On the whole, the Union soldiers and their officers were pleased by their President. To be sure, the very superior young Boston aristocrat Colonel Theodore Lyman, attached to Meade’s headquarters, found him “the ugliest man I ever put my eyes on,” with an offensive “expression of plebeian vulgarity in his face”; but after some conversation with the President, Lyman concluded he was “a very honest and kindly man,” who looked “much like a highly intellectual and benevolent Satyr.” “I never wish to see him again,” the colonel dismissed his commander-in-chief, “but, as humanity runs, I am well content to have him at the head of affairs.”
Mary Lincoln had a bad time on the trip down the Potomac on the River Queen. Highly nervous, she was greatly upset when her husband made the mistake of telling her that he dreamed the White House was on fire, and she insisted on sending not one but two telegrams to Washington to be sure everything was all right. At army headquarters she felt out of place, and the few other women who were present, like Julia Grant and Mary Ord, seemed not to pay sufficient deference to the wife of the President of the United States. Lincoln, intent on fulfilling his many obligations, gave her too little attention and assumed that she could cope in his absence. She could not.
When Ord’s troops were to be reviewed at Malvern Hill, the President and most of the men rode ahead on horseback, leaving Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant to proceed in an ambulance over roads calf-deep in mud. A sudden jolt bounced the ladies against the top of the carriage, crushing their bonnets and bumping their heads. Mary, who had never fully recovered from her 1863 carriage accident, probably had an attack of migraine. When she finally arrived at the site of the review, she discovered that it had begun without her. Her husband was riding down the lines accompanied by Mrs. Ord, a strikingly handsome young woman, whose appearance must have reminded Mary that she had now become corpulent and her face heavy, with permanent down-turned lines. When Mrs. Ord rode up to pay her respects, Mary, now hysterical, “positively insulted her, called her vile names ..., and asked what she meant by following up the President.”
That night before the guests at dinner aboard the River Queen, Mary repeatedly attacked her husband for flirting with Mrs. Ord and demanded that General Ord be removed from command. Deeply mortified, the President tried to ignore his wife’s remarks, but she continued her tirade of abuse until late in the night. For the next several days, ill and embarrassed, she spent most of her time in her cabin, and on April 1, to her husband’s undoubted relief, she went back to Washington, leaving Tad with his father.
Once his wife was out of the picture, Lincoln could reveal that recreation was not his only object in going to City Point. His greatest worry now was that Union generals might let victory slip through their hands. Grant, preparing to launch the final assault of the Army of the Potomac against Petersburg, felt that the President’s anxiety was unwarranted. So did Sherman, who had now pushed into the Carolinas and was so sure of success that he felt able to leave his army and come up to City Point for a final conference on strategy. But Lincoln had had too many experiences with overconfident commanders, and he knew how wily and dangerous the Confederates still were. Again and again during his two weeks at the front, he expressed concern that Lee might break away from Grant, lead his forces into North Carolina, where they could join the remnants of the Confederate army again under Joseph E. Johnston, and either fight another great battle or escape south to continue the war. He feared that Johnston might slip out of Sherman’s grasp and “be off South again with those hardy troops of his.” “Yes,” he told the general, “he will get away if he can, and you will never catch him until after miles of travel and many bloody battles.”
Equally important was the President’s determination to keep control of any peace negotiations generally thought to be in the offing. Old Francis P. Blair on his mission to Richmond had made the dangerous suggestion that Grant and Lee should get together to talk about peace terms, and the Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads had worked through Grant to secure the conference they desired with the President. More recently, Lee had directly approached Grant asking “an interchange of views” on “the subjects of controversy between [the] belligerents,” and the President had been obliged to tell his commanding general that he must “have no conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee’s army.” “Such questions,” Lincoln directed, “the President holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions.”
Lincoln was not just ordering the generals to follow protocol; he wanted to make sure that any negotiations led not merely to a suspension of fighting but to a peace that would ensure his war aims of Union, Emancipation, and at least limited Equality. His worst fear, which he repeatedly expressed, was that once the Confederate armies were defeated Southern soldiers “would not return to their homes to accept citizenship under a hated rule; and with nothing but desolation and want through the South, the disbanded Confederate soldiers would be tempted to lawlessness and anarchy.” Consequently his objective was to secure not merely peace but reconciliation. Bringing Grant, Sherman, and Admiral David D. Porter together for a conference aboard the River Queen on March 28, Lincoln discussed the approaching end of the war and talked of offering the most generous terms in order to “get the deluded men of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their homes.” “Let them once surrender and reach their homes,” he said, “[and] they won’t take up arms again. Let them all go, officers and all, I want submission, and no more bloodshed.... I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”
CHAPTER TWENTY - ONE
I Will Take Care of Myself
The visit to City Point rejuvenated Lincoln. Once he was away from the nagging pressures of Washington, his health returned. Buoyed by the adulation of the soldiers and exhilarated by the sense that final victory over the Confederacy was at hand, he had a new sense of strength. After his visit to the army hospital, where he shook hands with patients for several hours, a surgeon expressed fear that his arm must ache from the exertion. The President smiled and, saying that he had “strong muscles,” picked up a heavy ax that lay beside a log. He chopped away vigorously for a few minutes and then, taking the ax in his right hand, extended it horizontally, holding it steady without even a quiver. After he left, some strong soldiers attempted to duplicate his feat but failed.
