Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  But Lincoln knew that it was going to take more than White House receptions or bouquets for Charles Sumner to assure his reelection. No President since Andrew Jackson had served a second term, and within the Republican party there was considerable sentiment in favor of rotation in office—especially among those opposed to Lincoln. He could readily identify several groups of such opponents. The most vocal were abolitionists, mostly in New England but also powerful in the West, who feared he might negotiate a peace that did not completely eradicate slavery. Typical was an Iowa caucus of abolitionists that condemned the President as “an insignificant man,” who had “clogged and impeded the wheels and movements of the revolution”; moreover, because he was “a Kentuckian by birth, and his brothers-in-law being in the rebel army,” he had “always shielded the rebels.” German-Americans were also disaffected. Many thought that Lincoln, together with Stanton and especially Halleck, was at heart a nativist who discriminated against German-born generals like Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz. As the prominent Indiana Freie Presse said, “We cannot and dare not vote for Lincoln, unless we are willing to participate in the betrayal of the republic, unless we are willing to remain for all future the most despicable step-children of the nation.” The Charcoal, or Radical, faction of Missouri Republicans was especially hostile, believing that the President had shabbily rejected their overtures of friendship.

  In nearly every Northern state Lincoln’s reelection was opposed by one or more factions within the Republican party. Sometimes these factions continued the rivalry between former Whigs and former Democrats; in other states they reflected nothing more than intense personal rivalries. Thus in New York one faction consisted of the supporters of Seward and Thurlow Weed, who seemed to be the principal beneficiaries of the appointments and contracts given by the Lincoln administration; the other, which clustered around Greeley and David Dudley Field, was usually critical of the President. In Maryland an intense struggle between the Blairs and Henry Winter Davis continued; when Lincoln sustained his Postmaster General, Davis became one of the President’s most articulate and vituperative enemies.

  In most cases dissatisfaction with the President did not derive from fundamental ideological differences. Virtually all Republicans agreed that the war must be fought until victory, that slavery had to be abolished, and that some conditions had to be imposed on the Southern states before they could be readmitted to the Union. But there was disagreement over Lincoln’s ability to attain these goals. Many considered him an ineffectual administrator who tolerated looseness and inefficiency throughout the government. The best evidence was that, after two and a half years of costly, bloody warfare, the 20,000,000 loyal citizens of the North were unable to overcome 5,000,000 rebellious white Southerners.

  Republican members of Congress, who were in the best position to observe the workings of the administration, gave little support for Lincoln’s renomination. The chairmen of the most important Senate committees—such as Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee; Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Territories; Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, chairman of the Commerce Committee; and James W. Grimes of Iowa, chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia—were openly opposed to a second term, and only careful management kept Sumner, who headed the Foreign Relations Committee, from joining the opposition. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were also mostly hostile to Lincoln. Early in 1864 when a visiting editor asked Thaddeus Stevens to introduce him to some congressmen who favored Lincoln’s renomination, the Pennsylvania congressman brought him to Representative Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois, explaining: “Here is a man who wants to find a Lincoln member of Congress. You are the only one I know and I have come over to introduce my friend to you.”

  Aware of this congressional dissatisfaction, Lincoln and his friends took solace in the belief that it was shared by only a few disgruntled politicians. Surely the mass of the people thought differently, and his supporters convinced themselves that there was “a widespread and constantly increasing concurrence of sentiment in favor of the reelection of Mr. Lincoln.” “Mr. Lincoln has the inside track,” announced the Chicago Tribune; “he has the confidence of the people, and even the respect and affections of the masses.” Lincoln’s mail was filled with repeated assurances of the support of the voters. “Acting upon your own convictions—irrespective of those who threaten, as well as of those who fawn and flatter,” wrote a Bostonian, “you have touched and taken the popular heart—and secured your re-election beyond a peradventure—should you desire it.” Especially heartening were the expressions of support from the army. “The soldier will trust no one but Abraham Lincoln,” announced one veteran in the Army of the Potomac. “I believe it is God’s purpose ... to call Abraham Lincoln again to the Presidential chair.”

  Such letters encouraged Lincoln’s managers to present him in the role of an outsider, who had the support of the people if not the politicians. In several states, Union meetings begged the President to become “the People’s candidate for re-election,” accepting “the nomination so generously tendered without awaiting a nomination from a [Republican] National Convention.” Nowhere was this movement stronger than in New York City, where a National Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln Association, headed by the wealthy Simeon Draper, urged the people throughout the nation to meet on February 22 and express their support for Lincoln’s reelection. The Democratic New York World thought it reasonably certain that Lincoln would “nominate himself and leave the Republican Convention, if there should be one, nothing to do but hold a ratification meeting.”

