Team of Rivals (83 page)

T
O CELEBRATE
Tad’s tenth birthday on Saturday, April 4, Mary Lincoln proposed a family excursion by steam and train to the Army of the Potomac headquarters in Falmouth, Virginia. Delighted by the chance to escape from Washington, Lincoln organized a small traveling party, including his old Illinois friend Dr. Anson Henry, Noah Brooks, and, at Henry’s suggestion, Edward Bates. Dr. Henry had maintained a friendship with Bates over the years and considered him “one of the purest and best men in the world.” Bates agreed to the foray, hoping to visit his son Coalter, who was with Hooker’s army; as it happened, Coalter had just left to pay a final visit to the family in Washington before the expected spring battles began.

The little party left the White House in the midst of a furious blizzard. Gale winds blew clouds of dust and snow in all directions as they boarded the steamer
Carrie Martin
at sunset. They headed south past Alexandria and Mount Vernon, where, according to the custom of the river, a bell tolled a salute in honor of George Washington. The steamer was due to reach the army supply depot at Aquia Creek that evening, but the escalating storm required them to cast anchor in a protected cove for the night. Undeterred by the falling snow and the howling winds that drove everyone else to the warm comfort of the cabin, Tad remained on deck with his fishing line, determined to provide food for supper. Racing in to announce every bite to his parents, Tad finally caught a small fish that, much to his delight, was added to the dinner menu. Brooks marveled at the simplicity of the scene, watching “the chief magistrate of this mighty nation” relax with family and friends, “telling stories” and conversing in “a free and easy way,” with no servant standing by and no guard on deck. Had the rebels known their whereabouts, Brooks mused, they “might have gobbled up the entire party without firing a shot.”

The snowstorm was “at its height” when the
Carrie Martin
pulled into the busy dock at Aquia Creek, where, on Easter morning, the presidential party boarded a special train for Falmouth Station. Along the way, with “snow piled in huge drifts” and “the wind whistling fiercely over the hills,” they passed one army camp after another. Each encampment along the thirty miles had hundreds of campfires surrounded by tents, fortifications, and stockades. Disembarking at Falmouth Station, they were taken by closed carriage over rough roads to Hooker’s headquarters a half mile away. Situated about three miles from the Rappahannock, the headquarters resembled a small city, complete with telegraph office, printing establishment, bakery, post office, and accommodations for more than 133,000 soldiers.

General Hooker, tall and broad-shouldered, awaited them in front of his tent, which stood at the end of a wide street flanked with officers’ tents on both sides. He greeted the party of six and beckoned them into his comfortable quarters, furnished with a large fireplace, two beds, chairs for the entire party, and a long table covered with papers and books.

Lincoln liked and respected Hooker. When he had tendered him command of the Army of the Potomac ten weeks earlier, he had sent along a remarkable letter of advice. “I believe you to be a brave and a skillful soldier,” the letter began. “You have confidence in yourself, which is valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that during Gen. Burnside’s command of the Army, you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer.” Lincoln continued with an admonition about Hooker’s recent comments suggesting the need for a dictator to assume command of “both the Army and the Government.” He informed Hooker that “it was not
for
this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.” The president closed with shrewd words of guidance: “Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.” Aside from the wisdom of the advice, the letter clearly manifests Lincoln’s growing confidence in his own powers.

Hooker took the advice in stride. In fact, he was so moved by the kindhearted tone of the letter that over the next few days he read it aloud to various people, including Noah Brooks and Dr. Henry, who thought it should be printed in gold letters. “That is just such a letter as a father might write to his son,” Hooker fervently told Brooks as the young journalist sat with him before a fire in his tent. “It is a beautiful letter,” Hooker continued, “and, although I think he was harder on me than I deserved, I will say that I love the man who wrote it.”

