Lincoln

N >> Nathaniel Wright Stephenson >> Lincoln


Of those papers which he had signed without reading on April first,
Lincoln was to hear again in still more surprising fashion six days
thereafter.

He was now at the very edge of his second crucial decision. Though the
naval expedition was in preparation, he still hesitated over issuing
orders to sail. The reply to the Thoughts had not committed him to any
specific line of conduct. What was it that kept him wavering at this
eleventh hour? Again, that impenetrable taciturnity which always
shrouded his progress toward a conclusion, forbids dogmatic assertion.
But two things are obvious: his position as a minority president, of
which he was perhaps unduly conscious, caused him to delay, and to delay
again and again, seeking definite evidence how much support he could
command in the North; the change in his comprehension of the problem
before him-his perception that it was not an "artificial crisis"
involving slavery alone, but an irreconcilable clash of social-political
idealism--this disturbed his spirit, distressed, even appalled him.
Having a truer insight into human nature than Seward had, he saw that
here was an issue immeasurably less susceptible of compromise than was
slavery. Whether, the moment he perceived this, he at once lost hope of
any peaceable solution, we do not know. Just what he thought about the
Virginia Compromise is still to seek. However, the nature of his mind,
the way it went straight to the human element in a problem once his eyes
were opened to the problem's reality, forbid us to conclude that he
took hope from Virginia. He now saw what, had it not been for his near
horizon, he would have seen so long before, that, in vulgar parlance, he
had been "barking up the wrong tree." Now that he had located the right
tree, had the knowledge come too late?

It is known that Seward, possibly at Lincoln's request, made an attempt
to bring together the Virginia Unionists and the Administration. He sent
a special representative to Richmond urging the despatch of a committee
to confer with the President.

The strength of the party in the Convention was shown on April fourth
when a proposed Ordinance of Secession was voted down, eighty-nine to
forty-five. On the same day, the Convention by a still larger majority
formally denied the right of the Federal government to coerce a State.
Two days later, John B. Baldwin, representing the Virginia Unionists,
had a confidential talk with Lincoln. Only fragments of their talk,
drawn forth out of memory long afterward--some of the reporting being
at second hand, the recollections of the recollections of the
participants--are known to exist. The one fact clearly discernible is
that Baldwin stated fully the Virginia position: that her Unionists
were not nationalists; that the coercion of any State, by impugning
the sovereignty of all, would automatically drive Virginia out of the
Union.(23)

Lincoln had now reached his decision. The fear that had dogged him all
along--the fear that in evacuating Sumter he would be giving something
for nothing, that "it would discourage the friends of the Union,
embolden its adversaries"--was in possession of his will. One may hazard
the guess that this fear would have determined Lincoln sooner than
it did, except for the fact that the Secretary of State, despite his
faults, was so incomparably the strongest personality in the Cabinet.
We have Lincoln's own word for the moment and the detail that formed
the very end of his period of vacillation. All along he had intended to
relieve and hold Fort Pickens, off the coast of Florida. To this, Seward
saw no objection. In fact, he urged the relief of Pickens, hoping, as
compensation, to get his way about Sumter. Assuming as he did that the
Southern leaders were opportunists, he believed that they would not
make an issue over Pickens, merely because it had not in the public
eye become a political symbol. Orders had been sent to a squadron in
Southern waters to relieve Pickens. Early in April news was received at
Washington that the attempt had failed due to misunderstandings
among the Federal commanders. Fearful that Pickens was about to fall,
reasoning that whatever happened he dared not lose both forts, Lincoln
became peremptory on the subject of the Sumter expedition. This was on
April sixth. On the night of April sixth, Lincoln's signatures to the
unread despatches of the first of April, came home to roost. And
at last, Welles found out what Seward was doing on the day of All
Fools.(24)

