Tried by War

by James M. McPherson

  My greatest personal as well as intellectual debt is owed to Patricia McPherson, to whom the book is dedicated. We celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary one day after I turned in the final revisions of Tried by War. During those five decades she was often quite literally by my side as a research assistant at many of the libraries and archives mentioned earlier, and we edited one book together. More important than any book—indeed, than all books—she has enabled us to make a home and family for more than half a century.

  NOTES

  EXPLANATION OF CITATIONS

  The following abbreviated citation is used for War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 70 volumes in 128 serials (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901): O.R.

  These records were published in four series. The overwhelming majority of citations in this book are to series 1. Many of the “volumes” in series 1 have two or more “parts.” A full citation of a document in this publication would be: “series 1, vol. 14, part 2, p. 479.” In this book, citations to documents in series 1 will be: O.R. 14, ii:479. All citations to documents in series 2, 3, or 4 will be full citations; for example: O.R., series 2, vol. 3, p. 284.

  PREFACE

  1. Gabor S. Boritt, ed., The Historian’s Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context: Collected Essays (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987); Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  2. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 8:332.

  INTRODUCTION

  1. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 1:509–10.

  2. Ibid., 4:235–36.

  3. Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 312–14.

  4. Harlan Hoyt Horner, Lincoln and Greeley (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1953), 251–52; William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 210.

  5. Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 208.

  6. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: The Century Co., 1890), 5:155–56; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), vii.

  7. Fleming v. Page, 50 U.S. (9 Howard) 614 (1850).

  8. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 20, diary entry of May 7, 1861; Basler, Collected Works, 4:268.

  9. Basler, Collected Works, 7:23, 8:151.

  10. On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 87–88. Emphasis in original.

  11. Halleck to John M. Schofield, Sept. 20, Nov. 28, 1862, O.R. 13:264, 22, i:793–94.

  CHAPTER 1: THE QUEST FOR A STRATEGY, 1861

  1. Nicolay memorandums dated Nov. 15 and Dec. 13, 1860, in Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 10, 16–17.

  2. Lincoln to Francis P. Blair, Dec. 21, 1860, Lincoln to Elihu B. Washburne, Dec. 21, 1860, Lincoln to David Hunter, Dec. 22, 1860, Lincoln to Lyman Trumbull, Dec. 24, 1860, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 4:157, 159, 162; Nicolay memorandum dated Dec. 22, 1860, in Burlingame, With Lincoln in the White House, 21.

  3. Illinois Daily State Journal, Dec. 20, 1860, Jan. 21, 1861. The second editorial may have been written by John Hay, who had joined John Nicolay to become Lincoln’s second private secretary. See Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writing for the Press, 1860–1864 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 350–51. See also Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 2, Prologue to Civil War 1859–1861 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 356–57.

  4. George W. Hazzard to Lincoln, Oct. 21, 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.

  5. Basler, Collected Works, 4:195, 241, 243–44.

  6. Ibid., 245, 237.

  7. Ibid., 254, 266.

  8. Robert Anderson to Samuel Cooper, Feb. 28, 1861, enclosed with Joseph Holt to Lincoln, March 5, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  9. The evidence for these two meetings is clouded and contradictory; for the best discussions of the issue see David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1942), 353–58; James G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1946), 1:325–28; and William C. Harris, “The Southern Unionist Critique of the Civil War,” Civil War History 31 (March 1985), 50–51. For Lincoln’s recollection of the meetings, see Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 28 and 285n.104, diary entry of Oct. 22, 1861.

  10. Samuel Ward to Samuel L. M. Barlow, March 31, 1861, Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

  11. Memorandum by John Nicolay of a meeting between Lincoln and Browning, dated July 3, 1861, in Burlingame, With Lincoln in the White House, 46–47; see also Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield, Ill.: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 1:47, entry of July 3, 1861.

  12. Scott’s endorsement on a letter from Joseph Holt to Lincoln, March 5, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  13. Burlingame, Lincoln’s Journalist, 55–56, from the New York World, March 8, 1861.

  14. Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1933), 177, entry of March 9, 1861; Lincoln to Scott, March 9, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 4:279; Scott to Lincoln, March 11, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  15. Scott to Anderson, March 11, 1861, Scott to Cameron, March 11, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  16. The written opinions of the cabinet officers are in the Lincoln Papers and are excerpted in Basler, Collected Works, 4:285n.

