* Strictly speaking he did not become head of the army untilthe retirement of Scott in November. Practically, he wassupreme almost from the moment of his arrival in Washington.
When the catastrophe occurred at Bull Run, Fremont was a major-general commanding the Western Department with headquarters at St. Louis. He was one of the same violent root-and-branch wing of the Republicans—the Radicals of a latter day—of which Chandler was a leader. The temper of that wing had already been revealed by Senator Baker in his startling pronouncement: "We of the North control the Union, and we are going to govern our own Union in our own way." Chandler was soon to express it still more exactly, saying, "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness."(5) Here was that purpose to narrowing nationalism into Northernism, even to radicalism, and to make the war an outlet for a sectional ferocity, which Lincoln was so firmly determined to prevent. All things considered, the fact that on the day following Bull Run he did not summon the Republican hero to Washington, that he did summon a Democrat, was significant. It opened his long duel with the extremists.
The vindictive Spirit of the extremists had been rebuffed by Lincoln in another way. Shortly after Bull Run, Wade and Chandler appealed to Lincoln to call out negro soldiers. Chandler said that he did not care whether or no this would produce a servile insurrection in the South. Lincoln's refusal made another count in the score of the extremists against him.(6)
During the late summer of 1861, Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, were all busily organizing their forces for an attack on the Administration. Trumbull, indeed, seemed out of place in that terrible company. In time, he found that he was out of place. At a crucial moment he came over to Lincoln. But not until he had done yeoman service with Lincoln's bitterest enemies. The clue to his earlier course was an honest conviction that Lincoln, though well-intentioned, was weak.(7) Was this the nemesis of Lincoln's pliability in action during the first stage of his Presidency? It may be. The firm inner Lincoln, the unyielding thinker of the first message, was not appreciated even by well-meaning men like Trumbull. The inner and the outer Lincoln were still disconnected. And the outer, in his caution, in his willingness to be instructed, in his opposition to extreme measures, made the inevitable impression that temperance makes upon fury, caution upon rashness.
Throughout the late summer, Lincoln was the target of many attacks, chiefly from the Abolitionists. Somehow, in the previous spring, they had got it into their heads that at heart he was one of them, that he waited only for a victory to declare the war a crusade of abolition.(8) When the crisis passed and a Democrat was put at the head of the army, while Fremont was left in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, Abolition bitterness became voluble. The Crittenden Resolution was scoffed at as an "ill-timed revival of the policy of conciliation." Threats against the Administration revived, taking the old form of demands for a wholly new Cabinet The keener-sighted Abolitionists had been alarmed by the first message, by what seemed to them its ominous silence as to slavery. Late in July, Emerson said in conversation, "If the Union is incapable of securing universal freedom, its disruption were as the breaking up of a frog-pond."(9) An outcry was raised because Federal generals did not declare free all the slaves who in any way came into their hands. The Abolitionists found no solace in the First Confiscation Act which provided that an owner should lose his claim to a slave, had the slave been used to assist the Confederate government. They were enraged by an order, early in August, informing generals that it was the President's desire "that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained; in cases of fugitives from the loyal Slave States, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial proceedings must be respected by the military authorities; in the disloyal States the Confiscation Act of Congress must be your guide."(10) Especially, the Abolitionists were angered because of Lincoln's care for the forms of law in those Slave States that had not seceded. They vented their bitterness in a famous sneer—"The President would like to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky."
A new temper was forming throughout the land. It was not merely the old Abolitionism. It was a blend of all those elements of violent feeling which war inevitably releases; it was the concentration of all these elements on the issue of Abolition as upon a terrible weapon; it was the resurrection of that primitive blood-lust which lies dormant in every peaceful nation like a sleeping beast. This dreadful power rose out of its sleep and confronted, menacing, the statesman who of all our statesmen was most keenly aware of its evil, most determined to put it under or to perish in the attempt With its appearance, the deepest of all the issues involved, according to Lincoln's way of thinking, was brought to a head. Was the Republic to issue from the war a worthy or an unworthy nation? That was pretty definitely a question of whether Abraham Lincoln or, say, Zachary Chandler, was to control its policy.
