Rise to Greatness (58 page)

Sumner seethed: to his mind, this official letter placed “the Confederates and the majority of Congress upon the same levels.” Nothing could more clearly demonstrate Seward’s unacceptable views. Lincoln was at a loss to answer this charge. He explained that he and Seward normally discussed all dispatches before they were sent, but he couldn’t recall discussing this one. Pointedly, the president did not defend the decision to write or send the letter, much less to publish it for the world to read.

This colloquy with the senators went on for three long hours, though the tone remained civil throughout. Lincoln struck at least one senator as “cheerful” and “pleased with the interview.” Afterward, the president boiled the session down to one pithy remark. As Bates recorded it, Lincoln said that “while they believed in [Lincoln’s] honesty, they seemed to think that when he had in him any good purposes, Mr. S[eward] contrived
to suck them out of him unperceived.
”

Overnight, Lincoln sifted through the shards of his situation. He now knew the extent of the complaints against Seward, and he knew most of them weren’t true. They were based, as Fessenden had put it, on “common rumor.” And the president had a pretty good guess where the rumors were coming from. The difficult question was this: without further inflaming the situation, how could he prove to the senators that the gossip and complaints of Salmon Chase were not to be trusted?

*   *   *

Gideon Welles had barely shrugged off his overcoat at the Navy Department the next morning when a message arrived from John Nicolay announcing an emergency cabinet meeting at half-past ten. Normally, the call to council would come from the office of the secretary of state, but by now the rumor of Seward’s resignation was spreading. At the appointed hour, Lincoln convened the group—with Seward conspicuously absent—by admonishing everyone to keep secret what he was about to say. He then recounted the story thus far: the efforts by the Republican caucus to oust the secretary of state; Seward’s shock and resignation; the long and “animated” meeting with the Senate delegation the night before. The president told his colleagues that he had explained to the senators how much their resolution “grieved him,” particularly because it was based on assumptions that weren’t true. The senators had asserted that the cabinet was rife with dissent and division; no, he had told them, the cabinet, which had been carefully chosen to balance the diverse political voices of the Union coalition, had in fact “gone on harmoniously.” Of course its members had their differences, but “there had never been serious disagreements.” Moreover, Lincoln had assured the senators, the cabinet had “sustained and consoled” him through all his burdens and toils, with “mutual and unselfish confidence and zeal.”

This artful opening statement worked on two levels. First, it was an optimistic call to arms at a moment of crisis. Second, it deftly placed Chase, and Seward’s other critics, in a tricky spot. No cabinet member was likely to openly disagree with such a glowing tribute to the group’s self-sacrificing patriotism. But the alternative to speaking out was to remain silent, and silence could only be interpreted as agreement with Lincoln’s summary of the situation. The president had neatly closed off the option of airing and discussing the cabinet’s dysfunctions and grievances—by saying at the outset that they didn’t exist.

He then asked his colleagues not to do anything rash. Do not undertake “combined movement” to “resist this assault,” he begged. He said he was afraid “the rest of [them] might take [this] as a hint to retire also,” and “he could not afford to lose” any additional members of his council. They must remain together and be patient. Again, who could disagree?

When Lincoln finished talking, the cabinet chattered awhile over the shocking news, each one telling the others when he first caught wind of Seward’s resignation. Blair boasted that he had known since the day before; Stanton said he had heard it from Lincoln during an earlier meeting; Bates reported learning of the news on his way to the White House that morning. Salmon Chase, however, claimed that he had known absolutely nothing of the Senate caucus or of Seward’s decision to step down until he had heard it in this room—a statement difficult to believe, when it came from such a gossipy insider. Finally, after some more rambling discussion, Lincoln adjourned the meeting. He asked them all to return at seven thirty
P.M.

Lincoln had learned something that morning: neither Chase nor any other unhappy cabinet member was willing to cross him or to level charges against Seward in front of the others. And if they wouldn’t do it among themselves, it was unlikely they would do it with the Republican senators in the room. Lincoln sent word to Collamer that he would like to meet with the Senate delegation again. They should come to the White House that evening—at seven thirty.

