"THE PRESIDENT TELLS ME that he now fears "the fire in the rear"-meaning the Democracy, especially in the Northwest-more than our military chances." So wrote Senator Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, German-born professor of law at Columbia College in New York on January 17, 1863. Antiwar protest surged in the winter and spring of 1863, nowhere more than in Lincoln"s Midwest. Two years after the start of the war, "Peace Democrats," or "Copperheads," lashed out at the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, they said, would produce "n.i.g.g.e.r equality." Republicans coined the name "Copperheads" in the summer of 1861 when an anonymous writer to the that he now fears "the fire in the rear"-meaning the Democracy, especially in the Northwest-more than our military chances." So wrote Senator Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, German-born professor of law at Columbia College in New York on January 17, 1863. Antiwar protest surged in the winter and spring of 1863, nowhere more than in Lincoln"s Midwest. Two years after the start of the war, "Peace Democrats," or "Copperheads," lashed out at the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, they said, would produce "n.i.g.g.e.r equality." Republicans coined the name "Copperheads" in the summer of 1861 when an anonymous writer to the Cincinnati Commercial Cincinnati Commercial likened the peace faction of the Democratic Party to the snake in Genesis 3:14: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." Copperheads were poisonous snakes, but like many labels that begin as terms of derision, the disparaged soon wore the term as a badge of honor. They cut the G.o.ddess of Liberty from the head of pennies-"Copperheads"-and wore them in the lapels of their coats. Their efforts were no small sideshow, as has often been suggested, but rather a relentless push by well-organized forces that gathered momentum in 1863. They sought to gain control of all states in the Midwest. Lincoln, knowing well the sentiments from which the Copperheads sprung, took the movement seriously. likened the peace faction of the Democratic Party to the snake in Genesis 3:14: "Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." Copperheads were poisonous snakes, but like many labels that begin as terms of derision, the disparaged soon wore the term as a badge of honor. They cut the G.o.ddess of Liberty from the head of pennies-"Copperheads"-and wore them in the lapels of their coats. Their efforts were no small sideshow, as has often been suggested, but rather a relentless push by well-organized forces that gathered momentum in 1863. They sought to gain control of all states in the Midwest. Lincoln, knowing well the sentiments from which the Copperheads sprung, took the movement seriously.
This cartoon from the February 28, 1863, issue of Harper"s Weekly depicts three Copperheads advancing on Columbia, who bears a sword and a shield inscribed "Union."
Lincoln"s comment to Sumner was surely a response to a speech in Congress by Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio three days earlier. Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, the handsome son of a Presbyterian minister, the self-a.s.sured Vallandigham was first elected to the Ohio state legislature in 1845, just months after his twenty-fifth birthday. Elected to Congress in 1858, he became a vigorous states" rights advocate in the tradition of Andrew Jackson. Often caricatured as a wacko, Vallandigham, a conservative Democrat, was actually an effective spokesman for the interests of concerned citizens, especially farmers and immigrants, in the Midwest.
After Republicans had gerrymandered the forty-two-year-old Vallandigham out of a fourth term in Congress in the fall of 1862, he returned to Washington for the final session of the Thirty-seventh Congress determined to make his voice heard before he left office. He had campaigned on the slogan "The Const.i.tution as it is, the Union as it was," stressing that the "arbitrary government" of Lincoln, with its record of unlawful arrests and the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, was changing the Union forever. Vallandigham believed the Confederacy could not be defeated, and that the nation should go forward as it had in the past, with a mixed political system that allowed for slavery. When he listened to the reading of Lincoln"s annual message on December 1, 1862, the words that especially piqued him were, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. ... As our case is new, we must think anew."
On January 14, 1863, as Vallandigham left his seat and moved to the center of the opposition benches to speak, congressmen laid aside their newspapers and put down their pens. He began by reproaching the Republicans, not the Southern fire-eaters, for the crisis that had erupted into war. He argued that despite the repudiation of Republicans in the fall elections, especially in the Midwest, Lincoln did not withdraw his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, he claimed, was a strategy to divert attention from the president"s own failures.
Vallandigham asked: What was the result of twenty months of war? His answer: "Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchers, these are your trophies." Claiming to speak for the greater Midwest, he thundered, "The people of the West demand peace, and they begin to suspect that New England [by which he meant abolitionism] is in the way." Since the war had failed, it was time to give peace a chance. He proposed pulling Northern troops from the South and opening negotiations for an armistice. He concluded, "Let time do his office-drying tears, dispelling sorrows, mellowing pa.s.sions, and making herb and gra.s.s and tree grow again upon the hundred battlefields of this terrible war." Vallandigham, dubbed the apostle of peace, spoke for more than one hour while the packed gallery, including many uniformed soldiers, sat mesmerized.