A vain, weak man precipitated the inevitable struggle between these two. Fremont had been flattered to the skies. He conceived himself a genius. He was persuaded that the party of the new temper, the men who may fairly be called the Vindictives, were lords of the ascendent. He mistook their volubility for the voice of the nation. He determined to defy Lincoln. He issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of all who had "taken an active part" with the enemies of the United States in the field. He set up a "bureau of abolition."
Lincoln first heard of Fremont's proclamation through the newspapers. His instant action was taken in his own extraordinarily gentle way. "I think there is great danger," he wrote, "that the closing paragraph (of Fremont's proclamation) in relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating of slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform" to the Confiscation Act. He added, "This letter is written in the Spirit of caution, not of censure."(11)
Fremont was not the man to understand instruction of this sort. He would make no compromise with the President. If Lincoln wished to go over his head and rescind his order let him do so-and take the consequences. Lincoln quietly did so. His battle with the Vindictives was on. For a moment it seemed as if he had destroyed his cause. So loud was the outcry of the voluble people, that any one might have been excused momentarily for thinking that all the North had risen against him. Great meetings of protest were held. Eminent men—even such fine natures as Bryant—condemned his course. In the wake of the incident, when it was impossible to say how significant the outcry really was, Chandler, who was staunch for Fremont, began his active interference with the management of the army. McClellan had insisted on plenty of time in which to drill the new three-year recruits who were pouring into Washington. He did not propose to repeat the experience of General McDowell. On the other hand, Chandler was bent on forcing him into action. He, Wade and Trumbull combined, attempting to bring things to pass in a way to suit themselves and their faction. To these men and their followers, clever young Hay gave the apt name of "The Jacobin Club."
They began their campaign by their second visit to the army. Wade was their chief spokesman. He urged McClellan to advance at once; to risk an unsuccessful battle rather than continue to stand still; the country wanted something done; a defeat could easily be repaired by the swarming recruits.(12)
This callous attitude got no response from the Commanding General. The three Senators turned upon Lincoln. "This evening," writes Hay in his diary on October twenty-sixth, "the Jacobin Club represented by Trumbull, Chandler and Wade, came out to worry the Administration into a battle. The agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President defended McClellan's deliberateness. The next night we went over to Seward's and found Chandler and Wade there." They repeated their reckless talk; a battle must be fought; defeat would be no worse than delay; "and a great deal more trash."
But Lincoln was not to be moved. He and Hay called upon McClellan. The President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but said it was a reality and should be taken into account. "At the same time, General," said he, "you must not fight until you are ready."(13)
At this moment of extreme tension occurred the famous incident of the seizure of the Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, who were passengers on the British merchant ship, the Trent. These men had run the blockade which had now drawn its strangling line along the whole coast of the Confederacy; they had boarded the Trent at Havana, and under the law of nations were safe from capture. But Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy, more zealous than discreet, overhauled the Trent and took off the two Confederates. Every thoughtless Northerner went wild with joy. At last the government had done something. Even the Secretary of the Navy so far forgot himself as to telegraph to Wilkes "Congratulate you on the great public service you have rendered in the capture of the rebel emissaries."(14) Chandler promptly applauded the seizure and when it was suggested that perhaps the envoys should be released he at once arrayed himself in opposition.(15) With the truculent Jacobins ready to close battle should the government do its duty, with the country still echoing to cheers for Fremont and hisses for the President, with nothing to his credit in the way of military success, Lincoln faced a crisis. He was carried through the crisis by two strong men. Sumner, head and front of Abolitionism but also a great lawyer, came at once to his assistance. And what could a thinking Abolitionist say after that! Seward skilfully saved the face of the government by his management of the negotiation. The envoys were released and sent to England.
It was the only thing to do, but Chandler and all his sort had opposed it. The Abolition fury against the government was at fever heat. Wendell Phillips in a speech at New York denounced the Administration as having no definite purpose in the war, and was interrupted by frantic cheers for Fremont. McClellan, patiently drilling his army, was, in the eyes of the Jacobins, doing nothing. Congress had assembled. There was every sign that troubled waters lay just ahead.
