The Man Who Saved the Union (19 page)

Seward’s proposal tested Lincoln’s patience. The president bridled at the assertion that he lacked a policy; he dismissed as madly cynical Seward’s suggestion of a deliberate foreign war; he rejected as self-serving and unconstitutional the secretary of state’s recommendation of what sounded like a co-presidency. Lincoln drafted a reply summarizing these reactions—and then, in the interest of cabinet comity, refrained from sending it. But he quietly let Seward know that the country had only one president, who didn’t need any further such counsel.

Other cabinet members were more circumspect. Most favored bowing to the inevitable and surrendering Fort Sumter. Yet
Salmon Chase, the Treasury secretary, joined Montgomery Blair in urging an effort to resupply the fort.

Lincoln had great difficulty deciding. He was no military or naval expert, and he recognized his ignorance. He had a much firmer grasp of politics, but he couldn’t tell how the politics of the situation would play out. More than a few Northerners were wishing the South good riddance, and they definitely didn’t want to start a war over an indefensible fort in South Carolina. But others were tired of what they considered Southern arrogance and thought the slaveholders needed to be taught a lesson.

No less crucial than the reaction of the North was the reaction of the South—in particular of those Southern states that had not seceded. Virginia wavered; a convention had gathered to discuss secession but hadn’t reached a conclusion. Lincoln attempted to shape the outcome; he met secretly with a pro-Union Virginia delegate and apparently offered to swap Fort Sumter for a promise of Virginia’s loyalty. “
A State for a fort is no bad business,” he was later reported to have said. But the Virginians preferred to see how events developed, and the offer came to nothing.

The administration continued to drift. Though Lincoln prepared a relief expedition, his lack of administrative experience revealed itself in confusion and delay, and the ships were slow leaving New York. The supplies at Sumter dwindled, all but compelling
Anderson to capitulate.

Lincoln lost hope of holding the fort yet wished to make the secessionists strike first. On April 12, shortly after the relief ships arrived off Charleston but before they could attempt a landing, the Confederate battery opposite the fort commenced a bombardment. Anderson and his garrison stood the shelling for a day and a half, then surrendered.

Lincoln told the country what the fateful events in
South Carolina meant. The attack on Fort Sumter constituted rebellion, he said, which must be opposed by force. The president called on the states to raise militia troops to the number of 75,000. “
I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government.”

G
rant had been drifting, too, albeit less anxiously than Lincoln. Secession was the president’s problem, not Grant’s. He read the papers but out of curiosity rather than involvement. He spent his days in the leather trade and his evenings with Julia and the children. He let the world turn itself.

The onset of war abruptly terminated his disengagement. The news of the attack on Sumter electrified Galena. A large meeting was held at the courthouse; speakers vied to best one another in their devotion to the Union.
Elihu Washburne, Galena’s congressman, offered several resolutions affirming the community’s faith in the
Constitution and the Union, concluding with: “
We solemnly resolve that, having lived under the Stars and Stripes, by the blessing of God we propose to die under them!”
John Rawlins, an attorney who represented the Grant family’s leather business, reviewed at length the transgressions of the South and the patience of the North. For three-quarters of an hour he spoke, to increasing cheers and applause from the gathered citizenry, which erupted still further at his call to arms: “I have been a Democrat all my life, but this is no longer a question of politics. It is simply country or no country. I have favored every honorable compromise; but the day for compromise is passed. Only one course is left for us. We will stand by the flag of our country, and appeal to the God of battles!”

Grant attended the meeting and shared the mounting excitement. The event brought back memories of the most fulfilling period of his life thus far, when he had fought under the American flag. He knew he had never been good at anything but war, and now that another war had begun, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. And
this
war, unlike the Mexican War, was one he could believe in. The Union was a cause to stir the heart of any patriot.

Two days later another meeting took place. The captain of the local militia summoned the meeting to order and nominated Grant to chair
the session. “
The sole reason, possibly, was that I had been in the army and had seen service,” Grant suggested later by way of explanation. “With much embarrassment and some prompting, I made out to announce the object of the meeting”—to enlist a company of volunteers in response to Lincoln’s militia call. The company was quickly raised, and Grant was offered the captaincy. To the disappointment and perhaps surprise of the group, he declined. He felt the same urgency they all did, but he remembered enough of his Mexican War experience—in particular the difference between volunteer units and the regular army—to wish to rejoin the latter. He cushioned his refusal by promising to help enlist and train the volunteers.

He shortly thereafter wrote his father-in-law. “
In these exciting times we are very anxious to hear from you,” he told
Frederick Dent. Grant knew that Dent hated Lincoln and the Republicans, but he thought the old man might still love the Union. “Now is the time, particularly in the border slave states, for men to prove their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work with the
Republican party, but now all party distinctions should be lost sight of and every true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars & Stripes, the Constitution and the Union.” Grant blamed the secessionists for the present crisis. “No impartial man can conceal from himself the fact that in all these troubles the South have been the aggressors and the Administration has stood purely on the defensive.” The strength of the North grew more evident each day. “The North is responding to the President’s call in such manner that the rebels may truly quake. I tell you there is no mistaking the feelings of the people. The Government can call into the field not only 75,000 troops but ten or twenty times 75,000 if it should be necessary.”

The latest reports had brought news that Virginia had joined the seceders. Grant wasn’t worried, being confident of the North’s overwhelming strength. “But for the influence she will have on the other border slave states this is not much to be regretted,” he told Dent. Virginia shared with the other seceding states the folly of hastening the doom of slavery, the institution they claimed to cherish. “The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution, but they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance.… Then, too, this disturbance will give such an impetus to the production of their staple, cotton, in other parts of the world that they can never recover the control of the market again for that
commodity. This will reduce the value of negroes so much that they will never be worth fighting over again.”

