Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (144 page)

Chase used Treasury Department patronage to build a political machine for his nomination in 1864. The emergence of dissatisfaction with Lincoln's reconstruction policy strengthened his cause. In December 1863 a Chase committee took shape in Washington headed by Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas. Misreading congressional grumbling for an anti-Lincoln groundswell, the committee decided to bring its movement into the open in February 1864. Pomeroy issued a "circular" declaring that Lincoln's "manifest tendency toward temporary expedients" made "the 'one-term principle' absolutely essential" to ensure a victorious war and a just peace. Chase was the man to achieve these goals.
⁴⁶

This attempt to promote a Chase boom backfired. Once again, as in the cabinet crisis of December 1862, the secretary proved no match for the president in the game of politics. While Chase had filled the Treasury Department with his partisans, Lincoln had not neglected the patronage. Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair did yeoman service for the president in this respect. And his brother Frank Blair, on leave from corps command in Sherman's army to take a seat in Congress, functioned in a capacity that a later generation would describe as "hatchet man" for the administration. A week after the Pomeroy Circular appeared, Frank Blair caused an uproar with a blistering anti-Chase speech in the House that among other things charged widespread Treasury corruption in the issuance of cotton-trading permits. Many radical Republicans

45
. Chase to William Sprague, Nov. 26, 1863, in J. W. Schuckers,
Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase
(New York, 1874), 494; Wade quoted in Dennett,
Lincoln/Hay
, 53.

46
. James G. Randall and Richard N. Current,
Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure
(New York, 1955), 99.

never forgave the Blair family for this climactic event in a series of intraparty dogfights which found the Blairs leading the conservative faction. Meanwhile Republican state committees, legislatures, newspapers, and Union Leagues throughout the North—including Chase's home state of Ohio—passed resolutions endorsing Lincoln's renomination. Embarrassed by this boomerang destruction of his aspirations, Chase disingenuously disavowed any connection with the Pomeroy Circular, withdrew his name from consideration for the presidency, and offered to resign from the cabinet. For his part the president—perhaps with equal disingenuousness—disavowed any connection with Blair's attack and refused to accept Chase's resignation. Describing Chase's ambition for the presidency as a form of "mild insanity," Lincoln considered him less dangerous inside the government than out of it.
⁴⁷

Although most Republicans climbed aboard the Lincoln bandwagon, some of them did so with reluctance. As the reconstruction issue drove its wedge deeper into party unity, several radicals continued to hope that the bandwagon could be stopped. Horace Greeley futilely urged postponement of the national convention from June until September in a Micawber-like hope that something might turn up. Others launched trial balloons for an unlikely series of candidates including Grant, Butler, and Frémont. Of these only Frémont's balloon became airborne, carrying as strange a group of passengers as American politics ever produced.

Bitter toward a president who did not assign him to an important military command, Frémont like McClellan had been "awaiting orders" since 1862. Indeed, these two disgruntled generals represented the foremost political dangers to Lincoln. Of the two, McClellan posed the greater threat because he seemed likely to become the Democratic nominee later in the summer. In the meantime Frémont attracted a coalition of abolitionists and radical German-Americans into a third party. A few Republicans lent behind-the-scenes support to this movement, hoping to use it as a cat's-paw to scratch Lincoln from the main party ticket and bring Chase back to life. But the sparsely attended convention that met in Cleveland on May 31 to nominate Frémont contained not a single influential Republican. The most prominent supporter of this

47
. Chase to Lincoln, Feb. 22, 1864, Lincoln to Chase, Feb. 29, 1864, in
CWL
, VII, 200–201, 212–13; Thomas Graham Belden,
So Fell the Angels
(Boston, 1956), 108–17; Randall and Current,
Lincoln the President
, 95–110; William Frank Zor-now,
Lincoln & the Party Divided
(Norman, Okla., 1954), 231–56.

nomination was Wendell Phillips, whose letter to the convention proclaimed that Lincoln's reconstruction policy "makes the freedom of the negro a sham, and perpetuates slavery under a softer name." The convention adopted an apparently radical platform that called for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery and "secure to all men absolute equality before the law." The platform also asserted that Congress rather than the president must control reconstruction, and urged confiscation of land owned by "rebels" for redistribution "among the soldiers and actual settlers." At the same time, however, the platform denounced Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and suppression of free speech. This of course was the main Democratic indictment of the administration. The convention also nominated a Democrat for vice president, and the new party called itself the Radical
Democratic
party.
⁴⁸

Thereby hung a tale—and a tail that soon began to wag the dog. Shrewd Democrats had not overlooked this opportunity to stir up trouble among the opposition. They infiltrated the convention and held out to the naive Frémont the prospect of a coalition with Democrats to beat Lincoln. The unemployed general took the bait. His acceptance letter repudiated the confiscation plank, ignored the "equality before the law" plank, but dwelt at length on Lincoln's misconduct of the war and violation of civil liberties. As the Democratic game of using Frémont to divert a few thousand Republican votes to a third party in close states became evident, most radicals (but not Phillips) renounced the venture and concluded that they had no alternative but Lincoln.