  17. Ibid., 4:288–90.

  18. Scott to Cameron, March 28, O.R. 1, 200–201; Erasmus Keyes, diary entry of March 29, 1861, in Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, Civil and Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1884), 378.

  19. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: The Century Co., 1890), 3:394–95, 429–34; Basler, Collected Works, 4:301–2, 424.

  20. Lincoln Papers; reprinted in Basler, Collected Works, 4:317–18n.

  21. Basler, Collected Works, 4:316–17.

  22. The documentation on this contretemps can be found in entries in the diary of Montgomery Meigs of March 29, 31, April 1, 5, 6, in “General M. C. Meigs on the Conduct of the Civil War,” American Historical Review 26 (1920–21), 299–302; Basler, Collected Works, 4:313–15; and Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1960), 1:21–26.

  23. Basler, Collected Works, 4:316.

  24. Ibid., 323.

  25. Ibid., 324.

  26. Leroy P. Walker to Beauregard, April 8, 10, 1861, O.R. 1:289, 297.

  27. Basler, Collected Works, 4:329–31.

  28. Ibid., 331–32.

  29. Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, 2 vols. (Boston: Osgood, 1876), 2:433–34; Jane Stuart Woolsey to a friend, May 10, 1861, in Henry Steele Commager, ed., The Blue and the Gray, 2 vols. (rev. and abridged ed., New York: New American Library, 1973), 1:48.

  30. Basler, Collected Works, 4:3
53–54.

  31. Ibid., 338–39.

  32. Ibid., 426, 440.

  33. Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency, rev. ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), 99, makes the same point.

  34. Basler, Collected Works, 5:241–42.

  35. U.S. Statutes at Large, 12:326 (Aug. 6, 1861).

  36. Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635.

  37. O.R., series 3, vol. 1, pp. 70, 72, 76, 81, 83.

  38. Ibid., 71.

  39. Thomas H. Hicks to Lincoln, April 22, 1861, Lincoln Papers; Basler, Collected Works, 4:340–42.

  40. Basler, Collected Works, 4:370.

  41. Ibid., 347, 419, 554; 5:35, 436–37.

  42. Ex parte Merryman, 17 Fed. Cas., 148–53.

  43. “Opinion of Attorney General Bates,” July 5, 1861, O.R., series 2, vol. 2, pp. 20–30; Reverdy Johnson, Power of the President to Suspend the Habeas Corpus Writ (New York: privately printed, 1861); Horace Binney, The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus Under the Constitution (Philadelphia: C. Sherman and Sons, 1862). See also Edward Bates to Lincoln, July 5, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  44. Lincoln to Scott, April 25, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 4:344; “Reply to Committee from Maryland Legislature,” May 4, 1861, ibid., 356.

  45. “Memorandum: Military Arrests,” c. May 17, 1861, ibid., 372. Emphasis in original.

  46. Ibid., 430–31.

  47. Ibid., 430.

  48. Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, ibid., 7:281.

  49. Michael Stokes Paulsen, “The Civil War as Constitutional Interpretation,” University of Chicago Law Review 71 (Spring 2004), 721. Emphasis in original.

  50. Lincoln to Reverdy Johnson, April 24, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 4:343.

  51. Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd sess., appendix, 82.

  52. Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 4:209–22; Simon Cameron to Lyon, April 30, 1861, O.R. 1:675; Lincoln to Frank Blair, May 18, 1862, Lorenzo Thomas to William Harney, May 27, 1862, Basler, Collected Works, 4:372–73, 387.

  53. O.R. 52, i:146–48.

  54. O.R., series 3, vol. 1, p. 191; Lincoln to Robert Anderson, May 14, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 4:368–69; Joshua Speed to Lincoln, May 26, 1861, Robert Anderson to Lincoln, May 19, 1861, Kentucky Unionist Committee Report, May 28, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  55. For a similar conclusion, see William E. Gienapp, “Abraham Lincoln and the Border States,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 13 (1992), 13–46.

  56. Charles Winslow Elliott, Winfield Scott: The Soldier and the Man (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 698; O.R. 51, i:369–70.

  57. Edward Davis Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1884), 55–56. Colonel Townsend was Scott’s chief of staff and was present at this conversation with Lincoln.

  58. Basler, Collected Works, 4:332.

  59. New York Herald, May 25, 1861; Basler, Collected Works, 4:437.

  60. Montgomery Blair to Lincoln, May 16, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  CHAPTER 2: THE BOTTOM IS OUT OF THE TUB

  1. Alexander K. Randall to Lincoln, May 6, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.

  2. Lincoln to Winfield Scott, June 5, 1861, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 4:394–95.

  3. Meigs’s diary entry of June 29, 1861, transcript in John Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Russell F. Weigley, Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M. C. Meigs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 172.

