Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  The idea of eliminating Abraham Lincoln was not a new one in 1864. Even before his first election in 1860 he began to receive threats against his life. Initially these threats caused him some concern—and they made Mary frantic with worry. As President-elect, he had felt obliged to make a secret night trip through Baltimore to avoid attack by secessionists. But once he was settled in the White House, he ceased to pay much attention to the danger and directed his secretaries to throw away most threatening letters without showing them to him. By 1864, Lincoln told Francis B. Carpenter such letters no longer caused him apprehension. When the artist expressed surprise, he replied, “Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things!”

  Lincoln believed that in a democratic society the Chief Executive must not be screened from the public. “It would never do,” he told a member of Halleck’s staff, “for a President to have guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.” In addition, he recognized that it was impossible for him to be fully protected. If a group of conspirators plotted his death, he said, “no vigilance could keep them out. . . . A conspiracy to assassinate, if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to see me for any one or more of its instruments.”

  Consequently, like many other American presidents, Lincoln took few precautions to protect his security. During the first years of his presidency he often took long walks through the streets of Washington late at night or in the early morning hours, either alone or with a single companion. Nearly every night before going to bed Lincoln strolled through the densely shaded White House grounds to the War Department, often with no escort or guard. During the hot months when the Lincolns stayed at the Soldiers’ Home, he often rode back and forth to the White House on horseback or in an unguarded carriage. He frequently attended the theater in Washington accompanied only by Mary, or sometimes Tad, and one or two civilian friends. His indifference to security on these occasions drove his old friend Ward Lamon, the marshal of the District of Columbia who felt responsible for his safety, nearly to distraction. Once Lamon angrily offered to resign when he heard that the President had gone to the theater attended only by Charles Sumner and the Baron Gerolt, the elderly Prussian minister, “neither of whom,” Lamon sneered, “could defend himself against an assault from any able-bodied woman in this city.”

  At the outbreak of the war there was no military guard at the White House, and the two civilian attendants—one for the outer door, the other for the President’s office on the second floor—were often absent from their posts. In 1862, General James S. Wadsworth, the military commander of the District of Columbia, improved security by detailing a body of cavalry to escort the President on his rides to and from the Soldiers’ Home, but Lincoln objected that the soldiers made such a clatter with their sabers and spurs that he and Mary “couldn’t hear themselves talk.” The next summer these soldiers were replaced by the Union Light Guard, a company of one hundred carefully selected Ohioans mounted on handsome black steeds. Two of these guards were stationed at all times at each of the gateways to the Executive Mansion, and a noncommissioned officer was posted at the front portico. An infantry company of Pennsylvania Bucktails guarded the southern approaches to the White House. At Lamon’s urging, the chief of the Washington Metropolitan Police detailed four officers for special duty at the Executive Mansion. Wearing civilian clothing and carrying concealed weapons, these men were supposed to accompany the President on his walks and to escort him to the theater. At night one of them remained on duty upstairs in the White House outside the Lincolns’ private rooms.

  These increased precautions reflected Stanton’s growing anxiety that the President’s life was in danger. In 1864, Lincoln began to receive an unusual number of letters about plots to kidnap or assassinate him. Most were anonymous and undocumented. For instance, in July, “Lizzie W.S.” alerted the President that there were “hordes of Secesh-sympathizers” around Washington who would not hesitate to shoot him on his rides to the Soldiers’ Home. “If, you value your life! do, I entreat of you, discontinue your visits, out of the City,” she begged. A laborer in West Virginia reported overhearing a conversation in which one man assured another “that the plan was all made that if old Abe was Re alected we are agoin to kill him and I am the man that is agoin to do it with your help.”

  Hostility toward the President sharply increased during the last months of 1864 because both disaffected Northerners and embittered Confederates began to realize that what they considered the abuses and excesses of the Lincoln administration were going to be continued for another four years. Evils that up to this point had seemed transient now felt intolerable. Since the ballot did not remove the despot, it was time to find other means. In August, direly anticipating Lincoln’s success, the La Crosse (Wisconsin) Democrat, edited by the notorious Copperhead Marcus M. (“Brick”) Pomeroy, observed: “And if he is elected... for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good.”

  In the Confederacy more thought was given to kidnapping Lincoln than to assassinating him. Abducting the President of the United States would present the South with several advantages. If Lincoln could be safely seized and spirited away to Richmond, perhaps he would finally agree to negotiate with the Confederate government; the person of the President might make a powerful argument for suspending Grant’s merciless attacks; and—the most appealing argument of all—Lincoln could be used as a hostage to secure the release of some 200,000 captured Confederate soldiers languishing in Northern prisons. In the early years of the war Confederate authorities firmly discouraged all such schemes, and Secretary of War James A. Seddon announced, “The laws of war and morality, as well as Christian principles and sound policy forbid the use of such means.” But after the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren raid in February and March of 1864, when the Confederates captured documents purporting to show that the invaders planned to burn Richmond and kill Jefferson Davis, more Southerners were willing to contemplate some form of retaliation against Lincoln.

