Though, for a brief time while the enthusiasm after Sumter was still at its height they appeared to go along with the all-parties program, they soon revealed their true course. In the autumn of 1861, Lincoln still had sufficient hold upon all factions to make it seem likely that his all-parties program would be given a chance. The Republicans generally made overtures to the Democratic managers, offering to combine in a coalition party with no platform but the support of the war and the restoration of the Union. Here was the test of the organization of the Little Men. The insignificant new managers, intoxicated by the suddenness of their opportunity, rang false. They rejected the all-parties program and insisted on maintaining their separate party formation.(1) This was a turning point in Lincoln's career. Though nearly two years were to pass before he admitted his defeat, the all-parties program was doomed from that hour. Throughout the winter, the Democrats in Congress, though steadily ambiguous in their statements of principle, were as steadily hostile to Lincoln. If they had any settled policy, it was no more than an attempt to hold the balance of power among the warring factions of the Republicans. By springtime the game they were playing was obvious; also its results. They had prevented the President from building up a strong Administration group wherewith he might have counterbalanced the Jacobins. Thus they had released the Jacobins from the one possible restraint that might have kept them from pursuing their own devices.

The spring of 1862 saw a general realignment of factions. It was then that the Congressional Cabal won its first significant triumph. Hitherto, all the Republican platforms had been programs of denial. A brilliant new member of the Senate, john Sherman, bluntly told his colleagues that the Republican party had always stood on the defensive. That was its weakness. "I do not know any measure on which it has taken an aggressive position."(2) The clue to the psychology of the moment was in the raging demand of the masses for a program of assertion, for aggressive measures. The President was trying to meet this demand with his all-parties program, with his policy of nationalism, exclusive of everything else. And recently he had added that other assertion, his insistence that the executive in certain respects was independent of the legislative. Of his three assertions, one, the all-parties program, was already on the way to defeat Another, nationalism, as the President interpreted it, had alienated the Abolitionists. The third, his argument for himself as tribune, was just what your crafty politician might twist, pervert, load with false meanings to his heart's content. Men less astute than Chandler and Wade could not have failed to see where fortune pointed. Their opportunity lay in a combination of the two issues. Abolition and the resistance to executive "usurpation." Their problem was to create an anti-Lincoln party that should also be a war party. Their coalition of aggressive forces must accept the Abolitionists as its backbone, but it must also include all violent elements of whatever persuasion, and especially all those that could be wrought into fury on the theme of the President as a despot. Above all, their coalition must absorb and then express the furious temper so dear to their own hearts which they fondly believed-mistakenly, they were destined to discover-was the temper of the country.

It can not be said that this was the Republican program. The President's program, fully as positive as that of the Cabal, had as good a right to appropriate the party label—as events were to show, a better right. But the power of the Cabal was very great, and the following it was able to command in the country reached almost the proportions of the terrible. A factional name is needed. For the Jacobins, their allies in Congress, their followers in the country, from the time they acquired a positive program, an accurate label is the Vindictives.

During the remainder of the session, Congress may be thought of as having—what Congress seldom has—three definite groups, Right, Left and Center. The Right was the Vindictives; the Left, the irreconcilable Democrats; the Center was composed chiefly of liberal Republicans but included a few Democrats, those who rebelled against the political chicanery of the Little Men.

The policy of the Vindictives was to force upon the Administration the double issue of emancipation and the supremacy of Congress. Therefore, their aim was to pass a bill freeing the slaves on the sole authority of a congressional act. Many resolutions, many bills, all having this end in view, were introduced. Some were buried in committees; some were remade in committees and subjected to long debate by the Houses; now and then one was passed upon. But the spring wore through and the summer came, and still the Vindictives were not certainly in control of Congress. No bill to free slaves by congressional action secured a majority vote. At the same time it was plain that the strength of the Vindictives was slowly, steadily, growing.

Outside Congress, the Abolitionists took new hope. They had organized a systematic propaganda. At Washington, weekly meetings were held in the Smithsonian Institute, where all their most conspicuous leaders, Phillips, Emerson, Brownson, Garret Smith, made addresses. Every Sunday a service was held in the chamber of the House of Representatives and the sermon was almost always a "terrific arrangement of slavery." Their watch-word was "A Free Union or Disintegration." The treatment of fugitive slaves by commanders in the field produced a clamor. Lincoln insisted on strict obedience to the two laws, the Fugitive Slave Act and the First Confiscation Act. Abolitionists sneered at "all this gabble about the sacredness of the Constitution."(3) But Lincoln was not to be moved. When General Hunter, taking a leaf from the book of Fremont, tried to force his hand, he did not hesitate. Hunter had issued a proclamation by which the slaves in the region where he commanded were "declared forever free."

This was in May when Lincoln's difficulties with McClellan were at their height; when the Committee was zealously watching to catch him in any sort of mistake; when the House was within four votes of a majority for emancipation by act of Congress;(4) when there was no certainty whether the country was with him or with the Vindictives. Perhaps that new courage which definitely revealed itself the next month, may be first glimpsed in the proclamation overruling Hunter:

"I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field."(5)

The revocation of Hunter's order infuriated the Abolitionists. It deeply disappointed the growing number who, careless about slavery, wanted emancipation as a war measure, as a blow at the South. Few of either of these groups noticed the implied hint that emancipation might come by executive action. Here was the matter of the war powers in a surprising form. However, it was not unknown to Congress. Attempts had been made to induce Congress to concede the war powers to the President and to ask, not command, him to use them for the liberation of slaves in the Seceded States. Long before, in a strangely different connection, such vehement Abolitionists as Giddings and J. Q. Adams had pictured the freeing of slaves as a natural incident of military occupation.

What induced Lincoln to throw out this hint of a possible surrender on the subject of emancipation? Again, as so often, the silence as to his motives is unbroken. However, there can be no doubt that his thinking on the subject passed through several successive stages. But all his thinking was ruled by one idea. Any policy he might accept, or any refusal of policy, would be judged in his own mind by the degree to which it helped, or hindered, the national cause. Nothing was more absurd than the sneer of the Abolitionists that he was "tender" of slavery. Browning spoke for him faithfully, "If slavery can survive the shock of war and secession, be it so. If in the conflict for liberty, the Constitution and the Union, it must necessarily perish, then let it perish." Browning refused to predict which alternative would develop. His point was that slaves must be treated like other property. But, if need be, he would sacrifice slavery as he would sacrifice anything else, to save the Union. He had no intention to "protect" slavery.(6)

In the first stage of Lincoln's thinking on this thorny subject, his chief anxiety was to avoid scaring off from the national cause those Southern Unionists who were not prepared to abandon slavery. This was the motive behind his prompt suppression of Fremont. It was this that inspired the Abolitionist sneer about his relative attitude toward God and Kentucky. As a compromise, to cut the ground from under the Vindictives, he had urged the loyal Slave States to endorse a program of compensated emancipation. But these States were as unable to see the handwriting on the wall as were the Little Men. In the same proclamation that overruled Hunter, while hinting at what the Administration might feel driven to do, Lincoln appealed again to the loyal Slave States to accept compensated emancipation. "I do not argue," said he, "I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. You can not, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. . . . This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything."(7)

Though Lincoln, at this moment, was anxiously watching the movement in Congress to force his hand, he was not apparently cast down. He was emerging from his eclipse. June was approaching and with it the final dawn. Furthermore, when he issued this proclamation on May nineteenth, he had not lost faith in McClellan. He was still hoping for news of a crushing victory; of McClellan's triumphal entry into Richmond. The next two months embraced both those transformations which together revolutionized his position. He emerged from his last eclipse; and McClellan failed him.

