The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (25 page)

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.

On November 11, a few days after his election, Lincoln opened the paper and read it to his Cabinet. He then explained the motives that had led him to write it when his own prospects had seemed so dark, and when the Democratic convention had been only six days away:

You will remember that this was written at a time when as yet we had no adversary, and seemed to have no friends. I then solemnly resolved on the course of action indicated above. I resolved, in case of the election of General McClellan (being certain that he would be the candidate), that I would see him and talk matters over with him. I would say, “General, the election has demonstrated that you are stronger, have more influence with the American people than I. Now let us together—you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government—try to save the country. You raise as many troops as you possibly can for this final trial, and I will devote all my energies to assisting and finishing the war.”

The Cabinet members listened to the President’s explanation with surprise. Seward commented ironically: “And the General would answer you ‘Yes, yes’; and the next day when you saw him again and pressed these views upon him, he would say, ‘Yes, yes’; and so on forever, and would have done nothing at all.”

“At least,” Lincoln replied, “I should have done my duty and have stood clear before my own conscience.”

But before this happened, before the election was held, the
President, whose chief worry during that incredibly disastrous month of August was not for his own but for his country’s welfare, had still to endure the final ordeal—the ordeal of personal danger and imminent death. One night while he was riding alone to his summer quarters outside the city, a shot was fired at him in the darkness. The bullet came so close that it went through his hat and knocked it off. He spurred his horse and rode on to his destination where he made light of what happened to him, so that no word of it would reach the public. But he had felt death reach out for him in the darkness, and he knew that the plots against his life were real. During the next few months they were to multiply. Men were gathering in secret places to whisper and plan; soon they were to try to put their plans into effect.

The dismal month finally drew to a close. On the twenty-ninth, the Democrats held their convention at Chicago. The general who had failed to save the nation on the field of battle was nominated to save it by political means. A platform was adopted which declared that four years of warfare had failed to restore the Union, and that every Constitutional right of the people had been trampled on in the process. It recommended that “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the states.”

When this platform was submitted to McClellan, together with the nomination, he explicitly repudiated the platform but accepted the nomination. McClellan realized that he could not afford to admit that the blood of his soldiers had been poured out in vain. He knew that his best chance of election was to stand on his war record, hesitating and unsuccessful as it had been.

The Democratic convention at Chicago ended on August 31 with high hopes for the election of its candidate. These hopes lasted just two days. On September 2, Sherman’s army, which had been besieging Atlanta for weeks, finally entered the city. A Northern victory had come at last to clear the air. The first deep wound had been made in the body of the Confederacy, and the rebellious section, which for so long had seemed to be impregnable, was beginning to crack up under external pressure and internal strain. The news of Atlanta’s fall was received with such enthusiasm in the North that it blasted the chances of Lincoln’s rivals for the Presidency. Frémont withdrew from the campaign, and McClellan’s backers began to lose heart.

During September, Grant sent Sheridan into the Shenandoah Valley to attack Early, who had retired there after his raid on Washington. Several engagements took place (one of which served to inspire Thomas Buchanan Read’s famous poem on Sheridan’s ride from Winchester), and then the Union army proceeded to devastate the smiling valley that had sheltered Confederate forces throughout the War.

Grant and his generals were embarking on a new plan of warfare. They determined to bring fire and destruction to complete the work of the sword. When Sherman took Atlanta, he ordered its people to evacuate the city, and he had his men wreck everything of military value. When he set out from Atlanta in November for his march to the sea, his army left behind it a city abandoned to the flames with the smoke of its burning standing like a vast pillar in the sky.

Nothing that the North did during the whole War infuriated the South so much as these measures taken to destroy property. Human lives and human suffering were forgotten in the outcry raised over the burning and wrecking of inanimate objects. The bodies of the dead are quickly buried out of sight, but the fire-blackened walls of gutted buildings remain for years as stark reminders of terror long past.

This ruthless campaign gave the death-blow to the already weakened Confederacy. By the time the November elections were held, it was obvious, even to the most skeptical Northerner, that the end of the War was really in sight and that the Union armies must prevail.

The politicians had misjudged the people’s support of the President, although it is true, of course, that the autumn victories swung an even larger vote to the administration. Twenty-five states participated in the election; twenty-two of them were carried by Lincoln. McClellan received the electoral votes of only New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky. The popular vote was 2,214,000 for Lincoln and 1,802,000 for McClellan.

On the two nights following his election, Lincoln spoke to the people in answer to serenades of victory. In his speech of November 10, he outlined his own attitude toward the election: “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain itself in existence in great emergencies.… We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.… What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

Once the long-dreaded election was over, the administration could make long-term plans for the future, but its immediate problem was to try to bring the War to a speedy close. Sherman set out from Atlanta on November 15, severing his lines of communication and marching across Georgia, cutting a swath of destruction sixty miles wide as he went. Grant
tightened his stranglehold on Petersburg and Richmond. Richmond was now in desperate straits; food prices skyrocketed as money became almost worthless, and criticism of the government was increasing daily. Sherman continued his inexorable advance; on December 21 he captured Savannah and then prepared to head northward through the heart of the Confederacy.