  In late September 1864, Thomas Nelson Conrad, a Confederate preacher and spy, led a team of three associates through the lines into Washington, where they hoped to seize the President as his carriage turned into the grounds of the Soldiers’ Home. To their surprise they found Lincoln surrounded by a heavy guard. Possibly the War Department had been alerted by an anonymous letter the President received a few days earlier, warning him to “Keep watch and ward, with arms ready and at hand” against a likely attack on September 26. More likely Stanton ordered additional protection because of what seemed to be an attempt on Lincoln’s life. While the President was returning to the Soldiers’ Home one evening in August, someone fired a shot at him. Lincoln was unscathed because his frightened horse raced for safety, but the next day the soldiers in his guard found his “eight-dollar plug-hat” with a bullet hole through the crown. Unable to get near the President, Conrad remained in Washington until at least November 10, hoping for another opportunity, but he was obliged to report that his mission had been a “humiliating failure.”

  Lincoln never knew of Conrad’s plan to kidnap him, but frequent threats and warnings reminded him of his vulnerability. Showing John W. Forney a pigeonhole in his office desk where he had filed more than eighty letters of this sort, he told the newspaperman, “I know I am in danger; but I am not going to worry over threats like these.”

  II

  In the weeks after his reelection Lincoln felt he had more important matters to worry about. As he was about to begin a second term, party workers demanded rewards for their service in the campaign, and they harassed the President with applications for jobs. Once again, his office was filled with office-seekers, and sometimes, he said, it seemed that every visitor “darted at him, and with thumb and finger carried off a portion of his vitality.” Overwhelmed, he asked Senator Daniel B. Clark of New Hampshire: “Can’t you and others start a public sentiment in favor of making no changes in o
ffices except for good and sufficient cause? It seems as though the bare thought of going through again what I did the first year here, would crush me.” In the end, he concluded that he would change as few officeholders as possible, because, he observed, “To remove a man is very easy, but when I go to fill his place, there are twenty applicants, and of these I must make nineteen enemies.”

  But some changes were necessary in his own official family. Both Nicolay and Hay were exhausted after nearly four years of arduous service as his private secretaries, and Nicolay was in poor health. Lincoln decided to give Nicolay the lucrative appointment as United States consul at Paris and to make Hay the secretary of legation in France. He planned to offer the post of private secretary to Noah Brooks, the affable and politically astute correspondent of the Sacramento Union. Friends told him that Brooks “was capable of rendering him infinitely more substantial service” than Nicolay.

  In the months between his election in November and his inauguration in March, the President had also to select four new members for his cabinet. He had already appointed William Dennison, who had presided over the National Union Convention at Baltimore, acting Postmaster General, and he now made that appointment permanent. Shortly after the election Edward Bates, now seventy-one years old, offered his resignation as Attorney General. To replace him Lincoln first turned to the highly efficient Joseph Holt, but the judge advocate general declined. At Holt’s suggestion the President then gave the post to another loyal Kentuckian, James Speed, brother of Joshua F. Speed. Lincoln had never found John P. Usher a very satisfactory colleague, and when the Secretary of the Interior resigned on March 8, he welcomed an opportunity to replace him with Senator James Harlan of Iowa. Harlan had been one of the administration’s strongest defenders in Congress, and the engagement of his daughter, Mary, to Robert Todd Lincoln strengthened his personal attachment to the President. In February, just before the beginning of the new term, Fessenden had also asked to be relieved of his duties as Secretary of the Treasury, so that he could return to the Senate. Lincoln wanted to replace him with Senator E. D. Morgan, the former governor of New York, who had been chairman of the Republican National Committee and had arranged for the Baltimore convention. When Morgan declined, the President selected the colorless but efficient comptroller of the currency, Hugh McCulloch.

  Made over a period of months, these appointments, taken together, offered insight into the likely character of the second Lincoln administration. In contrast to the members of the original cabinet, none of these appointees was a major party leader and none had aspirations for the presidency. Lincoln now felt so strong that he did not have to surround himself with the heads of the warring Republican factions. He did not require ideological conformity of the men he chose; Dennison, Holt, and Speed became more or less affiliated with the Radical wing of the Republican party, but Morgan and McCulloch were strong Conservatives. The President did not want his cabinet members to be rubber stamps, and he was supremely confident of his ability to handle disagreement among his advisers. Unlike his original cabinet, his new appointees—like the holdovers, Seward, Stanton, and Welles—were warmly attached to Lincoln personally. He could now afford the luxury of a loyal cabinet.

  No appointment at the President’s disposal had potentially greater significance than that of Chief Justice of the United States to succeed Roger B. Taney. Lincoln was fully aware of the importance of his choice. Along with the associate justices he had already appointed—Noah Swayne, Samuel F. Miller, David Davis, and Stephen J. Field—the next Chief Justice would form a majority on the Court that would decide vital cases arising out of the Civil War. A lawyer himself, the President wanted to name a man deeply versed in the law, rather than an ideologue or a theorist; he hoped the new Chief Justice would recognize that “the function of courts is to decide cases—not principles.”

  Lincoln had deliberately postponed announcing a choice until after the election. In the interval he went over in his mind the list of strongly recommended candidates and rejected one after another for what appeared good reasons: Bates was too old; Stanton could not be spared from the War Department; Evarts was not widely known; Blair could never be confirmed by the Senate.