*   *   *

Elite Washington hummed with the electric excitement of a political crisis. Conversations leapt quickly from the rumor of Seward’s resignation to the prospect of a complete upheaval of the cabinet, and from there to the capital’s age-old pastime: touting candidates. Who should replace Seward—Sumner? Collamer? If Chase resigned, would Fessenden take his place? Or should Thomas Ewing return to Treasury? Preston King or John Dix would make a fine secretary of war when Stanton went—or should the new secretary be Frémont? Meanwhile, across the aisle, Democrats scoffed at this flurry of Republican names. They were convinced that the crackup of Lincoln’s cabinet would force the president to recall McClellan and give him greater powers than ever before. Browning, recording this line of reasoning in his diary, wrote that Little Mac would “
dictate
his own terms,” including “the disposal of all the commands in the army!”

When the delegation of senators gathered again that evening in the anteroom of Lincoln’s office, they discovered they were not alone. Eyeing the cabinet members with curiosity, they waited briefly until Lincoln welcomed them all into his chamber and announced that he had taken the liberty of inviting the cabinet—minus Seward, of course—“for a free and friendly conversation.” Did the senators have any objection? Blindsided, the lawmakers had no opportunity to discuss the proposition; when Collamer acquiesced, the rest of them went along.

Lincoln now had all of them in a room together; it was time to play his hand. The president began with an expanded version of the remarks he had tested with the cabinet that morning. It was true, he admitted, that the cabinet did not meet at regular intervals; the urgent press of the war made that impossible. But “most questions of importance had received a reasonable consideration” by the group. Furthermore, he continued, once decisions were made, the cabinet—including Seward—supported them. The president vouched personally for the secretary of state, saying that Seward was “earnest in the prosecution of the war and had not improperly interfered.”

The delegation was deeply skeptical of these claims. Senator Fessenden and Lincoln’s old Illinois rival Lyman Trumbull, for instance, later remarked that the president’s own words furnished ample evidence that he often failed to keep the cabinet informed. Lincoln acknowledged that he had not consulted his cabinet before choosing McClellan and, later, Halleck, as general in chief. Nor did he come to them prior to reinstating McClellan as head of the army after Pope’s loss at Bull Run. Nor did he take a vote on whether he should proclaim emancipation.

Yet, no one in the room was willing to speak up to contradict the president, so it was time for Lincoln to reveal his trump card. As evidence that his cabinet worked together harmoniously, the president declared that Seward sometimes sought advice from Chase about important diplomatic matters. Lincoln then paused, looked at Chase, and asked whether any of the cabinet members disagreed with anything he had said.

Chase was cornered. Everyone in the room knew that he disagreed with Lincoln’s description of a collegial cabinet. But would he say so, knowing that the consequences might be dire—for himself, for Lincoln, and for the country? The treasury secretary was visibly angry. As one participant recalled, Chase finally found his voice to protest that “he should not have come here had he known that he was to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate.” Grudgingly, however, he agreed with Lincoln that the cabinet had weighed most of the important issues in the war—“though perhaps not as fully as might have been desired,” he added weakly. It was also true, he acknowledged, that the cabinet generally concurred with and supported the decisions made by the president.

Stanton, for one, was “disgusted” by this answer. As he told Fessenden the next day, every charge contained in the caucus resolution was true, yet Chase had cut the legs out from under the senators. The war secretary asserted that he “was ashamed of Chase, for he knew better.”

But did Stanton speak up? Did any member of the cabinet? Caleb Smith, the interior secretary, was another anti-Seward voice, and he later said that “he had felt strongly tempted to contradict Mr. Chase on the spot.” But he had already accepted Lincoln’s appointment to the federal bench and would soon be gone, so he too decided to keep quiet.

The senators were stunned. A few days afterward, when Orville Browning heard a description of this meeting, he asked Senator Collamer “how Mr. Chase could venture to make such a statement in the presence” of the very men he had filled with stories of Seward’s “back stairs and malign influence.”

Collamer’s answer was simple: “He lied.”