On December 6, Lincoln delivered his annual message to Congress. He reminded that body that although the House had previously refused to pass the amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, the election had been a clear-cut call from the voters of the nation for it to do so now. He expressed pessimistic views on dealing with Jefferson Davis for peace—Davis was evidently committed to a last-stand policy. The President indicated, however, that the Southern people might be more willing than their leader to sue for a settlement to end the War. He stood firmly on his emancipation policy and said that he would not be a party to any effort to re-enslave Negroes already set free by it.

On the same day, Lincoln announced his choice for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position which had been made vacant by the death of the superannuated Taney in October. In making his decision, Lincoln again forgot personal rivalries and selected the man he felt was best fitted to serve. He appointed Salmon P. Chase, whom he regarded as a great lawyer, and he ignored the fact that Chase was a Radical Republican who had sat for three years in the Cabinet offering more opposition to the President than any other member.

The new year brought high hopes to the North. To the South it brought only a dull realization of impending defeat. The Richmond
Sentinel
published a remarkable article admitting the exhaustion of the Confederacy’s resources, and suggesting that an alliance be made with England, France or Spain to preserve independence from the North even at the
price of allowing a foreign power to gain a foothold on the American continent. As a concession to tender European feelings, the
Sentinel
recommended that slavery in the Southern states be abolished before any alliance was sought. Rebellion had run its course; this was the logical conclusion of the separation-at-any-price policy.

While the theoreticians in Richmond played with such ideas as this, Sherman’s army left Savannah on January 14 and pushed steadily northward. By February 18, Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, was in his hands, and like Atlanta, it too went up in smoke, although this time Sherman claimed that the fire had been set by the retreating Confederates. Not only Columbia, but the proud city of Charleston had to yield before the advance of Sherman’s victorious army. As soon as her railroad communications were cut, Charleston collapsed. She had been holding out for several years against a Federal fleet besieging her harbor. Now the fleet sailed in unresisted, and “the cradle of secession” was in the hands of the Northern invaders.

Before the first month of the new year was out, Congress heeded the President’s urgent request to pass the Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The vote was taken on January 31 in the presence of an intensely interested public audience which greeted with wild applause the announcement that the required two-thirds majority had been obtained.

A few days later, Lincoln, who had so recently spoken against entering into peace negotiations with the Richmond Government, now became a direct party to such a move himself. On February 3, he held a conference with three Confederate commissioners. They came to see him at Hampton Roads on board the
River Queen
, a ship often used by Lincoln when he traveled by water routes. This attempt to effect a reconciliation turned out to be as fruitless as all the others
had been. Davis wanted peace and independence; Lincoln insisted on peace and reunion, so the commissioners were powerless and could accomplish no direct result. The conference, however, was probably not without influence upon Lincoln’s policies. One of the commissioners was Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, a former Whig and United States Congressman. The South could not have chosen a better person to deal with Lincoln. They had both been in Congress together, and Lincoln had long admired this man who was one of the most beloved figures in the South. Lincoln had corresponded with him when he was President-elect in 1860. They were unalterably opposed to each other on the slavery issue, but they had always gotten on well together, and they talked for a while about old times. Although Lincoln was adamant about reunion, he intimated that he would be liberal in dealing with the Southern states if they would return. He also said that he favored some kind of compensation for the expropriation of slave property, for he believed that the North shared the South’s guilt in having permitted slavery to be established in the nation.

During the interview, Lincoln had occasion to remark that he doubted whether it was proper for him as the leader of a nation to deal directly with rebels who were opposing the authority of his government by force of arms. One of the commissioners cited the case of Charles I as precedent. It was an unfortunate example. Lincoln immediately said: “I don’t profess to be posted in history—all I distinctly recollect about Charles I is that he lost his head.”

When the commissioners were about to leave the ship, Stephens said to Lincoln: “I understand, then, that you regard us as rebels who are liable to be hanged for treason?”

Lincoln nodded solemnly.

“Well, we supposed that would have to be your view,” Stephens said with equal solemnity. Then he smiled as he turned to go, and his eyes twinkled as he looked at Lincoln,
“But to tell you the truth, we have none of us been much afraid of being hanged with you as President!”

We have no way of knowing how much the President’s contact with his old friend, Alexander Stephens, influenced his policies, but it is interesting to note that on Sunday evening, February 5, only twenty-four hours after his return from the Hampton Roads conference, Lincoln called a special Cabinet meeting. He had evidently spent the day preparing a proposal which incorporated a twofold plan to end the War quickly and to compensate the Southern slaveowners for the loss of their property. The document he read to his Cabinet provided that if the Confederacy would lay down arms by April 1, the United States would pay $400,000,000 to the rebellious states as an indemnity for their loss of slave property. The liberality of such an idea stunned the Cabinet. Pay the enemy for stopping a war that was almost won! There was an embarrassed silence. Hardly any discussion was given to the President’s plan. One after another the members of the Cabinet voted against it. Reluctantly the President had to write on the sheets of paper in his hand: