Lincoln’s close political ally, was convinced that the President lacked “the will necessary in this great emergency” and believed that Congress must take steps to bring the war to a q
uick end.

  Other congressmen tried to move the stalled war effort along through investigating committees, a device that had proved very effective to Republicans in undermining the Buchanan administration. A House committee headed by John F. Potter of Wisconsin had been working all summer to ferret out rebel sympathizers still holding jobs in the government departments, and it performed a needed service in bringing about dismissals and resignations.

  The House Judiciary Committee, in its eagerness to investigate alleged “telegraphic censorship of the press,” came perilously close to investigating the White House itself. Despite precautions for security, the New York Herald received an advance copy of the President’s State of the Union message and published excerpts before members of Congress heard it. The Herald’s source proved to be Henry Wikoff, an unsavory adventurer whom the paper had planted in Washington as its secret reporter. Cosmopolitan and flashy, Wikoff had made a great impression on Mary Lincoln, and he became an intimate in the White House. When the rival New York Tribune charged that Mrs. Lincoln had given Wikoff access to her husband’s message, the House Judiciary Committee decided to investigate.

  The decision was an easy one because almost nobody in the capital liked Mary Lincoln. Thinking her a renegade to the Southern cause, the dowagers who dominated Washington society condemned everything that she did. The smaller contingent of Northern women in the national capital, knowing that Mary Lincoln came from a Southern state and that some of her brothers had joined the Confederate army, suspected her loyalty to the Union. Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial sneered that she was “a fool—the laughing stock of the town, her vulgarity only the more conspicuous in consequence of her fine carriage and horses and servants in livery and fine dresses, and her damnable airs.” The New York sophisticate John Bigelow ridiculed her pretensions to speak French and claimed that when asked if she could use the language she replied “Tres poo.” Consequently there was much lip-smacking in Washington over the titillating possibilities of this gossip about Mrs. Lincoln and “Chevalier” Wikoff.

  There was, it proved, less to the story than met the eye. Wikoff, subpoenaed by the committee, refused to disclose his source and was incarcerated overnight. The next day he agreed to testify, and as the committee members listened avidly, he revealed that he had received a copy of the President’s message not from Mrs. Lincoln but from John Watt, the head White House gardener. The committee chewed over this information for several days before it decided to drop the investigation.

  More significant were the activities of a special committee named in July to look into allegations of fraud and mismanagement in government contracts. Headed by Charles H. Van Wyck of New York, this committee was instrumental in exposing some of the scandals of the Frémont regime in Missouri. Much of its work justifiably centered on the War Department, a model of maladministration and waste. There was, of course, no question of the President’s being involved in any of the shady deals that were making fortunes for manufacturers of shoddy goods. Lincoln was so punctilious that he refused to permit the army butcher to supply the White House with the choicest cuts of steak when he slaughtered cattle on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Told that this was a matter of little importance, he replied, “My observation is that frequently the most insignificant matter is the foundation for the worst scandal.” Nor was Simon Cameron believed to be personally venal, but he was the head of a corrupt department and was responsible for its actions.

  Lincoln did not need a congressional investigation to tell him that the War Department was badly run. Cameron, he remarked confidentially to Nicolay, was “utterly ignorant... Selfish and openly discourteous to the President[,] Obnoxious to the country [and] Incapable of either organizing details or conceiving and advising general plans.” If he had any doubts, his mail offered a chorus of objections to the Secretary of War. “Cameron ought to resign,” Gustave Koerner had warned Senator Trumbull as early as July 24. “The People have no confidence in him at all.... He is suspected of every sort of peculation. Lincoln must... have an honest man as war minister.” “It is universally believed that Cameron is a thief,” a New Yorker wrote the President, detailing how the War Department sold to the soldiers half-cotton blankets weighing less than five pounds for the same price as regulation all-wool blankets weighing ten or eleven pounds. The cautious Browning alerted Lincoln that his Secretary of War, “whether justly or not, has lost, or rather failed to secure the confidence of the country” and should be removed. A New York banker, James A. Hamilton, told the President that if he replaced Cameron the hard-pressed Treasury Department could immediately raise the $100,000,000 it needed to borrow.