The temper animating Hay's "Jacobins" formed a new and really formidable danger which menaced Lincoln at the close of 1861. But had he been anything of an opportunist, it would have offered him an unrivaled opportunity. For a leader who sought personal power, this raging savagery, with its triple alliance of an organized political machine, a devoted fanaticism, and the war fury, was a chance in ten thousand. It led to his door the steed of militarism, shod and bridled, champing upon the bit, and invited him to leap into the saddle. Ten words of acquiescence in the program of the Jacobins, and the dreaded role of the man on horseback was his to command.
The fallacy that politics are primarily intellectual decisions upon stated issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between programs presented to it by circumstances, receives a brilliant refutation in the course of the powerful minority that was concentrating around the three great "Jacobins." The subjective side of politics, also the temperamental side, here found expression. Statecraft is an art; creative statesmen are like other artists. Just as the painter or the poet, seizing upon old subjects, uses them as outlets for his particular temper, his particular emotion, and as the temper, the emotion are what counts in his work, so with statesmen, with Lincoln on the one hand, with Chandler at the opposite extreme.
The Jacobins stood first of all for the sudden reaction of bold fierce natures from a long political repression. They had fought their way to leadership as captains of an opposition. They were artists who had been denied an opportunity of expression. By a sudden turn of fortune, it had seemed to come within their grasp. Temperamentally they were fighters. Battle for them was an end in itself. The thought of Conquest sang to them like the morning stars. Had they been literary men, their favorite poetry would have been the sacking of Troy town. Furthermore, they were intensely provincial. Undoubted as was their courage, they had also the valor of ignorance. They had the provincial's disdain for the other side of the horizon, his unbounded confidence in his ability to whip all creation. Chandler, scornfully brushing aside a possible foreign war, typified their mood.
And in quiet veto of all their hopes rose against them the apparently easy-going, the smiling, story-telling, unrevengeful, new man at the White House. It is not to be wondered that they spent the summer laboring to build up a party against him, that they turned eagerly to the new session of Congress, hoping to consolidate a faction opposed to Lincoln.
His second message (1), though without a word of obvious defiance, set him squarely against them on all their vital contentions. The winter of 1861-1862 is the strangest period of Lincoln's career. Although the two phases of him, the outer and the inner, were, in point of fact, moving rapidly toward their point of fusion, apparently they were further away than ever before. Outwardly, his most conspicuous vacillations were in this winter and in the following spring. Never before or after did he allow himself to be overshadowed so darkly by his advisers in all the concerns of action. In amazing contrast, in all the concerns of thought, he was never more entirely himself. The second message, prepared when the country rang with what seemed to be a general frenzy against him, did not give ground one inch. This was all the more notable because his Secretary of War had tried to force his hand. Cameron had the reputation of being about the most astute politician in America. Few people attributed to him the embarrassment of principles. And Cameron, in the late autumn, after closely observing the drift of things, determined that Fremont had hit it off correctly, that the crafty thing to do was to come out for Abolition as a war policy. In a word, he decided to go over to the Jacobins. He put into his annual report a recommendation of Chandler's plan for organizing an army of freed slaves and sending it against the Confederacy. Advanced copies of this report had been sent to the press before Lincoln knew of it. He peremptorily ordered their recall, and the exclusion of this suggestion from the text of the report.(2)
On the heels of this refusal to concede to Chandler one of his cherished schemes, the second message was sent to Congress. The watchful and exasperated Jacobins found abundant offense in its omissions. On the whole great subject of possible emancipation it was blankly silent. The nearest it came to this subject was one suggestion which applied only to those captured slaves who had been forfeited by the disloyal owners through being employed to assist the Confederate government Lincoln advised that after receiving their freedom they be sent out of the country and colonized "at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them." Beyond this there was nothing bearing on the slavery question except the admonition—so unsatisfactory to Chandler and all his sort—that while "the Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed," Congress should "not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
Lincoln was entirely clear in his own mind that there was but one way to head off the passion of destruction that was rioting in the Jacobin temper. "In considering the policy to be adopted in suppressing the insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action of the Legislature." He persisted in regarding the war as an insurrection of the "disloyal portion of the American people," not as an external struggle between the North and the South.
