Rise to Greatness (49 page)

The brilliant and savage Bennett was one of the most innovative figures in newspaper history, pioneering the coverage of sports, finance, and sensational crimes in the daily penny press. A spine-tingling character with piercing crossed eyes that burned holes in two directions at once, Bennett wrote with the slashing ferocity of a man in a razor fight. He was proudly and crudely racist, and he strongly supported slavery. Yet he also believed in the Union. His fervent views marked the immigrant Scot as a man of New York, which owed much of its rise as a financial center to its role in capitalizing the Southern cotton economy. To save the Union would serve Wall Street’s interests, because it would restore easy commerce—but only if it were done with the South’s slave system left intact and ready to resume churning out cotton as soon as the war ended.

Bennett was masterly in reading and rallying popular opinion to support this agenda, so Lincoln cultivated him assiduously. He took time to write personal notes thanking Bennett for his “able support”; he gave Bennett’s son a plum commission in the navy; he helped to muffle a congressional investigation into the
Herald
’s theft of his annual message to Congress. And he suffered mostly in silence when Bennett portrayed him as a fellow foe of the hated abolitionists, even though the distortions in Bennett’s editorials inflamed the impatience of Lincoln’s antislavery friends. (The abolitionist William Goodell, in a furious letter warning Lincoln not to be fooled by Bennett’s feigned support, referred to the
Herald
as a “pestilent sheet” controlled by “well known Secession-Sympathizers.”)

Thus far, Lincoln’s handling of Bennett had been mostly a success. The editor trained his lethal fire on other targets and remained ostensibly loyal to the Union cause and to Lincoln himself. “I do very believe that you yourself are the only man in the government that possesses the confidence of the people,” Bennett wrote to the president in August (while also asking for a patronage post for a friend). But now Lincoln was at a particularly dangerous point in his relationship with the nation’s most powerful and ruthless media baron. The Emancipation Proclamation landed at a time when Bennett had more than the usual amount of latitude to make trouble. His Democratic pet, McClellan, was surrounded by voices urging him to overthrow the government, and the influential editor was in a position to amplify those voices. The state of New York, meanwhile, was in the midst of electing a new governor, and the race pitted the abolitionist Republican James Wadsworth against the anti-Lincoln Democrat Horatio Seymour. If he cared to, Bennett could easily paint Lincoln’s face on Wadsworth’s lagging candidacy and urge all Democrats to make Seymour their sign of defiance to the administration’s war policy.

Yet more than a week after the announcement of Lincoln’s plan to emancipate the slaves, Bennett still had not publicly criticized the president. Instead, he minimized the importance of what Lincoln had done. Bennett’s archrival Horace Greeley was declaring, GOD BLESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN!, but the
Herald
largely glossed over the revolutionary implications of the decree. Instead, Bennett latched onto the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation would not take effect until New Year’s Day. Lincoln, he theorized, was trying to
save
slavery by ending the war quickly—a notion that mirrored the
Herald
’s agenda. “We accept this proclamation,” the
Herald
announced, “not as that of an armed crusade against African slavery, but as … a liberal warning to our revolted States” to return to the Union in time to preserve their peculiar institution. The editor advised his readers to “look through the wretched but transparent negro” in the proclamation and “see clearly the end of the war.”

The president was not the only person at the White House who cultivated Bennett. Mary Lincoln visited, flattered, and gossiped with him long after his spy, the “Chevalier” Wikoff, had been banished from her circle. The day after the editorial gently mocking Lincoln’s foot problems, she wrote Bennett a silky letter from the cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. “My Dear Sir,” she began, “your kind note … has been received.” She was so happy to have it that she intended to ride into town to extend her personal thanks to the gentleman who had hand-delivered it to the Executive Mansion. “It is so exceedingly dusty, it is quite an undertaking” to make the trip, she continued, but since the fellow had carried “a note from
you,
I scarcely feel like having him leave, without seeing him.” Shifting from flattery to gossip, Mary then confided that she agreed with Bennett about the need for a shakeup of the cabinet, and hinted that many other powerful figures shared his views. She also promised to urge her husband to take action against the “ambitious fanatics” in his administration, but closed by assuring Bennett that such radicals “have very little control over the P[resident] when his mind is made up, as to what is right.” With syrupy apologies for “so long a note”—as if a journalist would ever prefer
less
access to the president’s family—she bade farewell to “my dear Mr. Bennett.”

