Toward the end of 1863, Lowell prepared an essay on "The President's Policy." It might almost be regarded as a manifesto of the Intellectuals. That there was now a prospect of winning the war "was mainly due to the good sense, the good humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and difficult eminence of modern times." When the essay appeared in print, Lincoln was greatly pleased. He wrote to the editors of the North American Review, "I am not the most impartial judge; yet with due allowance for this, I venture to hope that the article entitled 'The President's Policy' will be of value to the country. I fear I am not quite worthy of all which is therein so kindly said of me personally."(1)
This very able defense of his previous course appeared as he was announcing to the country his final course. He was now satisfied that winning the war was but a question of time. What would come after war was now in his mind the overshadowing matter. He knew that the vindictive temper had lost nothing of its violence. Chandler's savagery—his belief that the Southerners had forfeited the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—was still the Vindictive creed. 'Vae victi'! When war ended, they meant to set their feet on the neck of the vanquished foe. Furthermore, Lincoln was not deceived as to why they were lying low at this particular minute. Ears had been flattened to the ground and they were heeding what the ground had said. The President was too popular for them to risk attacking him without an obvious issue. Their former issue had been securely appropriated by the Democrats. Where could they find another? With consummate boldness Lincoln presented them an issue. It was reconstruction. When Congress met, he communicated the text of a "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction."(2) This great document on which all his concluding policy was based, offered "a full pardon" with "restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, or in property cases, where rights of third persons shall have intervened" upon subscribing to an oath of allegiance which required only a full acceptance of the authority of the United States. This amnesty was to be extended to all persons except a few groups, such as officers above the rank of colonel and former officials of the United States. The Proclamation also provided that whenever, in any Seceded State, the new oath should be taken by ten per cent. of all those who were qualified to vote under the laws of 1860, these ten per cent. should be empowered to set up a new State government.
From the Vindictive point of view, here was a startling announcement. Lincoln had declared for a degree of magnanimity that was as a red rag to a bull. He had also carried to its ultimate his assumption of war powers. No request was made for congressional cooperation. The message which the Proclamation accompanied was informative only.
By this time, the Vindictive Coalition of 1861 was gradually coming together again. Or, more truly, perhaps, various of its elements were fusing into a sort of descendant of the old coalition. The leaders of the new Vindictive group were much the same as the leaders of the earlier group. There was one conspicuous addition. During the next six months, Henry Winter Davis held for a time the questionable distinction of being Lincoln's most inveterate enemy. He was a member of the House. In the House many young and headstrong politicians rallied about him. The Democrats at times craftily followed his lead. Despite the older and more astute Vindictives of the Senate, Chandler, Wade and the rest who knew that their time had not come, Davis, with his ardent followers, took up the President's challenge. Davis brought in a bill designed to complete the reorganization of the old Vindictive Coalition. It appealed to the enemies of presidential prerogative, to all those who wanted the road to reconstruction made as hard as possible, and to the Abolitionists. This bill, in so many words, transferred the whole matter of reconstruction from the President to Congress; it required a majority (instead of one-tenth) of all the male citizens of a Seceded State as the basis of a new government; it exacted of this majority a pledge never to pay any State debt contracted during the Confederacy, and also the perpetual prohibition of slavery in their State constitution.
Davis got his bill through the House, but his allies in the Senate laid it aside. They understood the country too well not to see that they must wait for something to happen. If the President made any mistake, if anything went wrong with the army—they remembered the spring of 1862, McClellan's failure, and how Chandler followed it up. And at this moment no man was chafing more angrily because of what the ground was saying, no man was watching the President more keenly, than Chandler. History is said to repeat itself, and all things are supposed to come to him who waits. While Davis's bill was before the House, Lincoln accepted battle with the Vindictives in a way that was entirely unostentatious, but that burned his bridges. He pressed forward the organization of a new State government in Louisiana under Federal auspices. He wrote to Michael Hahn, the newly chosen governor of this somewhat fictitious State: "I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first Free State governor of Louisiana."(3)
Meanwhile, the hotheads of the House again followed Davis's lead and flung defiance in Lincoln's face. Napoleon, who had all along coquetted alarmingly with the Confederates, had also pushed ahead with his insolent conquest of Mexico. Lincoln and Seward, determined to have but one war on their hands at a time, had skilfully evaded committing themselves. The United States had neither protested against the action of Napoleon, nor in any way admitted its propriety. Other men besides the Vindictives were biding their time. But here the hotheads thought they saw an opportunity. Davis brought in a resolution which amounted to a censure of the Administration for not demanding the retirement of the French from Mexico. This was one of those times when the Democrats played politics and followed Davis. The motion was carried unanimously.(4) It was so much of a sensation that the 'American Minister at Paris, calling on the Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs, was met by the curt question, "Do you bring peace or war?"
But it was not in the power of the House to draw Lincoln's fire until he chose to be drawn. He ignored its action. The Imperial Government was informed that the acts of the House of Representatives were not the acts of the President, and that in relation to France, if the President should change his policy, the imperial Government would be duly in formed.(5)
It was Lincoln's fate to see his policy once again at the mercy of his Commanding General. That was his situation in the spring of 1862 when everything hung on McClellan who failed him; again in the autumn of the year when McClellan so narrowly saved him. The spring of 1864 paralleled, in this respect, that other spring two years earlier. To be sure, Lincoln's position was now much stronger; he had a great personal following on which he relied. But just how strong it was he did not know. He was taking a great risk forcing a policy high-handed in defiance of Congress, where all his bitterest enemies were entrenched, glowering. If his General failed him now—
The man on whom this huge responsibility rested was Grant. Lincoln had summoned him from the West and placed him at the head of all the armies of the Republic. As to Halleck who had long since proved himself perfectly useless, he was allowed to lapse into obscurity.