Grant wrote to his own father describing the course he intended to follow. “
We are now in the midst of trying times when everyone must be for or against his country, and show his colors too, by his every act,” he said. “Having been educated for such an emergency, at the expense of the Government, I feel that it has upon me superior claims, such claims as no ordinary motives of self-interest can surmount. I do not wish to act hastily or unadvisedly in the matter, and as there are more than enough to respond to the first call of the President, I have not yet offered myself.” But he was doing his part nonetheless. “I have promised and am giving all the assistance I can in organizing the company whose services have been accepted from this place. I have promised further to go with them to the state capital and, if I can, be of service to the Governor in organizing his state troops to do so.”

Grant owed his job in the leather business to his father, and he wanted his father’s permission to leave it. “What I ask now is your approval of the course I am taking,” he wrote Jesse. But whether he received permission or not, he would act. “Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now. That is, we have a Government and laws and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots, and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.”

16

“
O
N ACCOUNT OF THE CARS
NOT CONNECTING PROMPTLY, WE DID NOT
arrive here until evening yesterday,” Grant wrote Julia from Springfield on April 27. He had drilled the Galena company briefly at home and then traveled with them to the capital to oversee their enrollment in one of the Illinois regiments. “Our trip here was a perfect ovation,” he recounted. “At every station the whole population seemed to be out to greet the troops. There is such a feeling aroused through the country now as has not been known since the Revolution.” Grant’s forecast of an oversubscription to Lincoln’s summons for volunteers was proving true. “Every company called for in the President’s proclamation has been organized, and filled to near double the amount that can be received. In addition to that, every town of 1000 inhabitants and over has from one to four additional companies organized ready to answer the next call that will be made.”

Grant delivered the Galena company to its state regiment and prepared to return home. A personal request from the governor stopped him. Grant had never met
Richard Yates, although they were staying at the same hotel in Springfield and eating in the same dining room. “
The evening I was to quit the capital I left the supper room before the governor and was standing at the front door when he came out,” Grant remembered. “He spoke to me, calling me by my old army title ‘Captain,’ and said he understood that I was about leaving the city.” Grant replied that that was correct. Yates asked him to stay overnight and come to the office the next morning. “I complied with his request, and was asked to go into the Adjutant-General’s office and render such assistance as I could, the governor saying that my army experience would be of great service there.”

Grant was pleased to be noticed, and he quickly set to the task of enrolling the volunteer regiments. He soon discovered that the paperwork was more than he had encountered in the federal army. Briefly he wondered if he was up to the job. “
The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than myself,” he remarked after another two decades of wrestling with documents. Fortunately he found such a clerk in Springfield, and the enlistments proceeded smoothly.

He was impressed and gratified by the patriotic fervor of the men he mustered. “
I am convinced that if the South knew the entire unanimity of the North for the Union and maintenance of law, and how freely men and money are offered to the cause, they would lay down their arms at once in humble submission,” he wrote his sister Mary. “There is no disposition to compromise now. Nearly everyone is anxious to see the Government fully tested as to its strength, and see if it is not worth preserving.” To his father he described the masses rallying to the flag. “
Galena has several more companies organized but only one of them will be able to come in under a new call for ten regiments. Chicago has raised companies enough nearly to fill all the first call. The northern feeling is so fully aroused that they will stop at no expense of money and men to insure the success of their cause.” Grant acknowledged that the North had no monopoly on fervor. “I presume the feeling is just as strong on the other side,” he told Jesse. But the Southerners would be overwhelmed. “They are infinitely in the minority in resources.”

He began to regret that he had not joined the Illinois volunteers. “I should have offered myself for the Colonelcy of one of the regiments,” he told his father. Yet the politics of a volunteer army were beyond him. “I find all those places are wanted by politicians who are up to log-rolling.” He feared that the North would win before he could find his place. “
My own opinion is that this war will be but of short duration,” he told Jesse in early May. “A few decisive victories in some of the southern ports will send the secession army howling, and the leaders in the rebellion will flee the country.” The result would be lasting. “All the states will then be loyal for a generation to come, negroes will depreciate so rapidly in value that no body will want to own them, and their masters will be the loudest in their declamations against the institution in a political and economic view. The nigger will never disturb this country again.”

Events had never moved so rapidly in Grant’s life. A month earlier he had been minding the store in Galena, unknown to anyone beyond
his modest circle. Now he was an important man in the state, deeply involved in preparing its army for battle. He traveled the length of Illinois, from Freeport in the north to Cairo in the south, recruiting, supervising, issuing orders, signing contracts for supplies and transport. He scarcely had time to tell Julia where he was. “
Kiss the children for me,” he wrote from Mattoon, in the eastern part of the state. “And accept a dozen for yourself.”

E
vents moved even faster for Robert E. Lee. With the rest of Virginia, Lee watched the secession tide spread from Charleston across the South; with the rest of the officer corps of the
U.S. Army, he wondered what role the military would play in the unfolding drama. On April 17 Virginia seceded; on April 18 Lee received a visit from
Francis Blair, sent by Lincoln to offer him command of the federal army. The offer came as no surprise; Lee knew of his reputation as the most gifted of the emerging generation of officers. He had decided how he ought to respond to such an invitation as Blair delivered. “
After listening to his remarks,” he wrote later, “I declined the offer he made me, to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field; stating, as candidly and courteously as I could, that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take part in no invasion of the Southern States.”