The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (20 page)

The defeat at Bull Run
¹⁷
had an immediately disheartening effect upon the North. No one had foreseen that a war was ahead; what had happened in the South was looked upon as a sectional insurrection, widespread in area but localized in a few disaffected states. It was naturally expected that the Federal Government would put down this rebellion by force of arms and restore the nation to its normal state without much trouble. As soon as this first setback occurred some of the Northern people raised the cry for surrender. Greeley, who had wanted to let the Southern states go in peace, wrote to Lincoln in black despair, hinting at the need for an armistice. In a
Tribune
editorial, he blasted away at the Cabinet heads, calling for their dismissal.

Lincoln, however, was determined to carry on the work he had begun. While the troops were still streaming into Washington from the battlefield, he drew up a memorandum of war policy, outlining the steps to be taken to crush Southern resistance. Point by point he put down the things that had to be accomplished in order to press on successfully with the opposition to the rebellion that had grown into a war.

A few days after the battle, he summoned McClellan to Washington and placed him in charge of organizing a huge army that was to march into the South to overwhelm the insurgent slaveholders. Preparations for a real war were made. Enlistment terms had already been changed from three months to three years. It was realized that the three months’ period had been a mistake.

By an unfortunate coincidence, the battle of Bull Run had taken place almost exactly three months after the time many of the first volunteers had enlisted for three months’ service. Some of them had refused to go into the battle because their term of enlistment was expiring.

The new army was to be made up of three-year men. Their training was undertaken seriously; months of activity were given over to organization. McClellan was a stickler for drill, for military efficiency and for absolute thoroughness in all details of commissary and support.

Lincoln’s difficulties in finding leaders for his troops were just beginning. McDowell had been unsatisfactory; for the moment it seemed that McClellan would be the heaven-sent commander needed by the Union. Meanwhile, the problem of military leadership was creating trouble in the West. Sporadic fighting was going on in Missouri between bands of rebels and Union men. An able commander was needed there to hold the state in line. Lincoln appointed John C. Frémont, the Republican nominee for the Presidency in 1856, to the command of the Department of the West. Not long after Frémont took charge, reports began to filter east that he was incompetent, if not actually corrupt. Military expenditures in his Department swelled to huge proportions, but no sign of action came from his armies. Late in August, Lincoln was surprised to see in the newspapers that Frémont had published a proclamation freeing the slaves of all those persons in Missouri who had taken up arms against the United States. Frémont had consulted with no one about this tremendously
important move. It had seemed like a good idea to him at the time, and he had promptly put it into effect, perhaps to win support from the abolitionists for himself. Certainly he had no moral interest in setting the slaves free. He was an opportunist and a shallow-minded malcontent who was interested only in furthering his own career. Without any thought of the far-reaching consequences to the nation, he casually made a move that had only been discussed with bated breath by the President and the members of his Cabinet. What he did was especially embarrassing because it immediately met with great approbation by people who were sincerely interested in emancipation but did not realize that Frémont was acting rashly, with no consideration for the delicate situation in the border states which were still wavering in loyalty.

Lincoln wanted to keep the border states in the Union. Naturally, their people would not tolerate Frémont’s highhanded decision to free the slaves. The President wrote a letter to his Western commander, gently chiding him for what he had done, and suggesting that he modify his proclamation to conform to previously enacted legislation for the confiscation of property used for insurrectionary purposes. Frémont replied that if his order were to be modified it must be done so by Presidential command—he was obviously trying to put Lincoln in a position from which he could not extricate himself so far as abolitionist opinion was concerned.

Lincoln patiently sent through the official notice. As soon as it became known that he had officially countermanded Frémont’s order of emancipation, he was denounced by the abolitionists. Even his old friend, O. H. Browning, wrote to him from Illinois, criticizing him for what he had done. Lincoln replied to him on September 22, 1861, in an effort to justify his own stand. He made out an airtight argument for his position against emancipation. He was to reverse himself completely hardly more than a year later.

Frémont’s ill-considered proclamation gave rise to an issue
that Lincoln would rather not have seen raised—the question of whether the country was fighting a war to preserve the Union or to free the slaves. Lincoln had made up his mind to fight on the Union issue; the abolitionists, however, were just as determined to make the war a holy one for Negro freedom. They were in a minority, but they made up for their lack of numbers by their intensity of effort and moral zeal. Their cause was not allowed to remain a simple ethical crusade. As the War progressed, leadership was taken over from the idealists who regarded their work as the work of God. Men of more practical nature—politicians—stepped in because they saw in the anti-slavery movement a vigorous force that could be directed toward the winning of the War. And those who stood most to gain from the War, the Northern industrialists, quietly put their chips behind these men.

Frémont, who had brought the issue of emancipation into the open, became hopelessly bad as a military commander. McClellan grew in power as his army became stronger. General Scott resigned on October 31; on November 1, McClellan was appointed General in Chief in his place. On November 2, Lincoln removed Frémont from his command. The outcry immediately raised against Lincoln was based on political antagonisms. Frémont was a leading Republican, McClellan was a Democrat. Frémont, in the eyes of many Northerners, stood for the anti-slavery forces; McClellan was a member of the Democratic party which had been the representative of the South and slavery. Lincoln, of course, acted without thought of party, but the country was sensitive about the political affiliations of the men who were to lead its armies.

Only a week after McClellan’s appointment, something happened that made the North forget party issues for the moment. This was the famous
Trent
affair. The Confederate Government attempted to send two commissioners, James M.
Mason and John Slidell, to England and France by way of Havana. On November 8, the day after the British steamer
Trent
had left Cuba with Mason and Slidell on board, a United States man-of-war stopped the ship and seized the two commissioners. News of this event reached the North on November 16, and was received with wild enthusiasm. So far the North had seen nothing but defeat. This was her first small victory.

