Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  363 early as June 18: For a rather too circumstantial account of this conversation, see Charles E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1899), pp. 428–429.

  364 “slaves in the South”: David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (New York: Century Co., 1907), pp. 138–141. For a skeptical view of this account of the drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation, see Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 108–109.

  364 could enforce it: Louis M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), p. 125.

  364 “lose the game!”: Carpenter, Six Months, pp. 20–22.

  364 “the best policy”: CW, 5:329–330.

  365 “within a state”: CW, 5:329.

  365 “it may exist”: Browning, Diary, 1:555.

  365 a historic occasion: Lincoln’s own recollection of this meeting, as recorded by the artist Francis B. Carpenter, is in Carpenter, Six Months, pp. 20–22. Chase’s record is in Chase, Diary, pp. 98–100; Stanton’s memorandum, dated July 22, 1862, is in the Stanton MSS, LC. The first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation is in CW, 5:336–337.

  366 sympathy with the President: For Smith’s views, see Nelson H. Loomis, “Mr. Lincoln’s Cabinet by Hon. John P. Usher ... with a Foreword and a Sketch of the Life of the Author” [1924?], typed copy, A. J. Beveridge MSS, LC.

  366 important border states: Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p. 240; William Stuart to Lord Russell, Aug. 22, 1862, Stuart MSS, Public Records Office, London.

  366 “after a victory”: George Bemis, Diary, Nov. 15, 1862, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  366 “emancipating negroes”: Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1909), 2:113–115; Leonard Swett to Laura Swett, Aug. 10, 1862, David Davis MSS, ISHL.

  367 “necessaries of life”: Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War (1917), 2:41–42.

  367 “injury than good”: Browning, Diary, 1:555.

  367 “join the rebellion”: Frederic Bancroft, ed., Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 1:209.

  367 “Hamlin try”; James G. Smart, ed., A Radical View: The “Agate” Dispatches of Whitelaw Reid, 1861–1865 (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1976), 2:74–75.

  367 “good of mankind”: CW, 5:370–375.

  367 “North and South”: “The National Controversy,” Pacific Appeal, Sept. 6, 1862.

  368 “homes in America!”: Chase, Diary, p. 112.

  368 “benefit of the enslaved”: Garnet, in Pacific Appeal, Oct. 11, 1862.

  368 “save the Union”: CW, 5:388–389.

  369 “to stand on”: Weed to Seward, Aug. 23, 1862; Ashmun to AL, Aug. 25, 1862, both in Lincoln MSS, LC.

  369 “to that music”: Howe to AL, Aug. 25, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  369 “progress of events”: Carpenter, Six Months, p. 22.

  369 “alone prevents it”: McClellan, Civil War Papers, p. 374.

  369 “without reinforcements”: Browning, Diary, 1:563–564.

  370 “do what I wish”: Thomas and Hyman, Stanton, pp. 216–217.

  370 “these people now”: Hay, Diary, pp. 45–46.

  371 “the contest proceeds”: CW, 5:403–404.

  371 “unknown to us”: CW, 5:478.

  371 “army with him”: Hay, Diary, 45–47; Welles, Diary, 1:113.

  372 “called me to it”: McClellan, Civil War Papers, p. 428.

  372 “the [War] Department”: Welles, Diary, 1:97–98.

  372 “disrespectful to the President”: “Opinion of Stanton, Chase, Smith & Bates of Want of Confidence in Genl. McClellan, given to the President,” Sept. 2, 1862, copy, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  372 “tools we have”: Bates’s note, on the document previously cited; John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, vol. 1 Journals—1829–1872 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1993), p. 369; Hay, Diary, p. 47. Lincoln’s words in Chase’s diary, “gladly resign his place,” have caused some controversy among historians. J. G. Randall, in Lincoln the President, 2:112–113, believed the passage, which we have only in the handwriting of a copyist, should read “gladly resign his plan.” I adopted that reading in my edition of Chase’s diaries, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet, pp. 118–120, but I defer to the authoritative edition of those diaries edited by Professor John Niven and his associates.

  372 “Harrisburg and Philadelphia”: CW, 5:501.

  372 “will do anything”: Welles, Diary, 1:116.

  373 “side of the mountains”: CW, 5:417.

  373 “and the people”: Strong, Diary, p. 256; Samuel Galloway to AL, Sept. 4, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC; Robert Laird Collier, Moral Heroism: Its Essentialness to the Crisis. A Sermon, Preached to the Wabash Ave. M.E. Church, Chicago, Sabbath Evening, August 3, 1862, pp. 7–8.

  373 “all the cabinet”: Garrett Davis to AL, Sept. 7, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  373 “fatal concessions”: Chase, Diary, p. 136.

  373 in late September: Andrew, in Allan Nevins, The War for the Union (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 2:240. For much further detail, and some speculation, on the Altoona conference, see William Best Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), chap. 13.

