Team of Rivals (61 page)

“If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with,” Walt Whitman reflected, “it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall—indeed a crucifixion day—that it did not conquer him—that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it.”

Recriminations were plentiful. The Democratic
New York Herald
placed responsibility on “a weak, inharmonious and inefficient Cabinet.” General Patterson was blamed for failing to keep Johnston’s troops from joining Beauregard. “Two weeks ago,” Chase self-righteously complained to a friend, “I urged the sending of Fremont to this command; and had it been done we should now have been rejoicing over a great victory.” Still, the historian James Rowley concludes that “public censure touched too lightly on Lincoln,” who should have held back the assault until the troops were ready.

“The sun rises, but shines not,” Whitman wrote of the dismal day after the defeat. Rain continued to fall as the defeated troops flooded into Washington. From his window at Willard’s, Russell observed these bedraggled soldiers. “Some had neither great-coats nor shoes, others were covered with blankets.” Nettie Chase recalled being “awakened in the gray dawn by the heavy, unwonted, rumbling of laden wagons passing along the street below.” Thinking at first they were bound for market, she was sickened to realize they were filled with wounded soldiers heading for the hospital nearby. To relieve the crowded hospital wards, Chase opened his spacious home to nearly a dozen wounded men. Bishop McIlvaine, a friend visiting from Ohio who happened to be staying with Chase at the time, tended to the sick and dying. Nettie recalled the bishop’s uneasiness when one of the wounded men cursed loudly with each pain. “Just let me swear a bit,” the young man entreated the stunned bishop, “it helps me stand the hurting.”

“The dreadful disaster of Sunday can scarcely be mentioned,” Stanton wrote to former president Buchanan five days after Bull Run. “The imbecility of this Administration culminated in that catastrophe,” he pronounced with a sycophantic nod to his former boss, calling the fiasco “the result of Lincoln’s ‘running the machine’ for five months…. The capture of Washington seems now to be inevitable—during the whole of Monday and Tuesday it might have been taken without any resistance…. Even now I doubt whether any serious opposition to the entrance of the Confederate forces could be offered.”

Historians have long pondered the reluctance of the Confederates to capitalize on their victory by attacking Washington. Jefferson Davis later cited “an overweening confidence” after the initial victory that led to lax decisions. General Johnston observed that hundreds of volunteers, believing the war already won, simply left their regiments and returned home to “exhibit the trophies picked up on the field.” Other soldiers melted into the countryside, accompanying wounded comrades to faraway hospitals. Perhaps the most straightforward explanation of both the dismal Union retreat and the Confederate failure to march into Washington is manifest in the plain assessment Nancy Bates posted to her young niece Hester: “Well we fought all day Sunday. Our men were so tired that they had to come away from Manassa I expect that the others were very tired too or they would have followed our men.”

While Lincoln brooded in private, confiding in Browning that he was “very melancholy,” he maintained a stoic public image. He refrained from answering Horace Greeley’s acerbic letter, written in “black despair” after the
Tribune
editor had endured a week without sleep. “You are not considered a great man,” Greeley charged, adding that if the Confederacy could not be defeated, Lincoln should “not fear to sacrifice [himself] to [his] country.” Despite a blizzard of such indictments, Lincoln listened patiently to reports from the field of what went wrong. He told humorous stories to provide relief. And in the days that followed, with Seward by his side, he visited a number of regiments, raising spirits at every stop along the way.

At Fort Corcoran, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, he asked Colonel William T. Sherman if he could address the troops. Sherman was delighted, though he asked Lincoln to “discourage all cheering.” After the boasts that preceded Bull Run, he explained, “what we needed were cool, thoughtful, hard-fighting soldiers—no more hurrahing, no more humbug.” Lincoln agreed, proceeding to deliver what Sherman considered “one of the neatest, best, and most feeling addresses” he had ever heard. Lincoln commented on the lost battle but emphasized “the high duties that still devolved on us, and the brighter days yet to come.” At various points, “the soldiers began to cheer, but [Lincoln] promptly checked them, saying: ‘Don’t cheer, boys. I confess I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military; and I guess we had better defer to his opinion.’”