Grant has preserved in his Memoirs his first confidential talk with Lincoln: "He told me he did not want to know what I proposed to do. But he submitted a plan of campaign of his own that he wanted me to hear and then do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of Virginia on which he had evidently marked every position occupied by the Federal and Confederate armies up to that time. He pointed out on the map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that an army might be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of those streams. We would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the tributaries would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened respectfully, but did not suggest that the same streams would protect Lee's flanks while he was shutting us up."(6)
Grant set out for the front in Virginia. Lincoln's parting words were this note: "Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you."(7)
If the politicians needed a definite warning, in addition to what the ground was saying, it was given by an incident that centered upon Chase. A few bold men whose sense of the crowd was not so acute as it might have been, attempted to work up a Chase boom. At the instance of Senator Pomeroy, a secret paper known to-day as the Pomeroy Circular, was started on its travels. The Circular aimed to make Chase the Vindictive candidate. Like all the other anti-Lincoln moves of the early part of 1864, it was premature. The shrewd old Senators who were silently marshaling the Vindictive forces, let it alone.
Chase's ambition was fully understood at the White House. During the previous year, his irritable self-consciousness had led to quarrels with the President, generally over patronage, and more than once he had offered his resignation. On one occasion, Lincoln went to his house and begged him to reconsider. Alone among the Cabinet, Chase had failed to take the measure of Lincoln and still considered him a second-rate person, much his inferior. He rated very high the services to his country of the Secretary of the Treasury whom he considered the logical successor to the Presidency.
Lincoln refused to see what Chase was after. "I have determined," he told Hay, "to shut my eyes as far as possible to everything of the sort. Mr. Chase makes a good secretary and I shall keep him where he is."(1) In lighter vein, he said that Chase's presidential ambition was like a "chin fly" pestering a horse; it led to his putting all the energy he had into his work.(2)
When a copy of the Circular found its way to the White House, Lincoln refused to read it.(3) Soon afterward it fell into the hands of an unsympathetic or indiscreet editor and was printed. There was a hubbub. Chase offered to resign. Lincoln wrote to him in reply:
"My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote but I had, in Spite of myself, known of its existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's committee, and of secret issues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who I supposed were sent out by it, for several weeks. I have known just as little of these things as my friends have allowed me to know. They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them; they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more. I fully concur with you that neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation or with my countenance. Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, and in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change."(4) But this was not the end of the incident. The country promptly repudiated Chase. His own state led the way. A caucus of Union members of the Ohio Legislature resolved that the people and the soldiers of Ohio demanded the reelection of Lincoln. In a host of similar resolutions, Legislative caucuses, political conventions, dubs, societies, prominent individuals not in the political machine, all ringingly declared for Lincoln, the one proper candidate of the "Union party"-as the movement was labeled in a last and relatively successful attempt to break party lines.
As the date of the "Union Convention" approached, Lincoln put aside an opportunity to gratify the Vindictives. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, the recruiting offices had been opened to negroes. Thereupon the Confederate government threatened to treat black soldiers as brigands, and to refuse to their white officers the protection of the laws of war. A cry went up in the North for reprisal. It was not the first time the cry had been raised. In 1862 Lincoln's spokesman in Congress, Browning, had withstood a proposal for the trial of General Buckner by the civil authorities of Kentucky. Browning opposed such a course on the ground that it would lead to a policy of retaliation, and make of the war a gratification of revenge.(5) The Confederate threat gave a new turn to the discussion. Frederick Douglas, the most influential negro of the time, obtained an audience with Lincoln and begged for reprisals. Lincoln would not consent. So effective was his argument that even the ardent negro, convinced that his race was about to suffer persecution, was satisfied.
"I shall never forget," Douglas wrote, "the benignant expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye, the quiver in his voice, when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I do not know where such a measure would stop.' He said he could not take men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill the innocent for the guilty."(6)
In April, 1864, the North was swept by a wild rumor of deliberate massacre of prisoners at Fort Pillow. Here was an opportunity for Lincoln to ingratiate himself with the Vindictives. The President was to make a speech at a fair held in Baltimore, for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. The audience was keen to hear him denounce the reputed massacre, and eager to applaud a promise of reprisal. Instead, he deprecated hasty judgment; insisting that the rumor had not been verified; that nothing should be done on the strength of mere report.
"It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent in this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not to-day know that a colored soldier or white officer commanding colored soldiers has been massacred by the Rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it—believe it, I may say-but we do not know it To take the life of one of their prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a mistake."(7)
What a tame, spiritless position in the eyes of the Vindictives! A different opportunity to lay hold of public opinion he made the most of. And yet, here also, he spoke in that carefully guarded way, making sure he was not understood to say more than he meant, which most politicians would have pronounced over-scrupulous. A deputation of working men from New York were received at the White House. "The honorary membership in your association," said he, "as generously tendered, is gratefully accepted. . . . You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing rebellion means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of African slavery-that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working people."