  374 “as the Republicans”: Browning to AL, Sept. 10, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  374 “against the comet!”: CW, 5:420.

  374 “I will do it!”: Ibid.

  374 “cause of emancipation”. Welles, Diary, 1:143.

  374 had sent him: “Artemus Ward” was the pen name of Charles Farrar Browne. Lincoln read from the recently published Artemus Ward: His Book (1862).

  375 “other minor matter”: Chase, Diary, p. 150.

  375 “feelings of... the people”: Adam Gurowski, Diary, from March 4, 1861 to November 12, 1862 (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1862), p. 278.

  375 “forever free”: CW, 5:433–436.

  375 “ought to take”: Chase, Diary, pp. 150–151.

  375 “all my heart”: Ibid.

  376 “weight with him”: Welles, Diary, 1:144.

  376 “with difficulties”: CW, 5:438.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A PUMPKIN IN EACH END OF MY BAG

  Allan Nevins, The War for the Union (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), vol. 2, offers the most comprehensive survey of the period between the preliminary and the final Emancipation Proclamations. I have also found especially useful William Safire’s Freedom (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1987). Though this account is fictional, it is abundantly documented in Safire’s “Underbook” of notes.

  377 “his fellow man”: Speed to WHH, Feb. 7, 1866, HWC.

  377 “issued by man”: Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1951), p. 177.

  378 dozen hams: W. B. Lowry, H. Catlin, and J. F. Downing to AL, Sept. 23,1862; McKim to AL, Sept. 27, 1862; George Cassaru to AL, Sept. 25,1862—all in Lincoln MSS, LC.

  378 “other American man”: Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), pp. 416–417.

  378 “side of the President”: Donald, Sumner, p. 81.

  378 “sound policy”: CW, 5:441.

  378 “kills no rebels”: CW, 5:444.

  378 “Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation”: Randall, Lincoln the President, 2:175; Richard Nelson Current, Lincoln’s Loyalists (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), p. 50.

  379 “and of revenge”: Ephraim D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1925), 2:102.

  379 “destroy the Union”: Nevins, War for the Union, 2:235n.

  379 “loyal Slave States”: Randall, Lincoln the President, 2:172.

  379 �
��no practical result”: Virginia Jeans Laas, ed., Wartime Washington: The Civil War Letters of Elizabeth Blair Lee (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), p. 187.

  380 “beyond our vision”: Harper, Lincoln and the Press, p. 177; New York Evening Express, Sept. 23, 1862.

  380 “authority of the United States”: CW, 5:437.

  380 “less it does”: James A. Bayard to S. L. M. Barlow, Sept. 30,1862, Barlow MSS, HEH.

  381 not radical enough: Carl Schurz to AL, May 19,1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  381 “might be averted”: Forney to Hannibal Hamlin, Oct. 1,1862, Hamlin MSS, microfilm, Columbia University.

  381 “some time since”: Chase, Diary, p. 151.

  381 first law partner: Harry E. Pratt, “The Repudiation of Lincoln’s War Policy in 1862—Stuart-Swett Congressional Campaign,” JISHS 24:129–140.

  382 “plain sailing”: DeWitt C. Clarke to W. H. Seward, Sept. 23, 1862, Seward MSS, UR.

  382 “nothing else”: Enoch T. Carson to S. P. Chase, Sept. 25, 1862, Chase MSS.

  382 himself a dictator: See the excellent treatment of this subject in Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 51–65.

  382 “writ of ‘habeas corpus’”: Arthur C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), p. 297.

  382 “red with blood”: Seymour is quoted in John Livingston to W. H. Seward, Oct. 4, 1862, Seward MSS, UR.

  382 “overwork had wrought”: Mary A. Livermore, My Story of the War (Hartford: A. D. Worthington & Co., 1889), pp. 555, 560.

  382 “of holy-days”: CW, 5:452.

  382 a severe rebuff The best way to understand the outcome of the election is to consult the stunning maps in Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1989), pp. 115, 117.

  383 “want of confidence”: New York Times, Nov. 7, 1862.

  383 to “Africanize” Illinois: Bruce Tap, “Race, Rhetoric, and Emancipation: The Election of 1862 in Illinois,” Civil War History 39 (June 1993): 101–125.

  383 in Republican counties: CW, 5:494. For refutation of the theory that more Republicans than Democrats were in the army, see Randall, Lincoln the President, 2:235–236.

  383 “carry on the Government”: Field to AL, Nov. 8, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  383 “made to relent”: T. J. Barnett to S. L. M. Barlow, Nov. 30, 1862, Barlow MSS, HEH.

  383 “hands of its enemy’s”: Schurz to Lincoln, Nov. 8, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  384 outcome of the elections: S. W. Oakey to AL, Nov. 5, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  384 “not surprise me”: Sandburg, 1:606–607.

  385 “intimidate the President”: Nevins, War for the Union, 2:23 In.

  385 “to insubordination”: Ibid., 2:238.

