Lincoln's Personal Life by Nathaniel Wright Stephenson - HTML preview

PLEASE NOTE: This is an HTML preview only and some elements such as links or page numbers may be incorrect.
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.

"On To Richmond!"

 

It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an intensely warlike nation. Seward's belief that a war fury would sweep the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified. Both North and South appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.

The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen. That historic clash at Baltimore between the city's mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North. Railway tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut. During several days Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing. Was there an efficient general response to his call for troops? Or was precious time being squandered in preparation? Was it conceivable that the war fury was only talk? Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of the horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of silence all but intolerable. Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered city. General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia. Government employees and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill. The White House became a barracks. "Jim Lane," writes delightful John Hay in his diary, which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, "Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard's; tonight (they are in) the East Room."[1] Hay's humor brightens the tragic hour. He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn" that had been told to him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had heard from "a dashing Virginian" that inside forty-eight hours something would happen which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this meant the capture or assassination of the President. "Lincoln quietly grinned." But Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode, charming women and all, had got himself into trouble. He had to do "some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the assassination suspicion." Militia were quartered in the Capitol, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill ground. At the President's reception, the distinguished politician C. C. Clay, "wore with a sublimely unconscious air three pistols and an 'Arkansas toothpick,' and looked like an admirable vignette to twenty-five cents' worth of yellow covered romance."

But Hay's levity was all of the surface. Beneath it was intense anxiety. General Scott reported that the Virginia militia, concentrating about Washington, were a formidable menace, though he thought he was strong enough to hold out until relief should come. As the days passed and nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph remained silent, Lincoln became moodily distressed. One afternoon, "the business of the day being over, the executive office deserted, after walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour, he stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New York); and unconscious of other presence in the room, at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation, 'Why don't they come! Why don't they come!'"[2]

His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those Massachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington. "I don't believe there is any North. . . " he exclaimed. "You are the only Northern realities."[3] But even then relief was at hand. The Seventh New York, which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation as never before was given any regiment in America, had come by sea to Annapolis. At noon on April twenty-fifth, it reached Washington bringing, along with the welcome sight of its own bayonets, the news that the North had risen, that thousands more were on the march.

Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln. Already the President had reacted to a "pleasant, hopeful mood." He began outlining a tentative plan of action: blockade, maintenance of the safety of Washington, holding Fortress Monroe, and then to "go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing there."[4] But this was an undigested plan. It had little resemblance to any of his later plans. And immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarrass all his plans appeared. He was a minority President; and he was the Executive of a democracy. Many things were to happen; many mistakes were to be made; many times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant of opposition. Throughout the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to secure the favor of the Northern mass, to shape his policy with that end in view. At least, in his own mind, this seemed to be his paramount obligation. And so it was in the minds of his advisers. Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office, which continued to be in evidence, except for sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view, until another year and more had gone by. Still he felt himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action. Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.

And what advice did the country give him? There was one roaring shout dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!" Following Virginia's secession, Richmond had become the Confederate capital. It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would open at Richmond in July. "On to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!" screamed The Tribune. "The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the national army." The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded. Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to "depose" him, he took very seriously all the swiftly accumulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries "impertinently."[5] Members of Congress, either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury. That grim Sherman, who had been offended by Lincoln's tone the month previous, put their feeling into words. Declining the offer of a position in the War Department, he wrote that he wished "the Administration all success in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial people."[6]

In the President's councils, General Scott urged delay, and the gathering of the volunteers into camps of instruction, their deliberate transformation into a genuine army. So inadequate were the resources of the government; so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations which were attempting to combine into an army; such discrepancies appeared between the nominal and actual strength of commands, between the places where men were supposed to be and the places where they actually were; that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of mobilization to shoveling a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.[7] From the military point of view it was no time to attempt an advance. Against the military argument, three political arguments loomed dark in the minds of the Cabinet; there was the clamor of the Northern majority; there were the threats of the politicians who were to assemble in Congress, July fourth; there was the term of service of the volunteers which had been limited by the proclamation to three months. Late in June, the Cabinet decided upon the political course, overruled the military advisers, and gave its voice for an immediate advance into Virginia. Lincoln accepted this rash advice. Scott yielded. General Irwin McDowell was ordered to strike a Confederate force that had assembled at Manassas.[8] On the fourth of July, the day Congress met, the government made use of a coup de theatre. It held a review of what was then considered a "grand army" of twenty-five thousand men. A few days later, the sensibilities of the Congressmen were further exploited. Impressionable members were "deeply moved," when the same host in marching order passed again through the city and wheeled southward toward Virginia. Confident of victory, the Congressmen spent these days in high debate upon anything that took their fancy. When, a fortnight later, it was known that a battle was imminent, many of them treated the Occasion as a picnic. They took horses, or hired vehicles, and away they went southward for a jolly outing on the day the Confederacy was to collapse. In the mind of the unfortunate General who commanded the expedition a different mood prevailed. In depression, he said to a friend, "This is not an army. It will take a long time to make an army. But his duty as a soldier forbade him to oppose his superiors; "the poor fellow could not proclaim his distrust of his army in public."[9] Thoughtful observers at Washington felt danger in the air, both military and political.

Sunday, July twenty-first, dawned clear. It was the day of the expected battle. A noted Englishman, setting out for the front as war correspondent of the London Times, observed "the calmness and silence of the streets of Washington, this early morning." After crossing the Potomac, he felt that "the promise of a lovely day given by the early dawn was likely to be realized to the fullest"; and "the placid beauty of the scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington" delighted him. And then about nine o'clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery. Through those beautiful Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.

At the White House that day there was little if any alarm. Reports received at various times were construed by military men as favorable. These, with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful, established confidence in a victory before nightfall. Late in the afternoon, the President relieved his tension by taking a drive. He had not returned when, about six o'clock, Seward appeared and asked hoarsely where he was. The secretaries told him. He begged them to find the President as quickly as possible. "Tell no one," said he, "but the battle is lost. The army is in full retreat."

The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until close to midnight. It caused an instantaneous panic. In the small hours, the space before the Treasury was "a moving mass of humanity. Every man seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news, while all sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes." The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'[10] Now appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist. All night long he sat unruffled in his office, while refugees from the stricken field--especially those overconfident Senators and Representatives who had gone out to watch the overthrow of the Confederates--poured into his ears their various and conflicting accounts of the catastrophe. During that long night Lincoln said almost nothing. Meanwhile, fragments of the routed army continued to stream into the city. At dawn the next day Washington was possessed by a swarm of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled over it.

The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his dependence upon his advisers. While the runaway Senators were talking themselves out, while the rain was sheeting up the city, he had reached two conclusions. Early in the morning, he formulated both. One conclusion was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in which the first move should be a call for volunteers to serve three years.[11] The other conclusion was the choice of a conducting general. Scott was too old. McDowell had failed. But there was a young officer, a West Pointer, who had been put in command of the Ohio militia, who had entered the Virginia mountains from the West, had engaged a small force there, and had won several small but rather showy victories. Young as he was, he had served in the Mexican War and was supposed to be highly accomplished. On the day following Bull Run, Lincoln ordered McClellan to Washington to take command.[12]