Finally, the culmination of the message was a long elaborate argument upon the significance of the war to the working classes. His aim was to show that the whole trend of the Confederate movement was toward a conclusion which would "place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government." Thus, as so often before, he insisted on his own view of the significance in American politics of all issues involving slavery—their bearing on the condition of the free laborer. In a very striking passage, often overlooked, he ranked himself once more, as first of all, a statesman of "the people," in the limited class sense of the term. "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." But so far is he from any revolutionary purpose, that he adds immediately, "Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights." His crowning vision is not communism. His ideal world is one of universal opportunity, with labor freed of every hindrance, with all its deserving members acquiring more and more of the benefits of property.
Such a message had no consolation for Chandler, Wade, or, as he then was, for Trumbull. They looked about for a way to retaliate. And now two things became plain. That "agitation of the summer" to which Hay refers, had borne fruit, but not enough fruit. Many members of Congress who had been swept along by the President's policy in July had been won over in the reaction against him and were ripe for manipulation; but it was not yet certain that they held the balance of power in Congress. To lock horns with the Administration, in December, would have been so rash a move that even such bold men as Chandler and Wade avoided it. Instead, they devised an astute plan of campaign. Trumbull was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and in that important position would bide his time to bring pressure to bear on the President through his influence upon legislation. Wade and Chandler would go in for propaganda. But they would do so in disguise. What more natural than that Congress should take an active interest in the army, should wish to do all in its power to "assist" the President in rendering the army-efficient. For that purpose it was proposed to establish a joint committee of the two Houses having no function but to look into military needs and report to Congress. The proposal was at once accepted and its crafty backers secured a committee dominated entirely by themselves. Chandler was a member; Wade became Chairman.(3) This Committee on the Conduct of the War became at once an inquisition. Though armed with no weapon but publicity, its close connection with congressional intrigue, its hostility to the President, the dramatic effect of any revelations it chose to make or any charges it chose to bring, clothed it indirectly with immense power. Its inner purpose may be stated in the words of one of its members, "A more vigorous prosecution of the war and less tenderness toward slavery."(4) Its mode of procedure was in constant interrogation of generals, in frequent advice to the President, and on occasion in threatening to rouse Congress against him.(5) A session of the Committee was likely to be followed by a call on the President of either Chandler or Wade.
The Committee began immediately summoning generals before it to explain what the army was doing. And every general was made to understand that what the Committee wanted, what Congress wanted, what the country wanted, was an advance—"something doing" as soon as possible.
And now appeared another characteristic of the mood of these furious men. They had become suspicious, honestly suspicious. This suspiciousness grew with their power and was rendered frantic by being crossed. Whoever disagreed with them was instantly an object of distrust; any plan that contradicted their views was at once an evidence of treason.
The earliest display of this eagerness to see traitors in every bush concerned a skirmish that took place at Ball's Bluff in Virginia. It was badly managed and the Federal loss, proportionately, was large. The officer held responsible was General Stone. Unfortunately for him, he was particularly obnoxious to the Abolitionists; he had returned fugitive slaves; and when objection was made by such powerful Abolitionists as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, Stone gave reign to a sharp tongue. In the early days of the session, Roscoe Conkling told the story of Ball's Bluff for the benefit of Congress in a brilliant, harrowing speech. In a flash the rumor spread that the dead at Ball's Bluff were killed by design, that Stone was a traitor, that—perhaps!—who could say?—there were bigger traitors higher up. Stone was summoned before the Inquisition.(6)
While Stone was on the rack, metaphorically, while the Committee was showing him every brutality in its power, refusing to acquaint him with the evidence against him, intimating that they were able to convict him of treason, between the fifth and the eleventh of January a crisis arose in the War Office. Cameron had failed to ingratiate himself with the rising powers. Old political enemies in Congress were implacable. Scandals in his Department gave rise to sweeping charges of peculation.