  4. Edward Davis Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1884), 57; McDowell’s testimony to the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, part 2, Bull Run—Ball’s Bluff (37th Cong., Washington, D.C., 1863), 35–38.

  5. John Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 21, 1861, in Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 51.

  6. O.R. 2:747.

  7. Thomas R. R. Cobb to his wife, July 24, 1861, in E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1950), 345 (emphasis in original); Mobile Register, July 25, 1861, in J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 92.

  8. Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong: The Civil War 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 169, entry of July 22, 1861; Greeley to Lincoln, July 29, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  9. Lorenzo Thomas to McClellan, July 22, 1861, O.R. 2:753; “Memoranda of Military Policy Suggested by the Bull Run Defeat,” Basler, Collected Works, 4:457–58.

  10. O.R., series 3, vol. 1, pp. 380–83; Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 23, 1861, Burlingame, With Lincoln in the White House, 52.

  11. Halleck to William T. Sherman, April 29, 1864, O.R. 34, iii:332–33.

  12. Chicago Tribune, Sept. 16, 1861, quoted in Thomas J. Goss, The War Within the Union High Command: Politics and Generalship During the Civil War (Lawrence, Kans.: Kansas University Press, 2003), 42.

  13. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Fletcher Pratt (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954), 240, entry of July 27, 1861; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 1, The Improvised War 1861–1862 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 269.

  14. McClellan to Mary Ellen Marcy McClellan (hereafter Ellen), July 27, 30, Aug. 9, Oct. 31, 1861, in Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989), 70, 71, 82; McClellan Papers, Library of Congress (for Oct. 31 letter).

  15. O.R. 5:6–8.

  16. Ibid., 11, iii:3–4.

  17. McClellan to Ellen, Aug. 8, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 81; Scott to Cameron, Aug. 9, 1861, O.R. 11, iii:4.

  18. McClellan to Lincoln, Aug. 10, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  19. McClellan to Ellen, Aug. 8, 9, 14, 16, 19, Sears, Civil War Papers, 81, 84, 85–86, 87.

  20. McClellan to Ellen, Oct. 10, 11, ibid., 106–7.

  21. Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, part 1, The Army of the Potomac (37th Cong., Washington, D.C., 1863), 241.

  22. McClellan to Simon Cameron, Sept. 13, 1861, McClellan to Nathaniel P. Banks, Sept. 12, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 99–100.

  23. Dean Sprague, Freedom Under Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 180–212; “Statement Concerning Arrests in Maryland,” c. Sept. 15, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 4:523.

  24. McClellan to Samuel S. Cox, Feb. 12, 1864, Sears, Civil War Papers, 565.

  25. Wade to Chandler, Oct. 8, 1861, in Russell H. Beatie, Army of the Potomac: McClellan Takes Command, September 1861–February 1862 (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2004), 25–26; McClellan to Ellen, Oct. 26, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 112; Scott to Simon Cameron, Oct. 31, 1861, O.R., series 2, vol. 1, 611–12.

  26. McClellan to Ellen, Oct. 19, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 109.

  27. Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 30, entry dated “November 1861.”

  28. Ibid., 25, 29, entries of Oct. 10 and 26, 1861.

  29. McClellan to Simon Cameron, undated but probably Oct. 31, 1861, O.R. 5:9–11.

  30. McClellan to Ellen, Oct. 31, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 113.

  31. Burlingame and Ettlinger, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 32, entry of Nov. 13, 1861; McClellan to Ellen, Nov. 17, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 135.

  32. “Memorandum to George B. McClellan on Potomac Campaign,” c. Dec. 1, 1861, Basler, Collected Works, 5:34–35.

  33. Johnston to Davis, Nov. 22, 1861, O.R. 51:1072–73.

  34. McClellan to Lincoln, Dec. 10, 1861, Sears, Civil War Papers, 143.

  35. Frank Blair, Jr., to Montgomery Bl
air, Sept. 1, 1861, Lincoln Papers.

  36. See especially the report by Lorenzo Thomas, in O.R. 3:540–49.

  37. Lincoln Papers.

  38. Basler, Collected Works, 4:562–63; 5:1–2.

  39. O.R. 3:466–67.