Rise to Greatness (64 page)

“A great deal of discussion”: Chase diary, Jan. 6, 1862.

“He has got the presidential maggot”: “[Nicolay] Conversation with V. P. Wilson…” in
An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays,
p. 85.

“He would rather be on the bench”: John D. Martin to Thomas Ewing, Sr., Jan. 22, 1862, Ewing Family Papers, Box 13, No. 4866, Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

the federal debt: Nicolay and Hay,
Abraham Lincoln,
Vol. 6, pp. 227–31.

“determined to shut his eyes”:
RW,
p. 216.

First he defended: Chase diary, Jan. 6, 1862.

The committee was sent away: ibid.

“they don’t give me time”: McClellan to Samuel Barlow, Jan. 18, 1862.

out for a brisk ride: Taft diary, Jan. 8, 1862.

“You better go”:
CW,
Vol. 5, p. 94.

“Nothing but very marked evidences”: Adams to Seward, Dec. 27, 1861.

“no general in the army”: Nicolay and Hay,
Abraham Lincoln,
Vol. 6, pp. 113–14.

Visitors to the White House: Henry C. Whitney, quoted in
Herndon’s Informants,
p. 405; Browning diary, June 22, 1862.

“unknown in the art of war”: Seward to Adams, Jan. 31, 1862.

But to a man who could read them: “In charting the movements of armies, the facts of geography stand first.” Keegan,
Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America,
p. 8.

“My distress”:
CW,
Vol. 5, p. 91.

“a frontier of rivers”: McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era,
p. 42.

received a patent:
CW,
Vol. 2, pp. 32–35.

“brown water navy”: Joiner,
Mr. Lincoln’s Brown Water Navy: The Mississippi Squadron,
pp. 1–21; Stoddard,
Lincoln at Work: Sketches from Life,
pp. 20–25; Hearn,
Ellet’s Brigade: The Strangest Outfit of All
.

Fog lay thick: Taft diary, Jan. 10, 1862.

Lincoln convened the cabinet again: Bates diary, Jan. 10, 1862.

Welles echoed the sentiment: Welles diary, p. 61.

“The people are impatient”: Meigs diary, Jan. 10, 1862, Montgomery C. Meigs Papers, Reel 15, Library of Congress Manuscript Division; see also “Documents: General M. C. Meigs on the Conduct of the Civil War,”
American Historical Review
26 (January 1921), p. 292.

the navy implored Lincoln: Welles diary, p. 60.

Lincoln had decided to fire Cameron: Barnes,
The Life of Thurlow Weed,
Vol. 2, pp. 330–31.

“borrow it”:
RW,
p. 332.

“Traitors are under me”: ibid., pp. 254, 322.

Pretending to be sailors: Taft diary, Jan. 11, 1862.

an artful pair of letters:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 96–97.

“a dismissal”: Chase diary, Jan. 12, 1862.

“bricks in his pocket”:
RW,
pp. 135–36.

Stanton was not to be trusted: Welles diary, p. 56.

“that damned long armed Ape”: See, for example, Donald,
Lincoln,
pp. 185–87.

His favorite expression:
RW,
p. 221.

“Perhaps I have too little”: ibid., p. 232.

Hay once scoffed: Hay, quoted in
Herndon’s Informants,
p. 209.

“I know more about it”:
RW,
p. 209.

The Treasury secretary advised: Chase diary, Jan. 11, 1862.

For the first time: Sears,
George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon,
p. 140.

“at least 400,000 Men”: Taft diary, Jan. 12, 1862.

The lobbies and bars: ibid., Jan. 27, 1862.

“shabbier and dirtier”: Dicey,
Spectator of America,
pp. 63–64.

Lincoln’s secretaries appeared at Willard’s: Ronald A. Rietveld, “The Lincoln White House Community,”
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association
20, no. 2 (Summer 1999), p. 23. Available online at
http://quod.lib.unich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0020.204?rgn=main;view-fulltext
.

“holding court among the belles”: Seale,
The President’s House: A History,
Vol. 1, p. 381.

Orville Hickman Browning: Donald,
“We Are Lincoln Men,”
pp. 101–19; Browning diary, pp. 508–9.

he startled Browning: Browning diary, Jan. 12, 1862.

he had received a telegram:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 98–99.

“I would rather like a regiment”: Quoted in Sandburg,
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years,
Vol. 1, p. 465.

He had not been there long: Grant,
Memoirs and Selected Letters: Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, 1839–1865,
p. 188.

Using Halleck’s feint: ibid.

Halleck’s view of war: cf. Halleck,
Elements of Military Art and Science,
especially pp. 38–43.

“The art of war is simple”: This quote, in nearly identical context, can be found in T. Harry Williams, “The Military Leadership of North and South,” in Donald,
Why the North Won,
p. 51.

“I had not uttered”: Grant,
Memoirs and Selected Letters,
pp. 189–90.

“the largest official leak”: Sears,
George B. McClellan,
pp. 140–42.

“The streets and crossings are worse”: Taft diary, Jan. 22, 1862.