  Even though Lincoln had not wanted Cameron in his cabinet initially, he hesitated to fire him and tried to get rid of the Secretary by dropping hints. It might be unfair to replace Cameron now, he whispered to Schuyler Colfax, a friend of the Secretary—but he added “if it were an open question and to be settled de novo” he could see many advantages in having another-person in the War Department. He let it be known that he had a great desire to turn the War Department over to Joseph Holt, who had capably served as Secretary of War in the last days of the Buchanan administration. But Cameron was impervious to suggestion and stayed on.

  As pressure for his resignation grew, the Secretary took a daring gamble. Asked, as were the other members of the cabinet, to prepare a report on the activities of his department to be submitted to Congress along with the President’s annual State of the Union message, he remembered how enthusiastically antislavery men had greeted Frémont’s edict of emancipation in Missouri and decided to include in his report an announcement that “it is ... clearly a right of the Government to arm slaves ... and employ their service against the rebels.” He then sent the document out to newspapers in the principal cities without informing the President. Lincoln immediately ordered the report recalled and Cameron’s remarks concerning slaves expurgated. After that it was simply a matter of time before Cameron left the cabinet. The President could put up with incapacity and sloth in his administration, but he would not allow Frémont or Cameron to set government policy on slavery.

  On January 11, 1862, Lincoln curtly notified Cameron that he could now gratify his “desire for a change of position” by nominating him as minister to Russia. Cameron had no such desire, and he broke into tears when Secretary Chase gave him Lincoln’s letter, which he said was a personal affront which “meant personal as well as political destruction.” To save Cameron’s feelings the President withdrew his letter so that Cameron could submit his resignation. Lincoln then wrote another letter, this time expressing his “affectionate esteem” and praising Cameron’s “ability, patriotism, and fidelity to public trust.”

  Lincoln’s troubles with Cameron did not end with his resignation. To the considerable discomfort of the President, the House committee on contracts continued to investigate malfeasance in the War Department with such vigor that Lincoln accused one of the most prominent members, Representative Henry L. Dawes, of having “done more to break down the administration than any other man in the country.” Acting on the committee’s recommendation, the full House in April voted to censure the former Secretary for actions “highly injurious to the public service.” At this point Lincoln had to intervene. Assuring the Congress that letting contracts without bids, disbursing public moneys without authorization, and other irregularities were actions taken of necessity in the early days of the war, he explained that Cameron, “although he fully approved the proceedings,” was not primarily to blame for them; “not only the President but all the other heads of departments were at least equally responsible.” Not wishing to bring down the entire government, the investigators let the subject die.

  Investigations of military affairs fell to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, set up at the beginning of this session of Congress, and they continued throughout the conflict. The original purpose of the committee was to look into the disaster at Ball’s Bluff, but its sc
ope was soon expanded to cover military operations throughout the country. It concentrated mainly on the activities—or the lack of activities—of the Army of the Potomac. Benjamin F. Wade, a severe critic of both Lincoln and McClellan, was chairman, and he had the enthusiastic collaboration of Zachariah Chandler. The three House Republicans on the committee, George W. Julian of Indiana, John Covode of Pennsylvania, and Daniel Gooch of Massachusetts, also sought to prod the general and the President into prosecuting the war more vigorously. The two Democratic members—Andrew Johnson, the sole senator from the Southern states who remained in Congress, and Moses Odell, a New Yorker—played lesser roles.

  Lincoln viewed the creation of the Committee on the Conduct of the War with some anxiety, fearing that it might turn into an engine of agitation against the administration. When Wade and Chandler learned of his objections, they rushed to the White House to assure the President that their purpose was to aid, not to embarrass, the Chief Executive. Probably neither party believed the promise, but a surface harmony was maintained. Lincoln had his first meeting with the committee on December 31 and was relieved to find the congressmen “in a perfectly good mood.”

  Both the committee and the President were eager to learn McClellan’s plans. The general was reticent even with Lincoln. He declined to outline the campaign he proposed but dropped a cryptic hint that he no longer thought of advancing against the Confederate army at Manassas and had his “mind actively turned towards another plan of campaign ... not... at all anticipated by the enemy nor by many of our own people.” The committee did not get even this much from him. He was called to testify, but shortly before Christmas he fell ill with typhoid fever. For three weeks he was unable to do any serious work, much less to appear before the committee. He had no second in command, no council of officers to whom he had entrusted his plan for the coming campaign. As frustrated as the President, the committee began taking testimony from anti-McClellan witnesses, and it became a powerful engine of criticism not merely of the general but of his commander-in-chief.