When Lincoln returned to Washington after his two days at the front, he knew that the fortunes of his Administration were at a low ebb. Never had he been derided in Congress with more brazen injustice. The Committee, waiting only for McClellan's failure, would now unmask their guns-as Chandler did, seven days later. The line of Vindictive criticism could easily be foreshadowed: the government had failed; it was responsible for a colossal military catastrophe; but what could you expect of an Administration that would not strike its enemies through emancipation; what a shattering demonstration that the Executive was not a safe repository of the war powers.

Was there any way to forestall or disarm the Vindictives? His silence gives us no clue when or how the answer occurred to him—by separating the two issues; by carrying out the hint in the May proclamation; by yielding on emancipation while, in the very act, pushing the war powers of the President to their limit, declaring slaves free by an executive order.

The importance of preserving the war power of the President had become a fixed condition of Lincoln's thought. Already, he was looking forward not only to victory but to the great task that should come after victory. He was determined, if it were humanly possible, to keep that task in the hands of the President, and out of the hands of Congress. A first step had already been taken. In portions of occupied territory, military governors had been appointed. Simple as this seemed to the careless observer, it focussed the whole issue. The powerful, legal mind of Sumner at once perceived its significance. He denied in the Senate the right of the President to make such appointments; he besought the Senate to demand the cancellation of such appointment. He reasserted the absolute sovereignty of Congress.(8) It would be a far-reaching stroke if Lincoln, in any way, could extort from Congress acquiescence in his use of the war powers on a vast scale. Freeing the slaves by executive order would be such a use.

Another train of thought also pointed to the same result. Lincoln's desire to further the cause of "the Liberal party throughout the world," that desire which dated back to his early life as a politician, had suffered a disappointment. European Liberals, whose political vision was less analytical than his, had failed to understand his policy. The Confederate authorities had been quick to publish in Europe his official pronouncements that the war had been undertaken not to abolish slavery but to preserve the Union. As far back as September, 1861, Carl Schurz wrote from Spain to Seward that the Liberals abroad were disappointed, that "the impression gained ground that the war as waged by the Federal government, far from being a war of principle, was merely a war of policy," and "that from this point of view much might be said for the South."(9) In fact, these hasty Europeans had found a definite ground for complaining that the American war was a reactionary influence. The concentration of American cruisers in the Southern blockade gave the African slave trade its last lease of life. With no American war-ship among the West Indies, the American flag became the safeguard of the slaver. Englishmen complained that "the swift ships crammed with their human cargoes" had only to "hoist the Stars and Stripes and pass under the bows of our cruisers."(10) Though Seward scored a point by his treaty giving British cruisers the right to search any ships carrying the American flag, the distrust of the foreign Liberals was not removed. They inclined to stand aside and to allow the commercial classes of France and England to dictate policy toward the United States. The blockade, by shutting off the European supply of raw cotton, on both sides the channel, was the cause of measureless unemployment, of intolerable misery. There was talk in both countries of intervention. Napoleon, especially, loomed large on the horizon as a possible ally of the Confederacy. And yet, all this while, Lincoln had it in his power at any minute to lay the specter of foreign intervention. A pledge to the "Liberal party throughout the world" that the war would bring about the destruction of slavery, and great political powers both in England and in France would at once cross the paths of their governments should they move toward intervention. Weighty as were all these reasons for a change of policy—turning the flank of the Vindictives on the war powers, committing the Abolitionists to the Administration, winning over the European Liberals—there was a fourth reason which, very probably, weighed upon Lincoln most powerfully of them all. Profound gloom had settled upon the country. There was no enthusiasm for military service. And Stanton, who lacked entirely the psychologic vision of the statesman, had recently committed an astounding blunder. After a few months in power he had concluded that the government had enough soldiers and had closed the recruiting offices.(11) Why Lincoln permitted this singular proceeding has never been satisfactorily explained.* Now he was reaping the fruits. A defeated army, a hopeless country, and no prospect of swift reinforcement! If a shift of ground on the question of emancipation would arouse new enthusiasm, bring in a new stream of recruits, Lincoln was prepared to shift.

*Stanton's motive was probably economy. Congress was terrified by the expense of the war. The Committee was deeply alarmed over the political effect of war taxation. They and Stanton were all convinced that McClellan was amply strong enough to crush the Confederacy.

But even in this dire extremity, he would not give way without a last attempt to save his earlier policy. On July twelfth, he called together the Senators and Representatives of the Border States. He read to them a written argument in favor of compensated emancipation, the Federal government to assist the States in providing funds for the purpose.

"Let the States that are in rebellion," said he, "see definitely and certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed Confederacy, and they can not much longer maintain the contest. But you can not divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own States. . . . If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion—by the mere incidents of war. . . . Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved its form of government is saved to the world, its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand."(12)

He made no impression. They would commit themselves to nothing. Lincoln abandoned his earlier policy.

Of what happened next, he said later, "It had got to be. . . . Things had gone on from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy. . . "(13)

The next day he confided his decision and his reasons to Seward and Welles. Though "this was a new departure for the President," both these Ministers agreed with him that the change of policy had become inevitable.(14)

Lincoln was now entirely himself, astute in action as well as bold in thought. He would not disclose his change of policy while Congress was in session. Should he do so, there was no telling what attempt the Cabal would make to pervert his intention, to twist his course into the semblance of an acceptance of the congressional theory. He laid the matter aside until Congress should be temporarily out of the way, until the long recess between July and December should have begun. In this closing moment of the second session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, which is also the opening moment of the great period of Lincoln, the feeling against him in Congress was extravagantly bitter. It caught at anything with which to make a point. A disregard of technicalities of procedure was magnified into a serious breach of constitutional privilege. Reviving the question of compensated emancipation, Lincoln had sent a special message to both Houses, submitting the text of a compensation bill which he urged them to consider. His enemies raised an uproar. The President had no right to introduce a bill into Congress! Dictator Lincoln was trying in a new way to put Congress under his thumb.(15)

In the last week of the session, Lincoln's new boldness brought the old relation between himself and Congress to a dramatic close. The Second Confiscation Bill had long been under discussion. Lincoln believed that some of its provisions were inconsistent with the spirit at least of our fundamental law. Though its passage was certain, he prepared a veto message. He then permitted the congressional leaders to know what he intended to do when the bill should reach him. Gall and wormwood are weak terms for the bitterness that may be tasted in the speeches of the Vindictives. When, in order to save the bill, a resolution was appended purging it of the interpretation which Lincoln condemned, Trumbull passionately declared that Congress was being "coerced" by the President. "No one at a distance," is the deliberate conclusion of Julian who was present, "could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of the Republican members toward Lincoln at the final adjournment, while it was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here."(16)

Lincoln endured the rage of Congress in unwavering serenity. On the last day of the session, Congress surrendered and sent to him both the Confiscation Act and the explanatory resolution. Thereupon, he indulged in what must have seemed to those fierce hysterical enemies of his a wanton stroke of irony. He sent them along with his approval of the bill the text of the veto message he would have sent had they refused to do what he wanted.(17) There could be no concealing the fact that the President had matched his will against the will of Congress, and that the President had had his way.

Out of this strange period of intolerable confusion, a gigantic figure had at last emerged. The outer and the inner Lincoln had fused. He was now a coherent personality, masterful in spite of his gentleness, with his own peculiar fashion of self-reliance, having a policy of his own devising, his colors nailed upon the masthead.



XXIII. THE MYSTICAL STATESMAN

Lincoln's final emergence was a deeper thing than merely the consolidation of a character, the transformation of a dreamer into a man of action. The fusion of the outer and the inner person was the result of a profound interior change. Those elements of mysticism which were in him from the first, which had gleamed darkly through such deep overshadowing, were at last established in their permanent form. The political tension had been matched by a spiritual tension with personal sorrow as the connecting link. In a word, he had found his religion.