After reviewing his own argument on this subject in the second message, he concluded:
"The views then expressed now remain unchanged, nor have I much to add. None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuming that his own shall be safe from violence when built."(8)
Lincoln was never more anxious than in this fateful spring when so many issues were hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, in all his relations with the world, his firm serenity was not broken. Though subject to depression so deep that his associates could not penetrate it, he kept it sternly to himself.(9) He showed the world a lighter, more graceful aspect than ever before. 'A precious record of his later mood is the account of him set down by Frank B. Carpenter, the portrait painter, a man of note in his day, who was an inmate of the White House during the first half of 1864. Carpenter was painting a picture of the "Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation." He saw Lincoln informally at all sorts of odd times, under all sorts of conditions. "All familiar with him," says Carpenter, "will remember the weary air which became habitual during his last years. This was more of the mind than of the body, and no rest and recreation which he allowed himself could relieve it. As he sometimes expressed it, 'no remedy seemed ever to reach the tired spot."(10)
A great shadow was darkening over him. He was more than ever convinced that he had not long to live. None the less, his poise became more conspicuous, his command over himself and others more distinguished, as the months raced past. In truth he had worked through a slow but profound transformation. The Lincoln of 1864 was so far removed from the Lincoln of Pigeon Creek-but logically, naturally removed, through the absorption of the outer man by the inner—that inevitably one thinks of Shakespeare's change "into something rich and strange."
Along with the weakness, the contradictions of his earlier self, there had also fallen away from him the mere grossness that had belonged to him as a peasant. Carpenter is unconditional that in six months of close intimacy, seeing him in company with all sorts of people, he never heard from Lincoln an offensive story. He quotes Seward and Lincoln's family physician to the same effect.(11)
The painter, like many others, was impressed by the tragic cast of his expression, despite the surface mirth.
"His complexion, at this time, was inclined to sallowness his eyes were bluish gray in color—always in deep shadow, however, from the upper lids which were unusually heavy (reminding me in this respect of Stuart's portrait of Washington) and the expression was remarkably pensive and tender, often inexpressibly sad, as if the reservoir of tears lay very near the surface—a fact proved not only by the response which accounts of suffering and sorrow invariably drew forth, but by circumstances which would ordinarily affect few men in his position."(12) As a result of the great strain to which he was subjected "his demeanor and disposition changed-so gradually that it would be impossible to say when the change began. . . . He continued always the same kindly, genial, and cordial spirit he had been at first; but the boisterous laughter became less frequent, year by year; the eye grew veiled by constant meditation on momentous subjects; the air of reserve and detachment from his surroundings increased. He aged with great rapidity."(13)
Every Saturday afternoon the Marine Band gave an open-air concert in the grounds of the White House. One afternoon Lincoln appeared upon the portico. There was instant applause and cries for a speech. "Bowing his thanks and excusing himself, he stepped back into the retirement of the circular parlor, remarking (to Carpenter) with a disappointed air, as he reclined on a sofa, 'I wish they would let me sit there quietly and enjoy the music.' His kindness to others was unfailing. It was this harassed statesman who came into the studio one day and found (Carpenter's) little boy of two summers playing on the floor. A member of the Cabinet was with him; but laying aside all restraint, he took the little fellow in his arms and they were soon on the best of terms." While his younger son "Tad" was with his mother on a journey, Lincoln telegraphed: "Tell Tad, father and the goats are well, especially the goats."(14) He found time one bright morning in May to review the Sunday-school children of Washington who filed past "cheering as if their very lives depended upon it," while Lincoln stood at a window "enjoying the scene... making pleasant remarks about a face that now and then struck him."(15) Carpenter told him that no other president except Washington had placed himself so securely in the hearts of the people. "Homely, honest, ungainly Lincoln," said Asa Gray, in a letter to Darwin, "is the representative man of the country."
However, two groups of men in his own party were sullenly opposed to him—the relentless Vindictives and certain irresponsible free lances who named themselves the "Radical Democracy." In the latter group, Fremont was the hero; Wendell Phillips, the greatest advocate. They were extremists in all things; many of them Agnostics. Furious against Lincoln, but unwilling to go along with the waiting policy of the Vindictives, these visionaries held a convention at Cleveland; voted down a resolution that recognized God as an ally; and nominated Fremont for the Presidency. A witty comment on the movement—one that greatly amused Lincoln—was the citation of a verse in first Samuel: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men."
If anything was needed to keep the dissatisfied Senators in the party ranks, it was this rash "bolt." Though Fremont had been their man in the past, he had thrown the fat in the fire by setting up an independent ticket. Silently, the wise opportunists of the Senate and all their henchmen, stood aside at the "Union convention"—which they called the Republican Convention—June seventh, and took their medicine.
There was no doubt of the tempest of enthusiasm among the majority of the delegates. It was a Lincoln ovation.