While the Sumter expedition was being got ready, still without sailing
orders, a supplemental expedition was also preparing for the relief of
Pickens. This was the business that Seward was contriving, that Lincoln
would not explain, on April first. The order interfering with the Navy
Department was designed to checkmate the titular head of the department.
Furthermore, Seward had had the amazing coolness to assume that Lincoln
would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need
not hereinafter be consulted about details. He aimed to circumvent
Welles and to make sure that the Sumter expedition, whether sailing
orders were issued or not, should be rendered innocuous. The warship
Powhatan, which was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard,
was intended by Welles for the Sumter expedition. One of those unread
despatches signed by Lincoln, assigned it to the Pickens expedition.
When the sailing orders from Welles were received, the commander of the
Sumter fleet claimed the Powhatan. The Pickens commander refused to
give it up. The latter telegraphed Seward that his expedition was "being
retarded and embarrassed" by "conflicting" orders from Welles. The
result was a stormy conference between Seward and Welles which was
adjourned to the White House and became a conference with Lincoln. And
then the whole story came out. Lincoln played the scapegoat, "took the
whole blame upon himself, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his
part; he ought to have been more careful and attentive." But he insisted
on immediate correction of his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan
to the Sumter fleet. Seward struggled hard for his plan. Lincoln was
inflexible. As Seward had directed the preparation of the Pickens
expedition, Lincoln required him to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in
orders. Seward, beaten by his enemy Welles, was deeply chagrined. In
his agitation he forgot to be formal, forgot that the previous order
had gone out in the President's name, and wired curtly, "Give up the
Powhatan. Seward."

This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing.
The commander of the Powhatan had now before him, three orders.
Naturally, he held that the one signed by the President took precedence
over the others. He went on his way, with his great warship, to Florida.
The Sumter expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war. In this
strange fashion, chance executed Seward's design.

Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due
notice would be given, should he decide to relieve Sumter. Word was now
sent that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions
only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in
men, arms or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case
of an attack upon the fort."(25) Though the fleet was not intended to
offer battle, it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into
the harbor, should the relief of Sumter be opposed. But the power to do
so was wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan.
And the Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.

And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a
crisis. It, no less than Washington, had passed through a period of
disillusion. The assumption upon which its chief politicians had built
so confidently had collapsed. The South was not really a unit. It was
not true that the secession of any one State, on any sort of issue,
would compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States.
North Carolina had exploded this illusion. Virginia had exploded it.
The South could not be united on the issue of slavery; it could not be
united on the issue of sectional dread. It could be united on but
one issue-State sovereignty, the denial of the right of the Federal
Government to coerce a State. The time had come to decide whether the
cannon at Charleston should fire. As Seward had foreseen, Montgomery
held the trumps; but had Montgomery the courage to play them? There
was a momentous debate in the Confederate Cabinet. Robert Toombs, the
Secretary of State, whose rapid growth in comprehension since December
formed a parallel to Lincoln's growth, threw his influence on the side
of further delay. He would not invoke that "final argument of kings,"
the shotted cannon. "Mr. President," he exclaimed, "at this time, it is
suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will
instantly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean,
and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is
unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." But Toombs stood
alone in the Cabinet. Orders were sent to Charleston to reduce Fort
Sumter. Before dawn, April twelfth, the first shot was fired. The flag
of the United States was hauled down on the afternoon of the thirteenth.
Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived--without the Powhatan. Bereft
of its great ship, it could not pass the harbor batteries and assist the
fort. Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms
of surrender was allowed to withdraw. On the fourteenth, Sumter was
evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to the northward.

Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle. On the fifteenth
appeared his proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand
volunteers. Automatically, the upper South fulfilled its unhappy
destiny. Challenged at last, on the irreconcilable issue, Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, seceded. The final argument of
kings was the only one remaining.




XVI "ON TO RICHMOND!"

It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an
intensely warlike nation. Seward's belief that a war fury would sweep
the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified. Both North and
South appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.

The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen. That historic
clash at Baltimore between the city's mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en
route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling
in Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North. Railway
tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut. During several days
Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing. Was there an
efficient general response to his call for troops? Or was precious time
being squandered in preparation? Was it conceivable that the war fury
was only talk? Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of
the horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of
silence all but intolerable. Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered
city. General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the
government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia. Government employees
and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill. The White House
became a barracks. "Jim Lane," writes delightful John Hay in his diary,
which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis,
"Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard's; tonight
(they are in) the East Room."(1) Hay's humor brightens the tragic hour.
He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn" that had been told to
him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had
heard from "a dashing Virginian" that inside forty-eight hours something
would happen which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this
meant the capture or assassination of the President. "Lincoln quietly
grinned." But Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode, charming women and
all, had got himself into trouble. He had to do "some very dexterous
lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the
assassination suspicion." Militia were quartered in the Capitol, and
Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill ground. At the President's reception,
the distinguished politician C. C. Clay, "wore with a sublimely
unconscious air three pistols and an 'Arkansas toothpick,' and looked
like an admirable vignette to twenty-five cents' worth of yellow covered
romance."