*   *   *

In that same letter to Bennett, Mary remarked that her husband was “with the Army of the Potomac.” Once again, Lincoln had decided that he needed to see McClellan and his army firsthand. After the unsettling episode with Major Key, he wanted to “satisfy himself personally,” in the words of one of his traveling companions, “of the purposes, intentions, and fidelity of McClellan, his officers, and the army.” Accordingly, Lincoln set out from Washington on October 1, reaching Harpers Ferry about noon. The Rebels had moved off to the southwest, camping near Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, and Union troops had retaken possession of the heights surrounding the ferry.

McClellan was in a foul mood that morning. He had resolved to rebuild the railroad bridge at Harpers Ferry—the same bridge he had planned to repair in February, when he was foiled by the canal-boat fiasco. Finally rebuilt that summer, the bridge had been destroyed again by the recently departed Rebels. But Halleck, mindful of Lincoln’s hunger for action, rebuked McClellan for dallying over construction projects. “Compel the enemy to fall back or to give you battle,” Halleck directed. Little Mac fumed: “I do think that man Halleck is the most stupid idiot I ever heard of—either that or he drinks hard.” McClellan was working at his headquarters near Sharpsburg when he learned of Lincoln’s arrival. The general was leery: “His ostensible purpose is to see the troops & the battle fields. I incline to think that the real purpose of the visit is to push me into a premature advance,” he alerted his wife. The visit was thus steeped in mutual suspicion from the start.

The day was very fine. McClellan met Lincoln at the ferry, and in warm sunshine the two rode south to the Bolivar Heights to review troops from Sumner’s corps. Afterward, the general returned to Sharpsburg while Lincoln stayed overnight at Harpers Ferry. The next day, they were together again, and late that afternoon the president took up residence in a big white canvas tent next door to McClellan’s own. History would glimpse their meetings and simple accommodations through the lens of the photographer Alexander Gardner, who had arrived at Antietam the previous week to take some of the earliest and most horrifying pictures ever made of the high price of modern war.

In place of the romantic canvases of earlier war artists, Gardner’s images offered the public a glimpse of reality: corpses in piles along fencerows and facedown in wheel-worn roads, lined up for burial in a bare field, staring blankly into the unseen sky, twisted at painful angles. It was as if Gardner had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets,” as
The New York Times
put it. This intimacy with the war’s ugly face complicated the president’s task as he worked to shape public opinion, but Gardner’s presence during the visit with McClellan also gave Lincoln a novel opening to show the citizenry that their president was actively encouraging and supporting his general. While in Sharpsburg, Lincoln posed for a series of seemingly casual photos showing him at work with McClellan; in one of the most famous, the viewer glimpses the president and the general conferring at a small table inside a tent, its flap open.

Lincoln was, as always, interested in hard data. He carried a slip of paper on which he wrote the exact number of men in each corps of McClellan’s army: 24,130 under Sumner, 14,000 under Burnside, 16,479 under Porter, and so on for a total of more than 88,000 troops. A lot of fleas had been shoveled across the barnyard in the past few months, and now here he was one more time sharing a table with McClellan, hoping to find the magic words that had eluded him all year, words that would persuade Little Mac to use those soldiers fearlessly. “The Pres[ident] was very kind personally,” McClellan later wrote of their discussions. He “told me he was convinced I was the best general in the country etc etc. He was very affable & I really think he does feel very kindly towards me personally.”

