Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  Had the war been moving toward a rapid conclusion, most of these fears could have been allayed, but in the late summer of 1864 disaster continued to follow disaster. On July 30, after weeks of inactivity, Grant tried to break the defenses of Petersburg by exploding a huge mine under the Confederate line; 15,000 Union troops rushed into the crater produced by the explosion, but they were poorly led by drunken or incompetent officers and within hours 4,000 men were killed or wounded and the rest had to be withdrawn. Even before this fiasco, as losses in both the Army of the Potomac and in Sherman’s army continued to mount, Lincoln had felt obliged to call for 500,000 more soldiers; if by September there were not enough volunteers, he would resort to a draft. This time the draft was going to hit comfortable, middle-class families, because Congress had recently abolished the provision that had allowed a man to “commute” his military service by paying $300. Almost simultaneously, as the costs of the war grew steadily, Secretary of the Treasury Fessenden had to announce a new $200,000,000 loan, and the credit of the government was now so poor that he had difficulty finding purchasers.

  Faced with all these problems, Moderate Republicans rarely broke with the President, but they gave his reelection campaign only tepid support. In the cabinet itself Attorney General Bates saw no alternative to Lincoln but felt that the country lacked direction and “that our great want was a competent man at the head of affairs,... a competent leader.” Orville Browning felt even more alienated, and he wrote a fellow Moderate: “You know, strange as it may seem to you, that I am personally attached to the President, and have faithfully tried to uphold him, and make him respectable; tho’ I never have been able to persuade myself that he was big enough for his position. Still, I thought he might get through, as many a boy through college, without disgrace, and without knowledge; and I fear he is a failure.”

  In New York disaffection among Moderates posed a special problem for Lincoln because their leader, Thurlow Weed, was more critical of the President than ever. The New York boss was convinced that Lincoln went too far in making abolition a condition for peace negotiations. “As things now stand Mr Lincoln’s re-election is an impossibility,” he concluded. “The People are wild for Peace,” he explained to Seward. “They are told that the President will only listen to terms of Peace on condition [that] Slavery be abandoned.”

  “I am fearful our hold upon Mr Weed is slight,” wrote Abram Wakeman, the New York postmaster, who was one of Lincoln’s staunchest supporters. “He evidently has his eye upon some other probable candidate.” Weed was indeed flirting with the Democrats. Though he said he would zealously support Lincoln if the Democrats nominated a Peace man, he publicly offered his voice and vote to any presidential nominee who took as his platform the Crittenden resolution of 1861, which declared that the sole object of the war was the preservation of the Union.

  As usual, Weed’s disenchantment with the administration stemmed not merely from Lincoln’s policies but from his distribution of the patronage and public funds in New York. Chase’s protégé, Hiram Barney, remained the collector in the all-important customs house, though a Moderate complained “that he is a perfect negative man, and possesses no knowledge of politics in any shape and makes no pretentions [sic] to such knowledge.” Rufus F. Andrews, the surveyor, was “a political adventurer from the start,” who failed to support the regular nominees of the Republican party. Other Moderates alerted the President that there must be “an immediate change in the offices of the Collector and Surveyor of the Port of New York.”

  “The tide is setting strongly against us,” Henry J. Raymond, chairman of the National Union Executive Committee, warned the President on August 22. Raymond had heard from Washburne that Illinois would go Democratic, from Cameron that Pennsylvania would be against Lincoln, and from Governor Morton that “nothing but the most strenuous efforts can carry Indiana.” He himself predicted that New York would give the Democratic candidate a majority of 50,000 votes. Some voters were complaining of the want of military successes; others voiced “fear and suspicion... that we are not, to have peace in any event under this Administration until Slavery is abandoned.” “Nothing but the most resolute and decided action on the part of the Government and its friends,” he told Lincoln, “can save the country from falling into hostile hands.”

  This message confirmed Lincoln’s own pessimistic appraisal of the situation. “You think I don’t know I am going to be beaten,” he said to a friend, “but I do and unless some great change takes place badly beaten.” On August 23, with Raymond’s letter before him, he drafted and signed a memorandum: “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.”

  Lincoln’s language revealed not merely his pessimism about his own fortunes but his realistic understanding of the forces that opposed his reelection. He did not say that if he was defeated the country would fall into the hands of Copperheads who would consent to the division of the Union and the recognition of the Confederacy. He did not think the Democrats were disloyal. There had been “much impugning of motives, and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause,” he conceded, but he derived great satisfaction in recording that “a great majority of the opposing party” was as firmly committed as the Republicans to maintaining the integrity of the Union, and he noted with pride that “no candidate for office whatever, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union.” Nor did he have doubts about the loyalty of George B. McClellan, whose nomination by the Democrats he anticipated. But he did think that if the Democrats elected McClellan the party platform would force the new administration to seek an armistice, which virtually assured Confederate independence.