There is scarcely another moment when Lincoln's power was so precarious. In one respect, in their impatience, the Committee reflected faithfully the country at large. And by the irony of fate McClellan at this crucial hour, had fallen ill. After waiting for his recovery during several weeks, Lincoln ventured with much hesitation to call a conference of generals.(7) They were sitting during the Stone investigation, producing no result except a distraction in councils, devising plans that were thrown over the moment the Commanding General arose from his bed. A vote in Congress a few days previous had amounted to a censure of the Administration. It was taken upon the Crittenden Resolution which had been introduced a second time. Of those who had voted for it in July, so many now abandoned the Administration that this resolution, the clear embodiment of Lincoln's policy, was laid on the table, seventy-one to sixty-five.(8) Lincoln's hope for an all-parties government was receiving little encouragement The Democrats were breaking into factions, while the control of their party organization was falling into the hands of a group of inferior politicians who were content to "play politics" in the most unscrupulous fashion. Both the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State had authorized arbitrary arrests. Men in New York and New England had been thrown into prison. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus had been denied them on the mere belief of the government that they were conspiring with its enemies. Because of these arrests, sharp criticism was being aimed at the Administration both within and without Congress.
For all these reasons, the government at Washington appeared to be tottering. Desperate remedies seemed imperative. Lincoln decided to make every concession he could make without letting go his central purpose. First, he threw over Cameron; he compelled him to resign though he saved his face by appointing him minister to Russia. But who was to take his place? At this critical moment, the choice of a new Secretary of War was a political problem of exacting difficulty. Just why Lincoln chose a sullen, dictatorial lawyer whose experience in no way prepared him for the office, has never been disclosed. Two facts appear to explain it. Edwin M. Stanton was temperamentally just the man to become a good brother to Chandler and Wade. Both of them urged him upon Lincoln as successor to Cameron.(9) Furthermore, Stanton hitherto had been a Democrat. His services in Buchanan's Cabinet as Attorney-General had made him a national figure. Who else linked the Democrats and the Jacobins?
However, for almost any one but Lincoln, there was an objection that it would have been hard to overcome. No one has ever charged Stanton with politeness. A gloomy excitable man, of uncertain health, temperamentally an over-worker, chronically apprehensive, utterly without the saving grace of humor, he was capable of insufferable rudeness—one reason, perhaps, why Chandler liked him. He and Lincoln had met but once. As associate council in a case at Cincinnati, three years before, Lincoln had been treated so contemptuously by Stanton that he had returned home in pained humiliation. Since his inauguration, Stanton had been one of his most vituperative critics. Was this insolent scold to be invited into the Cabinet? Had not Lincoln at this juncture been in the full tide of selflessness, surely some compromise would have been made with the Committee, a secretary found less offensive personally to the President. Lincoln disregarded the personal consideration. The candidate of Chandler and Wade became secretary. It was the beginning of an intimate alliance between the Committee and the War Office. Lincoln had laid up for himself much trouble that he did not foresee.
The day the new Secretary took office, he received from the Committee a report upon General Stone:(10) Subsequently, in the Senate, Wade denied that the Committee had advised the arrest of Stone.(11) Doubtless the statement was technically correct. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the inquisitors were wholly in sympathy with the Secretary when, shortly afterward, Stone was seized upon Stanton's order, conveyed to a fortress and imprisoned without trial.
This was the Dreyfus case of the Civil War. Stone was never tried and never vindicated. He was eventually released upon parole and after many tantalizing disappointments permitted to rejoin the army. What gives the event significance is its evidence of the power, at that moment, of the Committee, and of the relative weakness of the President. Lincoln's eagerness to protect condemned soldiers survives in many anecdotes. Hay confides to his diary that he was sometimes "amused at the eagerness with which the President caught at any fact which would justify" clemency. And yet, when Stanton informed him of the arrest of Stone, he gloomily acquiesced. "I hope you have good reasons for it," he said. Later he admitted that he knew very little about the case. But he did not order Stone's release.
Lincoln had his own form of ruthlessness. The selfless man, by dealing with others in the same extraordinary way in which he deals with himself, may easily under the pressure of extreme conditions become impersonal in his thinking upon duty. The morality of such a state of mind is a question for the philosopher. The historian must content himself with pointing out the only condition that redeems it—if anything redeems it The leader who thinks impersonally about others and personally about himself-what need among civilized people to characterize him? Borgia, Louis XIV, Napoleon. If we are ever to pardon impersonal thinking it is only in the cases of men who begin by effacing themselves. The Lincoln who accepted Stanton as a Cabinet officer, who was always more or less overshadowed by the belief that in saving the government he was himself to perish, is explicable, at least, when individual men became for him, as at times they did, impersonal factors in a terrible dream.