Lincoln, clearly, was wielding more carrot than stick; for his part, McClellan tried to reassure Lincoln of his loyalty. He handed the president at least four letters he had received from friends in the Confederate army urging him to “make himself dictator” and end the conflict. The gesture—which suggested the general’s eagerness to let Lincoln know that he was not seriously harboring such thoughts—was slightly wide of the mark, since the president seems never to have doubted McClellan’s fundamental loyalty. Instead, Lincoln worried about the passion of the army, particularly because it was led by men so devoted to their general. McClellan may have been unlikely to lead a coup, but he might allow himself to be carried into one—especially if Lincoln tried to remove him from command. At this point in the war, Lincoln later explained, he “regarded his position … as a striking and noteworthy illustration of the dangers to which republican institutions were subjected by wars of such magnitude.” Though he was nominally the nation’s commander in chief, in truth this was a “season of insubordination, panic, and general demoralization” in which his authority over the troops was far from certain.

*   *   *

That worry lay heavy on Lincoln’s mind the next morning, October 3, when he awakened a member of his traveling party, an Illinois politician named Ozias Hatch. Hatch recalled the encounter vividly:

It was very early, Daylight was just lighting the east—the soldiers were all asleep in their tents. Scarce a sound could be heard except the notes of early birds, and the farm-yard voices from distant farms. Lincoln said to me, “Come, Hatch, I want you to take a walk with me.” His tone was serious and impressive. I arose without a word, and as soon as we were dressed we left the tent together. He led me about the camp, and then we walked upon the surrounding hills overlooking the great city of white tents and sleeping soldiers. Very little was spoken between us, beyond a few words as to the pleasantness of the morning.… We walked slowly and quietly, meeting here and there a guard … looking at the beautiful sunrise and the magnificent scene before us.

Finally, reaching a commanding point where almost that entire camp could be seen—the men were just beginning their morning duties, and evidences of life and activity were becoming apparent … the President, waving his hand towards the scene before us, and leaning towards me, said in an almost whispering voice: “Hatch—Hatch, what is all this?”

“Why, Mr. Lincoln,” said I, “this is the Army of the Potomac.” He hesitated a moment, and then, straightening up, said in a louder tone: “No, Hatch, no. This is General McClellan’s body-guard.” Nothing more was said. We walked to our tent, and the subject was not alluded to again.

After breakfast, the presidential party toured the site of the great battle, starting at the southern end of the field, where Lincoln and McClellan reviewed Burnside’s corps. Little Mac then suggested they hand over their horses to aides and ride to the next camp in the comfort of an ambulance, for it was two or three miles distant. As the wagon lurched along carrying the president and his companions, Lincoln said to Ward Hill Lamon: “Sing one of your sad little songs.” Before the war, the two men had been part of a group of lawyers who traveled Illinois’s Eighth Judicial Circuit; trying cases by day, the lawyers shared fellowship in the evenings, and Lamon was the singer of the bunch.

Lamon knew immediately which song the president had in mind. The pall of so much death had a depressing effect, and Lincoln was, in Lamon’s words, “weary and sad.” When such a mood was upon him he liked to hear a “homely tune” called “Twenty Years Ago,” about lost friends and unrecoverable youth and true love buried in the grave. No song “touched his great heart” as this one did, Lamon recalled; Lincoln rarely heard it without tears in his eyes.

I’ve wandered to the village, Tom,

I’ve sat beneath the tree

Upon the schoolhouse playground,

That sheltered you and me;

But none were there to greet me, Tom,

And few were left to know

That played with us upon the grass

Some twenty years ago …

The wheels creaked as Lamon’s voice drifted down to the low notes of the dirgelike song. His slow words told of the schoolmaster now buried on the hillside where the friends once went sledding, and of the tree where the names of young sweethearts had been carved, now stripped of bark and “dying sure but slow.”

I visited the old churchyard

And took some flowers to strew

Upon the graves of those we loved