In responding the next day to a committee of congratulation, Lincoln said: "I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this, and yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. . . . I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Convention or the (National Union) League have concluded to decide that I am the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is best not to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it trying to swap."(16)
Carpenter records another sort of congratulation a few days later that brought out the graceful side of this man whom most people still supposed to be hopelessly awkward. It happened on a Saturday. Carpenter had invited friends to sit in his painting room and oversee the crowd while listening to the music. "Towards the close of the concert, the door suddenly opened, and the President came in, as he was in the habit of doing, alone. Mr. and Mrs. Cropsey had been presented to him in the course of the morning; and as he came forward, half hesitatingly, Mrs. C., who held a bunch of beautiful flowers in her hand, tripped forward playfully, and said: 'Allow me, Mr. President, to present you with a bouquet!' The situation was momentarily embarrassing; and I was puzzled to know how 'His Excellency' would get out of it. With no appearance of discomposure, he stooped down, took the flowers, and, looking from them into the sparkling eyes and radiant face of the lady, said, with a gallantry I was unprepared for 'Really, madam, if you give them to me, and they are mine, I think I can not possibly make so good use of them as to present them to you, in return!'"(17)
In gaining the nomination, Lincoln had not, as yet, attained security for his plans. Grant was still to be reckoned with. By a curious irony, the significance of his struggle with Lee during May, his steady advance by the left flank, had been misapprehended in the North. Looking at the map, the country saw that he was pushing southward, and again southward, on Virginia soil. McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, with them it had been:
"He who fights and runs awayMay live to fight another day."
But Grant kept on. He struck Lee in the furious battle of the Wilderness, and moved to the left, farther south. "Victory!" cried the Northern newspapers, "Lee isn't able to stop him." The same delusion was repeated after Spottsylvania where the soldiers, knowing more of war than did the newspapers, pinned to their coats slips of paper bearing their names; identification of the bodies might be difficult. The popular mistake continued throughout that dreadful campaign. The Convention was still under the delusion of victory.
Lincoln also appears to have stood firm until the last minute in the common error. But the report of Grant's losses, more than the whole of Lee's army, filled him with horror. During these days, Carpenter had complete freedom of the President's office and "intently studied every line and shade of expression in that furrowed face. In repose, it was the saddest face I ever knew. There were days when I could scarcely look into it without crying. During the first week of the battles of the Wilderness he scarcely slept at all. Passing through the main hall of the domestic apartment on one of these days, I met him, clad in a long, morning wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow passage leading to one of the windows, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast-altogether such a picture of the effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have melted the hearts of the worst of his adversaries, who so mistakenly applied to him the epithets of tyrant and usurper."(18)
Despite these sufferings, Lincoln had not the slightest thought of giving way. Not in him any likeness to the sentimentalists, Greeley and all his crew, who were exultant martyrs when things were going right, and shrieking pacifists the moment anything went wrong. In one of the darkest moments of the year, he made a brief address at a Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia.
"Speaking of the present campaign," said he, "General Grant is reported to have said, 'I am going to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.' This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain, and for the American people, as far as my knowledge enables me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more."(19) He made no attempt to affect Grant's course. He had put him in supreme command and would leave everything to his judgment. And then came the colossal blunder at Cold Harbor. Grant stood again where McClellan had stood two years before. He stood there defeated. He could think of nothing to do but just what McClellan had wanted to do—abandon the immediate enterprise, make a great detour to the Southwest, and start a new campaign on a different plan. Two years with all their terrible disasters, and this was all that had come of it! Practically no gain, and a death-roll that staggered the nation. A wail went over the North. After all, was the war hopeless? Was Lee invincible? Was the best of the Northern manhood perishing to no result?
Greeley, perhaps the most hysterical man of genius America has produced, made his paper the organ of the wail. He wrote frantic appeals to the government to cease fighting, do what could be done by negotiation, and if nothing could be done—at least, stop "these rivers of human blood."
The Vindictives saw their opportunity. They would capitalize the wail. The President should be dealt with yet.
Now that the Vindictives had made up their minds to fight, an occasion was at their hands. Virtually, they declared war on the President by refusing to recognize a State government which he had set up in Arkansas. Congress would not admit Senators or Representatives from the Reconstructed State. But on this issue, Lincoln was as resolute to fight to a finish as were any of his detractors. He wrote to General Steele, commanding in Arkansas:
"I understand that Congress declines to admit to seats the persons sent as Senators and Representatives from Arkansas. These persons apprehend that, in consequence, you may not support the new State government there as you otherwise would. My wish is that you give that government and the people there the same support and protection that you would if the members had been admitted, because in no event, nor in any view of the case, can this do harm, while it will be the best you can do toward suppressing the rebellion."(1)
The same day Chase resigned. The reason he assigned was, again, the squabble over patronage. He had insisted on an appointment of which the President disapproved. Exactly what moved him may be questioned. Chase never gave his complete confidence, not even to his diary. Whether he thought that the Vindictives would now take him up as a rival of Lincoln, continues doubtful. Many men were staggered by his action. Crittenden, the Registrar of the Treasury, was thrown into a panic. "Mr. President," said he, "this is worse than another Bull Run. Pray let me go to Secretary Chase and see if I can not induce him to withdraw his resignation. Its acceptance now might cause a financial panic." But Lincoln was in a fighting mood. "Chase thinks he has become indispensable to the country," he told Chittenden. "He also thinks he ought to be President; he has no doubt whatever about that. He is an able financier, a great statesman, and at the bottom a patriot . . he is never perfectly happy unless he is thoroughly miserable and able to make everybody else just as uncomfortable as he is himself. . He is either determined to annoy me or that I shall pat him on the shoulder and coax him to stay. I don't think I ought to do it. I will take him at his word."(2)
He accepted the resignation in a note that was almost curt: "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity, I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems can not be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service."(3)
The selection of a successor to Chase was no easy matter. The Vindictives were the leaders of the moment. What if they persuaded the Senate not to confirm Lincoln's choice of Secretary. "I never saw the President," says Carpenter, "under so much excitement as on the day following this event" On the night of July first, Lincoln lay awake debating with himself the merits of various candidates. At length, he selected his man and immediately went to sleep.