  Folding and sealing his memorandum carefully, so that none of the text was visible, Lincoln put it aside until the next cabinet meeting, when he asked each member to sign his name on the back of the document. As he explained later, his purpose was to talk with McClellan, whose election he thought probable, saying: “General, the election has demonstrated that you are stronger, have more influence with the American people than I. Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government, try to save the country.” He had little hope that McClellan would do anything, but, he added, “At least... I should have done my duty and have stood clear before my own conscience.”

  V

  Then, in the last days of August, with the assembling of the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, the outlook for Lincoln’s reelection suddenly brightened. When he asked the newspaperman Noah Brooks to be his informal observer at the convention, the President predicted the outcome: “They must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform, or a War Democrat on a peace platform; and I personally can’t say that I care much which they do.” The Democrats lived up to his expectations. Their platform announced that “after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,... justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand ... a cessation of hostilities,” with a view to ending the war “on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.” It was not exactly a peace platform, for the Democrats, like the Republicans, were pledged to preserve the Union; but the condemnation of the war and the call for an end of fighting made it easy to brand the platform “the Chicago Surrender.” Then the convention nominated General George B. McClellan, the leading War Democrat, for President. The two wings of the Democratic party had struck a bargain: the Peace Democrats, most conspicuously represented by Vallandigham, dictated the platform while their opponents named the presidential candidate. In effect, the Democrats chose to make party harmony their principal goal, even at the risk of defeat in the election.

  From all quarters McClellan’s f
riends warned that the platform was a “wet blanket”; “universally condemned,” it had probably been “concocted to destroy their candidate.” After some delay the general disavowed the peace plank. He could not look in the face of his “gallant comrades of the army and navy, who have survived so many bloody battles, and tell them that their labors and the sacrifice of so many of our slain and wounded brethren had been in vain.” But the damage was done. As one of McClellan’s admirers said, his letter accepting the nomination of a party on whose platform he could not run amounted to “twaddle and humbug.”

  On September 4, as if timed to make a mockery of the Democratic announcement that the war was a failure, came a message from Sherman: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” After Jefferson Davis named the impetuous John Bell Hood as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, replacing the capable Joseph E. Johnston, Sherman was able to put Atlanta under partial siege and force its evacuation. Almost simultaneously with Sherman’s victory message the North received the news that Rear Admiral David G. Farragut had captured Mobile, the last major Gulf port in Confederate hands. Joyfully Lincoln proclaimed a day of thanksgiving and prayer for “the signal success that Divine Providence has recently vouchsafed to the operations of the United States fleet and army in the harbor of Mobile... and the glorious achievements of the Army under Major General Sherman ... resulting in the capture ... of Atlanta.”

  These Union victories, combined with the nomination of McClellan on a peace platform, had a devastating effect on the schemes of Radical Republicans to replace Lincoln as their party’s nominee. On August 30, the day the Democrats chose McClellan, disaffected Republicans met, as scheduled, at David Dudley Field’s house in New York City, but a number of major Radical leaders were not present. Chase was absent; he now doubted the possibility of the success of the movement and advised his followers to support the regular Republican ticket. Wade recommended further deliberations before taking any action. Sumner remained in Boston. Agreeing that Lincoln’s nomination had been “ill-considered and unseasonable,” he thought there could be no alternative candidate “unless he withdraws patriotically and kindly, so as to leave no breach in the party.”

  But the extreme Radicals, like Greeley, Henry Winter Davis, Field, Professor Francis Lieber of Columbia College, John Austin Stevens of the New York Union League, Parke Godwin, Theodore Tilton, and George Wilkes, were in attendance, and they agreed “that it was useless and inexpedient to attempt to run Mr. Lincoln.” The group proposed that Lincoln should withdraw in favor of a new candidate. To prepare the ground for these moves, Greeley, Godwin, and Tilton agreed to send out letters to Northern governors, asking whether Lincoln’s election was a probability, whether he could carry their respective states, and whether the interests of the country required the substitution of another candidate in Lincoln’s place.

  The answers they received showed how out of touch these Radicals were with reality, how little they had assimilated the consequences of McClellan’s nomination, and how ill prepared they were to deal with Sherman’s victory. Even Governor Andrew of Massachusetts declined to endorse their program. Lincoln was “essentially lacking in the quality of leadership” and his nomination had been a mistake, he granted; but now “correction is impossible” and “Massachusetts will vote for the Union Cause at all events and will support Mr. Lincoln so long as he remains the candidate.” The other governors were blunter. Richard Yates of Illinois wrote that substitution of another candidate for Lincoln would be “disastrous in the highest degree.” Governor James T. Lewis of Wisconsin told the editors, “In my judgment the interests of the Union party, the honor of the nation and the good of mankind, demand that Mr Lincoln should be sustained and re-elected.”

