Early on the morning of the 21st the body was removed from the Capitol and placed on the funeral-car which was to transport it to its final resting-place in Illinois. The remains of a little son who had died three years before, were taken from their burial-place in Georgetown and borne with those of his father for final sepulture in the stately mausoleum which the public mind had already decreed to the illustrious martyr. The train which moved from the National Capital was attended on its course by extraordinary manifestations of grief on the part of the people. Baltimore, which had reluctantly and sullenly submitted to Mr. Lincoln's formal inauguration and to his authority as President, now showed every mark of honor and of homage as his body was borne through her streets, Confederate and Unionist alike realizing the magnitude of the calamity which had overwhelmed both North and South. In Philadelphia the entire population did reverence to the memory of the murdered patriot. A procession of more than a hundred thousand persons formed his funeralcortégeto Independence Hall, where the body remained until the ensuing day. The silence of the sorrowful night was in strange contrast with the scene in the same place, four years before, when Mr. Lincoln, in the anxieties and perils of the opening rebellion, hoisted the National flag over our ancient Temple of Liberty, and before a great and applauding multitude defended the principles which that flag typifies. He concluded in words which, deeply impressive at the time, proved sadly prophetic now that his dead body lay in a bloody shroud where his living form then stood:"Sooner than surrender these principles, I would be assassinated on this spot."
In the city of New York the popular feeling was, if possible, even more marked than in Philadelphia. The streets were so crowded that the procession moved with difficulty to the City Hall, where amid the chantings of eight hundred singers, the body was placed upon the catafalque prepared for it. Throughout the day and throughout the entire night the living tide of sorrowful humanity flowed past the silent form. At the solemn hour of midnight the German musical societies sang a funeral-hymn with an effect so impressive and touching that thousands of strong men were in tears. Other than this no sound was heard throughout the night except the footsteps of the advancing and receding crowd. At sunrise many thousands still waiting in the park were obliged to turn away disappointed. It was observed that every person who passed through the hall, even the humblest and poorest, wore the insignia of mourning. In a city accustomed to large assemblies and to unrestrained expressions of popular feeling, no such scene had ever been witnessed. On the afternoon appointed for the procession to move Westward, all business was suspended, and the grief of New York found utterance in Union Square before a great concourse of people in a funeral oration by the historian Bancroft and in an elegiac ode by William Cullen Bryant.
Similar scenes were witnessed in the great cities along the entire route. Final obsequies were celebrated in Oakridge Cemetery near Springfield on the fourth day of May. Major-General Joseph Hooker acted as chief marshal upon the occasion, and an impressive sermon was pronounced by Bishop Simpson of the Methodist-Episcopal church. Perhaps in the history of the world no such outpouring of the people, no such exhibition of deep feeling, had ever been witnessed as on this funeral march from the National Capital to the capital of Illinois. The pomp with which sovereigns and nobles are interred is often formal rather than emotional, attaching to the rank rather than to the person. Louis Philippe appealed to the sympathy of France when he brought the body of the Emperor Napoleon from St. Helena twenty years after his death; but the popular feeling among the French was chiefly displayed in connection with the elaborate rites which attended the transfer of the dead hero to theInvalides, where the shattered remains of his valiant and once conquering legions formed for the last time around him. Twelve years later the victorious rival by whom the imperial warrior was at last overcome, received from the populace of London, as well as from the crown, the peers, and the commons of England, the heartiest tribute that Britons ever paid to human greatness.
The splendor of the ceremonials which aggrandize living royalty as much as they glorify dead heroism, was wholly wanting in the obsequies of Mr. Lincoln. No part was taken by the Government except the provision of a suitable military escort. All beyond was the spontaneous movement of the people. For seventeen hundred miles, through eight great States of the Union whose population was not less than fifteen millions, an almost continuous procession of mourners attended the remains of the beloved President. There was no pageantry save their presence. There was no tribute but their tears. They bowed before the bier of him who had ben prophet, priest, and king to his people, who had struck the shackles from the slave, who had taught a higher sense of duty to the true man, who had raised the Nation to a loftier conception of faith and hope and charity. A countless multitude of men, with music and banner and cheer and the inspiration of a great cause, presents a spectacle that engages the eye, fills the mind, appeals to the imagination. But the deepest sympathy of the soul is touched, the height of human sublimity is reached, when the same multitude, stricken with a common sorrow, stands with uncovered head, reverent and silent.
From saddening associations with the tragical death of Mr. Lincoln, popular attention was turned three weeks after his interment to a great military display in the Capital of the Nation in honor of the final victory for the Union. The exigencies of the closing campaign had transferred the armies commanded by General Sherman from the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic coast. The soldiers of Port Hudson and Vicksburg, the heroes of Donelson, Chattanooga, and Atlanta, had been brought within a day's march of the bronzed veterans whose battle-flags were emblazoned with the victories of Antietam and Gettysburg and with the crowning triumph at Appomattox. It was the happy suggestion of Secretary Stanton which assembled all these forces in the National Capital to be viewed by the Commander-in-Chief. Through four years of stern and perilous duty, there had been no holiday, no parade of ceremony, no evolution for mere display, either by the troops of the East or of the West. Their time had been passed in camp and in siege, in march and in battle, with no effort relaxed, no vigor abated, no vigilance suspended, during all the long period when the fate of the Union was at stake. It was now fitting that the President, attended by the chief officers of the Government, should welcome them and honor them in the name of the Republic. They had brought from the field the priceless trophy of American Nationality as the reward of their valorous struggle. By the voice of the people a "triumph" as demonstrative, if not as formal, as that given to a conqueror in Ancient Rome was now decreed to them. They had earned the right to be applauded on thevia sacra, and to receive the laurel-wreath from the steps of the Capitol.
The first day's review, Wednesday, May 23, was given to the Army of the Potomac, of which General Meade had remained the commander since the victory at Gettysburg, but whose operations during the closing year of the struggle had been under the personal direction of General Grant. A part only of its vast forces marched through Washington on that day of loyal pride and gladness; but the number was large beyond the power of the eye to apprehend, beyond any but the skilled mind to reckon. An approximate conception of it can be reached by stating that one hundred and fifty-one regiments of infantry, thirty-six regiments of cavalry, and twenty-two batteries of artillery passed under the eye of the President, who reviewed the whole from a platform in front of the Executive Mansion.
On the ensuing day the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Georgia, constituting the right and left wing of General Sherman's forces, were reviewed. There was naturally some rivalry of a friendly type between the Eastern and Western soldiers, and special observation was made of their respective qualities and characteristics. The geographical distinction was not altogether accurate, for Western troops had always formed a valuable part of the Army of the Potomac; while troops from the East were incorporated in Sherman's army, and had shared the glories of the Atlanta campaign and of the March to the sea. It was true, however, that the great mass of the Army of the Potomac came from the eastern side of the Alleghanies, while the great mass of Sherman's command came from the western side. The aggregate number reviewed on the second day did not differ materially from the number on the first day. There were some twenty more regiments of infantry on the second day, but fewer cavalry regiments and fewer batteries of artillery.