But Hay's levity was all of the surface. Beneath it was intense anxiety.
General Scott reported that the Virginia militia, concentrating about
Washington, were a formidable menace, though he thought he was strong
enough to hold out until relief should come. As the days passed and
nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph
remained silent, Lincoln became moodily distressed. One afternoon, "the
business of the day being over, the executive office deserted, after
walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour, he
stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac
in the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New
York); and unconscious of other presence in the room, at length broke
out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation, 'Why don't
they come! Why don't they come!'"(2)

His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those
Massachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington.
"I don't believe there is any North. . . " he exclaimed. "You are the
only Northern realities."(3) But even then relief was at hand. The
Seventh New York, which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation
as never before was given any regiment in America, had come by sea
to Annapolis. At noon on April twenty-fifth, it reached Washington
bringing, along with the welcome sight of its own bayonets, the news
that the North had risen, that thousands more were on the march.

Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln. Already
the President had reacted to a "pleasant, hopeful mood." He began
outlining a tentative plan of action: blockade, maintenance of the
safety of Washington, holding Fortress Monroe, and then to "go down to
Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing there."(4) But this
was an undigested plan. It had little resemblance to any of his later
plans. And immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarrass
all his plans appeared. He was a minority President; and he was the
Executive of a democracy. Many things were to happen; many mistakes
were to be made; many times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt
sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant
of opposition. Throughout the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to
secure the favor of the Northern mass, to shape his policy with that
end in view. At least, in his own mind, this seemed to be his paramount
obligation. And so it was in the minds of his advisers. Lincoln was
still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office, which
continued to be in evidence, except for sudden momentary disappearances
when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view, until another
year and more had gone by. Still he felt himself the apprentice hand
painfully learning the trade of man of action. Still he was deeply
sensitive to advice.

And what advice did the country give him? There was one roaring shout
dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!"
Following Virginia's secession, Richmond had become the Confederate
capital. It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress
would open at Richmond in July. "On to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!"
screamed The Tribune. "The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet
there on the 20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the
national army." The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it
warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he
would be superseded. Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The
Times to "depose" him, he took very seriously all the swiftly
accumulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient
Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries
"impertinently."(5) Members of Congress, either carried away by the
excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their
constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On purely
political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance
into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with
contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury. That grim Sherman,
who had been offended by Lincoln's tone the month previous, put their
feeling into words. Declining the offer of a position in the War
Department, he wrote that he wished "the Administration all success in
its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial
people."(6)

In the President's councils, General Scott urged delay, and the
gathering of the volunteers into camps of instruction, their deliberate
transformation into a genuine army. So inadequate were the resources of
the government; so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations
which were attempting to combine into an army; such discrepancies
appeared between the nominal and actual strength of commands, between
the places where men were supposed to be and the places where they
actually were; that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of
mobilization to shoveling a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.(7) From
the military point of view it was no time to attempt an advance. Against
the military argument, three political arguments loomed dark in the
minds of the Cabinet; there was the clamor of the Northern majority;
there were the threats of the politicians who were to assemble in
Congress, July fourth; there was the term of service of the volunteers
which had been limited by the proclamation to three months. Late in
June, the Cabinet decided upon the political course, overruled the
military advisers, and gave its voice for an immediate advance into
Virginia. Lincoln accepted this rash advice. Scott yielded. General
Irwin McDowell was ordered to strike a Confederate force that had
assembled at Manassas.(8) On the fourth of July, the day Congress met,
the government made use of a coup de theatre. It held a review of what
was then considered a "grand army" of twenty-five thousand men. A few
days later, the sensibilities of the Congressmen were further exploited.
Impressionable members were "deeply moved," when the same host in
marching order passed again through the city and wheeled southward
toward Virginia. Confident of victory, the Congressmen spent these days
in high debate upon anything that took their fancy. When, a fortnight
later, it was known that a battle was imminent, many of them treated the
Occasion as a picnic. They took horses, or hired vehicles, and away
they went southward for a jolly outing on the day the Confederacy was
to collapse. In the mind of the unfortunate General who commanded the
expedition a different mood prevailed. In depression, he said to a
friend, "This is not an army. It will take a long time to make an army.
But his duty as a soldier forbade him to oppose his superiors; the
poor fellow could not proclaim his distrust of his army in public."(9)
Thoughtful observers at Washington felt danger in the air, both military
and political.