There are other considerations in the attempt to give a moral value to his failure to interfere in behalf of Stone. The first four months of 1862 are not only his feeblest period as a ruler, the period when he was barely able to hold his own, but also the period when he was least definite as a personality, when his courage and his vitality seemed ebbing tides. Again, his spirit was in eclipse. Singularly enough, this was the darkness before the dawn. June of 1862 saw the emergence, with a suddenness difficult to explain, of the historic Lincoln. But in January of that year he was facing downward into the mystery of his last eclipse. All the dark places of his heredity must be searched for clues to this strange experience. There are moments, especially under strain of a personal bereavement that fell upon him in February, when his will seemed scarcely a reality; when, as a directing force he may be said momentarily to have vanished; when he is hardly more than a ghost among his advisers. The far-off existence of weak old Thomas cast its parting shadow across his son's career.
However, even our Dreyfus case drew from Lincoln another display of that settled conviction of his that part of his function was to be scapegoat. "I serve," which in a way might be taken as his motto always, was peculiarly his motto, and likewise his redemption, in this period of his weakness. The enemies of the Committee in Congress took the matter up and denounced Stanton. Thereupon, Wade flamed forth, criticizing Lincoln for his leniency, venting his fury on all those who were tender of their enemies, storming that "mercy to traitors is cruelty to loyal men."(12) Lincoln replied neither to Wade nor to his antagonists; but, without explaining the case, without a word upon the relation to it of the Secretary and the Committee, he informed the Senate that the President was alone responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of General Stone.(13)
The period of Lincoln's last eclipse is a period of relative silence. But his mind was not inactive. He did not cease thinking upon the deep theoretical distinctions that were separating him by a steadily widening chasm from the most powerful faction in Congress. In fact, his mental powers were, if anything, more keen than ever before. Probably, it was the very clearness of the mental vision that enfeebled him when it came to action. He saw his difficulties with such crushing certainty. During this trying period there is in him something of Hamlet.
The reaction to his ideas, to what is either expressed or implied, in the first and second messages, was prompt to appear. The Jacobins did not confine their activities within the scope of the terrible Committee. Wade and Chandler worked assiduously undermining his strength in Congress. Trumbull, though always less extreme than they, was still the victim of his delusion that Lincoln was a poor creature, that the only way to save the country was to go along with those grim men of strength who dominated the Committee. In January, a formidable addition appeared in the ranks of Lincoln's opponents. Thaddeus Stevens made a speech in the House that marks a chapter. It brought to a head a cloud of floating opposition and dearly defined an issue involving the central proposition in Lincoln's theory of the government. The Constitution of the United States, in its detailed provisions, is designed chiefly to meet the exigencies of peace. With regard to the abnormal conditions of war, it is relatively silent. Certain "war powers" are recognized but not clearly defined; nor is it made perfectly plain what branch of the government possesses them. The machinery for their execution is assumed but not described—as when the Constitution provides that the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus are to be suspended only in time of war, but does not specify by whom, or in what way, the suspension is to be effected. Are those undefined "war powers," which are the most sovereign functions of our government, vested in Congress or in the President? Lincoln, from the moment he defined his policy, held tenaciously to the theory that all these extraordinary powers are vested in the President. By implication, at least, this idea is in the first message. Throughout the latter part of 1861, he put the theory into practice. Whatever seemed to him necessary in a state of war, he did, even to the arresting of suspected persons, refusing them the privilege-of the habeas corpus, and retaining them in prison without trial. During 1861, he left the exercise of this sovereign authority to the discretion of the two Secretaries of War and of State.
Naturally, the Abolitionists, the Jacobins, the Democratic machine, conscientious believers in the congressional theory of the government, every one who for any reason, wanted to hit the Administration, united in a chorus of wrath over arbitrary arrests. The greatest orator of the time, Wendell Phillips, the final voice of Abolition, flayed the government in public speeches for reducing America to an absolute despotism. Trumbull introduced into the Senate a resolution calling upon the President for a statement of the facts as to what he had actually done.(1)
But the subject of arrests was but the prelude to the play. The real issue was the theory of the government. Where in last analysis does the Constitution place the ultimate powers of sovereignty, the war powers? In Congress or in the President? Therefore, in concrete terms, is Congress the President's master, or is it only one branch of the government with a definite but united activity of its own, without that sweeping sovereign authority which in course of time has been acquired by its parent body, the Parliament of Great Britain?