Lincoln had every right to be pleased with himself. After four exhausting years he was now fully master of the almost impossible job to which he had been elected. The only Chief Executive elected for two terms since Andrew Jackson, he was unquestionably the choice of the American people, not a minority or accidental President. He headed an administration, and a bureaucracy, that followed his leadership. As party leader, he commanded overwhelming support in both houses of Congress. He was commander-in-chief of the largest military and naval forces the country had ever raised, and at last they were functioning with machinelike efficiency. The United States Navy controlled the ocean and, after the capture of Fort Fisher, off Wilmington, North Carolina, in January, was strangling the Confederacy with its blockade. As Sherman’s tough Western army cornered Joseph E. Johnston’s weakened forces in North Carolina, Grant was moving to the south of Petersburg and Richmond. On April 1 he launched an attack with Sheridan’s dismounted cavalry and Gouverneur K. Warren’s Fifth Corps that crumpled Lee’s right flank in the battle of Five Forks and almost encircled Petersburg. Lee warned Jefferson Davis that he must be prepared to flee Richmond.
Lincoln wanted to be in on the finish. On April 3, learning that Petersburg had been evacuated, he closely followed the federal troops as they entered the city. The Secretary of War was horrified by the risk he was taking. “Allow me respectfully to ask you,” Stanton scolded, “to consider whether you ought to expose the nation to the consequence of any disaster to yourself in the pursuit of a treacherous and dangerous enemy like the rebel ar
my.” But Lincoln, elated to learn that the Confederate government had fled and Richmond was in Union hands, brushed aside the warning. “I will take care of myself,” he promised Stanton.
I
On April 4, as soon as the navy had removed most of the Confederate torpedoes in the James River, Lincoln set out with a small party to visit Richmond. When the U.S.S. Malvern, Admiral Farragut’s flagship, could not pass a line of obstructions the Southerners had placed in the river, the President transferred to a shallow-draft barge, pulled by the tugboat Glance. After the strong river current forced the Malvern against a bridge, the tugboat was detached to rescue it, and twelve sailors rowed Lincoln’s barge upstream. The President was amused. “Admiral,” he said to David D. Porter, who was in his party, “this brings to my mind a fellow who once came to me to ask for an appointment as minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers.” “But it is well to be humble,” Lincoln concluded.
Landing without notice or fanfare, the President was first recognized by some black workmen. Their leader, a man about sixty, dropped his spade and rushed forward, exclaiming, “Bless the Lord, there is the great Messiah! ... Glory, Hallelujah!” He and the others fell on their knees, trying to kiss the President’s feet. “Don’t kneel to me,” Lincoln told them, embarrassed. “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” Quickly word of the President’s arrival spread, and he was soon surrounded by throngs of blacks, who shouted, “Bless the Lord, Father Abrahams Come.”
As the small party walked up to Main Street, six of the sailors from the barge, armed with carbines, headed the procession, and six others brought up the rear, with Lincoln, leading Tad with his left hand, and Admiral Porter in the center. It was a beautiful, warm day, and the President soon shed his long overcoat, which reached below his knees, but continued to wear his tall stovepipe hat, though he frequently removed it to wipe away big drops of perspiration on his forehead. Encountering a squad of New York soldiers, the President asked for directions to the headquarters of General Godfrey Weitzel, whom Grant had named to command the Union forces occupying Richmond.
The soldiers escorted him to the Confederate White House, where he sank into a comfortable chair in what had been Jefferson Davis’s study. After a little rest he went on a tour of the building and then had a simple lunch with Weitzel and his staff. While they were eating, the general’s three-seated army hack, drawn by four horses, was brought to the front of the building, and Tad, who had finished lunch early, climbed into the back seat and began to hold a reception, shaking hands with all the freedmen, and some whites as well, who crowded around.
When the President emerged, there was cheering, and some members of the crowd threw their hats and bonnets into the air. Driving past St. Paul’s Church, the President made a stop at the Virginia statehouse, which had housed the Confederate Congress. As one of his party recalled, it gave “every evidence of hasty abandonment and subsequent looting”; members’ desks and chairs were upset, official documents were scattered about, and Confederate $1,000 bonds littered the floors. Afterward, as the President drove through the more fashionable residential districts of the city “blinds or shades were drawn and no faces were to be seen,” but in the working-class areas he was surrounded by enthusiastic crowds. Proceeding south, Lincoln went through part of the business section, devastated by the fires that had broken out as the Confederates evacuated the city, and stopped at the hated Libby Prison where so many Northern soldiers had been held during the war. In the late afternoon he went aboard the Malvern, which had finally made its way through the obstructions on the James River.