"The next morning he went to his office and wrote the nomination. John Hay, the assistant private secretary, had taken it from the President on his way to the Capitol, when he encountered Senator Fessenden upon the threshold of the room. As chairman of the Finance Committee, he also had passed an anxious night, and called this early to consult with the President, and offer some suggestions. After a few moments' conversation, Mr. Lincoln turned to him with a smile and said: 'I am obliged to you, Fessenden, but the fact is, I have just sent your own name to the Senate for Secretary of the Treasury. Hay had just received the nomination from my hand as you entered.' Mr. Fessenden was taken completely by surprise, and, very much agitated, protested his inability to accept the position. The state of his health, he said, if no other consideration, made it impossible. Mr. Lincoln would not accept the refusal as final. He very justly felt that with Mr. Fessenden's experience and known ability at the head of the Finance Committee, his acceptance would go far toward reestablishing a feeling of security. He said to him, very earnestly, 'Fessenden, the Lord has not deserted me thus far, and He is not going to now—you must accept!'
"They separated, the Senator in great anxiety of mind. Throughout the day, Mr. Lincoln urged almost all who called to go and see Mr. Fessenden, and press upon him the duty of accepting. Among these, was a delegation of New York bankers, who, in the name of the banking community, expressed their satisfaction at the nomination. This was especially gratifying to the President; and in the strongest manner, he entreated them to 'see Mr. Fessenden and assure him of their support.'"(4)
In justification of his choice, Lincoln said to Hay:—"Thinking over the matter, two or three points occurred to me: first his thorough acquaintance with the business; as chairman of the Senate Committee of Finance, he knows as much of this special subject as Mr. Chase; he possesses a national reputation and the confidence of the country; he is a Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals."(5) In other words, though he was not at heart one of them, he stood for the moment so close to the Vindictives that they would not make an issue on his confirmation.
Lincoln had scored a point in his game with the Vindictives. But the point was of little value. The game's real concern was that Reconstruction Bill which was now before the Senate with Wade as its particular sponsor. The great twin brethren of the Vindictives were Wade and Chandler. Both were furious for the passage of the bill. "The Executive," said Wade angrily, "ought not to be allowed to handle this great question of his own liking."
On the last day of the session, Lincoln was in the President's room at the Capitol Signing bills. The Reconstruction Bill, duly passed by both Houses, was brought to him. Several Senators, friends of the bill and deeply anxious, had come into the President's room hoping to see him affix his signature. To their horror, he merely glanced at the bill and laid it aside. Chandler, who was watching him, bluntly demanded what he meant to do. "This bill," said Lincoln, "has been placed before me a few minutes before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way."
"If it is vetoed," said Chandler, whose anger was mounting, "it will damage us fearfully in the Northwest. The important point is that one prohibiting slavery in the Reconstructed States."
"That is the point," replied the President, "on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act."
"It is no more than you have done yourself," retorted Chandler.
Lincoln turned to him and said quietly but with finality: "I conceive that I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which can not constitutionally be done by Congress."
Chandler angrily left the room. To those who remained, Lincoln added: "I do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict what we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the States."(6)
In a way, he was begging the question. The real issue was not how a State should be constitutionally reconstructed, but which, President or Congress, had a right to assume dictatorial power. At last the true Vindictive issue, lured out of their arms by the Democrats, had escaped like a bird from a snare and was fluttering home. Here was the old issue of the war powers in a new form that it was safe for them to press. And the President had squarely defied them. It was civil war inside the Union party. And for both sides, President and Vindictives, there could now be nothing but rule or ruin.
In this crisis of factional politics, Lincoln was unmoved, self-contained, lofty, deliberate. "If they (the Vindictives) choose to make a point on this, I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly to me. At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right. I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself."
Lincoln had now reached his final stature. In contact with the world his note was an inscrutable serenity. The jokes which he continued to tell were but transitory glimmerings. They crossed the surface of his mood like quick flickers of golden light on a stormy March day,—witnesses that the sun would yet prevail,—in a forest-among mountain shadows. Or, they were lightning glimmers in a night sky; they revealed, they did not dispel, the dark beyond. Over all his close associates his personal ascendency was complete. Now that Chase was gone, the last callous spot in the Cabinet had been amputated. Even Stanton, once so domineering, so difficult to manage, had become as clay in his hands.
But Lincoln never used power for its own sake, never abused his ascendency. Always he got his end if he could without evoking the note of command. He would go to surprising lengths to avoid appearing peremptory. A typical remark was his smiling reply to a Congressman whom he had armed with a note to the Secretary, who had returned aghast, the Secretary having refused to comply with the President's request and having decorated his refusal with extraordinary language.
"Did Stanton say I was a damned fool?" asked Lincoln. "Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means."