On this point Lincoln never wavered. From first to last, he was determined not to admit that Congress had the powers of Parliament. No sooner had the politicians made out this attitude than their attack on it began. It did not cease until Lincoln's death. It added a second constitutional question to the issues of the war. Not only the issue whether a State had a right to secede, but also the issue of the President's possession of the war powers of the Constitution. Time and again the leaders of disaffection in his own party, to say nothing of the violent Democrats, exhausted their rhetoric denouncing Lincoln's position. They did not deny themselves the delights of the sneer. Senator Grimes spoke of a call on the President as an attempt "to approach the footstool of power enthroned at the other end of the Avenue."(2) Wade expanded the idea: "We ought to have a committee to wait on him whenever we send him a bill, to know what his royal pleasure is with regard to it. . . . We are told that some gentlemen . . . have been to see the President. Some gentlemen are very fortunate in that respect. Nobody can see him, it seems, except some privileged gentlemen who are charged with his constitutional conscience."(3) As Lincoln kept his doors open to all the world, as no one came and went with greater freedom than the Chairman of the Committee, the sneer was-what one might expect of the Committee. Sumner said: "I claim for Congress all that belongs to any government in the exercise of the rights of war." Disagreement with him, he treated with unspeakable disdain: "Born in ignorance and pernicious in consequence, it ought to be received with hissings of contempt, and just in proportion as it obtains acceptance, with execration."(4) Henry Wilson declared that, come what might, the policy of the Administration would be shaped by the two Houses. "I had rather give a policy to the President of the United States than take a policy from the President of the United States."(5) Trumbull thundered against the President's theory as the last word in despotism.(6)
Such is the mental perspective in which to regard the speech of Stevens of January 22, 1862. With masterly clearness, he put his finger on the heart of the matter: the exceptional problems of a time of war, problems that can not be foreseen and prepared for by anticipatory legislation, may be solved in but one way, by the temporary creation of the dictator; this is as true of modern America as of ancient Rome; so far, most people are agreed; but this extraordinary function must not be vested in the Executive; on the contrary, it must be, it is, vested in the Legislature. Stevens did not hesitate to push his theory to its limit. He was not afraid of making the Legislature in time of war the irresponsible judge of its own acts. Congress, said he, has all possible powers of government, even the dictator's power; it could declare itself a dictator; under certain circumstances he was willing that it should do so.(7)
The intellectual boldness of Lincoln was matched by an equal boldness. Between them, he and Stevens had perfectly defined their issue. Granted that a dictator was needed, which should it be—the President or Congress?
In the hesitancy at the White House during the last eclipse, in the public distress and the personal grief, Lincoln withheld himself from this debate. No great utterances break the gloom of this period. Nevertheless, what may be considered his reply to Stevens is to be found. Buried in the forgotten portions of the Congressional Globe is a speech that surely was inspired-or, if not directly inspired, so close a reflection of the President's thinking that it comes to the same thing at the end.
Its author, or apparent author, was one of the few serene figures in that Thirty-Seventh Congress which was swept so pitilessly by epidemics of passion. When Douglas, after coming out valiantly for the Union and holding up Lincoln's hands at the hour of crisis, suddenly died, the Illinois Legislature named as his successor in the Senate, Orville Henry Browning. The new Senator was Lincoln's intimate friend. Their points of view, their temperaments were similar. Browning shared Lincoln's magnanimity, his hatred of extremes, his eagerness not to allow the war to degenerate into revolution. In the early part of 1862 he was Lincoln's spokesman in the Senate. Now that the temper of Wade and Chandler, the ruthlessness that dominated the Committee, had drawn unto itself such a cohort of allies; now that all their thinking had been organized by a fearless mind; there was urgent need for a masterly reply. Did Lincoln feel unequal, at the moment, to this great task? Very probably he did. Anyhow, it was Browning who made the reply,(8) a reply so exactly in his friend's vein, that—there you are!