Lincoln's instinctive reticence was especially guarded, as any one might expect, in the matter of his belief. Consequently, the precise nature of it has been much discussed. As we have seen, the earliest current report charged him with deism. The devoted Herndon, himself an agnostic, eagerly claims his hero as a member of the noble army of doubters. Elaborate arguments have been devised in rebuttal. The fault on both sides is in the attempt to base an impression on detached remarks and in the further error of treating all these fragments as of one time, or more truly, as of no time, as if his soul were a philosopher of the absolute, speaking oracularly out of a void. It is like the vicious reasoning that tortures systems of theology out of disconnected texts.

Lincoln's religious life reveals the same general divisions that are to be found in his active life: from the beginning to about the time of his election; from the close of 1860 to the middle of 1862; the remainder.

Of his religious experience in the first period, very little is definitely known. What glimpses we have of it both fulfill and contradict the forest religion that was about him in his youth. The superstition, the faith in dreams, the dim sense of another world surrounding this, the belief in communion between the two, these are the parts of him that are based unchangeably in the forest shadows. But those other things, the spiritual passions, the ecstacies, the vague sensing of the terribleness of the creative powers,—to them always he made no response. And the crude philosophizing of the forest theologians, their fiercely simple dualism—God and Satan, thunder and lightning, the eternal war in the heavens, the eternal lake of fire—it meant nothing to him. Like all the furious things of life, evil appeared to him as mere negation, a mysterious foolishness he could not explain. His aim was to forget it. Goodness and pity were the active elements that roused him to think of the other world; especially pity. The burden of men's tears, falling ever in the shadows at the backs of things—this was the spiritual horizon from which he could not escape. Out of the circle of that horizon he had to rise by spiritual apprehension in order to be consoled. And there is no reason to doubt that at times, if not invariably, in his early days, he did rise; he found consolation. But it was all without form. It was a sentiment, a mood,—philosophically bodiless. This indefinite mysticism was the real heart of the forest world, closer than hands or feet, but elusive, incapable of formulation, a presence, not an idea. Before the task of expressing it, the forest mystic stood helpless. Just what it was that he felt impinging upon him from every side he did not know. He was like a sensitive man, neither scientist nor poet, in the midst of a night of stars. The reality of his experience gave him no power either to explain or to state it.

There is little reason to suppose that Lincoln's religious experience previous to 1860 was more than a recurrent visitor in his daily life. He has said as much himself. He told his friend Noah Brooks "he did not remember any precise time when he passed through any special change of purpose, or of heart, but he would say that his own election to office and the crisis immediately following, influentially determined him in what he called 'a process of crystallization' then going on in his mind."(1)

It was the terrible sense of need—the humility, the fear that he might not be equal to the occasion—that searched his soul, that bred in him the craving for a spiritual up-holding which should be constant. And at this crucial moment came the death of his favorite son. "In the lonely grave of the little one lay buried Mr. Lincoln's fondest hopes, and strong as he was in the matter of self-control, he gave way to an overmastering grief which became at length a serious menace to his health."(2) Though firsthand accounts differ as to just how he struggled forth out of this darkness, all agree that the ordeal was very severe. Tradition makes the crisis a visit from the Reverend Francis Vinton, rector of Trinity Church, New York, and his eloquent assertion of the faith in immortality, his appeal to Lincoln to remember the sorrow of Jacob over the loss of Joseph, and to rise by faith out of his own sorrow even as the patriarch rose.(3)

Although Lincoln succeeded in putting his grief behind him, he never forgot it. Long afterward, he called the attention of Colonel Cannon to the lines in King John:

"And Father Cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven; If that be true, I shall see my boy again."

"Colonel," said he, "did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad consciousness that it was not a reality? Just so, I dream of my boy, Willie." And he bent his head and burst into tears.(4)

As he rose in the sphere of statecraft with such apparent suddenness out of the doubt, hesitation, self-distrust of the spring of 1862 and in the summer found himself politically, so at the same time he found himself religiously. During his later life though the evidences are slight, they are convincing. And again, as always, it is not a violent change that takes place, but merely a better harmonization of the outer and less significant part of him with the inner and more significant. His religion continues to resist intellectual formulation. He never accepted any definite creed. To the problems of theology, he applied the same sort of reasoning that he applied to the problems of the law. He made a distinction, satisfactory to himself at least, between the essential and the incidental, and rejected everything that did not seem to him altogether essential.

In another negative way his basal part asserted itself. Just as in all his official relations he was careless of ritual, so in religion he was not drawn to its ritualistic forms. Again, the forest temper surviving, changed, into such different conditions! Real and subtle as is the ritualistic element, not only in religion but in life generally, one may doubt whether it counts for much among those who have been formed mainly by the influences of nature. It implies more distance between the emotion and its source, more need of stimulus to arouse and organize emotion, than the children of the forest are apt to be aware of. To invoke a philosophical distinction, illumination rather than ritualism, the tense but variable concentration on a result, not the ordered mode of an approach, is what distinguishes such characters as Lincoln. It was this that made him careless &f form in all the departments of life. It was one reason why McClellan, born ritualist of the pomp of war, could never overcome a certain dislike, or at least a doubt, of him.

Putting together his habit of thinking only in essentials and his predisposition to neglect form, it is not strange that he said: "I have never united myself to any church because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith. When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both Law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart and with all my soul."(5)

But it must not be supposed that his religion was mere ethics. It had three cardinal possessions. The sense of God is through all his later life. It appears incidentally in his state papers, clothed with language which, in so deeply sincere a man, must be taken literally. He believed in prayer, in the reality of communion with the Divine. His third article was immortality.

At Washington, Lincoln was a regular attendant, though not a communicant, of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. With the Pastor, the Reverend P. D. Gurley, he formed a close friendship. Many hours they passed in intimate talk upon religious subjects, especially upon the question of immortality.(6) To another pious visitor he said earnestly, "I hope I am a Christian."(7) Could anything but the most secure faith have written this "Meditation on the Divine Will" which he set down in the autumn of 1862 for no eye but his own: "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."(8)

His religion flowered in his later temper. It did not, to be sure, overcome his melancholy. That was too deeply laid. Furthermore, we fail to discover in the surviving evidences any certainty that it was a glad phase of religion. Neither the ecstatic joy of the wild women, which his mother had; nor the placid joy of the ritualist, which he did not understand; nor those other variants of the joy of faith, were included in his portion. It was a lofty but grave religion that matured in his final stage. Was it due to far-away Puritan ancestors? Had austere, reticent Iron-sides, sure of the Lord, but taking no liberties with their souls, at last found out their descendant? It may be. Cromwell, in some ways, was undeniably his spiritual kinsman. In both, the same aloofness of soul, the same indifference to the judgments of the world, the same courage, the same fatalism, the same encompassment by the shadow of the Most High. Cromwell, in his best mood, had he been gifted with Lincoln's literary power, could have written the Fast Day Proclamation of 1863 which is Lincoln's most distinctive religious fragment.

However, Lincoln's gloom had in it a correcting element which the old Puritan gloom appears to have lacked. It placed no veto upon mirth. Rather, it valued mirth as its only redeemer. And Lincoln's growth in the religious sense was not the cause of any diminution of his surface hilarity. He saved himself from what otherwise would have been intolerable melancholy by seizing, regardless of the connection, anything whatsoever that savored of the comic.