Reporters noted Mary’s curiosity about every aspect of camp life; they commented on her simple attire and speculated that this was her first experience sleeping in a tent. In fact, the first couple’s tent was far more elaborately outfitted than an ordinary one. It boasted a plank floor, a stove, and beds especially constructed for the occasion, complete with real sheets, blankets, and pillowcases. As the days went by, the weariness that had marked Mary’s face upon arrival began to fade, and “the change seemed pleasant to her.” Brooks reported badinage between husband and wife occasioned by a photograph of a Confederate officer with an inscription on the back: “A rebellious rebel.” Mary suggested that this meant he “was a rebel against the rebel government.” Lincoln smiled, countering that perhaps the officer “wanted everybody to know that he was not only a rebel, but a rebel of rebels—‘a double-dyed-in-the-wool sort of rebel.’”

Stormy weather postponed the first grand review from Sunday to Monday afternoon, leaving the president and first lady free to talk at length with the members of Hooker’s staff. The irrepressible Tad, meanwhile, inspected every facility in the compound, zealously racing from one place to another. A reporter present at the meetings with Hooker’s officers and aides noted that “Lincoln was in unusual good humor,” lightening the atmosphere “by his sociability and shafts of wit.”

The roar of artillery at noon the next day signaled the start of the cavalry review. With General Hooker by his side, Lincoln rode along serried ranks that stretched for miles over the rolling hills. The soldiers cheered and shouted when they saw the president and cheered even louder when they saw Master Tad Lincoln bravely attempting to keep up, “clinging to the saddle of his pony as tenaciously as the best man among them,” his gray cloak flapping “like a flag or banneret.”

The boy’s “short legs stuck straight out from his saddle,” Brooks noted, “and sometimes there was danger that his steed, by a sudden turn in the rough road, would throw him off like a bolt from a catapult.” Much to the relief of onlookers, Tad made it through “safe and sound,” his reckless riding steadied by a young orderly who remained faithfully by his side. “And thereby hangs a tale,” noted a
New York Herald
reporter. The orderly was a thirteen-year-old boy, Gustave Shuman, who had left home when the war began to accompany the New Jersey Brigade. General Philip Kearny had made him his bugler. The boy rode in front of the troops throughout the Peninsula Campaign. When General Kearny was killed in the late summer of 1862, the new commander, Daniel Sickles, retained the boy as bugler. So, though not much older than the president’s son, Gustave was a hardened veteran, quite capable of containing the impulsive Tad. Reporters noted that from that first review on, the two boys became inseparable, roaming about the camp like brothers.

Over the next few hours, tens of thousands of troops passed in front of the president and first lady, sweeping one after another “like waves at sea.” From atop the little knoll on which the Lincolns were stationed, the endless tiers provided a majestic vista. When the sun came out, one reporter observed, “the sunbeams danced on the rifles and bayonets, and lingered in the folds of the banners.” At the review of the infantry and artillery, artists sketched the spectacle of sixty thousand men, “their arms shining in the distance and their bayonets bristling like a forest on the horizon as they disappeared far away.”

Lincoln so enjoyed mingling with the men—who appeared amazingly healthy and lavishly outfitted with new uniforms, arms, and equipment—that he extended his visit until Friday. After one review, someone remarked that the regulars could be easily distinguished from the volunteers, for “the former stood rigidly in their places without moving their heads an inch as he rode by, while the latter almost invariably turned their heads to get a glimpse of him.” Quick to defend the volunteers, Lincoln replied, “I don’t care how much my soldiers turn their heads, if they don’t turn their backs.”

During a break from the reviews, several members of the presidential party, including Noah Brooks, journeyed down to the Rappahannock for a glimpse of the rebel camps across the river. With the naked eye, they could see the houses and steeples of Fredericksburg. The wooded hills and the renowned plain that had become “a slaughter pen for so many men” in the December battle were also clearly visible. Binoculars allowed a view of the ridge on which thousands of unmarked graves had been dug. Beyond the ridge, smoke rose from the rebel camps with elaborate earthworks, a myriad of white tents, and the flag of stars and bars. At the shoreline, the Union pickets paced their rounds mirrored by rebel sentries across the narrow river. Honoring the “tacit understanding” that sentries would not fire at each other, they bandied comments across the water, hailing each other as “Secesh” or “Yank,” and conversing “as amiably as though belonging to friendly armies.” At one point, Brooks noted, a Confederate officer “came down to the water’s edge, doubtless to see if Uncle Abraham was of our party. Failing to see him, he bowed politely and retired.”