His aim was to explain the nature of those war powers of the government "which lie dormant during time of peace," and therefore he frankly put the question, "Is Congress the government?" Senator Fessenden, echoing Stevens had said, "There is no limit on the powers of Congress; everything must yield to the force of martial law as resolved by Congress." "There, sir," said Browning, "is as broad and deep a foundation for absolute despotism as was ever laid." He rang the changes on the need to "protect minorities from the oppression and tyranny of excited majorities."
He went on to lay the basis of all Lincoln's subsequent defense of the presidential theory as opposed to the congressional theory, by formulating two propositions which reappear in some of Lincoln's most famous papers. Congress is not a safe vessel for extraordinary powers, because in our system we have difficulty in bringing it definitely to an account under any sort of plebiscite. On the other hand the President, if he abuses the war powers "when peace returns, is answerable to the civil power for that abuse."
But Browning was not content to reason on generalities. Asserting that Congress could no more command the army than it could adjudicate a case, he further asserted that the Supreme Court had settled the matter and had lodged the war powers in the President. He cited a decision called forth by the legal question, "Can a Circuit Court of the United States inquire whether a President had acted rightly in calling out the militia of a State to suppress an insurrection?" "The elevated office of the President," said the Court, "chosen as he is by the People of the United States, and the high responsibility he could not fail to feel when acting in a case of such moment, appear to furnish as strong safeguards against the wilful abuse of power as human prudence and foresight could well devise. At all events, it is conferred upon him by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, and therefore, must be respected and enforced in its judicial tribunals."(9)
Whether or not constitutional lawyers would agree with Browning in the conclusion he drew from this decision, it was plainly the bed rock of his thought. He believed that the President—whatever your mere historian might have to say—was in point of fact the exponent of the people as a whole, and therefore the proper vessel for the ultimate rights of a sovereign, rights that only the people possess, that only the people can delegate. And this was Lincoln's theory. Roughly speaking, he-conceived of the presidential office about as if it were the office of Tribune of the People.
There was still another reason why both Lincoln and Browning feared to yield anything to the theory of congressional supremacy. It was, in their minds, not only the general question of all Congresses but immediately of this particular Congress. An assembly in which the temper of Wade and Chandler, of Stevens and Sumner, was entering the ascendent, was an assembly to be feared; its supremacy was to be denied, its power was to be fought.
Browning did not close without a startling passage flung square in the teeth of the apostles of fury. He summed up the opposite temper, Lincoln's temper, in his description of "Our brethren of the South—for I am willing to call them brethren; my heart yet yearns toward them with a fervency of love which even their treason has not all extinguished, which tempts me constantly to say in their behalf, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" He pleaded with the Senate not to consider them "as public enemies but as insurgent citizens only," and advocated an Act of Amnesty restoring all political and property rights "instantly upon their return to allegiance and submission to the authority of the government."
Had this narrowly constitutional issue arisen in quiet times, who can say how slight might have been its significance? But Fate had decreed that it should arise in the stormiest moment of our history. Millions of men and women who cared nothing for constitutional theories, who were governed by that passion to see immediate results which the thoughtless ever confuse with achievement, these were becoming hysterical over delay. Why did not the government do something? Everywhere voices were raised accusing the President of cowardice. The mania of suspicion was not confined to the Committee. The thoughts of a multitude were expressed by Congressman Hickman in his foolish words, "These are days of irresponsibility and imbecility, and we are required to perform two offices—the office of legislator and the office of President." The better part of a year had passed since the day of Sumter, and still the government had no military success to its credit. An impetuous people that lacked experience of war, that had been accustomed in unusual measure to have its wishes speedily gratified, must somehow be marshalled behind the government, unless the alternative was the capture of power by the Congressional Cabal that was forming against the President.
Entering upon the dark days of the first half of 1862, Lincoln had no delusions about the task immediately before him. He must win battles; otherwise, he saw no way of building up that popular support which alone would enable him to keep the direction of policy in the hands of the Executive, to keep it out of the hands of Congress. In a word, the standing or falling of his power appeared to have been committed to the keeping of the army. What the army would do with it, save his policy or wreck his policy, was to no small degree a question of the character and the abilities of the Commanding General.