His religious security did not destroy his superstition. He continued to believe that he would die violently at the end of his career as President. But he carried that belief almost with gaiety. He refused to take precautions for his safety. Long lonely rides in the dead of night; night walks with a single companion, were constant anxieties to his intimates. To the President, their fears were childish. Although in the sensibilities he could suffer all he had ever suffered, and more; in the mind he had attained that high serenity in which there can be no flagging of effort because of the conviction that God has decreed one's work; no failure of confidence because of the twin conviction that somehow, somewhere, all things work together for good. "I am glad of this interview," he said in reply to a deputation of visitors, in September, 1862, "and glad to know that I have your sympathy and your prayers. . I happened to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purpose. . . . I have sought His aid; but if after endeavoring to do my best in the light He affords me, I find my efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me He wills it otherwise. If I had my way, this war would never have commenced. If I had been allowed my way, this war would have been ended before this; but it still continues and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of His own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we can not but believe that He who made the world still governs it."(9)



XXIV. GAMBLING IN GENERALS

On July 22, 1862, there was a meeting of the Cabinet. The sessions of Lincoln's Council were the last word for informality. The President and the Ministers interspersed their great affairs with mere talk, story-telling, gossip. With one exception they were all lovers of their own voices, especially in the telling of tales. Stanton was the exception. Gloomy, often in ill-health, innocent of humor, he glowered when the others laughed. When the President, instead of proceeding at once to business, would pull out of his pocket the latest volume of Artemus Ward, the irate War Minister felt that the overthrow of the nation was impending. But in this respect, the President was incorrigible. He had been known to stop the line of his guests at a public levee, while he talked for some five minutes in a whisper to an important personage; and though all the room thought that jupiter was imparting state secrets, in point of fact, he was making sure of a good story the great man had told him a few days previous.(1) His Cabinet meetings were equally careless of social form. The Reverend Robert Collyer was witness to this fact in a curious way. Strolling through the White House grounds, "his attention was suddenly arrested by the apparition of three pairs of feet resting on the ledge of an open window in one of the apartments of the second story and plainly visible from below." He asked a gardener for an explanation. The brusk reply was: "Why, you old fool, that's the Cabinet that is a-settin', and them thar big feet are ole Abe's."(2)

When the Ministers assembled on July twenty-second they had no intimation that this was to be a record session. Imagine the astonishment when, in his usual casual way, though with none of that hesitancy to which they had grown accustomed, Lincoln announced his new policy, adding that he "wished it understood that the question was settled in his own mind; that he had decreed emancipation in a certain contingency and the responsibility of the measure was his."(3) President and Cabinet talked it over in their customary offhand way, and Seward made a suggestion that instantly riveted Lincoln's attention. Seward thought the moment was ill-chosen. "If the Proclamation were issued now, it would be received and considered as a despairing cry—a shriek from and for the Administration, rather than for freedom."(4) He added the picturesque phrase, "The government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government." This idea struck Lincoln with very great force. It was an aspect of the case "which he had entirely overlooked."(5) He accepted Seward's advice, laid aside the proclamation he had drafted and turned again with all his energies to the organization of victory.

The next day Halleck arrived at Washington. He was one of Lincoln's mistakes. However, in his new mood, Lincoln was resolved to act on his own opinion of the evidence before him, especially in estimating men. It is just possible that this epoch of his audacities began in a reaction; that after too much self-distrust, he went briefly to the other extreme, indulging in too much self-confidence. Be that as it may, he had formed exaggerated opinions of both these Western generals, Halleck and Pope. Somehow, in the brilliant actions along the Mississippi they had absorbed far more than their fair share of credit. Particularly, Lincoln went astray with regard to Pope. Doubtless a main reason why he accepted the plan of campaign suggested by Halleck was the opportunity which it offered to Pope. Perhaps, too, the fatality in McClellan's character turned the scale. He begged to be left where he was with his base on James River, and to be allowed to renew the attack on Richmond.1 But he did not take the initiative. The government must swiftly hurry up reinforcements, and then—the old, old story! Obviously, it was a question at Washington either of superseding McClellan and leaving the army where it was, or of shifting the army to some other commander without in so many words disgracing McClellan. Halleck's approval of the latter course jumped with two of Lincoln's impulses—his trust in Pope, his reluctance to disgrace McClellan. Orders were issued transferring the bulk of the army of the Potomac to the new army of Virginia lying south of Washington under the command of Pope. McClellan was instructed to withdraw his remaining forces from the Peninsula and retrace his course up the Potomac.(6)

Lincoln had committed one of his worst blunders. Herndon has a curious, rather subtle theory that while Lincoln's judgments of men in the aggregate were uncannily sure, his judgments of men individually were unreliable. It suggests the famous remark of Goethe that his views of women did not derive from experience; that they antedated experience; and that he corrected experience by them. Of the confessed artist this may be true. The literary concept which the artist works with is often, apparently, a more constant, more fundamental, more significant thing, than is the broken, mixed, inconsequential impression out of which it has been wrought. Which seems to explain why some of the writers who understand human nature so well in their books, do not always understand people similarly well in life. And always it is to be remembered that Lincoln was made an artist by nature, and made over into a man of action by circumstance. If Herndon's theory has any value it is in asserting his occasional danger—by no means a constant danger—of forming in his mind images of men that were more significant than it was possible for the men themselves to be. John Pope was perhaps his worst instance. An incompetent general, he was capable of things still less excusable. Just after McClellan had so tragically failed in the Seven Days, when Lincoln was at the front, Pope was busy with the Committee, assuring them virtually that the war had been won in the West, and that only McClellan's bungling had saved the Confederacy from speedy death.(7) But somehow Lincoln trusted him, and continued to trust him even after he had proved his incompetency in the catastrophe at Manassas.

During August, Pope marched gaily southward issuing orders that were shot through with bad rhetoric, mixing up army routine and such irrelevant matters as "the first blush of dawn."

Lincoln was confident of victory. And after victory would come the new policy, the dissipation of the European storm-cloud, the break-up of the vindictive coalition of Jacobins and Abolitionists, the new enthusiasm for the war. But of all this, the incensed Abolitionists received no hint. The country rang with their denunciations of the President. At length, Greeley printed in The Tribune an open letter called "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It was an arraignment of what Greeley chose to regard as the pro-slavery policy of the Administration. This was on August twentieth. Lincoln, in high hope that a victory was at hand, seized the opportunity both to hint to the country that he was about to change his policy, and to state unconditionally his reason for changing. He replied to Greeley through the newspapers:

"As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have meant to leave no one in doubt.

"I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was' If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some of the slaves and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it will help to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing hurts the cause; and I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the cause."(8) The effect of this on the Abolitionists was only to increase their rage. The President was compared to Douglas with his indifference whether slavery was voted "up or down."(9) Lincoln, now so firmly hopeful, turned a deaf ear to these railing accusations. He was intent upon watching the army. It was probably at this time that he reached an unfortunate conclusion with regard to McClellan. The transfer of forces from the James River to northern Virginia had proceeded slowly. It gave rise to a new controversy, a new crop of charges. McClellan was accused of being dilatory on purpose, of aiming to cause the failure of Pope. Lincoln accepted, at last, the worst view of him. He told Hay that "it really seemed that McClellan wanted Pope defeated. . . . The President seemed to think him a little crazy."(10)

But still the confidence in Pope, marching so blithely through "the blush of dawn," stood fast. If ever an Administration was in a fool's paradise, it was Lincoln's, in the last few days of August, while Jackson was stealthily carrying out his great flanking movement getting between Pope and Washington. However, the Suspicious Stanton kept his eyes on McClellan. He decided that troops were being held back from Pope; and he appealed to other members of the Cabinet to join with him in a formal demand upon the President for McClellan's dismissal from the army. While the plan was being discussed, came the appalling news of Pope's downfall.

The meeting of the Cabinet, September second, was another revelation of the new independence of the President. Three full days had passed since Pope had telegraphed that the battle was lost and that he no longer had control of his army. The Ministers, awaiting the arrival of the President, talked excitedly, speculating what would happen next. "It was stated," says Welles in his diary, "that Pope was falling back, intending to retreat within the Washington entrenchments, Blair, who has known him intimately, says he is a braggart and a liar, with some courage, perhaps, but not much capacity. The general conviction is that he is a failure here, and there is a belief . . . that he has not been seconded and sustained as he should have been by McClellan . . ." Stanton entered; terribly agitated. He had news that fell upon the Cabinet like a bombshell. He said "in a suppressed voice, trembling with excitement, he was informed that McClellan had been ordered to take command of the forces in Washington."