The triumph was short lived. The President realized that Great Britain would insist that the commissioners had been removed from one of her ships by an act contrary to international law. The commissioners would have to be surrendered, disappointing as this concession would be to the public.

The
Trent
reached England on November 27. Reaction there was immediate and violent, especially among those upper-class people who considered the United States a democratic upstart and a dangerous commercial rival. They promptly set up a clamor for war. Since these were the people who had charge of the British government, they were in a position to see that forcible measures were carried out at once against the United States. Eight thousand soldiers were dispatched to Canada, and an embargo was placed on arms and munitions. A peremptory demand for the release of the commissioners and an apology for their seizure was sent to the British Minister in Washington, with instructions for him to return to England unless the demand was granted within seven days of its delivery.

The sharp tone of the British note naturally was irritating to the Cabinet members who met on Christmas Day to deliberate on a course of action. Nevertheless, the attitude which Lincoln had taken from the beginning finally prevailed, and the Cabinet agreed that the commissioners should be turned over to the British. Seward, in drafting his reply, could not resist the temptation to twist the lion’s tail. After consenting to return the prisoners, he said: “Nor have I been tempted at
all by suggestions that cases might be found in history where Great Britain refused to yield to other nations, and even to ourselves, claims like that which is now before us.”

On January 1, 1862, the much-publicized prisoners were taken from Boston Harbor to Provincetown, where they were safely transferred to a British gunboat. There was an ironic aftermath. One of the transports bringing British troops to Canada found that the St. Lawrence was frozen over. She sailed to Portland, Maine, where permission had to be sought from the United States Government to let the troops travel across Maine to Canada. Permission was cheerfully granted, and the troops who had been sent as a threat to the United States shamefacedly entered the country they had come to invade, while the North grinned at Britain’s discomfiture.

The
Trent
affair, with its implications of a foreign war ended with a comic incident, but the President’s troubles with his generals never ceased. McClellan had spent the rest of the summer and the early autumn getting his magnificent army ready, but he seemed to be exceedingly reluctant to make any use of it. Everyone had expected that a drive would be started against the Confederate armies still lying at Manassas, but nothing happened. The public became impatient, the President worried, and as soon as Congress met, criticism of McClellan’s inactivity became increasingly severe.

The thirty-four-year-old general was undoubtedly suffering from an over-inflated egotism that made him difficult to handle. His predecessor, General Scott, had resigned because of genuinely bad health, but McClellan’s arrogance to the almost helpless old man had hastened his retirement. McClellan not only felt that Scott was a superannuated fool—he showed that he felt it in every speech, letter and deed. But if his attitude toward General Scott was unkind, his behavior toward the President who had selected him as his own personal choice for commander exceeded all bounds of common sense and human decency. Only thirteen days after Lincoln had made
him General in Chief, McClellan revealed himself as a badly spoiled child who should have been spanked with the flat of his own sword. Hay tells the story in his diary:

November 13. I wish here to record what I consider a portent of evil to come. The President, Governor Seward and I, went over to McClellan’s house tonight. The servant at the door said the General … would soon return. We went in, and after we had waited about an hour, McC. came in and without paying any particular attention to the porter, who told him the President was waiting to see him, went upstairs, passing the door of the room where the President and Secretary of State were seated. They waited about half-an-hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there, and the answer coolly came that the General had gone to bed.

I merely record this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without comment. It is the first indication I have yet seen of the threatened supremacy of the military authorities.

The ever-patient Lincoln swallowed the insult, remarking calmly to Hay that perhaps it was better during such perilous times not to make a point of etiquette or personal dignity. He said later that he would hold McClellan’s stirrup, if he would win him victories. But the pompous young general showed no signs of moving toward the enemy. Winter came, and McClellan confessed that he was glad to see the snow fall, for it meant that he could not be forced to make his army get under way until it was completely ready. In his contention that the army must be thoroughly trained and supplied before it ventured forth, McClellan was probably right. But the character traits he had betrayed in his dealings with two old men who wished him well correctly indicated that he was not the man to lead it.

While McClellan’s delay engaged the North in bitter dispute, Congress, which had adjourned on August 6, met again for its regular session on December 3. The President, in his first Annual Message to this Congress, touched only obliquely
on the question of slavery, but went on at some length to expound his ideas on the relationship of capital and labor. Free labor in the North was playing an important part in the War, and Lincoln was eager to win the allegiance of the working class to the Northern cause.

The anti-slavery Radical Republican group in Congress
¹⁸
was disappointed at the President’s unwillingness to take a positive stand on the matter of freeing the slaves. This Congressional cabal was growing in power; it had already approached the President in October to try to make him force McClellan’s hand to move into battle; it was now no longer content to let matters rest with the President—it initiated the formation of a Congressional committee to inquire into the conduct of the War. Generals were brought before this committee, investigators were sent into the field and a typical American scandal-hunting inquiry was staged.

Because of what happened in the South during Reconstruction days after the War, the Radicals have been treated with undue unfairness in history. They have been called the Vindictives, and every motive from overweening personal ambition to sheer malice has been attributed to them. Like most men, they were neither wholly good nor entirely bad. They were radicals in that they wanted the Republican party to get down to the root of the matter that had caused it to be founded—opposition to slavery. They were vindictive only in that they were implacably set against any compromise with slavery and wanted to punish the South that had gone to war to defend it. Lincoln hated slavery as an abstract thing; these men, like the non-political abolitionists whose cause they took over, hated slavery as a living evil. To them slavery was a force that stood for oppression and nothing else. They saw it in personal
terms as a demonic Simon Legree who was lashing the flesh and enchaining the souls of four million fellow creatures.