Was Chase lying, or had he exaggerated while telling and retelling all those aggrieved tales he spread around Washington and passed on in his letters—stories in which every Union setback was merely a matter of too much Seward and not enough Chase? None of the senators in the room that evening could be sure.

After the showdown with Chase, the conversation moved on. Various senators detailed their impatience and irritation and fears for the nation’s future. Blair and then Bates replied with long speeches about the Constitution and separation of powers and the authority of the executive. Throughout, Lincoln put in comments and anecdotes, most of which the men had heard before.

Chase sat quietly until he abruptly interjected one unexpected piece of information. The conversation had wandered onto the subject of the September 22 cabinet meeting at which Lincoln read his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. As Lincoln was describing that day’s discussion, Chase reminded the president that Seward had actually
strengthened
the decree. Where the president had pledged the government to “recognize” the freedom of former slaves, Seward suggested adding the words “and maintain.” Recognize
and maintain:
the senators could unquestionably see the significance of that change. How did this information square with their image of a man skulking on the back stairs of the White House, secretly maneuvering on behalf of slave owners?

It didn’t.

After allowing the conversation to go on a bit longer while everyone digested what they had heard, Lincoln asked the senators whether they had changed their minds about the need to force Seward out. Some had, some had not. Fessenden, for one, didn’t wish to discuss the subject in front of the president’s advisers; provided with this opening, the cabinet departed. By now it was around midnight. Lincoln and the senators kept talking for another hour, as the meeting devolved into a classic late-night airing of long-festering complaints.

Before the session ended, Fessenden made one last stab at Seward. The question was no longer whether to force him out, the senator said; he had resigned. Now the question was whether Lincoln should invite him back in. “Under these circumstances I feel bound to say that as Mr. Seward has seen fit to resign, I should advise that his resignation be accepted,” the senator said.

Lincoln, having accomplished over the past several hours precisely what he had intended, said nothing.

*   *   *

“The town is all in a buz,” Bates scribbled hastily in his diary on December 20. The scuttlebutt now was that Lincoln’s entire cabinet was out, and some people were actually sending lists of possible replacements to the White House in hopes that Lincoln would review them.

But the final act of the drama remained unwritten. To allow the Senate cabal to drive out Seward would have unbalanced the government and pushed it in the radical direction; as Lincoln later put it, “the thing would all have slumped over one way [and] we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters.” On the other hand, Fessenden had correctly pointed out the night before that since everyone in town already knew about Seward’s resignation, to coax him back would tilt the administration in the opposite direction. To maintain his precarious balance, Lincoln now needed to resolve the crisis in a way that did not appear to favor one side or the other.

He found the solution when he walked into his office that morning and discovered Chase already there, waiting for him. Welles and Stanton were there, too. The navy secretary was particularly anxious for a word with the president, having just returned from a visit to Seward’s house. Undertaken at Lincoln’s request, Welles’s mission had been to encourage the embattled secretary of state to keep quiet and have faith that “this scheme should be defeated.” Careful not to let Chase know where he had been, Welles cryptically assured Lincoln that he “had seen the man … and he assented to my views.”

Now the president turned to Chase. As Welles recalled it, the Treasury secretary “said he had been painfully affected by the meeting last evening.” After a bit of hemming and hawing, Chase came to the point: he was resigning. He had already written the necessary letter. Later that day, Welles recorded in detail what followed:

“‘Where is it?’ said the President quickly, his eye lighting up in a moment. ‘I brought it with me,’ said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket; ‘I wrote it this morning.’ ‘Let me have it,’ said the President, reaching his long arm and fingers toward C[hase], who held on, seemingly reluctant to part with the letter.”

Lincoln managed to get the sealed envelope from Chase and tore it open. “An air of satisfaction spread” over his face as he realized that Chase had given him the perfect way out. The letter, the president declared, “cuts the Gordian knot,” and when Stanton took that as a cue to offer his own resignation, Lincoln immediately replied: “I don’t want yours. This … is all I want—this relieves me—my way is clear—the trouble is ended.”