The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (108 page)

It is a pertinent question, often asked in the mind privately, and from one to the other, when is the war to end? Surely I feel as deep an interest in this question as any other can; but I do not wish to name a day, a month, or year, when it is to end. I do not wish to run any risk of seeing the time come without our being ready for the end, for fear of disappointment because the time had come and not the end. We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will end until that time. Speaking of the present campaign, General Grant is reported to have said, “I am going through on this line
if it takes all summer.” This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain, and for the American people, as far as my knowledge enables me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more.

My friends, I did not know but that I might be called upon to say a few words before I got away from here, but I did not know it was coming just here. I have never been in the habit of making predictions in regard to the war, but I am almost tempted to make one. If I were to hazard it, it is this: That Grant is this evening, with General Meade and General Hancock, and the brave officers and soldiers with him, in a position from whence he will never be dislodged until Richmond is taken.…

Salmon P. Chase was an ambitious man, so ambitious that he had left nothing undone to push himself forward for the Presidential nomination of 1864. He had favored the Radicals in Congress, and they had supported his candidacy; but, to his great disappointment, Chase had not received the nomination. He had already threatened to resign from the Cabinet three times; this time, over a minor issue as to who was to be appointed Assistant Treasurer at New York, Chase and Lincoln finally disagreed with each other. Chase offered his resignation, and much to his surprise, the President promptly accepted it. Lincoln still felt that Chase was a capable administrator and a good lawyer. After the death of Roger B. Taney, in October, 1864, Lincoln appointed Chase to the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Executive Mansion, June 30, 1864

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: Your resignation of the office of Secretary of the Treasury sent me yesterday is accepted. Of all I have said
in commendation of your ability and fidelity I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service.

When the President had issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on December 8, 1863, it had been received with great acclaim even by the Radical wing of his own party. As time passed, the Radicals, however, became more and more dissatisfied with the bill, feeling that the terms it offered to the seceded states were much too easy. One after another, and for varying reasons, they parted company with the President. They drafted a bill of their own which passed the House and the Senate under the sponsorship of Henry Winter Davis in the House and Benjamin F. Wade in the Senate. This bill was laid before the President on July 4 for his signature only a few moments before Congress was due to adjourn. Lincoln pocketed the bill, refusing either to sign or to veto it. Four days later, he issued this proclamation in which he shattered all precedent by eliminating those parts of the Wade-Davis Bill to which he could not agree, and by accepting those that were satisfactory to him. He did not want to be committed to any one plan of reconstruction at this time. He was still feeling his way and he was willing to let the people in the Southern states decide for themselves which plan they wished to adopt Wade and Davis, bitterly disappointed, issued a public denunciation of the President on August 5 in the New York Tribune. This denunciation, which became known as the Wade-Davis Manifesto, was an attack based on the ground that the President had encroached on the authority of Congress.

July 8, 1864

W
HEREAS
, at the late session, Congress passed a bill to “guarantee to certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government,” a copy of which is hereunto annexed;

And whereas
the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the
sine die
adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him;

And whereas
the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known, that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared, by a formal approval of this bill, to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration; and, while I am also unprepared to declare that the free-State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for nought, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, or to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States, but am at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation may be adopted, nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and that I am, and at all times shall be, prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State, and the
people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in which cases military governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the bill.

Word had come to Horace Greeley, editor of the
New York Tribune,
that two Confederate commissioners were in Canada, authorized to negotiate for a peaceful settlement of the
War.
They were willing to meet at Niagara Falls any person in authority sent to them for an interview. Greeley wrote to Lincoln, begging him not to ignore the opportunity. This letter is Lincoln’s reply to him. Lincoln later authorized Greeley to go to Niagara Falls to confer with the commissioners, which he unwillingly did. When Greeley arrived at Niagara Falls, he found that the commissioners had no credentials; furthermore, although Lincoln had told him that he would consider such negotiations only on the basis of restoring the Union and abandoning slavery, Greeley ignored the President’s conditions and telegraphed to Washington, saying that the commissioners wished to come there to deal with him in person. Lincoln, tearing that such a move might be interpreted as his suing for peace with the South, immediately sent John Hay to Niagara Falls with a note stating his terms in writing. The negotiations promptly collapsed.

Washington, D. C., July 9, 1864

D
EAR
S
IR
: Your letter of the 7th, with inclosures, received. If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you; and that if he really brings such proposition, he shall at the least have safe conduct with the paper (and without publicity,
if he chooses) to the point where you shall have met him. The same if there be two or more persons.

Grant was settling down for his long siege of Petersburg. Lincoln sends him a characteristic telegram.

Executive Mansion, Washington, August 17, 1864

L
IEUTENANT
-G
ENERAL
G
RANT
, C
ITY
P
OINT
, V
A
.: I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

Lincoln speaks to his soldiers in the midst of the darkest period of the War.