  That prospect helped to mobilize Lincoln’s opponents within the Republican party, but to have any chance of success they needed a rival candidate. Some looked to General Grant. Others thought of Benjamin F. Butler, famous for his severity during the occupation of New Orleans, but Lincoln largely neutralized him by giving him a dead-end job as commander at Fort Monroe. John C. Frémont had backers as well, both because he was known to hate Lincoln and because he had substantial support among the Germans and the Radicals, especially in Missouri. But in the winter of 1863–1864 most rested their hopes on Salmon P. Chase.

  Chase’s disaffection with the administration of which he was part had steadily increased since his embarrassing role in the cabinet crisis of December 1862. Though he and Lincoln had developed an effective working relationship, they were not personally congenial. Chase was stiff, reserved, and ponderous. In the course of a general conversation he was given to uttering profundities like: “It is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery failing after enormous exertions and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose.” He resented the easygoing relationship Lincoln had established with Seward; the President often made impromptu evening visits to Seward’s home to pass along the latest news and gossip or to share his most recent joke, but he never thought of dropping in on Chase. But there was more to it than that. Chase’s discontent stemmed fundamentally from his conviction that he was superior to Lincoln both as a statesman and as an administrator.

  Chase also felt that his labors in the Treasury Department were unappreciated. His exhausting efforts to borrow money and raise taxes in order to finance the war seemed to go unnoticed. Chase especially resented the President’s decentralized administrative policy of allowing each cabinet officer to run his own department without interference or even consultation with his colleagues. What was at stake here was not just Chase’s power drive; it was his sense that he was the only one responsible for keeping the government’s financial tub filled, while the War, Navy, and other departments controlled the spigots that drained it.

  He was willing to admit that the President had always treated him with kindness, and he did not doubt Lincoln’s fairness or integrity of purpose. But he believed Lincoln’s policies toward the South and slavery were too slow and too cautious. Th
e Secretary was determined that the end of the war must bring about “unconditional and immediate emancipation in all the Rebel States, no retrograde from the Proclamation of Emancipation, no recognition of a Rebel State as a part of the Union, or [any] terms with it except on the extinction, wholly, at once and forever of slavery.” Repeatedly he prodded the President to extend his Emancipation Proclamation to areas in the South under Union military control, which Lincoln had excepted. Increasingly he came to share Sumner’s belief that the only true Unionists in the South were the blacks, and he favored the participation of “colored loyalists” in the reconstruction of the rebellious states.

  Lincoln was aware of these dissatisfactions of his Secretary of the Treasury. For the most part, Chase openly and honorably expressed his dissents, and the President made no complaint about them. Nor did he object when Chase sought to make the army of Treasury Department employees, a force greatly enlarged after the passage of the Internal Revenue Act of 1862, loyal to him personally, rather than to the administration. He did not even protest when the Secretary made heavy-handed efforts to woo the support of key senators, as when he allowed John Conness of California to nominate the customs collector at San Francisco. But Lincoln could not help noticing that whenever he made a decision that offended some influential person, the Secretary promptly ranged himself in opposition and tried to persuade the victim that he had been unjustly dealt with and that things would have been different had Chase been in control. Thus he leapt to ingratiate himself with Frémont after Lincoln required him to withdraw his hasty proclamation against slavery in Missouri, with General Hunter after his emancipation order was overruled, with General Butler after he was recalled from New Orleans, with General Rosecrans when he was replaced by Thomas, and with the Missouri Radicals after they failed to get the President’s endorsement. “I am entirely indifferent as to his success or failure in these schemes,” Lincoln told John Hay, “so long as he does his duty as the head of the Treasury Department.”

  For the most part Lincoln regarded Chase’s rather clumsy efforts to promote himself with detached amusement. Generally he was willing to appoint the Secretary’s partisans to positions in the Treasury Department, preferring, as he said, to let “Chase have his own way in these sneaking tricks than getting into a snarl with him by refusing him what he asks.” When he learned that Chase was trying to make political capital out of the removal of Rosecrans, he laughed and said, “I suppose he will, like the bluebottle fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find.” Behind Lincoln’s easy tolerance was his recognition that his Secretary of the Treasury would probably make a very good President—and his confidence that he would never have a chance to do so.

  The President could afford to be confident because throughout the North his partisans were quietly working to secure his renomination. It was not considered proper for a presidential candidate himself to seem to have anything to do with these maneuvers, and Lincoln kept a strict public silence about them. But whenever Republican party leaders came to Washington, they gained easy access to the White House and were often closeted with the President for hours. Out of these conferences arose the strategy of opening the offensive against Chase in New Hampshire, the state of his birth. When Republicans of the Granite State met in Concord on January 7, their only stated business was to renominate Governor Joseph A. Gilmore, but young William E. Chandler seized the occasion to rush through a resolution praising Lincoln’s “unequaled sagacity and statesmanship” and declaring him “the people’s choice for re-election to the Presidency in 1864.” Chase’s supporters had to be content with the backhanded compliment of a resolution that expressed confidence in the financial abilities of the Secretary of the Treasury—but urged him “promptly to detect, expose and punish all corruption and fraud upon the Government.”