Never was there a more tense moment in the Cabinet room than when Lincoln entered that day. And all could see that he was in deep distress. But he confirmed Stanton's information. That very morning he had gone himself to McClellan's house and had asked him to resume command. Lincoln discussed McClellan with the Cabinet quite simply, admitting all his bad qualities, but finding two points in his favor—his power of organization, and his popularity with the men.(11)

He was still more frank with his Secretaries. "'He has acted badly in this matter,' Lincoln said to Hay, 'but we must use what tools we have. There is no man in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops of ours into shape half as well as he.' I spoke of the general feeling against McClellan as evinced by the President's mail. He rejoined: 'Unquestionably, he has acted badly toward Pope; he wanted him to fail. That is unpardonable, but he is too useful now to sacrifice.'"(12) At another time, he said: "'If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.'"(13)

McClellan justified Lincoln's confidence. In this case, Herndon's theory of Lincoln's powers of judgment does not apply. Though probably unfair on the one point of McClellan's attitude to Pope, he knew his man otherwise. Lincoln had also discovered that Halleck, the veriest martinet of a general, was of little value at a crisis. During the next two months, McClellan, under the direct oversight of the President, was the organizer of victory.

Toward the middle of September, when Lee and McClellan were gradually converging upon the fated line of Antietam Creek, Lincoln's new firmness was put to the test. The immediate effect of Manassas was another, a still more vehement outcry for an anti-slavery policy. A deputation of Chicago clergymen went to Washington for the purpose of urging him to make an anti-slavery pronouncement. The journey was a continuous ovation. If at any time Lincoln was tempted to forget Seward's worldly wisdom, it was when these influential zealots demanded of him to do the very thing he intended to do. But it was one of the characteristics of this final Lincoln that when once he had fully determined on a course of action, nothing could deflect him. With consummate coolness he gave them no new light on his purpose. Instead, he seized the opportunity to "feel" the country. He played the role of advocate arguing the case against an emancipation policy.(14) They met his argument with great Spirit and resolution. Taking them as an index, there could be little question that the country was ripe for the new policy. At the close of the interview Lincoln allowed himself to jest. One of the clergymen dramatically charged him to give heed to their message as to a direct commission from the Almighty. "Is it not odd," said Lincoln, "that the only channel he could send it was that roundabout route by the awfully wicked city of Chicago?"*

* Reminiscences, 335. This retort is given by Schuyler Colfax. There are various reports of what Lincoln said. In another version, "I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal His will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me." Tarbell, II, 12.

Lincoln's pertinacity, holding fast the program he had accepted, came to its reward. On the seventeenth occurred that furious carnage along the Antietam known as the bloodiest single day of the whole war. Military men have disagreed, calling it sometimes a victory, sometimes a drawn battle. In Lincoln's political strategy the dispute is immaterial. Psychologically, it was a Northern victory. The retreat of Lee was regarded by the North as the turn of the tide. Lincoln's opportunity had arrived.

Again, a unique event occurred in a Cabinet meeting. On the twenty-second of September, with the cannon of Antietam still ringing in their imagination, the Ministers were asked by the President whether they had seen the new volume just published by Artemus Ward. As they had not, he produced it and read aloud with evident relish one of those bits of nonsense which, in the age of Dickens, seemed funny enough. Most of the Cabinet joined in the merriment—Stanton, of course, as always, excepted. Lincoln closed the book, pulled himself together, and became serious.

"Gentlemen," said he, according to the diary of Secretary Chase, "I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery; and you all remember that several weeks ago I read you an order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the Rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland; and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the Rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little) to my Maker. The Rebel army is now driven out and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This, I say without intending anything but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and as carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. . . . I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take."(15) The next day the Proclamation was published.

This famous document (16) is as remarkable for the parts of it that are now forgotten as for the rest. The remembered portion is a warning that on the first of January, one hundred days subsequent to the date of the Proclamation—"all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The forgotten portions include four other declarations of executive policy. Lincoln promised that "the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who have remained loyal thereto shall be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves." He announced that he would again urge upon Congress "the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid" to all the loyal Slave States that would "voluntarily adopt immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their limits." He would continue to advise the colonization of free Africans abroad. There is still to be mentioned a detail of the Proclamation which, except for its historical setting in the general perspective of Lincoln's political strategy, would appear inexplicable. One might expect in the opening statement, where the author of the Proclamation boldly assumes dictatorial power, an immediate linking of that assumption with the matter in hand. But this does not happen. The Proclamation begins with the following paragraph:

"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and each of the States and the people thereof in which States that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed."



XXV. A WAR BEHIND THE SCENES

By the autumn of 1862, Lincoln had acquired the same political method that Seward had displayed in the spring of 1861. What a chasm separates the two Lincolns! The cautious, contradictory, almost timid statesman of the Sumter episode; the confident, unified, quietly masterful statesman of the Emancipation Proclamation. Now, in action, he was capable of staking his whole future on the soundness of his own thinking, on his own ability to forecast the inevitable. Without waiting for the results of the Proclamation to appear, but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists, he threw down the gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship. Two days after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator. He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The occasion was the effort of State governments to establish conscription of their militia. The Proclamation delivered any one impeding that attempt into the hands of the military authorities without trial.

Here was Lincoln's final answer to Stevens; here, his audacious challenge to the Jacobins. And now appeared the wisdom of his political strategy, holding back emancipation until Congress was out of the way. Had Congress been in session what a hubbub would have ensued! Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, Sumner, Stevens, all hurrying to join issue on the dictatorship; to get it before the country ahead of emancipation. Rather, one can not imagine Lincoln daring to play this second card, so soon after the first, except with abundant time for the two issues to disentangle themselves in the public mind ere Congress met. And that was what happened. When the Houses met in December, the Jacobins found their position revolutionized. The men who, in July at the head of the Vindictive coalition, dominated Congress, were now a minority faction biting their nails at the President amid the ruins of their coalition.

There were three reasons for this collapse. First of all, the Abolitionists, for the moment, were a faction by themselves. Six weeks had sufficed to intoxicate them with their opportunity. The significance of the Proclamation had had time to arise towering on their spiritual vision, one of the gates of the New Jerusalem.

Limited as it was in application who could doubt that, with one condition, it doomed slavery everywhere. The condition was a successful prosecution of the war, the restoration of the Union. Consequently, at that moment, nothing that made issue with the President, that threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support. The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President's mood, a possible recantation on January first. In order to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, or about questions of party leadership. Away with all your "gabble" about such small things! The Jacobins saw the moving hand—at least for this moment—in the crumbling wall of the palace of their delusion.

Many men who were not Abolitionists perceived, before Congress met, that Lincoln had made a great stroke internationally. The "Liberal party throughout the world" gave a cry of delight, and rose instantly to his support. John Bright declared that the Emancipation Proclamation "made it impossible for England to intervene for the South" and derided "the silly proposition of the French Emperor looking toward intervention."(1) Bright's closest friend in America was Sumner and Sumner was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He understood the value of international sentiment, its working importance, as good provincials like Chandler did not. Furthermore, he was always an Abolitionist first and a Jacobin second—if at all. From this time forward, the Jacobins were never able to count on him, not even when they rebuilt the Vindictive Coalition a year and a half later. In December, 1862, how did they dare—true blue politicians that they were—how did they dare raise a constitutional issue involving the right of the President to capture, in the way he had, international security?