The special interest which attached to the review, aside from the inestimable significance of a restored Union, consisted in the fact that the spectators, who were reckoned by tens of thousands, saw before them an actual, living, fighting army. They were not holiday troops with bright uniforms, trained only for display and carrying guns that were never discharged against a foe. They were a great body of veterans who had not slept under a roof for years, who had marched over countries more extended than those traversed by the Legions of Cæsar, who had come from a hundred battle-fields on which they had left dead comrades more numerous than the living who now celebrated the final victory of peace. It was the remembrance of this which in all the glad rejoicing over the past and all the bright anticipation of the future lent a tinge of sadness to the splendid and inspiring spectacle of the day. The applause so heartily given for the soldiers who were present could not be unaccompanied by tears for the fate of that vast host which had gone down to death without even the consolation of knowing that they had not died in vain.
In the four years of their service the armies of the Union, counting every form of conflict, great and small, had been in twenty-two hundred and sixty-five engagements with the Confederate troops. From the time when active hostilities began until the last gun of the war was fired, a fight of some kind—a raid, a skirmish, or a pitched battle—occurred at some point on our widely extended front nearly eleven times a week upon an average. Counting only those engagements in which the Union loss in killed, wounded, and missing exceeded one hundred, the total number was three hundred and thirty,—averaging one every four and a half days. From the northernmost point of contact to the southernmost, the distance by any practicable line of communications was more than two thousand miles. From East to West the extremes were fifteen hundred miles apart.
During the first year of hostilities—one of preparation on both sides —the battles were naturally fewer in number and less decisive in character than afterwards, when discipline had been imparted to the troops by drill, and when thematerielof war had been collected and stored for prolonged campaigns. The engagements of all kinds in 1861 were thirty-five in number, of which the most serious was the Union defeat at Bull Run. In 1862 the war had greatly increased in magnitude and intensity, as is shown by the eighty-four engagements between the armies. The net result of the year's operations was highly favorable to the Rebellion. In 1863 the battles were one hundred and ten in number—among them some of the most significant and important victories for the Union. In 1864 there were seventy-three engagements, and in the winter and early spring of 1865 there were twenty-eight.
In fact, 1864-65 was one continuous campaign. The armies of the Union did not go into winter-quarters to the extent of abandoning or suspending operations. They felt that it was in their power to bring the struggle to an end at once, and they pressed forward with prodigious vigor and with complete success. General Grant with his characteristic energy insisted that "active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field regardless of season and weather were necessary to a speedy termination of the war." He had seen, as he expressed it in his own terse, quaint language, that "the armies of the East and the West had been acting independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two of them ever pulling together." Under his direction the forces of the Union, however distant from each other, were brought into harmonious co-operation and with the happiest results. The discipline of the Union army was never so fine, its vigor was never so great, its spirit was never so high, as at the close of that terrible campaign which under Grant's command in the East began at the Wilderness and ended with Lee's surrender, and which under Sherman's command in the West began with the march towards Atlanta, and closed with the complete conquest of Georgia and the Carolinas.
A grave moral responsibility rests upon those who continue a contest of arms after it is made clear that there is no longer a possibility of success. However far the laws of war may justify a belligerent in deceiving an enemy, the laws of honorable and humane dealing are violated with one's own partisans when a brave and confiding soldiery are led into a fight known by their commanders to be hopeless. Early in January, 1865, Jefferson Davis indicated the desire of the Confederate authorities to negotiate with the National Government for the arrangement of the terms of peace, and as a result the famous conference was held at Fortress Monroe. This step was taken by Mr. Davis because he saw that further effort on the part of the Confederates must be utterly futile. When he failed at this conference to secure any recognition of his government, he spitefully turned to the prolongation of the struggle. Every life destroyed in the conflict thereafter was needless slaughter, and the blood of the victims cries out against the Confederate Government for compelling the sacrifice.
When at last through sheer exhaustion the Confederate Armies ceased resistance and surrendered, they did so on precisely the same terms that had been offered by the Government of the Union three months before. In theinterimthe Confederate leaders had been deluding their people with the pretense that the "Lincoln Government" had outraged the South in refusing to recognize Confederate Nationality even long enough to treat with it for peace. "Nothing beyond this," exclaimed Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter in a speech delivered at a meeting in Richmond held immediately after the Peace Conference to which he had been one of the commissioners,—"Nothing beyond this is needed to stir the blood of Southern men." In the course of his inflammatory address Mr. Hunter made thenaïveconfession: "If our people exhibit the proper spirit they will bring forth the deserters from their caves; and the skulkers, who are avoiding the perils of the field, will go forth to share the dangers of their countrymen." The "skulkers" and "deserters" referred to were no doubt brave men who, having fought as long as there was hope, were not ambitious to sacrifice their lives to carry on the shameless bravado of the political leaders of the Rebellion.
Mr. Hunter spoke with singular intemperance of tone for one who was usually cool, guarded, and conservative. He was followed by theMephistophelesof the Rebellion, the brilliant, learned, sinister Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin. He spoke as one who felt that he had thealiasof an English subject for shelter, or possibly the Spanish flag for protection, when the worst should come, and thus he might continue to play the part of Confederate citizen so long as it favored his ambition and his fortune. He delivered a speech full of desperate suggestion—so desperate indeed that it re-acted and injured the cause for which he was demanding harsh sacrifices on the part of others. He urged upon his hearers that the States of the Confederacy had nearly seven hundred thousand male slaves of the age for military service. He gave the assurance that if freedom should be conceded to these men they would fight in aid of the Rebellion. Besides advocating a guaranty of emancipation to all these black men,—for the right to keep whom in slavery the war had been undertaken,—Mr. Benjamin urged that every bale of cotton, every hogshead of tobacco, every pound of bacon, every barrel of flour, should be seized for the benefit of the common cause.
Happily Mr. Benjamin went too far. His over-zeal had tempted him to prove too much. The Southern people who had desired to build up a slave empire, and who despised the negro as a freeman, were asked by Mr. Benjamin to surrender this cherished project, and join with him in the ignoble design of founding a confederacy whose corner-stone should rest on hatred of the Northern States, and whose one achievement should be the revival and extension of English commercial power on this continent. When the end came, Mr. Benjamin did not share the disasters and sacrifices with the sincere and earnest men whom he had done so much to mislead, and to whom he was bound in an especial manner by the tie which unites the victims of a common calamity. Instead of this magnanimous course which would in part have redeemed his wrong-doing, Mr. Benjamin took quick refuge under the flag to whose allegiance he was born. He left America with the full consciousness that to the measure of his ability, which was great, he had inflicted injury upon the country which had sheltered and educated him, and which had opened to him the opportunity for that large personal influence which he had used so discreditably to himself and so disastrously to the cause he espoused.