Nevertheless, the time had come when Lincoln had only to say the word and Stanton, no matter how fierce his temper might' be, would acknowledge his master. General Fry, the Provost Marshal, witnessed a scene between them which is a curious commentary on the transformation of the Stanton of 1862. Lincoln had issued an order relative to the disposition of certain recruits. Stanton protested that it was unwarranted, that he would not put it into effect. The Provost Marshal was called in and asked to state at length all the facts involved. When he had finished Stanton broke out excitedly—
"'Now, Mr. President, those are the facts and you must see that your order can not be executed.'
"Lincoln sat upon a sofa with his legs crossed and did not say a word until the Secretary's last remark. Then he said in a somewhat positive tone, 'Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll have to execute the order.'
"Stanton replied with asperity, 'Mr. President, I can not do it. The order is an improper one, and I can not execute it'."
Lincoln fixed his eye upon Stanton, and in a firm voice with an accent that clearly showed his determination, he said, "Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done."(1)
At this point, General Fry discreetly left the room. A few moments later, he received instructions from Stanton to execute the President's order.
In a public matter in the June of 1864 Lincoln gave a demonstration of his original way of doing things. It displayed his final serenity in such unexpected fashion that no routine politician, no dealer in the catchwords of statecraft, could understand it. Since that grim joke, the deportation of Vallandigham, the Copperhead leader had not had happy time. The Confederacy did not want him. He had made his way to Canada. Thence, in the spring of 1864 he served notice on his country that he would perform a dramatic Part, play the role of a willing martyr—in a word, come home and defy the government to do its worst. He came. But Lincoln did nothing. The American sense of humor did the rest. If Vallandigham had not advertised a theatrical exploit, ignoring him might have been dangerous. But Lincoln knew his people. When the show did not come off, Vallandigham was transformed in an instant from a martyr to an anticlimax. Though he went busily to work, though he lived to attend the Democratic National Convention and to write the resolution that was the heart of its platform, his tale was told.
Turning from Vallandigham, partly in amusement, partly in contempt, Lincoln grappled with the problem of reinforcing the army. Since the Spring of 1863 the wastage of the army had been replaced by conscription. But the system had not worked well. It contained a fatal provision. A drafted man might escape service by paying three hundred dollars. Both the Secretary of War and the Provost Marshal had urged the abolition of this detail. Lincoln had communicated their arguments to Congress with his approval and a new law had been drawn up accordingly. Nevertheless, late in June, the House amended it by restoring the privilege of commuting service for money.(2) Lincoln bestirred himself. The next day he called together the Republican members of the House. "With a sad, mysterious light in his melancholy eyes, as if they were familiar with things hidden from mortals" he urged the Congressmen to reconsider their action. The time of three hundred eighty thousand soldiers would expire in October. He must have half a million to take their places. A Congressman objected that elections were approaching; that the rigorous law he proposed would be intensely unpopular; that it might mean the defeat, at the polls, of many Republican Representatives; it might even mean the President's defeat. He replied that he had thought of all that.
"My election is not necessary; I must put down the rebellion; I must have five hundred thousand more men."(3)
He raised the timid politicians to his own level, inspired them with new courage. Two days later a struggle began in the House for carrying out Lincoln's purpose. On the last day of the session along with the offensive Reconstruction Bill, he received the new Enrollment Act which provided that "no payment of money shall be accepted or received by the Government as commutation to release any enrolled or drafted man from personal obligation to per-form military service."
Against this inflexible determination to fight to a finish, this indifference to the political consequences of his determination, Lincoln beheld arising like a portentous specter, a fury of pacifism. It found expression in Greeley. Always the swift victim of his own affrighted hope, Greeley had persuaded himself that both North and South had lost heart for the war; that there was needed only a moving appeal, and they would throw down their arms and the millennium would come. Furthermore, on the flimsiest sort of evidence, he had fallen into a trap designed to place the Northern government in the attitude of suing for peace. He wrote to Lincoln demanding that he send an agent to confer with certain Confederate officials who were reported to be then in Canada; he also suggested terms of peace.(4) Greeley's terms were entirely acceptable to Lincoln; but he had no faith in the Canadian mare's nest. However, he decided to give Greeley the utmost benefit of the doubt, and also to teach him a lesson. He commissioned Greeley himself to proceed to Canada, there to discover "if there is or is not anything in the affair." He wrote to him, "I not only intend a sincere effort for peace, but I intend that you shall be a personal witness that it is made."(5)
Greeley, who did not want to have any responsibility for anything that might ensue, whose joy was to storm and to find fault, accepted the duty he could not well refuse, and set out in a bad humor.
Meanwhile two other men had conceived an undertaking somewhat analogous but in a temper widely different. These were Colonel Jaquess, a clergyman turned soldier, a man of high simplicity of character, and J. R. Gilmore, a writer, known by the pen name of Edmund Kirke. Jaquess had told Gilmore of information he had received from friends in the Confederacy; he was convinced that nothing would induce the Confederate government to consider any terms of peace that embraced reunion, whether with or without emancipation. "It at once occurred to me," says Gilmore, "that if this declaration could be got in such a manner that it could be given to the public, it would, if scattered broadcast over the North, destroy the peace-party and reelect Mr. Lincoln." Gilmore went to Washington and obtained an interview with the President. He assured him—and he was a newspaper correspondent whose experience was worth considering—that the new pacifism, the incipient "peace party," was schooling the country in the belief that an offer of liberal terms would be followed by a Southern surrender. The masses wanted peace on any terms that would preserve the Union; and the Democrats were going to tell them in the next election that Lincoln could save the Union by negotiation, if he would. Unless the popular mind were disabused of this fictitious hope, the Democrats would prevail and the Union would collapse. But if an offer to negotiate should be made, and if "Davis should refuse to negotiate—as he probably would, except on the basis of Southern independence—that fact alone would reunite the North, reelect Lincoln, and thus save the Union."(6)
"Then," said Lincoln, "you would fight the devil with fire. You would get that declaration from Davis and use it against him."
