Lincoln: A Photobiography (12 page)

Opposition to Lincoln's wartime policies was growing. Early in the war he had imposed measures to deal with the "enemy in the rear"—Northerners who sympathized with the South and threatened to sabotage the war effort. He had allowed army commanders to declare martial law in some areas. And he had suspended the right of
habeas corpus,
which meant that the army could arrest and jail suspected traitors without trial.

As if that weren't bad enough, the president had introduced a military draft to overcome manpower shortages. And now he was enlisting blacks in the armed forces, allowing them to carry guns and wear the Union uniform.

Antiwar feelings were boiling over. Early in 1863, Northern Democrats launched a peace movement to stop the war and bring the boys home. Calling themselves Peace Democrats, they demanded an immediate truce and a constitutional amendment that would guarantee slavery in the South. They attacked Lincoln's policies right down the line—the draft, the military arrests, the use of Negro troops, and above all, the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln reminded his critics that thousands of black soldiers were now fighting and dying in the Union ranks: "You say you will not fight to free Negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you.... Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."

Republicans charged that the Peace Democrats were poisonous "Copperheads." They branded them disloyal, accused them of aiding the rebels and undermining the war effort. Lincoln took a firm stand. He authorized army officers to jail anyone who obstructed the draft or otherwise helped the rebellion. By the summer of 1863, more then thirteen thousand opponents of the war had been
crowded into Northern prisons. When Lincoln was criticized for jailing a prominent Ohio Democrat who had denounced the draft, he snapped back, "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

Black infantrymen photographed at Fort Lincoln by Mathew Brady.

Pvt. Abraham Brown, 54th Massachusetts Regiment, 1863.

That summer, violent draft riots flared up in several Northern cities. In New York, a rampaging mob burned down the draft office, attacked the mayor's house, and surged into the city's Negro district, clubbing and whipping blacks to death, and killing policemen and other whites who tried to interfere. More than five hundred people had died before federal troops could restore order.

The governor of New York demanded that Lincoln suspend the draft and revoke the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln replied that he would never abandon emancipation. And the draft would continue, because the Union needed men to see the war through to victory. His secretary, John Hay was impressed by how tough the president had become. "He will not be bullied," said Hay, "even by his friends."

Yet victory was nowhere in sight. For months the fighting had continued with a mounting death toll. Lincoln was still having bad luck with his generals. At Antietam, McClellan had stopped Lee's advance into Maryland, but he hadn't gone after the rebels. Instead, he dug in at Antietam, complaining about his lack of supplies and his footsore horses while the president tried to prod him into action. "McClellan has got the slows," Lincoln muttered. By the time McClellan finally started in pursuit of Lee, the rebels had crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains and reached safety in central Virginia. Lincoln's patience was exhausted. In November, 1862, he dismissed McClellan from his command, ending the cautious general's troubled military career.

McClellan was replaced by General Ambrose E. Burnside, who
promptly marched south into Virginia and lost twelve thousand men at Fredericksburg. Burnside was so humiliated, he asked to be relieved of his command.

Lincoln confers with General George McClellan at Antietam, October 3,
1862.

His replacement was General "Fighting Joe" Hooker, who began to plan a new campaign against the rebel forces in Virginia. "My plans are perfect," Hooker announced, "and when I start to carry them out, may God have mercy on General Lee, for I shall have none." But Hooker, like Burnside, lasted for just one battle. Early in May, 1863, he went down to defeat at Chancellorsville, losing seventeen thousand men as Lee routed the demoralized Union troops.

Lee was determined to carry the war into the North. In June, his troops pushed northwards from Virginia, marched across Maryland, and invaded Pennsylvania, throwing the North into a panic. Lincoln had replaced Hooker with a new commander, General George Gordon Meade, who rushed his forces to Pennsylvania to stop the rebels. The two armies met on July 1 at the little country town of Gettysburg, where 170,000 troops clashed in the most spectacular battle of the war.

On July 4, after three days of fierce fighting, with more than fifty thousand casualties on both sides, Lee's broken and defeated army started back to Virginia. When news of the victory reached Lincoln, he ordered Meade to go after Lee and destroy his army once and for all. "Do not let the enemy escape," Lincoln cabled. But Meade hesitated, allowing Lee to move his retreating troops safely across the Potomac. "We had them within our grasp," the president wailed. "We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours."

Lincoln had not yet found the commander he needed. He feared now that the war would go on indefinitely. "What can I do with such generals as we have?" he asked. "Who among them is any better than Meade?"

Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle in American history.

Union and Confederate dead on the battlefield at Gettysburg.

Four months later, a ceremony was held at Gettysburg to dedicate a national cemetery for the soldiers who had died there. The main speaker was to be Edward Everett of Massachusetts, the most celebrated orator of the day. The president was asked to deliver "
a
few appropriate remarks" after Everett had finished.

Lincoln wanted to make a brief statement about the larger meaning of the war, which was now well into its third year. He started work on his speech in Washington, but it was not yet finished when he rode a special train to Gettysburg the day before the ceremony. After dinner that evening, he retired to his room to work on the speech again. He added the final touches after breakfast the next morning. He had written it out on two pieces of lined paper. There were about 270 words. "It is what I would call a short, short speech," he said.

That morning, wearing his familiar black suit and silk stovepipe hat, Lincoln rode on horseback to the cemetery on the outskirts of Gettysburg, accompanied by politicians and other dignitaries, by brass bands and marching soldiers. The official party paraded across the battlefield, where dead horses still lay stiffly on their sides among scattered autumn leaves. A crowd of fifteen thousand had assembled in front of the speaker's platform, which faced the unfinished cemetery's temporary graves and the famous battlefield beyond.

Edward Everett spoke for two hours as many in the crowd grew restless and wandered off to explore the battleground. Finally it was Lincoln's turn. He rose from his seat, took two bits of paper from his pocket, put on his spectacles, and in his reedy voice said: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

A photographer in the crowd fiddled with his camera, preparing to take a picture of the president as he spoke. But before he could get the camera ready, the speech was finished.

Lincoln spoke for two minutes. Some of his listeners were disappointed. Opposition newspapers criticized the address as unworthy of the occasion, and some papers didn't mention it at all. Lincoln himself felt that the speech was a failure. He certainly didn't realize that the words he spoke at Gettysburg on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, would be remembered all over the world as an American classic more than a hundred years later.

The war was being fought, Lincoln had said, to preserve America's bold experiment in democracy. A new kind of government had been created by the Founding Fathers in 1776. It was based on the idea that all men have an equal right to liberty that they can govern themselves by free elections. The war was a test to determine if such a government could endure. Thousands of men had fought and died at Gettysburg so that the nation and its idea of democracy might survive. Now it was up to the living to complete their unfinished work, to make sure that "those dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Worry and fatigue had become etched into the president's features. As the war dragged on, Lincoln could not forget that the conflict involved human lives. The entrance hall to the White House was always jammed with people who wanted to see him, and he saw them all, sitting in his office day after day as he listened to their pleas and complaints.