Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (75 page)

25
. Jessie A. Marshall, ed.,
Private and Official Correspondence of General Benjamin F. Butler during the Period of the Civil War
, 5 vols. (Norwood, Mass., 1917), I, 185–87. Other relevant correspondence between Butler and the War Department is conveniently reprinted in Ira Berlin et al., eds.,
The Destruction of Slavery
, Vol. I of
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation
1861–1867 (Cambridge, 1985), 70–75.

insisted that Congress had no more right to legislate against slavery in the states during wartime than in peacetime. True, agreed Republicans, but Congress
can
punish treason by confiscation of property, a penalty that operated against the individual but not the institution. In this tentative, limited fashion the Republicans enacted a confiscation act on August 6. Butler had his answer, such as it was. The contrabands were no longer slaves if—and only if—they had been employed directly by the Confederate armed services. But were they then free? The law did not say. This was hardly the ringing endorsement of emancipation that abolitionists had begun to call for. But it went too far for Democratic and border-state congressmen. All but three of them voted against the bill while all but six Republicans voted for it. This was the first breach in bipartisan support for Union war measures. It was a signal that if the conflict became an antislavery war it would thereby become a Republican war.

Such a prospect worried Lincoln in 1861. That was why he had revoked Frémont's emancipation edict, which went well beyond the confiscation act by applying to
all
slaves owned by rebels and by declaring those slaves
free
.
²⁶
The president's action was unpopular with most Republicans. "It is said we must consult the border states," commented an influential Connecticut Republican. "Permit me to say
damn
the border states. . . . A thousand Lincolns cannot stop the people from fighting slavery." Even Orville Browning, conservative senator from Illinois and Lincoln's close friend, criticized the revocation of Frémont's edict. Stung by this response, Lincoln chose to reply in a private letter to Browning. Frémont's action, he said, was "not within the range of
military
law, or necessity." He could have confiscated enemy property including slaves as Butler had done, "but it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition [by declaring them free]. That must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations." Browning had endorsed Frémont's policy as "the only means of saving the government." On the contrary, said Lincoln, "it is itself the surrender of government." When a company of Union soldiers from Kentucky heard about Frémont's edict, said Lincoln, they "threw down their arms

26
. It should be noted that Butler's contraband policy also went beyond the confiscation act. Butler retained the wives and children of contrabands, even though they had not worked directly for the Confederate armed forces. For that matter, many of the male slaves who had entered Union lines did not legitimately come under the specific terms of the act either.

and disbanded." If the order had not been modified, "the very arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol." And in any case, "can it be pretended that it is any longer [a] . . . government of Constitution and laws, wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?"
²⁷

One wonders if Lincoln remembered these words when a year later he did endeavor to make a permanent rule of property with his Emancipation Proclamation declaring the slaves "forever free." But a lifetime of change had been compressed into that one year. The slavery issue just would not fade away. The slaves themselves would not let it fade away. By ones and twos, dozens and scores, they continued to convert themselves to "contrabands" by coming into Union lines. It proved extremely difficult for their owners to pry them out again, even in the unionist border states. Many northern regiments gave refuge to fugitives and refused to yield them up despite orders to do so.
²⁸

Radical Republicans countenanced such action. And by October 1861 some radicals were urging not only freeing the contrabands but also arming them to fight for the Union. Secretary of War Cameron endorsed such action in his annual report: "Those who make war against the Government justly forfeit all rights of property. . . . It is as clearly a right of the Government to arm slaves, when it may become necessary, as it is to use gun-powder taken from the enemy."
²⁹
Cameron released his report to the press on December 1 without prior approval from the president. When an astonished Lincoln read these words he ordered Cameron to recall the report and delete this paragraph. But some newspapers had already published it. Cameron's precipitate action,

27
. Joseph R. Hawley to Gideon Welles, Sept. 17, 1861, quoted in James G. Randall,
Lincoln the President
, 4 vols. (New York, 1946–54), II, 21; Lincoln to Browning, Sept. 22, 1861,
CWL
, IV, 531–32.

28
. For rich detail on the continuing escapes of contrabands into Union lines and on the relationship between the army and the slaveholders who tried to retrieve their property, see Berlin et al., eds.,
The Destruction of Slavery
, and Barbara J. Fields,
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century
(New Haven, 1985).

29
. John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
Abraham Lincoln: A History
, 10 vols. (New York, 1890), V, 125–26.

like Frémont's, contributed to a widening rift between Lincoln and the radical wing of his party. Soon Cameron, like Frémont, lost his job. In both cases the main reason for removal was inefficiency, not abolitionism, but few radicals believed that the slavery issue had nothing to do with it.

In his annual message on December 3, 1861, Lincoln said: "I have been anxious and careful" that the war "shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle." But abolitionists and some Republicans were already viewing it as a revolutionary conflict between two social systems. "
WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONISTS
!" wrote Virginia-born, New England-educated Moncure Conway in 1861. Although the Confederates "justify themselves under the right of revolution," Conway continued, their cause "is not a revolution but a rebellion against the noblest of revolutions." The North, wrote another abolitionist, must proclaim freedom as a war aim and thereby accomplish "
the glorious second American Revolution
."
³⁰
Thaddeus Stevens, the grim-visaged Cromwellian leader of radical Republicans in the House, called for precisely the kind of violent, remorseless struggle Lincoln hoped to avoid: "Free every slave—slay every traitor—burn every rebel mansion, if these things be necessary to preserve this temple of freedom." We must "treat this [war] as a radical revolution," said Stevens, "and remodel our institutions." Stevens's colleagues were not prepared to go quite this far, but by December 1861 they had moved a long way beyond their position of a few months earlier. On December 4, by a solid Republican vote, the House refused to reaffirm the Crittenden resolution disavowing an an-tislavery purpose in the war.
³¹

IV

The slavery issue played a part in a growing Republican disenchantment with McClellan. But more important than slavery were McClellan's defects of character and generalship.

