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Lincoln Page 108

by David Herbert Donald


  399 “disgraceful termination”: Hollister, Colfax, p. 203.

  399 “the traitoress Mrs. Lincoln”: H. Finch to Zachariah Chandler, Sept. 10, 1862, Chandler MSS, LC.

  399 “a new administration”: George P. Morgan to W. H. Seward, Oct. 22, 1862, Seward MSS, UR.

  399 “shape of cabinet ministers”: Grimes to Lyman Trumbull, Oct. 6, 1862, Trumbull MSS, LC.

  400 “corner with the President”: Welles, Diary, 1:124, 136; 2:58.

  400 their legs on: George Bemis, Diary, Nov. 15, 1862, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  400 “as critics only”: David Davis to Leonard Swett, Nov. 26, 1862, Davis MSS, ISHL.

  400 “United States Navy”: P. M. Zall, ed., Abe Lincoln Laughing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 78.

  401 “over-borne their patriotism”: Galloway to AL, Sept. 4, 1862, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  401 “Head to the War Dept.”: Montgomery Blair to Francis P. Blair, Jr., Sept. 17, 1862, Blair Family MSS, LC.

  401 “the Silurian era”: Hollister, Colfax, p. 200.

  401 “Uncle Abe’s nose”: Ibid.

  401 “be immediately accepted”: W. H. Seward to AL, Dec. 18, 1862, Seward MSS, UR.

  401 “What does this mean?”: Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington (New York: Derby & Miller, 1891), p. 146.

  401 extraordinary caucus: The fullest account of this caucus meeting is in Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1907), 1:231–236, but there are further details in Browning’s Diary, 1:596–598.

  402 “on my account”: Seward, Seward at Washington, p. 146.

  402 outcome of the Republican caucus: Fessenden, Fessenden, 1:236–238, offers a full account of these meetings, and Browning’s Diary, 1:598–599, adds details.

  402 “conclusions reached”: Chase to Chandler, Sept. 20; 1862, Chandler MSS, LC.

  403 “a ray of hope”: Browning, Diary, 1:600–601.

  403 “his usual urbanity”: Again the fullest account of this conference is in Fessenden, Fessenden, 1:240–243.

  403 read resolutions: A copy of these resolutions, misdated 1864, is in the Lincoln MSS (#39732–34), LC.

  403 “around the Administration”: Nevins, War for the Union, 2:355; Hannibal Hamlin to Ellen Hamlin, Dec. 19, 1862, Hamlin MSS, microfilm, Columbia University.

  404 “a free talk”: Bates, Diary, p. 269.

  404 “sufficient consultation”: The fullest accounts of this meeting are in Fessenden, Fessenden, 1:243–248; Bates, Diary, pp. 269–270; and Welles, Diary, 1:196–198.

  405 “this subject now”: Welles, Diary, 1:201–202, gives a full account of this interview.

  405 “end of my bag!”: Seward, Seward at Washington, p. 148.

  405 “should not do that”: Browning, Diary, 1:604.

  405 “He lied”: Ibid., 1:603.

  405 “and their enemies”: Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1987), p. 193.

  405 “confidence and esteem”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Dec. 23,1862, Nicolay MSS, LC.

  406 “of Almighty God”: CW, 6:23–26. For Sumner’s role, see Donald, Sumner, p. 97.

  406 “put it through”: Hay, Diary, pp. 111–112.

  406 “anyone could”: Hemdon’s Lincoln, 3:533.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: WHAT WILL THE COUNTRY SAY!

  T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), offers a spirited account of Lincoln’s unhappy efforts to identify able commanders. In vol. 2 of Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War (New York: Macmillan Co., 1949), Kenneth P. Williams provides an expert analysis of Hooker’s campaign. On antiwar movements in the North, Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York: Viking Press, 1942) and Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), offer conflicting interpretations.

  407 the reception line: Patricia Carley Johnson, ed., “Sensitivity and Civil War: The Selected Diaries and Papers ... of Frances Adeline [Fanny] Seward” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1963), pp. 586–587; New York Herald, Jan. 3, 1863.

  407 “going to be done!”: Frederick W. Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State (New York: Derby & Miller, 1891), p. 151.

  408 “and da[u]ntless courage”: CW, 6:39.

  408 mounting “counter-raids”: CW, 6:108.

  408 “so, ranks you”: CW, 6:138–139.

  409 “idiotically drunk”: Murat Halstead to Salmon P. Chase, Apr. 1, 1863, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  409 “in our ranks”: CW, 6:71.

  409 “particle of responsibility”: “Extracts from the Journal of Henry J. Raymond,” Scribner’s Monthly 19 (1879–1880): 424.

  409 “not be successful”: CW, 6:15.

  409 “very disheartening” inactivity: William Marvel, Burnside (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 208.

  409 “letting me know”: CW, 6:22.

  410 “for that policy”: CW, 6:32.

  410 “existing conditions”: Sandburg, 1:629.