August 18, 1864

S
OLDIERS
: I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country. I wish it might be more generally and universally understood what the country is now engaged in. We have, as all will agree, a free government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed. I say this in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose.

There may be some inequalities in the practical application of our system. It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property; but if we should wait before collecting a tax, to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all. There may be mistakes made sometimes; things may be done wrong; white the officers of the government do all they can to prevent mistakes. But I beg of you, as citizens of this great republic, not to let your minds be carried off from the great work we have before us. This struggle is too large for you to be diverted from it by any small matter. When you return to your homes, rise up to the height of a generation of men worthy of a free government, and we will carry out the great work we have commenced.

On August 29, the Democratic National Convention was to be held at Chicago, at which it was almost certain that General McClellan would be nominated to run against Lincoln. During the terrible summer of 1864, everything had gone against the administration, and Lincoln had been told even by his closest advisers that he could not hope for re-election. He presented this memorandum, folded so that it could not be read, to the members of his Cabinet, asking them to sign it. He did not read its contents to them until November 11, after he had been re-elected.

Executive Mansion, August 23, 1864

T
HIS
morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so coöperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.

Ever since October, 1862, when Lincoln had gone to visit McClellan at his headquarters at Antietam, the story of his visit there had been used against him in one of the dirtiest whispering campaigns in American politics.
The New York World,
in particular, had been guilty of printing distorted versions of what had happened during his visit. On September 9, 1864, this piece appeared in the
World; “
While the President was driving over the field in an ambulance, accompanied by Marshal Lamon, General McClellan, and another officer, heavy details of men were engaged in the task of burying the dead. The ambulance had just reached the neighborhood of the old stone bridge, where the dead were piled highest, when Mr. Lincoln, suddenly slapping Marshal Lamon on the knee, exclaimed: ‘Come, Lamon, give us the song about Picayune Butler. McClellan has never heard it.’ ‘Not now, if you please,’ said General McClellan, with a shudder; ‘I would prefer to hear it some other place and time!’ ” The
World
also published this bit of doggerel:

Lamon wanted to answer this attack; Lincoln was afraid that his belligerent friend would cause more trouble than good, so he wrote out this account himself. After having written it, however, Lincoln decided against using it.

September [12?], 1864

T
HE
President has known me intimately for nearly twenty years, and has often heard me sing little ditties. the battle of
Antietam was fought on the 17th day of September 1862. On the first day of October, just two weeks after the battle, the President, with some others including myself started from Washington to visit the Army, reaching Harpers’ Ferry at noon of that day. In a short while Gen. McClellan came from his Headquarters near the battle-ground, joined the President, and with him, reviewed, the troops at Bolivar Heights that afternoon; and, at night, returned to his Headquarters, leaving the President at Harpers’ Ferry. On the morning of the second the President, with Gen. Sumner, reviewed the troops respectively at Loudon Heights and Maryland Heights, and at about noon, started to Gen. McClellan’s Headquarters, reaching there only in time to see very little before night. On the morning of the third all started on a review of the three corps, and the Cavalry, in the vicinity of the Antietam battle-ground. After getting through with Gen. Burnsides’ Corps, at the suggestion of Gen. McClellan he and the President left their horses to be led, and went into an ambulance or ambulances to go to Gen. Fitz John Porter’s Corps, which was two or three miles distant. I am not sure whether the President and Gen. Mc. were in the same ambulance, or in different ones; but myself and some others were in the same with the President. On the way, and on no part of the battle-ground, and on what suggestion I do not remember, the President asked me to sing the little sad song that follows, which he had often heard me sing, and had always seemed to like very much. I sang them. After it was over, some one of the party (I do not think it was the President), asked me to sing something else; and I sang two or three little comic things of which Picayune Butler was one. Porter’s Corps was reached and reviewed; then the battle-ground was passed over, and the most noted parts examined; then, in succession the Cavalry, and Franklin’s Corps were reviewed, and the President and party returned to Gen. McClellan’s Headquarters at the end of a very hard, hot, and dusty day’s work. Next day, the 4th, President and Gen. Mc.
visited such of the wounded as still remained in the vicinity, including the now lamented Gen. Richardson; then proceeded to and examined the South-Mountain battle-ground, at which point they parted, Gen. McClellan returning to his Camp, and the President returning to Washington, seeing, on the way, Gen. Hartsoff, who lay wounded at Fredericktown. This is the whole story of the singing and its surroundings. Neither Gen. McClellan or any one else made any objection to the singing; the place was not on the battlefield, the time was sixteen days after the battle, no dead body was seen during the whole time the President was absent from Washington, nor even a grave that had not been rained on since it was made.