The president closed his graceful speech with a pledge to provide the troops with all they needed, and even encouraged them to call on him “personally in case they were wronged.” One aggrieved officer took him at his word, revealing that, as a three-month volunteer, he had tried to leave, but Sherman had “threatened to shoot” him. In a “stage-whisper,” Lincoln counseled the officer: “Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it.” The response produced gales of laughter among the men while upholding Sherman’s discipline.

Northern public opinion reflected Lincoln’s firm resolve. Republican newspapers across the land reported a “renewed patriotism,” bringing thousands of volunteers to sign up for three years. “Let no loyal man be discouraged by the reverse,” the
Chicago Tribune
proclaimed. “Like the great Antaeas, who, when thrown to the ground, gathered strength from the contact with mother earth and arose refreshed and stronger than before, to renew the contest, so of the Sons of Liberty; the loss of this battle will only nerve them to greater efforts.” Several papers compared the Bull Run disaster to George Washington’s early defeats in the Revolutionary War, which eventually resulted in triumph at Yorktown. “The spirit of the people is now thoroughly aroused,” the
New York Times
announced, “and, what is equally important, it has been chastened and moderated by the stern lessons of experience.”

With the stunning reversal and rout at Bull Run, however, Northern delusions of easy triumph dissolved. “It is pretty evident now that we have underrated the strength, the resources and the temper of the enemy,” the
Times
conceded. “And we have been blind, moreover, to the extraordinary nature of the country over which the contest is to be waged,—and to its wonderful facilities for defence.” Yet the harrowing lessons of Bull Run generated a perverse confidence that the North could “take comfort” in already knowing the worst that could happen. It was unimaginable in the anxious chaos following the first major battle of the Civil War that far worse was yet to come.

“N
OTHING BUT A PATENT PILL
was ever so suddenly famous,” it was said of George B. McClellan when he arrived in Washington on July 27, 1861, to take command of the Army of the Potomac. “That dear old domestic bird, the Public,” an essayist later wrote, “was sure she had brooded out an eagle-chick at last.” Among the Union’s youngest generals at thirty-four, the handsome, athletic McClellan seemed to warrant the acclaim and great expectation. He was the scion of a distinguished Philadelphia family. His father graduated from Yale College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. His mother was elegant and genteel. Educated in excellent schools, including West Point, McClellan had served on the staff of General Scott in the Mexican War. Most important, to a public looking for deliverance, he had recently defeated a guerrilla band in western Virginia, handing the North its only victory, albeit a small one.

To the nerve-worn residents of Washington, McClellan seemed “the man on horseback,” just the leader to mold the disorganized Union troops into a disciplined army capable of returning to Manassas and defeating the enemy. Within days of his arrival, one diarist noted, Washington itself had assumed “a more martial look.” Hotel bars no longer overflowed with drunken soldiers, nor did troops wander the city late at night in search of lodgings. The young general seemed able to mystically project his own self-confidence onto the demoralized troops, restoring their faith in themselves and their hope for the future. “You have no idea how the men brighten up now, when I go among them—I can see every eye glisten,” he wrote proudly to his wife, Mary Ellen. “Yesterday they nearly pulled me to pieces in one regt. You never heard such yelling.”

Lincoln hoped that between Scott’s seasoned wisdom as general-in-chief and McClellan’s vitality and force, he would finally have a powerfully effective team. From the start, however, McClellan viewed Scott as “the great obstacle” to both his own ambition for sole authority and to his larger strategy in the war. Less than two weeks after assuming command of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan questioned Scott’s belief that the rush of reinforcements to Washington had secured the capital. In a letter to General Scott, which he copied to the president, he argued that his army was “entirely insufficient for the emergency,” for “the enemy has at least 100,000 men in our front.” Scott was furious that his judgment had been called into question, correctly insisting that McClellan was grossly exaggerating the opposition forces. It would not be the last of the imperious general’s miscalculations.

Lincoln temporarily defused the animosity by asking McClellan to withdraw his offending letter, but the discord between the two generals continued to escalate. Scott wanted to employ “concentric pressure” on the rebels in different theaters of war. McClellan declared that only with an overwhelming force concentrated on Virginia could he put an end to hostilities. All other engagements he considered secondary, dispersing resources needed to “crush the rebels in one campaign.”