  410 “and to myself”: CW, 6:31–32.

  410 “face of the enemy”: CW, 6:13.

  410 McClellan partisans: Samuel E. Lyon to Salmon P. Chase, Jan. 6, 1863, Chase MSS.

  411 “driving you”: CW, 6:46.

  411 “you are right”: Marvel, Burnside, p. 215.

  411 “sooner the better”: “Extracts from the Journal of Henry J. Raymond,” Scribner’s Monthly 19 (1879–1880): 422.

  412 “Beware of rashness”: CW, 6:78–79.

  412 “in internal commerce”: CW, 5:125–126.

  412 caused minor ripples: Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1945), offers a spirited account of these and other personalities.

  413 captured the Peterhoff: For a careful examination of the Peterhoff affair, see J. G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Midstream (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1952), pp. 334–338.

  414 “drive Lincoln into it”: Daniel B. Carroll, Henri Mercier and the American Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 251–257; Hiram Barney to Salmon P. Chase, Jan. 16, 1863, Chase MSS; Donald, Sumner, p. 103.

  414 “urge on the war”: Chicago Tribune, Feb. 18, 1863.

  415 “steadiness of purpose”: New York Herald, Mar. 28, 1863.

  415 “in any country”: CW, 6:63–65.

  415 “of human bondage”: CW, 6:88–89.

  415 “and civilized nations”: CW, 6:176.

  416 “to their rulers”: The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1863 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1871), p. 233.

  416 “all future generations”: New York Herald, Jan. 9, 1863.

  416 “an informal, practical recognition”: American Annual Cyclopaedia... 1863, pp. 265–268.

  417 “loss of blood”: Samuel Augustus Pleasants, Fernando Wood of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), pp. 139–140.

  417 “anti-slavery crusade!”: B. S. A. McClellan to Elihu B. Washburne, Jan. 13, 1863, Washburne MSS, LC.

  417 “to their level”: Thomas Ewing, Sr., to W. H. Seward, Jan. 13, 1863, Seward MSS, UR.

  418 “blood and race”: CW, 5:554–536.

  418 “cessation of hostilities”: San Francisco Daily Alta California, Mar. 3, 1863.

  418 “the North itself”: New York Herald, Mar. 5, 1863.

  418 “the revolted States”: McClernand to AL, Feb. 14, 1863, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  418 without legislative authorization: On Illinois, see Arthur Charles Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), pp. 298–300; on Indiana, Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics During the Civil War (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1949), chap. 8.

  419 “man I know of”: Sandburg, 2:244.

  419 “
a thousand ways”: CW, 6:87.

  419 to the Republican party: Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York: Viking Press, 1942), gives considerable credence to these reports of conspiracies. Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), argues more convincingly that they were largely political protests.

  419 “our military chances”: Sumner to Francis Lieber, Jan. 17,1863, Sumner MSS, Houghton Library, Harvard.

  419 “for the enemy”: American Annual Cyclopaedia... 1863, p. 473.

  420 duration of the war: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 2, vol. 5, pp. 633–646; Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970), chap. 11.

  420 “kind assurance of support”: The quotation is from Burnside to AL, May 8, 1863, Lincoln MSS, LC. Lincoln’s letter has not been found.

  420 “part of Burnside”: Welles, Diary, 1:306.

  420 such military tribunals: David Davis, statement to WHH, Sept. 19, 1866, HWC.

  420 “little as possible”: Official Records, ser. 2, vol. 5, pp. 664–665. Halleck told Burnside he had just come from a conference with the President, and “No objections were made to your action in this matter....”

  421 “in bloody anarchy”: New York Herald, May 19, 26, June 2, 1863.

  421 than its publication: Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1951), pp. 258–261.

  421 and military despotism: Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 293.

  421 cunning for wisdom: Bates, Diary, pp. 290–291.

  422 “new organization for 1864”: Abraham Oakey Hall to William H. Seward, Jan. 21,1863, Seward MSS, UR.

  422 “unfortunate” and “pernicious”: Browning, Diary, 1:612–613.

  422 “has ever known”: Strong, Diary, p. 292.

  422 “Union and Government”: Weed to AL, Feb. 1,1863, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  422 joining the Democrats: Hamlin to Ellen Hamlin, Jan. 25,1863, Hamlin MSS, microfilm. Columbia University.

  422 “all the patriotism”: Mitchell, Seymour, pp. 276–277.

  422 “their constitutional powers”: CW, 6:145–146.

  423 “our next President”: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1884), p. 428; Mitchell, Seymour, pp. 273–274.

  423 “to destroy himself”: Gray, The Hidden Civil War, p. 130.

  424 a conquered province: American Annual Cyclopaedia... 1863, p. 309.

  424 National Banking Act: For Lincoln’s public and private exertions in behalf of the banking act, see G. S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978), pp. 200–202.