  In the end, as at the beginning, he was left with the name of Salmon P. Chase. The strongest argument against Chase was his unquenchable political ambition. “If he keeps on with the notion that he is destined to be President of the United States, and which in my judgment he will never be,” Lincoln remarked to a senator, “he will never acquire that fame and influence as a Chief Justice which he would otherwise certainly attain.” But the arguments for Chase were much stronger. During the next few years the most difficult cases likely to come before the Court were those involving the constitutionality of Lincoln’s emancipation policies and the validity of the greenbacks with which the war was being financed. In selecting a judge, Lincoln explained to Representative George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, “we cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.” Chase’s record, the President thought, put him unquestionably on the right side of these basic issues.

  The President chose Chase to be Chief Justice because he thought him worthy—but he expected to receive political advantages from his choice. The appointment was part of his broader program of conciliating all the factions within the Republican party. He tried to make the selection of a Radical as painless as possible to Conservative Republicans. When Francis P. Blair, Sr., renewed his plea for the appointment of his son, the President agreed that Montgomery’s qualifications were indeed estimable but said he had to consult his advisers before making a choice. “Although I may be stronger as an authority,” he told the elder Blair, “yet if all the rest oppose, I must give way. . . . If the strongest horse in the team would go ahead, he cannot, if all the rest hold back.” Any insider would have recognized that Lincoln’s statement was absurd; he did not consult the cabinet about the appointment and did not even tell them his choice until after he sent Chase’s name to the Senate. But to the elder Blair his explanation made perfectly good sense. The President had learned how to make his hard decisions appear to be the work of a committee.

  At the same time, he sought to secure the greatest possible advantage with the Radicals from the appointment. With Chase’s partisans he gained credit for magnanimity in selecting a man who had been his sharp critic and a formidable political rival. Radicals credited rumors that the President had to force himself to make this choice, that, according to one report, rather than nominate Chase he would have swallowed the elk horn chair that the frontiersman Seth Kinman had given him. (Another had him say “he would sooner have eat flat irons than do it.”) A few days after he sent Chase’s name to the Senate, Lincoln candidly explained his purpose to Ward Lamon: “His appointment will satisfy the Radicals and after that they will not dare kick up against any appointment I may make.” With unwonted optimism he added that it was hard to see how in the future they could “interpose a reasonable objection” to his policies.

  III

  His calculations proved exactly right, for the new session of Congress, which assembled on December 5, proved remarkably supportive of his policies. Congressmen judged that it was not politically expedient to attack the policies of a President who had just been triumphantly reelected. Military victories further strengthened Lincoln’s hand. The capture of Atlanta had probably determined the outcome of the 1864 election, and now, while Grant grimly pinned down Lee’s army before Richmond, Sherman continued his march to the sea, cutting a swath of devastation through Georgia. Like Grant, Lincoln initially was “anxious, if not fearful” of Sherman’s plan, and the draft of his annual message to Congress included a promise that “our cause could, if need be, survive the loss of the whole detached force.” He deleted the phrase, doubtless because it sounded too pessimistic, but his doubts did not disappear until he received a telegram from Sherman on December 25
: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also about 25000 bales of cotton.” During the same time General Thomas’s forces checked the Confederate invasion of Tennessee at Franklin (November 30) and on December 15–16 routed Hood’s army in the decisive battle of Nashville. The double victory of Thomas and Sherman, Lincoln rejoiced, “brings those who sat in darkness, to see a great light.”

  The President probably did not intend to refer to members of Congress, but certainly their views underwent a remarkable transformation. Many who had hitherto strongly opposed Lincoln now muted their criticisms. When Henry Winter Davis, always implacable in his hatred of Lincoln and his administration, proposed to condemn the President for failing to adopt a more belligerent policy toward the French in Mexico, the President found an unlikely defender in Thaddeus Stevens, hitherto one of Lincoln’s most vocal critics. Other Radicals chimed in to praise “an Executive who is doing his utmost in a patriotic spirit to preserve unimpaired all the institutions of our country” and to condemn those who, like Davis, wished to “impugn his integrity in any respect whatsoever.” It did seem, as the National Intelligencer observed, that the country was entering on a new Era of Good Feeling.

  In the spirit of conciliation Lincoln reached out for the support of Democrats as well as Republicans. His annual message contained an earnest plea to his political opponents to support the proposed constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United States. In the previous session of Congress the measure had failed to secure the required two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives, because all but four of the Democratic members voted against it. At Lincoln’s urging, the National Union Convention had made the amendment a central plank in the platform on which he and a heavy Republican majority in the next Congress were elected. He now asked the lame-duck session of the Thirty-eighth Congress to reconsider the amendment. “Without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition,” the President urged the Democrats to rethink their position. “Of course,” he admitted, “the abstract question is not changed; but an intervening election shows, almost certainly, that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not.” Since adoption was simply a matter of time, he asked, “may we not agree that the sooner the better?” Arguing that “some deference shall be paid to the will of the majority, simply because it is the will of the majority,” he appealed for support of the amendment now.