"McClellan is to me one of the mysteries of the war," said Ulysses S. Grant a dozen years after the conflict. Historians are still trying to solve

30
.
CWL
, V, 48–49; Moncure D. Conway,
The Rejected Stone: or, Insurrection
vs.
Resurrection in America
(Boston, 1861), 75–80, 110;
Principia
, May 4, 1861.

31
. Stevens quoted in T. Harry Williams,
Lincoln and the Radicals
(Madison, 1941), 12, and Margaret Shortreed, "The Anti-Slavery Radicals, 1840–1868,"
Past and Present
, no. 16 (1959), 77; House action in
CG
, 37 Cong., 2 Sess., 15.

that mystery.
³²
Life seemed to have prepared McClellan for greatness. His birth into a well-to-do Philadelphia family and his education at the best private schools prepared him for admission to West Point by special permission when he was two years under the minimum age. After graduating second in his class, McClellan won renown at the age of twenty for engineering achievements in the Mexican War. His subsequent army career included assignment as an American observer of the Crimean War. In 1857 he resigned his commission to become chief engineer and vice president of a railroad at the age of thirty and president of another railroad two years later. In May 1861, at the age of thirty-four, he became the second-ranking general in the U. S. army and in July he took command of the North's principal field army. McClellan came to Washington, in the words of the London
Times
correspondent, as "the man on horseback" to save the Union; the press lionized him; a sober-minded contemporary wrote that "there is an indefinable
air of success
about him and something of the 'man of destiny.' "
³³

But perhaps McClellan's career had been too successful. He had never known, as Grant had, the despair of defeat or the humiliation of failure. He had never learned the lessons of adversity and humility. The adulation he experienced during the early weeks in Washington went to his head. McClellan's letters to his wife revealed the beginnings of a messiah complex. "I find myself in a strange position here: President, Cabinet, Genl. Scott & all deferring to me," he wrote the day after arriving in Washington. "By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become
the
power of the land." Three days later he visited Capitol Hill and was "quite overwhelmed by the congratulations I received and the respect with which I was treated." Congress seemed willing "to give me my way in everything." The next week McClellan reported that he had received "letter after letter—have conversation after conversation calling on me to save the nation—alluding to the Presidency, Dictatorship, etc." McClellan said he wanted no part of such powers, but he did revel in the cheers of his soldiers as he rode along their lines—cheers that reinforced his Napoleonic self-image. "You have no idea how the men

32
. Quotation from Warren W. Hassler, Jr.,
General George B. McClellan: Shield ofthe Union
(Baton Rouge, 1957), xv. For a good summary of writings on McClellan, see Joseph L. Harsh, "On the McClellan-Go-Round," in John T. Hubbell, ed.,
Battles Lost and Won: Essays from Civil War History
(Westport, Conn., 1975). 55–72

33
. Russell, My
Diary North and South
, 240; Nevins, War, I, 269.

brighten up now when I go among them. I can see every eye glisten. . . . You never heard such yelling. . . . I believe they love me. . . . God has placed a great work in my hands. . . . I was called to it; my previous life seems to have been unwittingly directed to this great end."
³⁴

The first victim of McClellan's vainglory was General-in-Chief Scott. More than twice McClellan's age, Scott was America's foremost living soldier, a hero of two wars, second only to George Washington in miilitary reputation. But Scott's fame belonged to past wars. McClellan aspired to be the hero of this one. A rivalry with the "old general," as McClellan privately called Scott, soon developed. In truth, there could be only one head of the post-Bull Run military buildup. McClellan set about this task with great energy. He put in eighteen-hour days that achieved quick and visible results. McClellan communicated directly with the president, bypassing Scott. The latter, whose age and infirmities prevented him from doing more than a few hours of daily paperwork, grew piqued at being left out of things. McClellan complained that Scott was frustrating his plans to expand and prepare the army for an early offensive. "I am leaving nothing undone to increase our force," McClellan wrote to his wife in early August, "but that confounded old Gen'l always comes in my way. He is a perfect incubus. He understands nothing, appreciates nothing. . . . I do not know whether he is a
dotard
or a
traitor
. . . . If he
cannot
be taken out of my path, I . . . will resign and let the admin[istration] take care of itself. . . . The people call upon me to save the country—I
must
save it and cannot respect anything that is in the way."
³⁵
Lincoln tried to mediate between the two generals, but only succeeded in delaying the inevitable. The president finally succumbed to pressure from Republican senators and allowed Scott to retire on November 1 "for reasons of health." McClellan succeeded him as general in chief. Lincoln cautioned McClellan that the dual jobs of general in chief and commander of the Army of the Potomac "will entail a vast labor upon you." Replied McClellan: "I can do it all."
³⁶