Mr. Benjamin became a resident of London and subsequently won distinction at the English Bar—rising to the eminence of Queen's counsel. His ability and learning were everywhere recognized, but it was at the same time admitted that he owed much of his success to the sympathy and the support of that preponderating class among British merchants who cordially wished and worked for our destruction,—who, covertly throughout the entire civil conflict, and openly where safe opportunity was presented, did all in their power to embarrass and injure the Union. If Mr. Benjamin had been loyal, and had honorably observed the special oath which he had taken to maintain and defend the Constitution, he might in vain have sought the patronage of that large number of Englishmen who enriched him with generous retainers. No one grudged to Mr. Benjamin the wages of his professional work, the reward of ability and industry; but the manner in which he was lauded into notoriety in London, the effort constantly made to lionize and to aggrandize him, were conspicuous demonstrations of hatred to our Government, and were significant expressions of regret that Mr. Benjamin's treason had not been successful. Those whom he served either in the Confederacy or in England in his efforts to destroy the American Union may eulogize him according to his work; but every citizen of the Great Republic, whose loyalty was unswerving, will regard Mr. Benjamin as a foe in whom malignity was unrelieved by a single trace of magnanimity.
The Confederates had failed in war, but their leaders had not the moral courage to accept the only practicable peace. Their subsequent course in Congress, in the Cabinet, and in the field, exposed in very striking outline the strong points and the weak points of Southern character. It exhibited Southern men as possessed of the utmost physical courage—often carried indeed to foolish audacity. It exhibited them at the same time as singularly deficient in the attribute of moral courage. When the Southern leaders knew the Confederate cause to be hopeless not a single man among them displayed sufficient heroism to brave public opinion with the declaration of his honest belief. The absolute suppression of free discussion which had long prevailed in the South, the frequent murder of those who attempted to express an unpopular opinion however honestly entertained, had deprived brave men of every trait of that higher form of courage which has given immortality of fame to the moral heroes of the world.
Not individually alone but in combined action this weak trait of Southern character was made manifest. Only a month before the time when the Confederacy was in ruins and the members of its Congress were fugitives from its Capital, they united in an inflammatory address to the people of the South, urging them to continue the contest. They made assertions and employed arguments which as men of intelligence they could not themselves believe and accept. They strove by exciting evil passions and blind animosities to hurl the soldiers of the Confederacy once more into a desperate fight with all its suffering and with certain defeat. In this address, which was the unanimous vote of the Confederate Senate and the Confederate House of Representatives, the people were told that if they failed in the war, "the Southern States would be held as conquered provinces by the despotic government at Washington;" that they "would be kept in subjugation by the stern hand of military power as Venice and Lombardy have been held by Austria, as Poland is held by the Russian Czar." A still more terrible fate was foretold. "Not only," continued the address, "would we be deprived of every political franchise dear to freemen, but socially we would be degraded to the level of slaves. . . . Not only would the property and estates of vanquished rebels be confiscated, but they would be divided and distributed among our African bondsmen."
Even the extravagance and absurdity of the foregoing declarations were outdone in other parts of the address. These senators and representatives—not ignorant men themselves—presumed so far upon the ignorance of their constituents as to assure them that "our enemies with a boastful insolence unparalleled in the history of modern civilization have threatened not only our subjugation, but some of them have announced their determination if successful in this struggle to deport our entire white population, and supplant it with a new population drawn from their own territory and from European countries. . . . Think of it! That we the descendants of a brave ancestry who wrested from a powerful nation by force of arms the country which we inhabit—bequeathed to us by them, and upon which we have been born and reared; that we should be uprooted from it and an alien population planted in our stead is a thought that should inspire us with undying hostility to an enemy base enough to have conceived it."
The white population of the eleven Confederate States was at that time between five and six millions. Of course no man who signed the address believed its statements. No one believed that the Government of the United States or the loyal people of the North were so inhuman and so unpatriotic as to advocate the deportation of this vast population, or so foolish as to think that such a task would be practicable even if it were desirable. The address was read in the North immediately after it was issued, and created a mingled feeling of astonishment, amusement, and sorrow. The severest comment made upon it was the remark of a Republican representative in Congress who had a most kindly feeling for the men of the South—that "the deportation for life of the men who signed and issued the libel would not only be a just punishment for the offense, but would be an undoubted advantage to both North and South." The close of the address was in harmony with its opening, and contained an argument which to some minds relieved the whole document from wickedness by making it ludicrous. Its last words insisted that "failure makes us vassals of an arrogant people—secretly if not openly hated by the most enlightened and elevated portions of mankind. Success records us forever in letters of light upon one of the most glorious pages of history.Failure will compel us to drink the cup of humiliation even to the bitter dregs of having the history of our struggle written by New-England historians."
The same lack of moral courage to face the inevitable and deal frankly with friends and supporters was still more palpably shown by Jefferson Davis when he sent a message to the Confederate Congress on March 13, three weeks before the fall of Richmond, in a tone similar to that of the famous address. Even after he was a fugitive, and the Capital of the Confederacy was in the possession of the Union Army, Mr. Davis halted long enough at Danville, to issue a proclamation in which he said, "We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle. Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be free to move from point to point to strike the enemy in detail far from his base. Let us but will it, and we are free. . . . Let us not despond, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance, with unconquered and unconquerable hearts." It is clearly established that Mr. Davis was fully aware of the state of affairs when he issued this misleading and inexcusable proclamation. Four days after its publication the army upon which he relied even for personal protection surrendered to General Grant, and Mr. Davis again sought safety in flight.
These extravagant misrepresentations do infinite damage to the Confederate cause and to the Confederate leaders in history. They reveal in strong light the method by which those leaders were willing to impose and actually did impose upon the almost unlimited credulity of the white population of their States. Prejudice on the question of slavery could be easily stimulated, and no effort was spared to poison the minds of the Southern people against the National Government and against the Northern people. But the exaggerations at the close of the struggle were no greater than those which had been employed at its commencement. From beginning to end the Rebellion was based upon the suppression of that which was true and the suggestion of that which was untrue. To mete out the proper share of responsibility to the leaders who organized the insurrection would be a task at once ungracious and impossible. The aggressive character of the movement was not concealed, and the motives underlying it were understood. That which was not understood, and which still remains to be accounted for, was the conduct of the thousands of Southern Unionists who did not express their opinions and maintain their faith with the firmness and effectiveness which had been widely hoped for and expected in the North. From the timidity of the friends of the Union and the boldness of the advocates of Secession, it is not difficult to understand how the large class of poor whites in the South could be urged into a contest in which every blow struck by them was in support of a system to whose baleful influence they owed their own ignorance, their social degradation, their pitiable poverty.
The wonder excited by the raising of the vast army which saved the Union from destruction was even surpassed by the wonder excited by its prompt and peaceful dissolution. On the day that the task of disbandment was undertaken, the Army of the United States bore upon its rolls the names of one million five hundred and sixteen men (1,000,516). The killed, and those who had previously retired on account of wounds and sickness and from the expiration of shorter terms of service, aggregated, after making due allowance for re-enlistments of the same persons, at least another million. The living among these had retired gradually during the war, and had resumed their old avocations, or, in the great demand for workmen created by the war itself, had found new employment. But with the close of hostilities many industries which had been created by the demands of war ceased, and thousand of men were thrown out of employment. The disbandment of the Volunteer Army would undoubtedly add hundreds of thousands to this number, and thus still further overstock and embarrass the labor-market. The prospect was not encouraging, and many judicious men feared the result.