Gilmore defended himself by proposing to offer extremely liberal terms. There was a pause in the conversation. Lincoln who was seated at his desk "leaned slightly forward looking directly into (Gilmore's) eyes, but with an absent, far-away gaze as if unconscious of (his) presence." Suddenly, relapsing into his usual badinage, he said, "God selects His own instruments and some times they are queer ones: for instance, He chose me to see the ship of state through a great crisis."(7) He went on to say that Gilmore and Jaquess might be the very men to serve a great purpose at this moment. Gilmore knew the world; and anybody could see at a glance that Jaquess never told anything that wasn't true. If they would go to Richmond on their own responsibility, make it plain to President Davis that they were not official agents, even taking the chance of arrest and imprisonment, they might go. This condition was accepted. Lincoln went on to say that no advantage should be taken of Mr. Davis; that nothing should be proposed which if accepted would not be made good. After considerable further discussion he drew up a memorandum of the terms upon which he would consent to peace. There were seven items:
1. The immediate dissolution of the armies.
2. The abolition of slavery.
3. A general amnesty.
4. The Seceded States to resume their functions as states in the Union as if no secession had taken place.
5. Four hundred million dollars to be appropriated by Congress as compensation for loss of slave property; no slaveholder, however, to receive more than one-half the former value of his slaves.
6. A national convention to be called for readjustment of all other difficulties.
7. It to be understood that the purpose of negotiation was a full restoration of the Union as of old.(8)
Gilmore and Jaquess might say to Davis that they had private but sure knowledge that the President of the United States would agree to peace on these terms. Thus provided, they set forth.
Lincoln's thoughts were speedily claimed by an event which had no Suggestion of peace. At no time since Jackson threw the government into a panic in the spring of 1862, had Washington been in danger of capture. Now, briefly, it appeared to be at the mercy of General Early. In the last act of a daring raid above the Potomac, he came sweeping down on Washington from the North. As Grant was now the active commander-in-chief, responsible for all the Northern armies, Lincoln with a fatalistic calm made no move to take the capital out of his hands. When Early was known to be headed toward Washington, Lincoln drove out as usual to spend the night at the Soldiers' Home beyond the fortifications. Stanton, in whom there was a reminiscence at least of the hysterical Secretary of 1862, sent after him post haste and insisted on his returning. The next day, the eleventh of July, 1864, Washington was invested by the Confederate forces. There was sharp firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, "apparently unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him, and General Wright peremptorily represented to him the needless risk he was running." Hay recorded in his diary "the President in good feather this evening . . . not concerned about Washington's safety . . . only thought, can we bag or destroy the force in our front." He was much disappointed when Early eluded the forces which Grant hurried to the Capitol. Mrs. Lincoln was outspoken to the same effect. The doughty little lady had also been under fire, her temper being every whit as bold as her husband's. When Stanton with a monumental playfulness proposed to have her portrait painted in a commanding attitude on the parapet of Fort Stevens, she gave him the freedom of her tongue, because of the inadequacy of his department.(9)
This incident had its aftermath. A country-place belonging to the Postmaster General had been laid waste. Its owner thought that the responsibility for permitting Early to come so near to Washington fell chiefly on General Halleck. He made some sharp criticisms which became public the General flew into a rage and wrote to the Secretary of War: "The Postmaster General ought to be dismissed by the President from the Cabinet." Stanton handed his letter to the President, from whom the next day the General received this note: "Whether the remarks were made I do not know, nor do I suppose such knowledge is necessary to a correct response. If they were made, I do not approve them; and yet, under the circumstances, I would not dismiss a member of the Cabinet therefor. I do not consider what may have been hastily said in a moment of vexation at so severe a loss is sufficient ground for so grave a step. Besides this, truth is generally the best vindication against slander. I propose continuing to be myself the judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall be dismissed." Lincoln spoke of the affair at his next conference with his Ministers. "I must, myself, be the judge," said he, "how long to retain in and when to remove any of you from his position. It would greatly pain me to discover any of you endeavoring to procure another's removal, or in any way to prejudice him before the public. Such an endeavor would be a wrong to me, and much worse, a wrong to the country. My wish is that on this subject no remark be made nor question asked by any of you, here or elsewhere, now or hereafter."(10)
Not yet had anything resulted either from the Canadian mission of Greeley, or from the Richmond adventure of Gilmore and Jaquess. There was a singular ominous pause in events. Lincoln could not be blind to the storm signals that had attended the close of Congress. What were the Vindictives about? As yet they had made no Sign. But it was incredible that they could pass over his defiance without a return blow. When would it come? What would it be?