“The city was in a fearful condition”: Alexander Williamson, quoted in Seale,
The President’s House,
Vol. 1, p. 401.

Chase convened a conference: Chase diary, Jan. 14–20, 1862; Taft diary, Jan. 17, 1862.

Nicolay estimated: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Jan. 15, 1862.

an evening at the Washington Theater: Miers,
Lincoln Day by Day
, Vol. 3, Jan. 23, 1862.

across the ocean in Paris: Dayton to Seward, Jan. 27, 1862.

An “unscrupulous adventurer”: Stoddard,
Lincoln at Work,
pp. 47–53.

“Having gotten on our armor”: The account of the meeting is from William Dayton’s dispatch to Seward, Jan. 27, 1862.

“something must be done”: ibid.

“our efforts … are hopeless”: ibid.

“President’s General War Order No. 1:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 111–12.

precisely what he was looking for: Smith,
Grant,
pp. 139–40.

3: FEBRUARY

“One section of our country believes”:
CW,
Vol. 4, pp. 268–69.

“We didn’t go into the war”:
RW,
p. 295.

a new poem:
The Atlantic Monthly
9, no. 52 (February 1862), p. 10.

Samuel Gridley Howe: Tuchinsky, “Samuel Gridley Howe,” in Heidler and Heidler, eds.,
Encyclopedia of the American Civil War,
pp. 1011–13.

“like a bloodstained ghost”: Davis,
Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World,
pp. 157–61.

he despised the reformers: Welles diary, Sept. 3, 1862.

“I will not fight”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, circa Nov. 14, 1861; see also McClellan to Samuel Barlow, Nov. 8, 1861.

he knew which side: John Stuart, quoted in
Herndon’s Informants,
p. 64.

“a great and crying injustice”:
RW,
p. 169.

“Slavery is doomed”: ibid., p. 303.

“I am naturally anti-slavery”:
CW,
Vol. 7, pp. 281–83.

“a party of Methodist parsons”:
RW,
p. 430.

the entire country … was complicit: ibid., p. 368.

Chief Justice Taney: Guelzo,
Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
(for example, pp. 39, 114) provides several lucid insights into the constitutional snares Taney had laid across the path to emancipation. If freeing the slaves could be construed as a punishment imposed on a class of citizens (i.e., slave owners) without benefit of a trial, emancipation could be classed as a bill of attainder, explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Freeing slaves by presidential order, meanwhile, could run afoul of Taney’s 1850 opinion in
Fleming v. Page.

“violent and remorseless”:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 48–49.

Confederate operatives in Europe: Owsley,
King Cotton Diplomacy,
p. 66.

abolitionists began to fear: cf. Sumner to Frances Bird, Feb. 19, 1862.

“When the hour comes”:
RW,
pp. 118–19.

Nathaniel Gordon: The story of Gordon’s crime, trial, and punishment is told in Soodalter,
Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader.

“You do not know how hard”:
RW,
p. 409.

“boyish cheerfulness”: Emerson,
Essays and Journals,
p. 667.

Finally, an army was moving: Grant,
Memoirs and Selected Letters,
p. 190; Smith,
Grant,
pp. 139–41.

“Oh, Mr. Emerson!”: Emerson,
Essays and Journals,
p. 667.

delight in his own jokes: ibid.

he had spoken at the Smithsonian: Richardson,
Emerson: The Mind on Fire,
pp. 563–64.

“I am against capital punishment”: Sumner to Orestes Brownson, Feb. 2, 1862.

“fidelity and conscientiousness”: Emerson,
Essays and Journals,
p. 667.

“If we fail”: Bates diary, Feb. 3, 1862.

“duty” compelled him:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 128–29.

doctrine of white supremacy: See, for example, Alexander Stephens’s speech at Savannah, March 21, 1861, excerpted in Stampp, ed.,
The Causes of the Civil War,
pp. 116–17: “Our new Government is founded upon … its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.”

“the awful change”:
CW,
Vol. 5, pp. 128–29.

Nicolay estimated: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Feb. 2, 1862.

Mary’s idea was: Keckley,
Behind the Scenes: Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House,
pp. 95–97.

What mattered to the cutthroats: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Feb. 2, 1862.

Determined to show: Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography,
pp. 206–7.

“Our cat has a long tail”: Keckley,
Behind the Scenes,
pp. 101–2. The spelling of Elizabeth Keckly’s surname is a matter of dispute. I have chosen to follow the choice of biographer Jennifer Fleischner in Fleischner,
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave.

“Are the President and Mrs. Lincoln aware”: quoted in Baker,
Mary Todd Lincoln,
p. 206.

The Liberator
pronounced: quoted in Randall,
Mary Lincoln,
pp. 259–60.

But as Nicolay acidly observed: Nicolay to Therena Bates, Feb. 6, 1862.

McClellan … cutting the familiar figure: Dahlgren diary, Feb. 5, 1862.

“30 days delay”: McClellan to Stanton, Feb. 3, 1862. Stephen W. Sears, editor of
The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan,
argues persuasively that this document, dated Jan. 31, 1862, is misdated and actually was completed on Feb. 3.