Happily all anticipations of evil proved groundless. By an instinct of self-support and self-adjustment, that great body of men who left the military service during the latter half of the year 1865 and early in the year 1866 re-entered civil life with apparent contentment and even with certain advantages. Their experience as soldiers, so far from unfitting them for the duties and callings of Peace, seem rather to have proved an admirable school, and to have given them habits of promptness and punctuality, order and neatness, which added largely to their efficiency in whatever field they were called to labor. After the Continental Army was dissolved, its members were found to be models of industry and intelligence in all the walks of life. The successful mechanics, the thrifty tradesmen, the well-to-do farmers in the old thirteen States were found, in great proportion, to have held a commission or carried a musket in the Army of the Revolution. They were, moreover, the strong pioneers who settled the first tier of States to the westward, and laid the solid foundation which assured progress and prosperity to their descendants. Their success as civil magistrates, as legislators, as executives was not less marked and meritorious than their illustrious service in war. The same cause brought the same result a century later in men of the same blood fighting with equal valor the same battle of Constitutional liberty. The inspiration of a great cause does not fail to ennoble the humblest of those who do battle in its defense. Those who stood in the ranks of the Union Army have established this truth by the twenty years of honorable life through which they have passed since their patriotic service was crowned with victory.
The officers who led the Union Army throughout all the stages of the civil conflict were in the main young men. This feature has been a distinguishing mark in nearly all the wars in which the American people have taken part, and with a few notable exceptions has been the rule in the leading military struggles of the world. Alexander the Great died in his thirty-second year. Cæsar entered upon the conquest of Gaul at forty. Frederick the Great was the leading commander of Europe at thirty-three. Napoleon and Wellington, born in the same year, fought their last battle at forty-six years of age. On the exceptional side Marlborough's greatest victories were won when he was nearly sixty (though he had been brilliantly distinguished at twenty-two), and in our own day the most skillful campaign in Europe was under the direction of Von Moltke when he was in the seventieth year of his age.
Washington took command of the Continental Army at forty-three. Lafayette was a major-general at twenty. Nathaniel Greene was a general officer in the military establishment of the Revolution at thirty-three, and entered upon his memorable campaign in the South at thirty-eight. Winfield Scott was but twenty-eight when he commanded at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane. Macomb was thirty-two when he gained the famous victory over Sir George Prevost at Plattsburg. Jackson was forty-seven when he won the decisive battle over Pakenham at New Orleans. On the other hand, Taylor was sixty-three when he conquered at Buena Vista, and Scott was sixty-one when he made his celebrated march from Vera Cruz to the Capital. Scott enjoys the rare distinction of having held high and successful command in two wars which were a full generation of men apart. In 1847 he commanded in Mexico the sons of those officers who aided in his brilliantly successful campaign against the British on the borders of Canada in 1814.
At the opening of the war of the Rebellion General Scott again assumed command, but his seventy-five years pressed heavily upon him, and he soon gave way to younger men who came rapidly forward with patriotic ardor and with worthy ambition. Nearly all the graduates of the United-States Military Academy who achieved distinction were in what might be termed their middle youth; a few were in their twenties; none were old. General Grant won his campaign of the Tennessee, and fought the battles of Henry, Donelson, and Shiloh when he was thirty-eight years of age. Sherman entered upon his onerous work in the South-West when he was forty-one, and accomplished the march to the sea when he was forty-four. Thomas began his splendid career in Kentucky when he was forty-three, and fought the critical and victorious battle of Nashville when he was forty-six. Sheridan was but thirty-three when he confirmed a reputation, already enviable, by his great campaign of 1864 in the Shenandoah Valley. Meade won the decisive battle of Gettysburg when he was forty-seven. McClellan was but thirty-five when he succeeded General Scott in command of the army. McDowell was forty-five when he fought the first battle of magnitude in the war. Buell was forty-two when he joined forces with Grant's army on the second day's fight at Shiloh. Pope was scarcely over forty when he attained the highest credit for his success in the South-West. Hancock was forty-one when he approved himself one of the most brilliant commanders in the army by his superb bearing on the field of Spotsylvania. Hooker was forty-six when he assumed command of the Army of the Potomac.
General Schofield was thirty-four when he commanded with signal ability and success in the battle of Franklin. John Reynolds was forty-three when he fell at the head of his corps in the first day's fight at Gettysburg. Rosecrans was forty-two when he gained the important victory at Stone River. Burnside was thirty-seven when he made the admirable record of his North-Carolina campaign. Howard was thirty-two when he was assigned to the command of a corps, and only a year older when he succeeded McPherson in the command of the army of the Tennessee. McPherson was thirty-five when he gave up his heroic life on the bloody field before Atlanta. Slocum was thirty-eight when he handled his division with consummate skill at White-Oak Swamp. Joseph J. Reynolds was a major-general before he was forty. Parke was at the head of a corps when he was thirty-five. Hazen was thirty-four when he led in the important capture of Fort McAllister. McKenzie, Custer, Kilpatrick, and Ames had each won his star before he had passed his twenty-sixty hear. The only West-Point man who became conspicuous in the command of troops after he was fifty years of age was David Hunter. He entered upon his sixtieth year on the day of the unfortunate battle of Bull Run, and engaged thenceforth in severe and meritorious field-service. Montgomery C. Meigs, one of the ablest graduates of the Military Academy, was kept from the command of troops by the inestimably important services he performed as quartermaster-general, in which office he succeeded Joseph E. Johnston when the latter cast his fortunes with the Confederacy. Perhaps in the military history of the world there was never so large an amount of money disbursed upon the order of a single man as by the order of General Meigs. The aggregate sum could not have less during the war than fifteen hundred millions of dollars, accurately vouched and accounted for to the last cent. General Meigs is still living, vigorous in mind and body, active in good works, and enjoying the unstinted confidence and admiration of his countrymen.