In his almost daily letters to his wife, McClellan recognized that his disagreements with Scott might “result in a mortal enmity on his part against me.” Justifying his unwillingness to make peace with Scott, he referred frequently to his sense of destiny. It was his conviction that “God has placed a great work in my hands.” He felt that “by some strange operation of magic” he had “become
the
power of the land” and if “the people call upon me to save the country—I
must
save it & cannot respect anything that is in the way.” McClellan told her that he received “letter after letter” begging him to assume the presidency or become a dictator. While he would eschew the presidency, he would “cheerfully take the Dictatorship & agree to lay down my life when the country is saved.”

Frustrated by the lack of response to his constant calls for more troops and equipment, McClellan insisted that Scott was “a perfect imbecile,” a
“dotard,”
even possibly “a
traitor.”
Refusing to acknowledge that the dispute represented an honest clash of opinions, McClellan insisted that the root of contention with Scott was the veteran’s “eternal jealousy of all who acquire any distinction.”

As the row between the two men intensified, McClellan decided to ignore Scott’s communications, though the chain of command required that he inform his superior officer of his position and the number of troops at his disposal. Scott was indignant. “The remedy by arrest and trial before a Court Martial, would probably, soon cure the evil,” Scott told Secretary of War Cameron, but he feared a public conflict “would be highly encouraging to the enemies, and depressing to the friends of the Union. Hence my long forbearance.” Instead, he proposed that as soon as the president could make other arrangements, he himself would gladly retire, “being, as I am, unable to ride in the saddle, or to walk, by reason of dropsy in my feet and legs, and paralysis in the small of the back.”

For two months, Lincoln tried to restore harmony between his commanders. He spent many hours at General Scott’s headquarters, listening to the old warrior and attempting to mollify him. He made frequent visits to McClellan’s headquarters, situated in a luxurious house at the corner of Lafayette Square, not far from Seward’s new home. The upstairs rooms were reserved for McClellan’s private use. The parlors downstairs were occupied by the telegraph office, with dozens of staff “smoking, reading the papers, and writing.” Sometimes McClellan welcomed Lincoln’s visits; on other occasions, he felt them a waste of time: “I have just been interrupted here by the Presdt & Secty Seward who had nothing very particular to say, except some stories to tell.” Observers noted with consternation that McClellan often kept Lincoln waiting in the downstairs room, “together with other common mortals.” British reporter William Russell began to pity the president, who would call only to be told that the general was “lying down, very much fatigued.” Nonetheless, so long as he believed in McClellan’s positive influence on the army, Lincoln tolerated such flagrant breaches of protocol.

The first public dissatisfaction with McClellan’s performance began to emerge as the autumn leaves began to fall. While Washingtonians delighted in his magnificent reviews of more than fifty thousand troops marching in straight columns to the sounds of hundred-gun salutes, with “not a mistake made, not a hitch,” they grew restive with the failure of the troops to leave camp. Undeterred, McClellan insisted to his wife that he would not move until he was certain that he was completely ready to take on the enemy. “A long time must yet elapse before I can do this, & I expect all the newspapers to abuse me for delay—but I will not mind that.”

Radical Republicans who had initially applauded McClellan’s appointment began to turn on him when they learned he had issued “a slave-catching order” requiring commanders to return fugitive slaves to their masters. McClellan repeatedly emphasized that he was “fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union & the power of the Govt,” and that to achieve that overriding goal, the country could not “afford to raise up the negro question.” Coming under attack, he sought cover from his Democratic friends. “Help me to dodge the nigger,” he entreated Samuel Barlow of New York, “we want nothing to do with him.”

At the first whiff of censure, McClellan shifted blame onto any other shoulder but his own—onto Scott’s failure to muster necessary resources, onto the incompetence of the cabinet, “some of the greatest geese…I have ever seen—enough to tax the patience of Job.” He considered Seward “a meddling, officious, incompetent little puppy,” Welles “weaker than the most garrulous old woman,” and Bates “an old fool.” He was disgusted by the “rascality of Cameron,” and though he commended Monty Blair’s courage, he did not “altogether fancy him!” Only Chase was spared his scorn, perhaps because the treasury secretary had sent a flattering letter before McClellan was called to Washington in which he claimed that he was the one responsible for the general’s promotion to major general.