The crowning irony in the new situation of the Jacobins was the revelation that they had played unwittingly into the hands of the Democrats. Their short-sighted astuteness in tying up emancipation with the war powers was matched by an equal astuteness equally short-sighted. The organization of the Little Men, when it refused to endorse Lincoln's all-parties program, had found itself in the absurd position of a party without an issue. It contained, to be sure, a large proportion of the Northerners who were opposed to emancipation. But how could it make an issue upon emancipation, as long as the President, the object of its antagonism, also refused to support emancipation? The sole argument in the Cabinet against Lincoln's new policy was that it would give the Democrats an issue. Shrewd Montgomery Blair prophesied that on this issue they could carry the autumn elections for Congress. Lincoln had replied that he would take the risk. He presented them with the issue. They promptly accepted it But they did not stop there. They aimed to take over the whole of the position that had been vacated by the collapse of the Vindictive Coalition. By an adroit bit of political legerdemain they would steal their enemies' thunder, reunite the emancipation issue with the issue of the war powers, reverse the significance of the conjunction, and, armed with this double club, they would advance from a new and unexpected angle and win the leadership of the country by overthrowing the dictator. And this, they came very near doing. On their double issue they rallied enough support to increase their number in Congress by thirty-three. Had not the moment been so tragic, nothing could have been more amusing than the helpless wrath of the Jacobins caught in their own trap, compelled to gnaw their tongues in silence, while the Democrats, paraphrasing their own arguments, hurled defiant at Lincoln.

Men of intellectual courage might have broken their party ranks, daringly applied Lincoln's own maxim "stand with any one who stands right," and momentarily joined the Democrats in their battle against the two proclamations. But in American politics, with a few glorious exceptions, courage of this sort has never been the order of the day. The Jacobins kept their party line; bowed their heads to the storm; and bided their time. In the Senate, an indiscreet resolution commending the Emancipation Proclamation was ordered to be printed, and laid on the table.(2) In the House, party exigencies were more exacting. Despite the Democratic successes, the Republicans still had a majority. When the Democrats made the repudiation of the President a party issue, arguing on those very grounds that had aroused the eloquence of Stevens and the rest—why, what's the Constitution between friends! Or between political enemies? The Democrats forced all the Republicans into one boat by introducing a resolution "That the policy of emancipation as indicated in that Proclamation is an assumption of powers dangerous to the rights of citizens and to the perpetuity of a free people." The resolution was rejected. Among those who voted NO was Stevens.(3) Indeed, the star of the Jacobins was far down on the horizon.

But the Jacobins were not the men to give up the game until they were certainly in the last ditch. Though their issues had been slipped out of their hands; though for the moment at least, it was not good policy to fight the President on a principle; it might still be possible to recover their prestige on some other contention. The first of January was approaching. The final proclamation of emancipation would bring to an end the temporary alliance of the Administration and the Abolitionists. Who could say what new pattern of affairs the political kaleidoscope might not soon reveal? Surely the Jacobin cue was to busy themselves, straightway, making trouble for the President. Principles being unavailable, practices might do. And who was satisfied with the way the war was going? To rouse the party against the Administration on the ground of inefficient practices, of unsatisfactory military progress, might be the first step toward regaining their former dominance.

There was a feather in the wind that gave them hope. The ominous first paragraph of the Emancipation Proclamation was evidence that the President was still stubbornly for his own policy; that he had not surrendered to the opposite view. But this was not their only strategic hope. Lincoln's dealings with the army between September and December might, especially if anything in his course proved to be mistaken, deliver him into their hands.

Following Antietam, Lincoln had urged upon McClellan swift pursuit of Lee. His despatches were strikingly different from those of the preceding spring. That half apologetic tone had disappeared. Though they did not command, they gave advice freely. The tone was at least that of an equal who, while not an authority in this particular matter, is entitled to express his views and to have them taken seriously.

"You remember my speaking to you of what I called your overcautiousness? Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess and act upon that claim . . . one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is to operate upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing your own. You seem to act as if this applies against you, but can not apply in your favor. Change positions with the enemy and think you not he would break your communications with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours. . . .

"If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications. If he should prevent your seizing his communications and move toward Richmond; I would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say 'try'; if we never try we shall never succeed. . . . We should not operate so as to merely drive him away. . . . This letter is in no sense an order."(4)

But once more the destiny that is in character intervened, and McClellan's tragedy reached its climax. His dread of failure hypnotized his will. So cautious were his movements that Lee regained Virginia with his army intact. Lincoln was angry. Military amateur though he was, he had filled his spare time reading books on strategy, Von Clausewitz and the rest, and he had grasped the idea that war's aim is not to win technical victories, nor to take cities, but to destroy armies. He felt that McClellan had thrown away an opportunity of first magnitude. He removed him from command.(5)

This was six weeks after the two proclamations. The country was ringing with Abolition plaudits. The election had given the Democrats a new lease of life. The anti-Lincoln Republicans were silent while their party enemies with their stolen thunder rang the changes on the presidential abuse of the war powers. It was a moment of crisis in party politics. Where did the President stand? What was the outlook for those men who in the words of Senator Wilson "would rather give a policy to the President of the United States than take a policy from the President of the United States."

Lincoln's situation was a close parallel to the situation of July, 1861, when McDowell failed. Just as in choosing a successor to McDowell, he revealed a political attitude, now, he would again make a revelation choosing a successor to McClellan. By passing over Fremont and by elevating a Democrat, he had spoken to the furious politicians in the language they understood. Whatever appointment he now made would be interpreted by those same politicians in the same way. In the atmosphere of that time, there was but one way for Lincoln to rank himself as a strict party man, to recant his earlier heresy of presidential independence, and say to the Jacobins, "I am with you." He must appoint a Republican to succeed McClellan. Let him do that and the Congressional Cabal would forgive him. But he did not do it. He swept political considerations aside and made a purely military appointment Burnside, on whom he fixed, was the friend and admirer of McClellan and might fairly be considered next to him in prestige. He was loved by his troops. In the eyes of the army, his elevation represented "a legitimate succession rather than the usurpation of a successful rival."(6) He was modest. He did not want promotion. Nevertheless, Lincoln forced him to take McClellan's place against his will, in spite of his protest that he had not the ability to command so large an army.(7)

When Congress assembled and the Committee resumed its inquisition, Burnside was moving South on his fated march to Fredericksburg. The Committee watched him like hungry wolves. Woe to Burnside, woe to Lincoln, if the General failed! Had the Little Men possessed any sort of vision they would have seized their opportunity to become the President's supporters. But they, like the Jacobins, were partisans first and patriots second. In the division among the Republicans they saw, not a chance to turn the scale in the President's favor, but a chance to play politics on their own account. A picturesque Ohio politician known as "Sunset" Cox opened the ball of their fatuousness with an elaborate argument in Congress to the effect that the President was in honor bound to regard the recent elections as strictly analogous to an appeal to the country in England; that it was his duty to remodel his policy to suit the Democrats. Between the Democrats and the Jacobins Lincoln was indeed between the devil and the deep blue sea with no one certainly on his side except the volatile Abolitionists whom he did not trust and who did not trust him. A great victory might carry him over. But a great defeat—what might not be the consequence!

On the thirteenth of December, through Burnside's stubborn incompetence, thousands of American soldiers flung away their lives in a holocaust of useless valor at Fredericksburg. Promptly the Jacobins acted. They set up a shriek: the incompetent President, the all-parties dreamer, the man who persists in coquetting with the Democrats, is blundering into destruction! Burnside received the dreaded summons from the Committee. So staggering was the shock of horror that even moderate Republicans were swept away in a new whirlpool of doubt.