Among the officers who volunteered from civil life the success of young men as commanders was not less marked than among the graduates of West Point. General Logan, to whom is conceded by common consent the leading reputation among volunteer officers, and who rose to the command of an army, went to the field at thirty-five. General Butler was forty-two when he was placed at the head of the Army of the Gulf, and began his striking career in Louisiana. General Banks was forty-four when with the rank of major-general he took command of the Department of Maryland. Alfred Terry, since distinguished in the regular service, achieved high rank as a volunteer at thirty-five. Garfield was a major-general at thirty-one with brilliant promise as a solider when he left the field to enter Congress. Frank Blair at forty-one was a successful commander of a division in the arduous campaign which ended with the fall of Vicksburg. Jacob D. Cox had achieved his reputation in the field at thirty-four. Sickles was forty-one when, desperately wounded, he was borne from the head of his corps at Gettysburg. Cadwallader Washburn in his forty-third year was in command of an important district in the South-West. Rawlins was high in General Grant's confidence and favor at thirty when he filled the important post of chief of staff. James B. Steedman was forty-four when he received Mr. Lincoln's special encomium for bravery. Franz Sigel was in command of a corps before he was thirty-five. Crawford was thirty-three when his division did its noble work at Gettysburg. Chamberlain was thirty-four when he associated his name indelibly with the defense of Little Round-Top. Corse was but twenty-nine when he held the pass at Altoona. Beaver was still younger when he received his terrible wound and his promotion. Grenville Dodge had risen to the rank of a major-general and approved his merit in the Atlanta campaign before his was thirty-three. Hawley did splendid service in the field at thirty-five, and rose rapidly to the rank of brigadier-general. Gresham had made his brave record at thirty-two, and bears wounds to attest his service. The McCooks were all young, all gallant, all successful. Negley was a brigadier-general at thirty-two. Robert Potter commanded a corps before he was thirty-seven. Joseph B. Carr achieved an honorable reputation in his early thirties. Hartranft was highly distinguished before he was thirty-seven. Nelson A. Miles left his counting-room at twenty-one, enlisted as a private, and in two years was a brigadier-general. Selden Connor was rewarded with the same rank for his conduct at the battle of the Wilderness before he was twenty-seven. Nicholas L. Anderson was under thirty when he received his brevet of major-general for a military career worthy in all respects of his eminent kinsman who fired the first gun in defense of the Union. The only general of volunteers beyond fifty years of age who acquired special distinction was James S. Wadsworth who in his fifty-seventh year fell in one of the most sanguinary battles of the war.
The list, both of regulars and volunteers, who achieved high command while still young, might be largely increased. The names given are selected from a roll of honor that has never been surpassed for gallantry of spirit and intrepidity of action in the military service of any country,—a roll too long to have full justice done to all the names borne upon it. Indeed, one of the obstacles to widespread popular fame for many, was in the great number of generals who fairly earned the laurels due to exalted heroism. In a military establishment so vast that the major-generals number one hundred and fifty, and the generals of brigade nearly or quite six hundred, with battles, engagements, and skirmishes in full proportion to the force which such a number of commanders implies, it is difficult to give even the names of all who are worthy of lasting renown. Battles such as established Scott's fame in the Niagara campaign, or Jackson's at New Orleans, or Taylor's at Buena Vista, were in magnitude repeated a hundred times during the civil conflict under commanders whose names are absolutely forgotten by the public. A single corps of Grant's army at the Wilderness, or of Sherman's at Atlanta, or of Meade's at Gettysburg, or of McClellan's on the Peninsula, or of Hooker's at Chancellorsville, contained a large number of troops than Washington or Scott ever commanded on the field, a larger number than Taylor or Jackson ever saw mustered. A more correct conception of the real magnitude of the Union Army can be reached by measuring the proportions of the several branches of the service, than by simply stating the aggregate number of men. There were in all some seventeen hundred regiments of infantry, over two hundred and seventy regiments of cavalry, and more than nine hundred batteries of artillery. These numbers are without parallel in the military history of the world.
There was a very strong and patriotic disposition to engage in the war, on the part of the sons of the Northern statesmen who had been prominent during the generation preceding the outbreak of hostilities. It was no doubt felt by the juniors to be a chivalric duty to defend on the field what had been advanced by the seniors in Congress and in Cabinet. A very notable instance was that of the brothers Ewing,—Hugh, Thomas, and Charles, sons of the eminent Thomas Ewing of Ohio,—each of which attained through gradual promotion, fairly earned by meritorious service in the field, the rank of brigadier-general. They were all young, the eldest not being over thirty-five when he received his commission, the youngest under thirty. Senator Fessenden of Maine had two sons who rose to the rank of brigadier-general; a third with the rank of captain, was killed in the second battle of Bull Run. Vice-President Hamlin had one son who attained the rank of brigadier-general; another who served as colonel. William H. Seward, jun., also reached the rank of brigadier-general. William H. Harris, son of Mr. Seward's successor in the Senate, honorably distinguished himself in the service. Benjamin Harrison of Indiana commanded a brigade before he was thirty, and made a military record which did honor to the illustrious name which he inherits. Fletcher Webster lost his life while bravely commanding a Massachusetts regiment in a war which his illustrious father's exposition of the Constitution had served the arm of the Government to maintain. Similar instances in the Union Army might be cited in great number. The same disposition was manifested on the Confederate side, and it may be said with truth that almost every name which grew into prominence in the long political contention between the North and the South was represented in the conflict of arms to which it led.
That men without previous military education should prove to be intelligent, brave, efficient, and skillful officers, was a constant surprise to the foreign critics of our campaigns. The commanders of batteries, of regiments, of brigades, not to speak of battalions and companies, were almost wholly from the volunteer service. Many of the volunteers, as already indicated, rose to the command of divisions, a few to the command of corps, and in some marked instances to the command of separate armies and to the military direction of vast districts. At the same time the value of strict military training was shown by the superior prominence attained in proportion to their numbers by the officers who had been educated at the West Point Military Academy. The wisdom of maintaining that institution was abundantly vindicated by the results of the war. Its graduates worked in harmony with the volunteers, and, as matter of fact, the field offices they held during the war were, with few exceptions, under the law for the organization of the volunteer forces. They imparted to the entire army the discipline, the organization, and the efficiency of a regular military establishment. There was naturally at the beginning of the war a certain jealousy between the regulars and the volunteers, but none that did not yield to the patriotism and good sense of both. The two services were rapidly and most happily combined, and demonstrated by their joint prowess the strength of the country for defense, and, if need by, for offense. Without maintaining a large military establishment, which besides its expense entails multiform evils, it was shown that the Republic possesses in the strong arms and patriotic hearts of its sons an unfailing source of military power.
Mr. Johnson continued his public receptions, his interviews and his speeches for nearly a month after his accession to the Presidency—until indeed, in the judgment of his most anxious and most cautious friends, he had talked too much. All were agreed that the time had now come when he must do something. He evidently sought to impress the country with the belief that his Administration was to be marked by a policy of extraordinary vigor, that the standard of loyalty was to be held high, that the leaders of the Rebellion were to be dealt with in a spirit of stern justice. His position gave satisfaction to those who thought the chief conspirators against the Union could not be punished too severely; but it led to uneasiness among the anti-slavery philanthropists, lest, in wreaking vengeance upon white traitors, the President might leave the loyal negroes unprotected in their newly acquired civil rights.
On the 10th of May the President issued a proclamation declaring substantially that actual hostilities had ceased, and that "armed resistance to the authority of the Government in the insurrectionary States may be regarded as at an end." This great fact being officially recognized, the President found himself face to face with the momentous duty of bringing the eleven States of the Confederacy into active and harmonious relations with the Government of the Union. He had reached the point where he must take the first step in the serious task of Reconstruction, and the country awaited it with profound interest. He had in other official stations given distinct intimations of the conditions which he considered essential to the restoration of a rebel State to its place in the Union, but in the numerous speeches he had delivered since his accession to the Presidency he had studiously avoided a repetition of his former position, and had with equal care refrained from a public committal to any specific line of action.