  424 Department of Agriculture: For careful studies of this nonmilitary legislation, see Leonard P. Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), and Heather Cox Richardson, “Constructing ‘the Greatest Nation of the Earth’: Economic Policies of the Republican Party During the American Civil War” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1992).

  424 “if they deserve it”: James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1907), 4:24ln.

  425 “get along yet”: T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1941), pp. 280–281.

  425 “ray of hope left”: E. B. Ward to B. F. Wade, Feb. 7,1863, Wade MSS, LC.

  425 “of James Buchanan”: Asa Mahan to Zachariah Chandler, Mar. 3, 1863, Chandler MSS, LC.

  425 “a traitor out and out”: Chandler to Letitia Chandler, Feb. 7, 1863, Chandler MSS, LC.

  425 declined to sign it: For White’s campaign against Seward, see White’s unsigned memorial to AL, Jan. [12] 1863, William Butler MSS, Chicago Historical Society; White to Benjamin F. Wade, Dec. 27, 1862, Wade MSS, LC; White to Simon Cameron, Jan. 11, 1863, Cameron MSS, LC; Lyman Trumbull to William Butler, Jan. 11,1863, Butler MSS; Donald, Sumner, pp. 103–105.

  425 removal of Seward: New York Tribune, Jan. 19,1863.

  426 “stand by the President”: Hamlin to Ellen Hamlin, Jan. 11,1863, Hamlin MSS, microfilm, Columbia University; Charles E. Hamlin, The Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1899), pp. 452–453.

  426 “almost dictatorial powers”:. J. F. Ankeny to E. B. Washburne, Feb. 3, 1863, Washburne MSS, LC.

  426 “be no serious opposition”: Giddings to Salmon P. Chase, Jan. 13,1863, Chase MSS.

  426 “and really republican”: Salmon P. Chase to Benjamin F. Butler, Dec. 14,1862, Chase MSS.

  426 was “growing feeble”: Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), pp. 416–417.

  426 “tells a joke now”: Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren, Memoir of John A Dahlgren (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1882), p. 387.

  426 “as I have been”: Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography: Memories and Experiences (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1904), 1:379.

  427 “of these anniversaries”: Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 147.

  427 “sometimes with him”: The evidence on Mary Lincoln and spiritualism is admirably summarized in Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 217–222.

  427 her guests mechanically: For a sympathetic account of Mrs. Lincoln during these years, see Randall, Mary Lincoln, esp. chap. 25.

  427 three-foot-four-inch guest: San Francisco Daily Alta California, Mar. 18,1863.

  428 “forefeet up”: Leonard Swett to “My Dear Boy,” Feb. 23, 1863, David Davis MSS, ISHL.

  428 now mostly slept: This paragraph draws on the full, sympathetic account of Tad in Ruth Painter Randall, Lincoln’s Sons (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1955), esp. pp. 137–138.

  428 “better than he had”: Virginia Woodbury Fox, Diary, Apr. 29, 1863, Levi Woodbury MSS, LC.

  429 “was laughing at”: Hay, Diary, p. 179.

  429 “a great man”: Ibid., p. 91.

  429 “everything seem wrong”: Conway, Autobiography, 1:379.

  429 use: African-Americans: On Lincoln’s decision to raise African-American troops, Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956), is authoritative. Except where otherwise identified, all quotations in the following pages come from this book.

  430 “time has come”: Hamlin, Hannibal Hamlin, pp. 431–432.

  430 “it, if practicable”: CW, 6:56.

  430 “of all sorts”: CW, 6:30.

  430 citizens of the United States: For cancellation of contracts to colonize blacks, see New York Herald, Mar. 17, 1863, and CW, 6:41, 178–179.

  431 “be employed elsewhere”: CW, 6:56.

  431 “rebellion at once”: CW, 6:149–150.

  431 often worked creakingly: The definitive study of Lincoln’s interest in technology and of his efforts to introduce new armaments is Robert V. Bruce, Lincoln and the Tools of War (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1956), on which I have drawn heavily in the following pages.

  431 “to Mr. Capen”: CW, 6:190–191.

  431 down land patents: William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times (New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1892), pp. 39–40.

  432 “none anywhere else”: Dahlgren, John A. Dahlgren, p. 390.

  433 “as our hospitality”: Joseph Hooker to AL, Apr. 3, 1863, Lincoln MSS, LC.

  433 “intelligent looking woman”: Charles N. Walker and Rosemary Walker, eds., “Diary of the War of Robt. S. Robertson,” Old Fort News 28 (Apr.-June 1965): 89–90.

  433 billowing behind him: For Noah Brooks’s spirited, detailed account of Lincoln’s visit to the army, see P. J. Staudenraus, ed., Mr. Lincoln’s Washington (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1967), pp. 147–164.

  433 “inspire much admiration”: Walke
r and Walker, “Diary of the War of Robt. S. Robertson,” p. 90.

  434 “in sp[l]endid condition”: New York Herald, Apr. 11, 1863.

  434 “prepared for the worst”: Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1863.

 

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