  “The conspiracy against Mr Lincoln collapsed on Monday last,” Thurlow Weed jubilantly wrote Seward on September 10. Theodore Tilton suddenly discovered the Democrats’ Chicago platform was “the most villainous political manifesto known to American history” and that Sherman’s victory at Atlanta had produced “a sudden lighting up of the public mind.” When he brought his Independent out for Lincoln, the Evening Post and even the Tribune followed suit. Presently Greeley began making campaign speeches for the Republican ticket—though he made a point of not mentioning Lincoln by name.

  VI

  Kept closely informed of these activities, Lincoln moved to reunite his party, offering concessions to both factions. He had first to address the concerns of the Conservatives, who continued to be alarmed by his insistence that abolition was a necessary condition for peace. Raymond, the chairman of the National Union Executive Committee, spoke for this group and claimed to represent the President’s “staunchest friends in every state.” He pressed Lincoln to make a distinct offer of peace to Jefferson Davis “on the sole Condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,” with all other questions—including emancipation—to be settled by a subsequent convention. Raymond was confident that the Confederates would reject such an offer, but by making it Lincoln could “rouse and concentrate the loyalty of the country and ... give us an easy and a fruitful victory.”

  Lincoln believed that such a scheme meant “utter ruination,” but he could not afford to dismiss Raymond’s scheme out of hand. In late August, when the Executive Committee met in Washington, he had a long conversation with the editor and went so far as to draft possible instructions for a mission to Richmond. The emissary would be told to ignore the President’s consistent refusal to speak of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America and to address him in any terms necessary to secure a conference. He should then propose that “the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful modes.” If this was rejected, he should then inquire what terms of peace the Confederates would be willing to accept. When Raymond went over the draft, he realized what Lincoln had known all along: that “his plan of sending a commission to Richmond would be worse than losing the Presidential contest—it would be ignominiously surrendering it in advance.” Persuaded, Raymond gave up diplomacy and went back to managing the campaign, and in a few days the news from Chicago and Atlanta vindicated the President’s position.

  It took something more than persuasion to allay the unhappiness of Conservatives like Thurlow Weed. The President sent Nicolay to New York City to negotiate changes in the customs house that would placate the boss. It was, as the secretary said, a “very delicate, disagreeable and arduous duty,” because the New York Conservatives were no longer willing to share the patronage with the Radicals. Yielding to necessity, Lincoln, with some reluctance, ousted Hiram Barney, the collector, on September 5 and replaced him with Simeon Draper, a respected New York merchant who was an intimate of Seward and Weed. Ten days later he removed Andrews, the surveyor of the port, another Chase supporter, and appointed in his stead Abram Wakeman, the New York City postmaster who had become an intimate friend of Mrs. Lincoln. Taking hold, Draper announced that he would “hold every body responsible, for Mr Lincoln’s reelection, and I will countenance nothing else.” By making a few dismissals, he brought the rest of the customs house gang in line. “It is remarkable to note,” the New York Herald reported, “the change which has taken place in the political sentiments of some of these gentlemen within the last forty-eight hours—in fact, an anti-Lincoln man could not be found in any of the departments yesterday.”

  VII

  Lincoln had also to enlist the support of the Radicals, most of whom had not favored his renomination and some of whom had been trying to replace him with another candidate. His task was made easier because many of the Radicals had an institutional loyalty to the party they had helped found. Others made a cold-eyed calculation that they stood to benefit more from the victory of a Republican candidate whom they distrusted than from the success of any Democrat.

  He was fortunate that Zachariah Chandler, the blunt, self-educated Detroit businessman who represented Michigan in the Senate, took on himself the task of reconciling t
he Radicals and the President. Though the Michigan senator thought poorly of Lincoln’s record and believed he was “perfectly infatuated with Seward and Blair,” he was concerned for the victory of his party. “If it was only Abe Lincoln,” he wrote his wife, “I would say, go to—in your own way.” But now it was a choice between an inadequate Republican candidate and the “Traitor McLelland [sic].”

  During the final weeks of August, Chandler began exploring ways to bring Wade and Davis, the two Radicals most openly critical of Lincoln, back into the regular Republican fold. Wade’s resistance was the first to crack. He had been overwhelmed by the hostile reception of the Wade-Davis Manifesto, and his friends warned that “Lincoln has been more firmly seated in the saddle than at any time since the premature action of the Baltimore convention placed him there.” Chandler persuaded him to swallow his pride and agree to endorse the Lincoln-Johnson ticket, provided that Davis did so, too. Davis was also ready to negotiate. Distrusting Lincoln, he virulently hated Blair, leader of the rival Republican faction in Maryland. He agreed to support Lincoln but only on condition that the President dismiss the Postmaster General from the cabinet. His purpose was not merely to kill off Blair but to show Lincoln up as a “mean and selfish old dog who sacrificed his friend to his prospects.”