The manner in which the insurrectionary States should be dealt with at the close of hostilities had been the object of solicitous inquiry throughout the war. It was indeed often a question of angry disputation in Congress, in the press, and among the people. The tentative and somewhat speculative efforts in this field, which had been made or at least encouraged by Mr. Lincoln, had confused rather than solved the problem, and yet his action could not fail to exert an embarrassing and possibly a decisive influence upon the course of his successor. Difficult as it might have proved to Mr. Lincoln himself to go forward on the line he had marked out, it would obviously prove far more difficult to Mr. Johnson to maintain the same policy with the inevitable result of renewing the conflict with Congress which Mr. Lincoln had only allayed and postponed—not removed. A brief review of what Mr. Lincoln had done in the field of Reconstruction will give a more accurate knowledge of President Johnson's policy, which afterwards became the subject of prolonged and bitter controversy. Mr. Lincoln had naturally been anxious from the beginning of the war to re-establish civil government in any and every one of the Confederate States where actual resistance should cease. A military autocracy controlling people who were engaged in the ordinary avocations of life was altogether contrary to his views of expediency, altogether repugnant to his conceptions of right.
At the end of the first year of the war (April, 1862) the rebel fortifications on the Lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans surrendered to the guns of Farragut, and not long afterwards a movement was made to re-establish in Louisiana a civil government that would be loyal to the Union. The first step was the election on the third of December, 1862, of Benjamin F. Flanders and Michael Hahn, old citizens of Louisiana, as Representatives in Congress.
On the 9th of February, 1863, when the Thirty-seventh Congress was drawing to its close, Messrs. Flanders and Hahn were admitted to their seats, though not without contention and misgiving. They had been chosen at an election ordered by the military governor of Louisiana (General George F. Shepley), and their credentials bore the signature of that official. General Shepley had undoubtedly been permitted, if not specifically authorized, by the National Administration to take this step; though it was afterwards perceived by all friends of the Union to be useless if not mischievous, and its repetition for the ensuing Congress was seriously opposed. On the 21st of November—only a fortnight before the election ordered by General Shepley—Mr. Lincoln addressed him a note which in effect was a warning that Federal officers, not citizens of Louisiana, must not be chosen to represent the State in Congress. "We do not," said the President, referring to the South, "particularly need members of Congress from those States to enable us to get along with legislation here. What we do want is the conclusive evidence that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be members of Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and that other respectable citizens are willing to vote for them and send them. To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives, elected as would be understood (and perhaps really so) at the point of the bayonet, would be disgraceful and outrageous."
Previous to this instruction to Governor Shepley, Mr. Lincoln had been in correspondence with Cuthbert Bullett, Esq., a Southern gentleman, who enjoyed his personal regard and confidence. In a letter to Mr. Bullett of July 28, 1862, the President reviewed some of the impracticable methods of re-establishing civil authority desired by certain citizens of Louisiana who were very anxious to prevent any interference with property in slaves. Mr. Thomas Durant was the spokesman for this large class of men who professed anxiety for the fate of the Union but were unwilling to do any thing to aid in saving it. Mr. Lincoln's letter is very characteristic. He says, "Mr. Durant speaks of no duty, apparently thinks of none resting upon Southern Union men. He even thinks it injurious to the Union cause that they should be restrained in trade and passage without taking sides. They are to touch neither a sail nor a pump, live merely as passengers ('dead-heads' at that) to be carried snug and dry throughout the storm and safely landed right side up. Nay, more, even a mutineer is to go untouched, lest these sacred passengers receive an accidental wound. Of course the Rebellion will never be suppressed in Louisiana if the professed Union men there will neither help to do it nor permit the Government to do it without their help. . . . What wouldyoudo in my position? Would you drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it in the future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose-water? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest leaving every available means unapplied? I am in no boastful mood: I shall not do more than I can, but IshalldoallI can to save the Government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing."
The pressure of these political events in Louisiana had increased Mr. Lincoln's desire to attempt some form of reconstruction, and the admission of Messrs. Flanders and Hahn to seats in the House of Representatives had to a certain degree misled him as to the temper and tendency of Congress on the whole subject of re-establishing civil government in the insurrectionary States. During the year 1862, when the original movements were made in Louisiana, the military situation grew so critical and so discouraging that the Administration had no time for the consideration of any other subject than the raising of men and money. But in 1863 the Government was incalculably strengthened by General Meade's victory at Gettysburg and by the opening of the Mississippi River to navigation in consequence of General Grant's capture of the rebel stronghold of Vicksburg. The latter event practically destroyed the military power of the Rebellion on the western side of the Mississippi, and opened, as Mr. Lincoln hoped, a great opportunity for the formation of State governments loyal to the Union and able to aid effectively in the overthrow of the Rebellion.
To this end the President proposed a definite plan of reconstruction in his message of December 8, 1863, sent to the Thirty-eighth Congress at its first session. He accompanied the message with a public proclamation which more fully embodied his conception of the necessities of the situation and the duties of the loyal people. According to the message of the President "the constitutional obligation to guarantee to every State in the Union a Republican form of government and to protect the State in such cases is explicit and full. . . . This section of the Constitution contemplates a case wherein the elements within a State favorable to Republican government in the Union may be too feeble for an opposite and hostile element external to or even within the State, and such are precisely the cases with which we now are dealing. An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected is simply absurd. There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements so as to build only from the sound, and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness."
In his proclamation the President made known that "to all persons who have directly or by implication participated in the existing rebellion except as herein after excepted, a full pardon is hereby granted with restoration of all rights of property except as to slaves, upon condition that every such person shall take and subscribe an oath, and thenceforward maintain said oath inviolate," to the following effect: viz., to "henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution and the Union of the States thereunder," and to abide by all laws and proclamations "made during the existing rebellion, having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court." Those excepted from the benefits of the pardon were first the civil and diplomatic officers of the Confederate Government; second, those who left judicial stations in the United-States Government to aid the rebellion; third, military officers of the Confederacy above the rank of colonel, and naval officers above the rank of lieutenant; fourth, all who left seats in the Congress of the United States to aid the rebellion; fifth, all who left the National Army or Navy to aid the rebellion; sixth, all who had treated colored persons found in the military or naval service of the United States otherwise than as prisoners of war.
The President was willing to intrust the task of establishing State governments to a population whose loyalty to the Union should be tested by taking the prescribed oath,providedthat the population should be sufficiently numerous to cast a vote one-tenth as large as that cast at the Presidential election of 1860. A government thus established, the President declared, "shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that the United States shall guarantee to each State a Republican form of government." At the same time the President was careful to affirm that "whether members sent to Congress from any State shall be admitted to seats constitutionally rests exclusively with the respective Houses, and not to any extent with the Executive."
The Union men in Louisiana had been so encouraged by the admission of Flanders and Hahn to seats in Congress, that they were active in the year 1863 in maturing schemes for re-establishing a loyal State government. But the decisive step was not taken until the opening of the ensuing hear. On the 8th of January, 1864, a large Free-State Convention was held in New Orleans, which proved to be in harmony with the National Administration at all points, accepting the emancipation policy of the President as the basis of all their action. General Banks, then in command of the military district, at once issued a proclamation as requested by the convention, appointing an election for State officers on the 22d of February—the officers chosen, to be installed on the 4th of March. Michael Hahn was elected governor as the especial representative of the President's firm yet cautious and moderate policy. B. F. Flanders and C. Roselius were the opposing candidates, the former representing a more radical the latter a more conservative policy than the President was willing to accept.