Impatience with McClellan mounted when one of his divisions suffered a crushing defeat at a small engagement on October 21, 1861. Having learned that the rebels had pulled back some of their troops from Leesburg, Virginia, McClellan ordered General Charles P. Stone to mount “a slight demonstration on your part” in order “to move them.” Stone assumed that he would have the help of a neighboring division, which McClellan had ordered back to Washington without informing Stone. Colonel Edward Baker, Lincoln’s close friend from Illinois, was killed in action, along with forty-nine of his men when the Confederates trapped them at the river’s edge at Ball’s Bluff. Many more were seriously wounded, including the young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was brought to Chase’s spacious home to recover.

Baker was mourned by the entire Lincoln family. Lincoln later told the journalist Noah Brooks that “the death of his beloved Baker smote upon him like a whirlwind from a desert.” The day before Baker was killed, the two old friends had talked together on the White House grounds. A passing officer recalled the poignant scene: “Mr. Lincoln sat on the ground leaning against a tree; Colonel Baker was lying prone on the ground his head supported by his clasped hands. The trees and the lawns were gorgeous in purple and crimson and scarlet, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle.” Not far away, ten-year-old Willie “was tossing the fallen leaves about in childish grace and abandon.” When the time came for Baker to take his leave, he shook Lincoln’s hand and then took Willie into his arms and kissed him.

Twenty-four hours later, Captain Thomas Eckert, in charge of the telegraph office at McClellan’s headquarters, received word of Baker’s death and the defeat at Ball’s Bluff. Instructed to deliver all military telegrams directly to McClellan, Eckert searched for the commanding general. Finding him at the White House talking with Lincoln, he handed the general the wire and withdrew. McClellan chose not to reveal its contents to the president. Afterward, when Lincoln dropped in at the telegraph office to get the latest news from the front, he discovered the dispatch. A correspondent seated in the outer room observed Lincoln’s reaction. He walked “with bowed head, and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his face pale and wan, his heart heaving with emotion.” He stumbled through the room and “almost fell as he stepped into the street.”

Mary was similarly distraught. She had named her second son, Edward, in honor of Edward Baker. Now both her child and his dear namesake were lost. Willie and Tad, who had likewise adored Baker, were heartbroken. For Willie, much like his father, writing provided some measure of solace. He composed a small poem, “On the Death of Colonel Edward Baker,” which was published in the
National Republican.
After two stanzas recalling Baker’s patriotic life and celebrated oratorical skills, he wrote:

No squeamish notions filled his breast,

     The Union
was his theme.

“No surrender and no compromise,”

     
His day thought and night’s dream.

His country has
her
part to play,

     
To’rds those he has left behind,

His widow and his children all,—

     
She must always keep in mind.

The child’s homage to a cherished friend reflected a depressingly common circumstance as the war left mounting casualties and desolation in its wake. Ten-year-old Willie’s words would be echoed in his father’s memorable plea in the Second Inaugural Address, when he urged the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.”

McClellan straightaway denied responsibility for the defeat at Ball’s Bluff, characteristically insisting that the “disaster was caused by errors committed” by the leaders at the front. “The whole thing took place some 40 miles from here without my orders or knowledge,” he told his wife; “it was entirely unauthorized by me & I am in no manner responsible for it.” The person “
directly
to blame,” McClellan said, was Colonel Baker, who had exceeded General Stone’s orders by crossing the river. Rumors then began to spread that Stone himself would be court-martialed.

When frustrated congressional leaders, many of whom were longtime friends of Baker, decried the defeat at Ball’s Bluff and the general stagnation of the Union troops, the president defended McClellan. When these same leaders approached McClellan, he unleashed a diatribe against Scott, accusing him of placing obstacles at every step along his way. The congressional delegation left, vowing to remove Scott. “You may have heard from the papers etc of the small row that is going on just now between Genl Scott & myself,” McClellan wrote his wife, “in which the vox populi is coming out strongly on my side…. I hear that off[icer]s & men all declarethat they will fight under no one but ‘our George,’ as the scamps have taken it into their heads to call me.”