Sunday, July twenty-first, dawned clear. It was the day of the
expected battle. A noted Englishman, setting out for the front as war
correspondent of the London Times, observed "the calmness and silence
of the streets of Washington, this early morning." After crossing the
Potomac, he felt that "the promise of a lovely day given by the early
dawn was likely to be realized to the fullest"; and "the placid beauty
of the scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington" delighted
him. And then about nine o'clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery.
Through those beautiful Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.

At the White House that day there was little if any alarm. Reports
received at various times were construed by military men as favorable.
These, with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful,
established confidence in a victory before nightfall. Late in the
afternoon, the President relieved his tension by taking a drive. He had
not returned when, about six o'clock, Seward appeared and asked hoarsely
where he was. The secretaries told him. He begged them to find the
President as quickly as possible. "Tell no one," said he, "but the
battle is lost. The army is in full retreat."

The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until
close to midnight. It caused an instantaneous panic. In the small hours,
the space before the Treasury was "a moving mass of humanity. Every
man seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news, while all
sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair
appeared to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into
the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic
that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes."
The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly
and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'(10) Now
appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist.
All night long he sat unruffled in his office, while refugees from
the stricken field--especially those overconfident Senators and
Representatives who had gone out to watch the overthrow of the
Confederates--poured into his ears their various and conflicting
accounts of the catastrophe. During that long night Lincoln said almost
nothing. Meanwhile, fragments of the routed army continued to stream
into the city. At dawn the next day Washington was possessed by a swarm
of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled over it.

The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his
dependence upon his advisers. While the runaway Senators were talking
themselves out, while the rain was sheeting up the city, he had
reached two conclusions. Early in the morning, he formulated both. One
conclusion was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in which
the first move should be a call for volunteers to serve three years.(11)
The other conclusion was the choice of a conducting general. Scott was
too old. McDowell had failed. But there was a young officer, a West
Pointer, who had been put in command of the Ohio militia, who had
entered the Virginia mountains from the West, had engaged a small force
there, and had won several small but rather showy victories. Young as
he was, he had served in the Mexican War and was supposed to be highly
accomplished. On the day following Bull Run, Lincoln ordered McClellan
to Washington to take command.(12)




XVII. DEFINING THE ISSUE

While these startling events were taking place in the months between
Sumter and Bull Run, Lincoln passed through a searching intellectual
experience. The reconception of his problem, which took place in March,
necessitated a readjustment of his political attitude. He had prepared
his arsenal for the use of a strategy now obviously beside the mark. The
vital part of the first inaugural was its attempt to cut the ground
from under the slave profiteers. Its assertion that nothing else was
important, the idea that the crisis was "artificial," was sincere. Two
discoveries had revolutionized Lincoln's thought. The discovery
that what the South was in earnest about was not slavery but State
sovereignty; the discovery that the North was far from a unit upon
nationalism. To meet the one, to organize the other, was the double task
precipitated by the fall of Sumter. Not only as a line of attack, but
also as a means of defense, Lincoln had to raise to its highest power
the argument for the sovereign reality of the national government. The
effort to do this formed the silent inner experience behind the surging
external events in the stormy months between April and July. It was
governed by a firmness not paralleled in his outward course. As always,
Lincoln the thinker asked no advice. It was Lincoln the administrator,
painfully learning a new trade, who was timid, wavering, pliable in
council. Behind the apprentice in statecraft, the lonely thinker stood
apart, inflexible as ever, impervious to fear. The thinking which
he formulated in the late spring and early summer of 1861 obeyed his
invariable law of mental gradualness. It arose out of the deep places
of his own past. He built up his new conclusion by drawing together
conclusions he had long held, by charging them with his later
experience, by giving to them a new turn, a new significance.