Mr. Hahn was duly installed in office on the 4th of March, and on the 15th the President issued an order declaring the new governor to be "invested until further orders with the powers exercised hitherto by the military governor of Louisiana." In a personal note to Governor Hahn at the same time the President said, "I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first Free-State Governor of Louisiana. Now you are about to have a convention which among other things will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of the colored people may not be let in, as for instance the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time in the future to keep the jewel of Liberty in the family of Freedom." The form of the closing expression, quite unusual in Mr. Lincoln's compact style, may have been pleonastic, but his meaning was one of deep and almost prophetic significance. It was perhaps the earliest proposition from any authentic source to endow the negro with the right of suffrage, and was an indirect but most effective answer to those who subsequently attempted to use Mr. Lincoln's name in support of policies which his intimate friends instinctively knew would be abhorrent to his unerring sense of justice.
The scheme of reconstruction in Louisiana was completed by the assembling of a convention to form a constitution for the State. The convention was organized early in April, and its most important act was the prompt incorporation of an anti-slavery clause in the organic law. By a vote of seventy to sixteen the convention declared slavery to be forever abolished in the State. The constitution was adopted by the people on the fifth day of the ensuing September by a vote of 6,836 in its favor to 1,566 against it. As the total vote of Louisiana at the Presidential election of 1860 was 50,510, the new State government had obviously fulfilled the requirement of the President's proclamation in demonstrating that it was sustained by more than one-tenth of that number. The President's scheme had therefore so far succeeded that Louisiana was at least in form under a loyal government. It was, however, a government that could not sustain itself for a day if the military support of the Nation should be withdrawn, and therein lay the weakness of the President's plan.
The action of Louisiana was accompanied, indeed in some parts preceded, by a similar action in Arkansas. A loyal governor (Isaac Murphy) was elected, an anti-slavery constitution adopted, a government duly installed over the State, and senators and representatives in Congress were elected in due form. These successive steps were taken in the early spring of 1864. But when the senators, Messrs. Fishback and Baxter, presented themselves for admission to the body to which they were thus chosen, it was found that Congress was not in sympathy with what was derisively termed the "short-hand" method of reconstruction proposed in Mr. Lincoln's proclamation. Mr. Sumner, when the credentials were presented, offered a resolution declaring that "a State pretending to secede from the Union, and battling against the General Government to maintain that position, must be regarded as a rebel State subject to military occupation and without representation on this floor until it has been re-admitted by a vote of both Houses of Congress; and the Senate will decline to entertain any such application from any such rebel State until after such a vote of both Houses."
Mr. Sumner's resolution embodied a radical and absolute dissent from the President's scheme of reconstruction. The Senate, however, was not quite ready for so emphatic a declaration, and the resolution was referred with the credentials to the Judiciary Committee. A few weeks alter, on the 27th June (1864), the committee made a report covering substantially the ground of Mr. Sumner's resolution. By a vote of twenty-seven to six the State declared that "the rebellion is not so far suppressed in Arkansas as to entitle that State to representation in Congress, and therefore Messrs. Fishback and Baxter are not entitled to admission as senators." Similar action was taken in the House—the representatives not being allowed to take seats.
The conflict between the President and Congress on the subject of reconstruction was made still more apparent by the further action of each. After the Arkansas case had been disposed of, Congress passed a bill embodying its own views of the proper process of reconstruction. By this measure it was directed that the President should appoint a provisional governor for each of the States declared to be in rebellion; that said governor should, as soon as military resistance to the United States ceased, make an enrolment of the white male citizens, submitting to each an oath to support the Constitution. If a majority of the citizens should take and subscribe the oath, the governor was to order an election of delegates to a constitutional convention.
It was made the duty of the convention as its initial proceeding to declare on behalf of the people of the State their submission to the Constitution of the United States, and to incorporate in their own organic law three fundamental provisions: First, No one who has held any office under the Confederate Government except civil offices merely ministerial, or military office below the rank of colonel, shall vote for or be a member of the Legislature, or shall vote for or be elected governor. Second, Involuntary servitude shall be forever prohibited, and the freedom of all persons in the State guaranteed. Third, No debt, State or Confederate, created in aid of the rebellion shall ever be paid. In the event of a constitution being framed with these provisions inserted, and then adopted by a majority of the popular vote as already enrolled, the governor shall certify that fact to the President, and thereupon the President,after obtaining the assent of Congress, shall recognize the State government so established as a legitimate and constitutional government competent to elect senators and representatives in Congress and electors of President and Vice-President.
This bill was passed on the last day of the session, July 4, 1864. It was commonly regarded as a rebuke to the course of the President in proceeding with the grave and momentous task of reconstruction without waiting the action or invoking the counsel of Congress. Some of the more radical members of both Houses considered the action of the President as beyond his constitutional power, and they were very positive and peremptory in condemning it. But Mr. Lincoln, with his habitual caution and wise foresight, had specially avoided any form of guaranty, or even suggestion to the States whose reconstruction he was countenancing and aiding, that their senators and representatives would be admitted to seats in Congress. Admission to membership he took care to advise them was a discretion lodged solely in the respective Houses. What he had done was in his own judgment clearly within his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Union, and was thus obviously and solely an Executive act.
Mr. Lincoln was not therefore in the humor to be rebuked by Congress. Though the least pretentious of men, he had an abounding self-respect and a full appreciation of the dignity and power of his office. He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective departments of the Government, and he was not willing that his judgment should be revised or his course censured, however indirectly, by a co-ordinate branch of the Government. He therefore declined to sign the bill. He did not veto it but let it quietly die. Four days after the session had closed, he issued a proclamation in which he treated the bill merely as the expression of an opinion by Congress as to the plan of Reconstruction—"which plan," he remarked, "it is thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration."
The President further stated in his proclamation that he had "already propounded one plan of restoration," and that he was "unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration," and also "unprepared to declare that the Free-State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Louisiana and Arkansas shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort;" and also "unprepared to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in the States"—though "sincerely hoping at the same time that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery in all the States might be adopted." While with these objections Mr. Lincoln could not approve the bill, he concluded his proclamation in these words: "Nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the plan of restoration contained in this bill as one very proper for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and I am and at all times shall be prepared to give executive aid and assistance to any such people so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and Laws of the United States—in which cases military governors will be appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill."