  385 Pinkerton’s long interview: Pinkerton’s report of this interview is in James D. Horan, The Pinkertons: The Detective Dynasty That Made History (New York: Crown Publishers, 1967), pp. 130–133.

  386 “break up that game”: CW, 5:442–443. Most historians have failed to see the importance of Key’s dismissal. The best account of the affair is Safire, Freedom, pp. 770–775; see particularly Safire’s notes, pp. 1084–1085.

  387 “wanted an example”: CW, 5:508; Chase, Diary, p. 219.

  387 trusted political advisers: On Thomas M. Key’s influence over McClellan, see Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (New York: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1887), pp. 291–295.

  387 “into a despotism”: Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1963), pp. 464–465.

  387 opposition to the proclamations: Montgomery Blair to McClellan, Sept. 27, 1862, McClellan MSS, LC.

  387 “manners and appearance”: Allan Nevins, ed., A Diary of Battle: The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861–1865 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), pp. 109–110.

  387 adjacent to McClellan’s: For a detailed chronology of the visit, see LL, no. 1277 (Sept. 28,1953).

  387 “McClellan’s body-guard”: Francis Fisher Browne, The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Browne & Howell Co., 1913), 2:417–418.

  387 “smile of approbation”: Nevins, Diary of Battle, p. 110.

  388 of the Union dead: Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865, ed. Dorothy Lamon Teillard (Washington, D.C.: 1911), chap. 9; LL, no. 250 (Sept. 4, 1933).

  388 “general in the country”: McClellan, Civil War Papers, pp. 489–490.

  388 “master of the situation”: William D. Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), p. 75.

  388 “indulge her baby”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Nov. 9, 1862, Nicolay MSS, LC.

  388 “temper over it”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Oct. 13,1862, Nicolay MSS, LC.

  389 “the same notion”: Livermore, My Story of the War, pp. 556–560.

  389 “Mac’s ribs”: Nicolay to John Hay, Oct. 26, 1862, Nicolay MSS, LC.

  389 “the ‘Gorilla’”: McClellan, Civil War Papers, p. 515.

  389 “fatigue anything?”: CW, 5:474–479.

  389 “dull to take hold”: F. P. Blair, Sr., to Montgomery Blair, Nov. 7, 1862, Blair MSS, LC.

  389 “inexpedient” to remove: Chase to Hiram Barney, Oct. 26, 1862, Chase MSS.

  390 advance at Antietam: For McClellan’s criticism of Burnside’s performance at Antietam, see William Marvel, Burnside (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 145–150.

  390 ground for his own: For the high degree of Republican unanimity on measures relating to the war, see David Donald, “Devils Facing Zionwards,” in Grady McWhiney, ed., Grant, Lee, Lincoln and the Radicals (Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 72–91. But for clearly visible Republican factionalism, which became more evident as the war dragged on, see Allan G. Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981), esp. chap. 3.

  391 in a single morning: C. Van Santvoord, “A Reception by President Lincoln,” Century Magazine 25 (Feb. 1883): 612–614.

  392 “occurrences of the day”: Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 187.

  392 Indians in American history: Throughout this section I have relied heavily on David A. Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978), chaps. 6–8 and 13, and, except where otherwise indicated, all quotations are taken from this excellent monograph. The Civil War in the American West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., has also been very useful in helping me to understand the Sioux rebellion.

  392 “cowardly, and shameful”: Wallace J. Schutz and Walter N. Trenerry, Abandoned by Lincoln: A Military Biography of General John Pope (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), p. 176.

  393 “neglected race”: CW, 5:173.

  393 “Cherokee Nation”: CW, 5:439.

  393 “our red brethren”: CW, 6:151–152. This meeting was on Mar. 27, 1863.

  394 man to his death: CW, 5:542–543.

  395 “before the Locos”: O. J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886), p. 199.

  395 Much of the message: The full text of the message is in CW, 5:518–537.

  396 “our military reach”: Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, Memoir of John A. Dahlgren (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1882), p. 382.

  396 “make them free”: N. Worth Brown and Randolph C. Downes, eds., “A Conference with Abraham Lincoln: From the Diary of Reverend Nathan Brown,” Northwest Ohio Quarterly 22 (Spring 1950): 61–62.

  397 “two thirds of the States”: Chase to AL, Nov. 28, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  397 from a “hallucination”: Browning, Diary, 1:591.

  397 “problem is solved”: Davis to Leonard Swett, Nov. 26, 1862, Davis MSS, ISHL.

  397 “proclamation of September 22”: CW, 5:462�
�463.

  398 “the Apprentice System”: T. J. Barnett to S. L. M. Barlow, Nov. 30, 1861, Barlow MSS, HEH.

  398 “and extermination”: CW, 2:240–241.

  398 “hope of earth”: CW, 5:537.

  399 “bad as all that”: Henry Villard, Memoirs (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1904), 1:389–391.