The Republican convention in Baltimore during the second week of June exhibited the usual hoopla and love-feast unity of a party renominating an incumbent. The assemblage called itself the National Union convention to attract War Democrats and southern unionists who might flinch at the name Republican. But it nevertheless adopted a down-the-line Republican platform, including endorsement of unremitting war to force the "unconditional surrender" of Confederate armies and the passage of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. When this latter plank was presented, "the whole body of delegates sprang to their feet . . . in prolonged cheering," according to William Lloyd Garrison, who was present as a reporter for his newspaper
The Liberator
. "Was not a spectacle like that rich compensation for more than thirty years of personal opprobrium?"
⁴⁹

48
.
New York Tribune
, June 1, 1864; Zornow,
Lincoln & the Party Divided
, 72–86; McPherson,
The Struggle for Equality
, 267–78.

49
.
Liberator
, June 24, 1864.

The platform dealt with the divisive reconstruction issue by ignoring it. Delegations from the Lincoln-reconstructed states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee were admitted, while with the president's covert sanction the convention made a gesture of conciliation to radicals by seating an anti-Blair delegation from Missouri which cast a token ballot for Grant before changing its vote to make Lincoln's nomination unanimous. The only real contest at the convention was generated by the vice-presidential nomination. The colorless incumbent Hannibal Hamlin would add no strength to the ticket. The attempt to project a Union party image seemed to require the nomination of a War Democrat from a southern state. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee best fitted this bill. After backstairs maneuvers whose details still remain obscure, Johnson received the nomination on the first ballot.
⁵⁰
This nomination had a mixed impact on radical-moderate tensions in the party. On the one hand, Johnson had dealt severely with "rebels" in Tennessee. On the other, he embodied Lincoln's executive approach to reconstruction.

The unanimity at Baltimore only temporarily papered over cracks in the party. By the time of Benjamin Wade's and Henry Winter Davis's angry manifesto against the president's reconstruction policy two months later, those cracks had become so wide that a serious move was on foot to replace Lincoln with another candidate. But the pressures that produced this astounding development arose less from controversy over what to do with the South when the war was won than from despair about whether it could be won at all. A Confederacy that had seemed on the ropes at the end of 1863 had come back fighting and appeared likely to survive after a season of slaughter whose toll eclipsed even that of the terrible summers of '62 and '63.

50
. A postwar controversy arose over whether Lincoln remained neutral in this matter or played a role in engineering Johnson's nomination. Two of the most thorough students of this matter concluded that Lincoln's role was decisive: see Randall and Current,
Lincoln the President
, 15–34; and Zornow,
Lincoln & the Party Divided
, 99–103.

24
If It Takes All Summer

I

"Upon the progress of our arms," said Lincoln late in the war, "all else chiefly depends."
¹
Never was this more true than in 1864, when "all else" included Lincoln's own re-election as well as the fate of emancipation and of the Union.

In the spring of 1864 the progress of Union arms seemed assured. Congress had revived the rank of lieutenant general (last held by George Washington), and Lincoln had promoted Grant to this rank with the title of general in chief. Henry W. Halleck stepped down to the post of chief of staff. Grant designated Sherman as his successor to command western armies and came east to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac. Though Meade remained in charge of this army subject to Grant's strategic orders, Phil Sheridan also came east to take over its cavalry. With the Union's three best generals—Grant, Sherman, Sheridan—in top commands, the days of the Confederacy appeared numbered.

After their setbacks during the latter half of 1863, rebel armies had suffered through a hard winter of short rations. The South was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel. The Confederate Congress abolished the privilege of substitution (making those who had previously bought substitutes liable to conscription) and required soldiers whose

1
.
CWL
, VIII, 332. 718

three-year enlistments were about to expire to remain in the army. Congress also stretched the upper and lower age limits of the draft to fifty and seventeen. Despite these efforts to maintain the army's strength, southern forces numbered fewer than half the enemy's as spring sunshine began to dry the red clay roads of Virginia and Georgia.

But there were flaws in the Union sword and hidden strengths in the Confederate shield. Northern success paradoxically created military weakness. Union armies had to detach many divisions as occupation forces to police 100,000 square miles of conquered territory. Other divisions had similar responsibilities in the border slave states. Invading armies also had to drop off large numbers of troops to guard their supply lines against cavalry and guerrilla raids. In Sherman's campaign for Atlanta in 1864 the number of men protecting his rail communications 450 miles back to Louisville nearly equaled the number of front-line soldiers he could bring against the enemy.

These subtractions from Union forces reduced the odds against the Confederacy. In spite of defeat at Gettysburg and the hardships that followed, the morale of the Army of Northern Virginia remained high. Many of these lean, tough veterans had re-enlisted even before Congress on February 17 required them to do so. They had become a band of brothers fighting from motives of pride in themselves, comradeship with each other, and devotion to Marse Robert. Many of them also shared Lee's sentiments, expressed on the eve of the 1864 military campaign, that "if victorious, we have everything to hope for in the future. If defeated, nothing will be left for us to live for."
²
Joseph Johnston had not been able to instill the same
esprit
in the army he inherited from Brax-ton Bragg. But he had done more in that direction by May 1864 than anyone who watched these troops flee from Missionary Ridge the previous November would have thought possible.

Most of the Confederate soldiers were veterans. Many of the veterans in the Union army were due to go home in 1864 when their three-year enlistments were up. If this happened, the South might well seize victory from the jaws of defeat. The Union Congress did not emulate its southern counterpart and require these veterans to re-enlist. Regarding their three-year term as a contract that could not be abrogated, the Washington lawmakers relied instead on persuasion and inducements. Three-year veterans who re-enlisted would receive a special chevron to