It must be frankly admitted that Mr. Lincoln's course was in some of its aspects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of Republican members of Congress, and violent opposition from the more radical members of both Houses. If Congress had been in session at the time, a very rancorous hostility would have been developed against the President. Fortunately the senators and representatives had returned to their States and districts before the proclamation was issued, and they found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. Lincoln's support. No contest was raised, therefore, by the great majority of those who had sustained the bill which the President had refused to approve. The pending struggle for the Presidency demanded harmony, and by common consent agitation on the question was abandoned. Two of the ablest, most fearless, most resolute men then in public life—Senator Wade of Ohio, and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland—were exceptions to the general rule of acquiescence. They were respectively the chairmen in Senate and House of the "Committees on the Rebellious States," and were primarily and especially responsible for the bill which the President criticized in his proclamation. They united over their own signatures in a public "Protest" against the action of Mr. Lincoln. The paper was prepared by Mr. Davis, which of itself was guaranty that it would be able, caustic, and unqualified. Mr. Wade was known to be a man of extraordinary courage, both physical and moral. To these qualities Mr. Davis added a highly cultivated mind and a style of writing which in political controversy has rarely been surpassed—a style at once severe, effective, and popular.
The "Protest" embodied a sharp contrast between the President's plan of Reconstruction in his proclamation of December 8 (1863), and that contained in the bill presented by Congress for his approval. "The bill," said Messrs. Wade and Davis, "requires a majority of the voters to establish a State government, the proclamation is satisfied with one-tenth; the bill requires one oath, the proclamation another; the bill ascertains voters by registering, the proclamation by guess; the bill exacts adherence to existing territorial limits, the proclamation admits of others; the bill governs the rebel Statesby lawequalizing all before it, the proclamation commits them to the lawless discretion of military governors and provost marshals; the bill forbids electors for President (in the rebel States), the proclamation with the defeat of the bill threatens us with civil war for the exclusion of such votes."
The criticisms of the President's course closed with the language of stern admonition if not indeed of absolute menace. The act of the President was denounced as "rash and fatal," and as "a blow at the friends of the Administration, at the rights of humanity, and at the principles of Republican government." The President was warned that the support of the Republican party was "of a cause and not of a man," that the "authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected," that the "whole body of Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him or rash and unconstitutional legislation," that he must "confine himself to his Executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws;" that he "must suppress armed rebellion by arms and leave political re-organization to Congress."
No political result followed the publication of this remarkable paper save that it probably defeated the renomination of Mr. Davis for Congress. The Democrats were of course hostile to it in spirit and in letter, and the leading Republicans saw in it the seeds of a controversy between the President and Congress which might rapidly grow into dangerous proportions. The very strength of the paper was, by one of the paradoxes that frequently recur in public affairs, its special weakness. It was so powerful an arraignment of the President that of necessity it rallied his friends to his support with that intense form of energy which springs from the instinct of self-preservation. It was at once seen and profoundly realized by the great majority of the loyal people that even if the President had fallen into an error, no result could possibly flow from adhering to it that would prove half so perilous to the Union cause as would dissension and division in the ranks of those who were relied upon to keep the Government in the control of an Administration, devoted heart and soul to the preservation of the Union. It was, they thought, safer to follow Mr. Lincoln who had all the power in his hands than to follow Messrs. Wade and Davis who had no power in their hands.
When Congress convened in December (1864), Mr. Lincoln, who had meanwhile been re-elected to the Presidency, studiously refrained from any reference in his annual message to the controversy over his proclamation. With the intuitive sagacity and caution which never failed him, he did not touch upon the question of reconstruction. He had foreseen that the unhappy differences with which the close of the previous session of Congress had been marked might be renewed, and thence lead the party into warring factions if he should again attempt to urge his own views. This was undoubtedly a disappointment to those who had regarded the controversy with the President as only postponed till the assembling of Congress, and who were impatiently awaiting its renewal. The assumed views of the President were antagonized later in the session by the passage of a joint resolution "declaring certain States not entitled to representation in the electoral college." This was done to cut off the electoral votes (should any such votes be returned) of Louisiana and Arkansas, satirically referred to by the opponents of the Administration policy as Mr. Lincoln's "ten per cent States"—in allusion to the permission given to one-tenth of the population to organize a State government.
The passage of this joint resolution, to which great importance was attached by the critics of the President, was met by Mr. Lincoln in a spirit and with a tact which deprived its authors of all sense of triumph. In a brief special message (February 8, 1865) the President declared that he had "signed the joint resolution in defence to the view of Congress implied in its passage and presentation." In his own view, however, the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution, "have complete power to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it is not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct the power by a veto, as would be the case if his action were at all essential to the matter." The President further informed Congress that "he disclaims all right on the part of the Executive to interfere in any way in the matter of canvassing or counting the electoral votes, and he also disclaims that by signing said resolution he has expressed any opinion of the recitals of the preamble or any judgement of his own upon the subject of the resolution."
The message was indeed throughout a sarcastic reflection upon the action of Congress. It was as if the President had said, "You have passed a resolution making certain declarations which nobody controverts: you have claimed certain powers which nobody denies. If I should sign your resolution without explanation, it might imply my right to veto it, and thereby take from you your undoubted Constitutional power. You are really guilty of weakening your own prerogatives under the Constitution by asking me to assent to their existence. If you intended your resolution as a reflection on my policy of reconstruction, you might have spared yourself the trouble, for that policy never contemplated the slightest violation of the rights and prerogatives of Congress." The message throughout was a singularly apt illustration of that keen perception and abounding common sense which made Mr. Lincoln so formidable an antagonist in every controversy political and official in which he became involved. His triumph was complete both in the estimation of Congress and of the people.
Mr. Lincoln really adhered with unexpected tenacity to the plan of reconstruction which he had attempted, and which, putting aside the opprobrious names applied to it, was called by himself "The Louisiana Plan." He had stubbornly maintained his ground against the almost unanimous protest of Republican senators and representatives, and he justified himself by elaborate argument. He had been much influenced by the representations made by General Banks who was commander of the Military District, and much impressed by the perfect faith in its success entertained by leading men of the State. In the last speech he ever made (April 11, 1865), referring to the twelve thousand men who had organized the Louisiana Government, the President said, "If we now reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We say to the white man, you are worthless or worse. We will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the black man we say, this cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when and where and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing to both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, they recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand men to adhere to their work and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and with energy and daring to the same end. Grant that he desired the elective franchise. He will yet attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it than by running backward over them. Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."
Mr. Lincoln described also at some length the process by which he had been induced to try the Louisiana plan. Like all his conclusions it was reached after much consultation and serious reflection. He was conscientiously convinced that, all things considered, it was the promptest and most feasible process of re-establishing civil government in the insurrectionary States. Mr. Lincoln was especially anxious that neither the ruling power nor the conquered rebels should be needless procrastination become accustomed to military government—a form of administration which he regarded as very tempting, but very sure to undermine, and in time to destroy, the real spirit of independence and self-government. It was his belief, as he expressed it himself, that "We must begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant elements, nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly make answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows." He then gave somewhat full details of the successive steps he had taken in his attempt at reconstruction,—steps already detailed with precision in this chapter. After completing his recital he stated with entire frankness that he had done nothing else. "Such," said he, "has been my only agency in setting up the Louisiana Government." He was thus explicit because certain members of Congress, in the excitement caused by the hostility to the President's plan, had been rash enough to insinuate that the President had a secret understanding with certain rebels, who, as soon as the President's hand was withdrawn, would turn the control of the State over to the unrepentant Democracy who had been so active in precipitating the war.