Even here he was not allowed to rest undisturbed. Throughout the day members of his entourage had been fearful of attempts on his life, for it was almost impossible to protect the President when so many people pushed close to inspect and admire him. There was a moment of panic when a man clad in a gray Confederate uniform stood in a second-story window and appeared to point a rifle directly at Lincoln; but no shot was fired, and the group moved on. In the evening two suspicious persons attempted to board the Malvern, claiming to bear dispatches for the President. Concerned for Lincoln’s safety, Admiral Porter posted a guard outside his cabin door. The next morning General Edward H. Ripley, who commanded one of Weitzel’s brigades, brought a report from a Confederate soldier that the President was in danger and ought to take greater care if he went ashore again. Lincoln ignored the threat, saying, “I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.”
Lincoln’s motive in going to Richmond was not just natural curiosity about the citadel of the Confederacy; it was a desire to help in the process of restoring peace. For this reason he took time while in the Confederate White House to meet with John A. Campbell, one of the Southern commissioners at Hampton Roads and the only high-ranking Confederate to remain in the capital. Urging the President to pursue a policy of “moderation, magnanimity and kindness” toward the South, Campbell secured his ready agreement “not to exact oaths, interfere with churches, etc.” and, in general, to make “no requisitions on the inhabitants [of Richmond]... of any sort save as to police and preservation of order.” But these promises did little to solve the larger issues involved in bringing Virginia back into the Union, and for that purpose Campbell suggested that Lincoln confer with the influential moderate leaders of the state, like R. M. T. Hunter, who “were satisfied that submission was a duty and a necessity.”
The President invited Campbell to bring a delegation of such leaders aboard the Malvern the next morning. Campbell asked six or seven influential Virginians to accompany him, but only Gustavus A. Myers, a prominent Richmond attorney, agreed to do so. Lincoln had General Weitzel at his side. The President began by restating his indispensable terms for peace: “restoration of the national authority”; “no receding by the Executive of the United States on the slavery question”; and “no cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government.” If these were acceded to, he promised to consider other proposed conditions “in a spirit of sincere liberality.” For instance, he promised to return property seized under the Confiscation Acts to any state that withdrew its troops from the Confederate army. At the same time, he warned that “if the war be now further persisted in,” the costs would have to be paid from confiscated Confederate property.
Campbell responded by saying that slavery was now “defunct” and therefore no longer an issue between North and South. Virginia could be brought back into the Union if Lincoln offered a general amnesty. “To cover appearances,” there should also be “a military convention” to end the fighting, but there was no Confederate authority willing or able to sign such an agreement dismantling the Southern government. Jefferson Davis had avoided the decision, saying that only a convention of the Southern states could end the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress had refused to overrule its President. General Lee, as usual, stuck to his military duties and declined to act on political questions, such as the terms of peace.
The situation was exactly what Lincoln had most feared. The war was not yet over, and further fighting and more bloodshed lay ahead. Even if there were no more pitched battles, thousands of Southern soldiers, turned loose on the countryside, would probably resort to guerrilla warfare. Society would be broken up, and anarchy was likely.
To prevent these disasters, the President told Campbell and Myers, he had been thinking of a plan for the speedy restoration of Virginia to the Union. If he gave safe-conduct assurances to members of the state’s Confederate legislature, they could meet at Richmond and vote to withdraw the state from the Confederacy. It was not an idea that he had fully worked out, but it was not a completely novel one. Representative Ashley, a leading Radical, had advanced a similar proposal in the last
session of Congress. To secure stable governments in the South, he argued, “the President may lawfully and rightfully treat with [rebel officials] and recognize them as the existing government.” In his conversations with Grant and Sherman at City Point, Lincoln had probably discussed the possibility of dealing with Confederate state authorities, at least during a transitional period. But Lincoln recognized that this plan entailed risks. For one thing, it overturned the policy of nonrecognition of the Confederacy that he and his administration had resolutely adhered to for more than four years. For another, in the case of Virginia it raised problems about the legitimacy of the existing Unionist government, headed by Francis Pierpont. To be sure, this Pierpont regime had, as the President admitted, a “somewhat farcical” quality, since it governed only the areas of the state that were under Union guns, but both he and the Congress had repeatedly recognized it. These were weighty objections, to be balanced against the President’s desire to see “the very Legislature which had been sitting ‘up yonder’—pointing to the capitol—to come together and to vote to restore Virginia to the Union, and recall her soldiers from the Confederate army.”
Eagerly his listeners seized on his idea. As Weitzel later reported, Campbell and Myers “assured Mr. Lincoln that if he would allow the Virginia Legislature to meet, it would at once repeal the ordinance of secession, and that then General Robert E. Lee and every other Virginian would submit; that this would amount to the virtual destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia, and eventually to the surrender of all the other rebel armies, and would insure perfect peace in the shortest possible time.”
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