He spent his nights at the Soldiers' Home. As a rule, his family were with him. Sometimes, however, Mrs. Lincoln and his sons would be absent and his only companion was one of the ardent young secretaries. Then he would indulge in reading Shakespeare aloud, it might be with such forgetfulness of time that only the nodding of the tired young head recalled him to himself and brought the reading to an end. A visitor has left this charming picture of Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home in the sad sweetness of a summer night:
"The Soldiers' Home is a few miles out of Washington on the Maryland side. It is situated on a beautiful wooded hill, which you ascend by a winding path, shaded on both sides by wide-spread branches, forming a green arcade above you. When you reach the top you stand between two mansions, large, handsome and substantial, but with nothing about them to indicate the character of either. That on the left is the Presidential country house; that directly before you, is the 'Rest,' for soldiers who are too old for further service . . . In the graveyard near at hand there are numberless graves—some without a spear of grass to hide their newness—that hold the bodies of volunteers.
"While we stood in the soft evening air, watching the faint trembling of the long tendrils of waving willow, and feeling the dewy coolness that was flung out by the old oaks above us, Mr. Lincoln joined us, and stood silent, too, taking in the scene.
"'How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes blest," he said, softly. . .
"Around the 'Home' grows every variety of tree, particularly of the evergreen class. Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed along, and left us with that pleasant woody smell belonging to leaves. One of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce.
"'Let me discourse on a theme I understand,' said the President. 'I know all about trees in right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine and cedar, and this shred of green, which is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress. He then proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive formation of foliage belonging to each."(11)
Those summer nights of July, 1864, had many secrets which the tired President musing in the shadows of the giant trees or finding solace with the greatest of earthly minds would have given much to know. How were Gilmore and Jaquess faring? What was really afoot in Canada? And that unnatural silence of the Vindictives, what did that mean? And the two great armies, Grant's in Virginia, Sherman's in Georgia, was there never to be stirring news of either of these? The hush of the moment, the atmosphere of suspense that seemed to envelop him, it was just what had always for his imagination had such strange charm in the stories of fated men. He turned again to Macbeth, or to Richard II, or to Hamlet. Shakespeare, too, understood these mysterious pauses—who better!
The sense of the impending was strengthened by the alarms of some of his best friends. They besought him to abandon his avowed purpose to call for a draft of half a million under the new Enrollment Act. Many voices joined the one chorus: the country is on the verge of despair; you will wreck the cause by demanding another colossal sacrifice. But he would not listen. When, in desperation, they struck precisely the wrong note, and hinted at the ruin of his political prospects, he had his calm reply: "it matters not what becomes of me. We must have men. If I go down, I intend to go like the Cumberland, with my colors flying."(12)
Thus the days passed until the eighteenth of July. Meanwhile the irresponsible Greeley had made a sad mess of his Canadian adventure. Though Lincoln had given him definite instructions, requiring him to negotiate only with agents who could produce written authority from Davis, and who would treat on the basis of restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, Greeley ignored both these unconditional requirements.(13) He had found the Confederate agents at Niagara. They had no credentials. Nevertheless, he invited them to come to Washington and open negotiations. Of the President's two conditions, he said not a word. This was just what the agents wanted. It could easily be twisted into the semblance of an attempt by Lincoln to sue for peace. They accepted the invitation. Greeley telegraphed to Lincoln reporting what he had done. Of course, it was plain that he had misrepresented Lincoln; that he had far exceeded his authority; and that his perverse unfaithfulness must be repudiated. On July eighteenth, Hay set out for Niagara with this paper in Lincoln's handwriting.(14)
"To whom it may concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have, safe conduct both ways. ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
This was the end of the negotiation. The agents could not accept these terms. Immediately, they published a version of what had happened: they had been invited to come to Washington; subsequently, conditions had been imposed which made it impossible for them to accept Was not the conclusion plain? The Washington government was trying to open negotiations but it was also in the fear of its own supporters playing craftily a double game. These astute diplomats saw that there was a psychological crisis in the North. By adding to the confusion of the hour they had well served their cause. Greeley's fiasco was susceptible of a double interpretation. To the pacifists it meant that the government, whatever may have been intended at the start, had ended by setting impossible conditions of peace. To the supporters of the war, it meant that whatever were the last thoughts of the government, it had for a time contemplated peace without any conditions at all. Lincoln was severely condemned, Greeley was ridiculed, by both groups of interpreters. Why did not Greeley come out bravely and tell the truth? Why did he not confess that he had suppressed Lincoln's first set of instructions; that it was he, on his own responsibility, who had led the Confederate agents astray; that he, not Lincoln was solely to blame for the false impression that was now being used so adroitly to injure the President? Lincoln proposed to publish their correspondence, but made a condition that was characteristic. Greeley's letters rang with cries of despair. He was by far the most influential Northern editor. Lincoln asked him to strike out these hopeless passages. Greeley refused. The correspondence must be published entire or not at all. Lincoln suppressed it. He let the blame of himself go on; and he said nothing in extenuation.(15)
He took some consolation in a "card" that appeared in the Boston Transcript, July 22. It gave a brief account of the adventure of Gilmore and Jaquess, and stated the answer given to them by the President of the Confederacy. That answer, as restated by the Confederate Secretary of State, was: "he had no authority to receive proposals for negotiations except by virtue of his office as President of an independent Confederacy and on this basis alone must proposals be made to him."(16)
There was another circumstance that may well have been Lincoln's consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes. Only boldness could extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties. The mesh was destined to grow more and more of a snare; his boldness was to grow with his danger. He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter, when, on the day he sent the final instructions to Greeley, in defiance of his timid advisers, he issued a proclamation calling for a new draft of half a million men.(17)