But even thus it was scarcely wise, the Abolitionists being still fearful over the emancipation policy, to attack the President direct. Nevertheless, the resourceful Jacobins found a way to begin their new campaign. Seward, the symbol of moderation, the unforgivable enemy of the Jacobins, had recently earned anew the hatred of the Abolitionists. Letters of his to Charles Francis Adams had appeared in print. Some of their expressions had roused a storm. For example: "extreme advocates of African slavery and its most vehement exponents are acting in concert together to precipitate a servile war."(8) To be sure, the date of this letter was long since, before he and Lincoln had changed ground on emancipation, but that did not matter. He had spoken evil of the cause; he should suffer. All along, the large number that were incapable of appreciating his lack of malice had wished him out of the Cabinet. As Lincoln put it: "While they seemed to believe in my honesty, they also appeared to think that when I had in me any good purpose or intention, Seward contrived to suck it out of me unperceived."(9)

The Jacobins were skilful politicians. A caucus of Republican Senators was stampeded by the cry that Seward was the master of the Administration, the chief explanation of failure. It was Seward who had brought them to the verge of despair. A committee was named to demand the reorganization of the Cabinet Thereupon, Seward, informed of this action, resigned. The Committee of the Senators called upon Lincoln. He listened; did not commit himself; asked them to call again; and turned into his own thoughts for a mode of saving the day.

During twenty months, since their clash in April, 1861, Seward and Lincoln had become friends; not merely official associates, but genuine comrades. Seward's earlier condescension had wholly disappeared. Perhaps his new respect for Lincoln grew out of the President's silence after Sumter. A few words revealing the strange meddling of the Secretary of State would have turned upon Seward the full fury of suspicion that destroyed McClellan. But Lincoln never spoke those words. Whatever blame there was for the failure of the Sumter expedition, he quietly accepted as his own. Seward, whatever his faults, was too large a nature, too genuinely a lover of courage, of the nonvindictive temper, not to be struck with admiration. Watching with keen eyes the unfolding of Lincoln, Seward advanced from admiration to regard. After a while he could write, "The President is the best of us." He warmed to him; he gave out the best of himself. Lincoln responded. While the other secretaries were useful, Seward became necessary. Lincoln, in these dark days, found comfort in his society.(10) Lincoln was not going to allow Seward to be driven out of the Cabinet. But how could he prevent it? He could not say. He was in a quandary. For the moment, the Republican leaders were so nearly of one mind in their antagonism to Seward, that it demanded the greatest courage to oppose them. But Lincoln does not appear to have given a thought to surrender. What puzzled him was the mode of resistance.

Now that he was wholly himself, having confidence in whatever mode of procedure his own thought approved, he had begun using methods that the politicians found disconcerting. The second conference with the Senators was an instance. Returning in the same mood in which they had left him, with no suspicion of a surprise in store, the Senators to their amazement were confronted by the Cabinet—or most of it, Seward being absent.(11) The Senators were put out. This simple maneuver by the President was the beginning of their discomfiture. It changed their role from the ambassadors of an ultimatum to the participants in a conference. But even thus, they might have succeeded in dominating the event, though it is hardly conceivable that they could have carried their point; they might have driven Lincoln into a corner; had it not been for the make-up of one man. Again, the destiny that is in character! Lincoln was delivered from a quandary by the course which the Secretary of the Treasury could not keep himself from pursuing.

Chase, previous to this hour, may truly be called an imposing figure. As a leader of the extreme Republicans, he had earned much fame. Lincoln had given him a free hand in the Treasury and all the financial measures of the government were his. Hitherto, Vindictives of all sorts had loved him. He was a critic of the President's mildness, and a severe critic of Seward. But Chase was not candid. Though on the surface he scrupulously avoided any hint of cynicism, any point of resemblance to Seward, he was in fact far more devious, much more capable of self-deception. He had little of Seward's courage, and none of his aplomb. His condemnation of Seward had been confided privately to Vindictive brethren.

When the Cabinet and the Senators met, Chase was placed in a situation of which he had an instinctive horror. His caution, his secretiveness, his adroit confidences, his skilful silences, had created in these two groups of men, two impressions of his character. The Cabinet knew him as the faithful, plausible Minister who found the money for the President. The Senators, or some of them, knew him as the discontented Minister who was their secret ally. For the two groups to compare notes, to check up their impressions, meant that Chase was going to be found out. And it was the central characteristic of Chase that he had a horror of being found out.

The only definite result of the conference was Chase's realization when the Senators departed that mischance was his portion. In the presence of the Cabinet he had not the face to stick to his guns. He feebly defended Seward. The Senators opened their eyes and stared. The ally they had counted on had failed them. Chase bit his lips and was miserable.

The night that followed was one of deep anxiety for Lincoln. He was still unable to see his way out. But all the while the predestination in Chase's character was preparing the way of escape. Chase was desperately trying to discover how to save his face. An element in him that approached the melodramatic at last pointed the way. He would resign. What an admirable mode of recapturing the confidence of his disappointed friends, carrying out their aim to disrupt the Cabinet! But he could not do a bold thing like this in Seward's way—at a stroke, without hesitation. When he called on Lincoln the next day with the resignation in his hand, he wavered. It happened that Welles was in the room.

"Chase said he had been painfully affected," is Welles' account, "by the meeting last evening, which was a surprise, and after some not very explicit remarks as to how he was affected, informed the President he had prepared his resignation of the office of Secretary of the Treasury. 'Where is it,' said the President, quickly, his eye lighting up in a moment. 'I brought it with me,' said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket. 'I wrote it this morning.' 'Let me have it,' said the President, reaching his long arm and fingers toward Chase, who held on seemingly reluctant to part with the letter which was sealed and which he apparently hesitated to surrender. Something further he wished to say, but the President was eager and did not perceive it, but took and hastily opened the letter.

"'This,' said he, looking towards me with a triumphal laugh, 'cuts the Gordian knot.' An air of satisfaction spread over his countenance such as I had not seen for some time. 'I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty,' he added, as he turned in his chair; 'I see my way clear.'"(12) In Lincoln's distress during this episode, there was much besides his anxiety for the fate of a trusted minister. He felt he must not permit himself to be driven into the arms of the Vindictives by disgracing Seward. Seward had a following which Lincoln needed. But to proclaim to the world his confidence in Seward without at the same time offsetting it by some display of confidence, equally significant in the enemies of Seward, this would have amounted to committing himself to Seward's following alone. And that would not do. Should either faction appear to dominate him, Lincoln felt that "the whole government must cave in. It could not stand, could not hold water; the bottom would be out."(13)

The incredible stroke of luck, the sheer good fortune that Chase was Chase and nobody else,—vain, devious, stagey and hypersensitive,—was salvation. Lincoln promptly rejected both resignations and called upon both Ministers to resume their portfolios. They did so. The incident was closed. Neither faction could say that Lincoln had favored the other. He had saved himself, or rather, Chase's character had saved him, by the margin of a hair.

For the moment, a rebuilding of the Vindictive Coalition was impossible. Nevertheless, the Jacobins, again balked of their prey, had it in their power, through the terrible Committee, to do immense mischief. The history of the war contains no other instance of party malice quite so fruitless and therefore so inexcusable as their next move. After severely interrogating Burnside, they published an exoneration of his motives and revealed the fact that Lincoln had forced him into command against his will. The implication was plain.

January came in. The Emancipation Proclamation was confirmed. The jubilation of the Abolitionists became, almost at once, a propaganda for another issue upon slavery. New troubles were gathering close about the President The overwhelming benefit which had been anticipated from the new policy had not clearly arrived. Even army enlistments were not satisfactory. Conscription loomed on the horizon as an eventual necessity. A bank of returning cloud was covering the political horizon, enshrouding the White House in another depth of gloom.