  Spurred by the action of New Hampshire, Simon Cameron sprang into action in Pennsylvania. Loyal to a President who had generously accepted part of the blame for his mismanagement of the War Department, Cameron also recognized that Lincoln’s renomination would be a blow to the rival Republican faction in Pennsylvania headed by Thaddeus Stevens. Back in December, finding the President pessimistic about his chances for renomination, Cameron reminded him that when Andrew Jackson sought a second term his managers outflanked any possible rivals by procuring a petition from the members of the Pennsylvania legislature asking him to run again. “Cameron,” asked Lincoln, “could you get me a letter like that?” “Yes I think I might,” replied the wily Pennsylvanian, and he went to work. By January 9 he had secured the signatures of all the Republican members of the Pennsylvania house and senate to a request that the President would allow himself to be reelected. “I have kept my promise,” he told John Hay.

  Promptly other Republican organizations began to swing into line. Throughout the North chapters of the Union League, originally formed in 1862 to restore Northern morale shaken by political and military reverses, came out in support of Lincoln’s reelection. The Philadelphia Union League, for example, praised the President for “showing himself the leader of a people and not a party.” The Trenton Union League declared that he had shown “his pre-eminent fitness” for the presidency. The New England Loyal Publication Society, which issued patriotic broadsides distributed to nearly nine hundred newspapers, broke its rule against taking a position on political contests and published a powerful editorial urging Lincoln’s reelection. The Union members of the legislatures of New Jersey, Kansas, California, and the Territory of Colorado all came out in favor of a second term.

  With Lincoln’s supporters on the move, Chase’s backers were forced into the open. They had begun to organize as early as December 9, the day after Lincoln issued his amnesty proclamation, when an advisory committee met in Washington to consider plans to make Chase the next President. The core membership included two Ohio congressmen, an Ohio army paymaster who was in the employ of the Treasury Department, and Whitelaw Reid, the consistently pro-Chase Washington correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette. Subsequently it was expanded by the addition of Senator John Sherman and Representative James A. Garfield, both of Ohio, and Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, who felt aggrieved because Lincoln had favored his rival fellow senator, James H. Lane, in the distribution of Kansas patronage.

  Early in February the Chase campaign tested the waters by issuing a pamphlet, The Next Presidential Election, which deplored efforts to procure “the formal nomination of Mr. Lincoln in State Legislatures and other public bodies.” “The people have lost all confidence in his ability to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union,” the pamphlet continued. The “vascillation [sic] and indecision of the President,” “the feebleness of his will,” and his “want of intellectual grasp” were responsible for the failure of Union armies to crush the rebellion. “Mr. Lincoln cannot be re-elected to the Presidency,” the argument ran. The next Republican candidate must be “an advanced thinker; a statesman profoundly versed in political and economic science, one who fully comprehends the spirit of the age.” Salmon P. Chase’s name was not mentioned; it did not have to be.

  This secret, anonymous attack on Lincoln backfired on its authors. As early as February 6, Ward Hill Lamon learned of this “most scurrilous and abusive pamphlet” and warned the President of its existence. When it was circulated in Ohio under the franks of Senator Sherman and Representative James M. Ashley, Lincoln’s supporters were already on the alert. The document was “so mean and dastardly in its character,” one correspondent wrote Sherman, “that it will brand with infamy your character as a statesman and your honor as a gentleman.” Another protested this attempt on the part of “a few politicians at Washington” to turn the people against “Old Honest Abe” and instructed the senator: “You cant do it and Mr. Sherman you need not try it. If you were to resign tomorrow you could not get 10 votes in the Legislature.... If you cant do anything better you had better quit.”

  Undeterred, Chase’s backers continued to organize and in late February, unde
r the signature of Senator Pomeroy, distributed a second circular, again marked “Private,” declaring that the reelection of Lincoln was “practically impossible.” This time they frankly announced that Chase, with his “record, clear and unimpeachable, showing him to be a statesman of rare ability, and an administrator of the very highest order,” possessed “more of the qualities needed in a President during the next four years, than are combined in any other available candidate.” Sent to hundreds of Republicans throughout the North, this Pomeroy Circular promptly became a matter of public knowledge. The Washington Constitutional Union published it on February 20, and two days later the National Intelligencer gave it broad circulation.

  Once again, Chase found himself in the embarrassing position of appearing disloyal to the President to whose favor he owed his office, and he quickly disclaimed responsibility for the Pomeroy Circular. He was, he wrote Lincoln, only a reluctant candidate, and he had not been consulted by the friends who were organizing in his behalf. Choosing his words very carefully, he denied knowledge of the existence of the Pomeroy Circular before it was published—a statement that may have been literally true, though the author of the document, James M. Winchell, remembered that the Secretary was informed in advance of the plan to send it out and fully approved it. Chase offered his resignation, declaring, “I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence.”