Both sides knew that as soon as the weather cleared, the brutal fighting would resume. “It was a saddening thought,” Brooks remarked after one impressive review, “that so many of the gallant men whose hearts beat high as they rode past must, in the course of events, be numbered with the slain before many days shall pass.” Yet despite the awareness that a major engagement was not far off, “all enjoyed the present after a certain grim fashion and deferred any anxiety for the morrow until that period should arrive.” Before he departed, Lincoln issued one final directive to Hooker and his second in command, General Darius Couch. “Gentlemen, in your next battle
put in all your men.”

Tremendously heartened by the splendid condition of the army and the high spirits and reception of the troops, Lincoln boarded the
Carrie Martin
at sunset on Friday for the return trip to Washington. The
Herald
noted that he “received a salute from all the vessels in port and locomotives on shore, whistles being blown, bells run, and flags displayed.”

L
INCOLN RETURNED
to the White House to find Blair enraged with Stanton, Welles feuding with Seward, and Chase threatening once again to resign. The Blairs, father and son, were defending James S. Pleasants, a Union man from Maryland who was related to Confederate John Key. Key had sought refuge at Pleasants’s house, begging food and shelter. Reluctantly, the loyal Marylander had allowed him to stay at his home. Stanton insisted that such treason deserved the gallows. “The skirmish was sharp & long,” Elizabeth Blair told her husband, but finally, the president commuted the sentence to imprisonment. Furthermore, when Lincoln learned of the man’s poor health, he agreed, at the Blairs’ request, to reduce the sentence. All of this left Stanton “very bitter.”

The quarrel between Seward and Welles concerned an English ship captured in neutral waters by a blockade runner. Suspecting that the cargo aboard was meant for the Confederacy, the Union Navy sent the
Peterhoff
to New York for disposition by a prize court. Long-standing tradition dictated that the ship’s mail be opened by the court to determine the true destination of the vessel and its cargo. The controversy had aroused strong protest from Britain regarding the sanctity of its mails. Seward, wanting to avoid British intervention at all cost, had agreed to surrender the mails unopened. Furious, Welles claimed that surrender was in violation of international law and would set a terrible precedent. Moreover, Seward had no basis meddling in this issue, since jurisdiction belonged to the Navy Department.

For days, as the unresolved matter led to rumors of war with England, the two colleagues argued the case before Lincoln. They visited him late at night armed with letters explaining their positions, argued in cabinet council, and solicited allies. Sumner backed Welles in the fray, maintaining that England would never go to war over this issue. The president, however, concurred with Seward that at this juncture good relations with England must supersede the legal questions surrounding the mails. Sumner left much disgruntled, considering Lincoln “very ignorant” about the precedents involved. Welles agreed, blaming Seward for “daily, and almost hourly wailing in [Lincoln’s] ears the calamities of a war with England,” thus diverting the president “from the real question.” Montgomery Blair also sided with Welles, telling him after a cabinet meeting that Seward “knows less of public law and of administrative duties than any man who ever held a seat in the Cabinet.” In the end, as Seward had advised, the president determined that the mails would be returned unopened to the British government.

Chase’s disaffection also weighed heavily on Lincoln that spring. For the third time in five months, Chase threatened to resign his position in the Treasury. His first resignation during the cabinet crisis had been repeated in March when Lincoln, bowing to pressure from a Connecticut senator, had decided not to renominate one of Chase’s appointees for collector of internal revenue in Hartford. Livid, Chase informed the president that unless his authority over his own appointments could be established, he could not continue in the cabinet: “I feel that I cannot be useful to you or the country in my present position.” Lincoln managed once again to placate Chase, only to receive another threat in short order. This squabble was provoked by Lincoln’s removal of one of Chase’s appointees in the Puget Sound district who had been accused of speculating in land. Enraged that he was not consulted, Chase argued that he could not function in his department if decisions were made “not only without my concurrence, but without my knowledge.” If the president could not respect his authority, Chase wrote, “I will, unhesitatingly, relieve you from all embarrassment so far as I am concerned by tendering you my resignation.”