However, out of all this gathering darkness, one clear light solaced Lincoln's gaze. One of his chief purposes had been attained. In contrast to the doubtful and factional response to his policy at home, the response abroad was sweeping and unconditional. He had made himself the hero of the "Liberal party throughout the world." Among the few cheery words that reached him in January, 1863, were New Year greetings of trust and sympathy sent by English working men, who, because of the blockade, were on the verge of starvation. It was in response to one of these letters from the working men of Manchester that Lincoln wrote:

"I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely with the American people; but I have at the same time been aware that the favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair examination of history has served to authorize a belief that the past actions and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have therefore reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances—to some of which you kindly allude—induce me especially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised by the United States they would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own country only more than she is, by the kindred nation which has its home on this side of the Atlantic.

"I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working men at Manchester, and in all Europe, are called on to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this government which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the working men of Europe have been subjected to severe trials for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I can not but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of the truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation; and on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations, will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual."(14)



XXVI. THE DICTATOR, THE MARPLOT AND THE LITTLE MEN

While the Jacobins were endeavoring to reorganize the Republican antagonism to the President, Lincoln was taking thought how he could offset still more effectually their influence. In taking up the emancipation policy he had not abandoned his other policy of an all-parties Administration, or of something similar to that. By this time it was plain that a complete union of parties was impossible. In the autumn of 1862, a movement of liberal Democrats in Michigan for the purpose of a working agreement with the Republicans was frustrated by the flinty opposition of Chandler.(1) However, it still seemed possible to combine portions of parties in an Administration group that should forswear the savagery of the extreme factions and maintain the war in a merciful temper. The creation of such a group was Lincoln's aim at the close of the year.

The Republicans were not in doubt what he was driving at. Smarting over their losses in the election, there was angry talk that Lincoln and Seward had "slaughtered the Republican party."(2) Even as sane a man as John Sherman, writing to his brother on the causes of the apparent turn of the tide could say "the first is that the Republican organization was voluntarily abandoned by the President and his leading followers, and a no-party union was formed to run against an old, well-drilled party organization."(3) When Julian returned to Washington in December, he found that the menace to the Republican machine was "generally admitted and (his) earnest opposition to it fully justified in the opinion of the Republican members of Congress."(4) How fully they perceived their danger had been shown in their attempt to drive Lincoln into a corner on the issue of a new Cabinet.

Even before that, Lincoln had decided on his next move. As in the emancipation policy he had driven a wedge between the factions of the Republicans, so now he would drive a wedge into the organization of the Democrats. It had two parts which had little to hold them together except their rooted partisan habit.(5) One branch, soon to receive the label "Copperhead," accepted the secession principle and sympathized with the Confederacy. The other, while rejecting secession and supporting the war, denounced the emancipation policy as usurped authority, and felt personal hostility to Lincoln. It was the latter faction that Lincoln still hoped to win over. Its most important member was Horatio Seymour, who in the autumn of 1862 was elected governor of New York. Lincoln decided to operate on him by one of those astounding moves which to the selfless man seemed natural enough, by which the ordinary politician was always hopelessly mystified. He called in Thurlow Weed and authorized him to make this proposal: if Seymour would bring his following into a composite Union party with no platform but the vigorous prosecution of the war, Lincoln would pledge all his influence to securing for Seymour the presidential nomination in 1864. Weed delivered his message. Seymour was noncommittal and Lincoln had to wait for his answer until the new Governor should show his hand by his official acts. Meanwhile a new crisis had developed in the army. Burnside's character appears to have been shattered by his defeat. Previous to Fredericksburg, he had seemed to be a generous, high-minded man. From Fredericksburg onward, he became more and more an impossible. A reflection of McClellan in his earlier stage, he was somehow transformed eventually into a reflection of vindictivism. His later character began to appear in his first conference with the Committee subsequent to his disaster. They visited him on the field and "his conversation disarmed all criticism." This was because he struck their own note to perfection. "Our soldiers," he said, "were not sufficiently fired by resentment, and he exhorted me (Julian) if I could, to breathe into our people at home the same spirit toward our enemies which inspired them toward us."(6) What a transformation in McClellan's disciple!

But the country was not won over so easily as the Committee. There was loud and general disapproval and of course, the habitual question, "Who next?" The publication by the Committee of its insinuation that once more the stubborn President was the real culprit did not stem the tide. Burnside himself made his case steadily worse. His judgment, such as it was, had collapsed. He seemed to be stubbornly bent on a virtual repetition of his previous folly. Lincoln felt it necessary to command him to make no forward move without consulting the President.(7)

Burnside's subordinates freely criticized their commander. General Hooker was the most outspoken. It was known that a movement was afoot—an intrigue, if you will-to disgrace Burnside and elevate Hooker. Chafing under criticism and restraint, Burnside completely lost his sense of propriety. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1863, when Henry W. Raymond, the powerful editor of the New York Times, was on a visit to the camp, Burnside took him into his tent and read him an order removing Hooker because of his unfitness "to hold a command in a cause where so much moderation, forbearance, and unselfish patriotism were required." Raymond, aghast, inquired what he would do if Hooker resisted, if he raised his troops in mutiny? "He said he would Swing him before sundown if he attempted such a thing."

Raymond, though more than half in sympathy with Burnside, felt that the situation was startling. He hurried off to Washington. "I immediately," he writes, "called upon Secretary Chase and told him the whole story. He was greatly surprised to hear such reports of Hooker, and said he had looked upon him as the man best fitted to command the army of the Potomac. But no man capable of so much and such unprincipled ambition was fit for so great a trust, and he gave up all thought of him henceforth. He wished me to go with him to his house and accompany him and his daughter to the President's levee. I did so and found a great crowd surrounding President Lincoln. I managed, however, to tell him in brief terms that I had been with the army and that many things were occurring there which he ought to know. I told him of the obstacles thrown in Burnside's way by his subordinates and especially General Hooker's habitual conversation. He put his hand on my shoulder and said in my ear as if desirous of not being overheard, 'That is all true; Hooker talks badly; but the trouble is, he is stronger with the country today than any other man.' I ventured to ask how long he would retain that strength if his real conduct and character should be understood. 'The country,' said he, 'would not believe it; they would say it was all a lie.'"(8)

Whether Chase did what he said he would do and ceased to be Hooker's advocate, may be questioned. Tradition preserves a deal between the Secretary and the General—the Secretary to urge his advancement, the General, if he reached his goal, to content himself with military honors and to assist the Secretary in succeeding to the Presidency. Hooker was a public favorite. The dashing, handsome figure of "Fighting Joe" captivated the popular imagination. The terrible Committee were his friends. Military men thought him full of promise. On the whole, Lincoln, who saw the wisdom of following up his clash over the Cabinet by a concession to the Jacobins, was willing to take his chances with Hooker.

His intimate advisers were not of the same mind. They knew that there was much talk on the theme of a possible dictator-not the constitutional dictator of Lincoln and Stevens, but the old-fashioned dictator of historical melodrama. Hooker was reported to have encouraged such talk. All this greatly alarmed one of Lincoln's most devoted henchmen—Lamon, Marshal of the District of Columbia, who regarded himself as personally responsible for Lincoln's safety. "In conversation with Mr. Lincoln," says Lamon, "one night about the time General Burnside was relieved, I was urging upon him the necessity of looking well to the fact that there was a scheme on foot to depose him, and to appoint a military dictator in his stead. He laughed and said, 'I think, for a man of accredited courage, you are the most panicky person I ever knew; you can see more dangers to me than all the other friends I have. You are all the time exercised about somebody taking my life; murdering me; and now you have discovered a new danger; now you think the people of this great government are likely to turn me out of office. I do not fear this from the people any more than I fear assassination from an individual. Now to show my appreciation of what my French friends would call a coup d'etat, let me read you a letter I have written to General Hooker whom I have just appointed to the command of the army of the Potomac."(9)