Peace as well as War Democrats shared an apprehension about the quickly moving developments in the Midwest. John A. McClernand wrote the president on February 14, 1863, "The Peace Party means, as I predicted long since, not only a separation from the New England States, but reunion of the Middle and Northwestern States with the revolted States." Many War Democrats, initially supportive of the war, were becoming increasingly critical of Lincoln because of their disagreement with the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation and the continuing price of the war. McClernand put Lincoln on notice. "Unless the war shall be brought to a close before the expiration of your Administration, or decisive victories gained, this scheme, in whole or a part, will find authoritative sanction."
Clement L. Vallandigham, former Ohio congressman, became the symbol of the fire in the rear." Lincoln did not underestimate the power the Copperhead, or Peace Democrat, movement had in the Midwest.
Back in Lincoln"s Illinois, the bitter fruits of the Democratic victories in 1862 were ripened in the state legislative agenda of 1863. The legislature pa.s.sed resolutions criticizing the federal administration and calling for an armistice to end the war. A bill to stop the immigration of African-Americans was put on the docket for a vote. Finally, to stop further motions, Republican governor Richard Yates arbitrarily ended the session of the legislature, the first time this had ever happened in Illinois.
As winter gave way to spring, the Copperheads, incited by the March 3, 1863, pa.s.sage of the Conscription Act, the first federal military draft, which stipulated that every male citizen between the ages of twenty and forty-five would be obligated to serve for three years or until the end of the war, moved from words to deeds. Protesters swiftly denounced the draft as unconst.i.tutional. Recruiting officers were murdered. Young men were encouraged to desert. Violence sometimes erupted when Union army officers tried to round up deserters. African-Americans were attacked when Copperheads promoted the fear that the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation would produce an unwanted influx of blacks from South to North.
When Congress adjourned in March, Vallandigham returned home to a hero"s welcome in Dayton, Ohio. In the same month, the new commander of the Department of the Ohio, General Ambrose Burnside, arrived at his headquarters at Cincinnati. Each man had recently endured failures; each man came to Ohio determined to make his mark.
Vallandigham, not one to sit on the sidelines, set about making speeches and announced his plans to run for governor. Burnside, incapable of understanding the disaffection in Ohio and not recognizing the partisan editorial viewpoint in Murat Halstead"s attacks on Peace Democrats in the Cincinnati Commercial, Cincinnati Commercial, decided to stamp out tyranny by force. On April 13, 1863, Burnside issued General Order Number Thirty-eight, a military edict aimed at persons who "uttered one word against the government of the United States." Anyone guilty of "acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country" could be liable to execution. Burnside a.s.sured Ohio Republicans that he had the power to decide what treason was and what the suitable punishment would be. decided to stamp out tyranny by force. On April 13, 1863, Burnside issued General Order Number Thirty-eight, a military edict aimed at persons who "uttered one word against the government of the United States." Anyone guilty of "acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country" could be liable to execution. Burnside a.s.sured Ohio Republicans that he had the power to decide what treason was and what the suitable punishment would be.
Vallandigham saw immediately that Burnside"s overreaching offered an opportunity to test the limits of dissent. He became determined to bait Burnside. The commander of the Department of the Ohio proved more than willing to take that bait.
On May 1, 1863, with Vallandigham scheduled to speak at a Democratic rally in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Burnside dispatched two staff members to observe and take notes. A friend of Vallandigham tipped him off to Burnside"s intentions. Vallandigham began his speech by pointing to the American flags, with their thirty-four stars, that surrounded the speakers" stands. He told the crowd the flag with all the states would still be united if it were not for Republican treachery. Looking right at one of Burnside"s note-taking agents, he said that his right to speak came from a doc.u.ment-the Const.i.tution-that was higher than General Order Number Thirty-eight, which he derided as "a bane usurpation of arbitrary power." "Valiant Val" concluded by saying that the remedy for all "the evils" was the ballot box, by which they could throw "King Lincoln" from his throne.
Burnside heard the applause for Vallandigham in Cincinnati and decided to act. He dispatched Captain Charles G. Hutton and a posse of sixty-seven men to Dayton. They arrived at 323 First Street at 2 a.m. When Vallandigham refused to come out of his house, Hutton"s men attacked the front door with bars and axes.
Union troops transported Vallandigham to Burnside"s headquarters in Cincinnati, where a military court tried him. While in custody, Vallandigham wrote an address, "To the Democracy of Ohio," which was smuggled out of his confinement and published in newspapers across the country. "I am here in a military bastile for no other offense than my political opinions." Vallandigham, denied a writ of habeas corpus, was sentenced to confinement in a military prison for the rest of the war.
The two main players in this Ohio melodrama appeared, at first glance, to be Vallandigham and Burnside, but the national audience understood that the lead actor was President Lincoln. All eyes watched to see what action he would take.
Lincoln recognized that both actors, Vallandigham and Burnside, had overplayed their roles. He brought the issue to a cabinet meeting on May 19, 1863, where Welles noted that the arrest was "an error on the part of Burnside." Burnside learned of the cabinet"s deliberations and telegraphed Lincoln that he understood his actions were "a source of Embarra.s.sment," and offered to resign his command. Lincoln replied the same day that "being done, all were for seeing you through with it."
Lincoln"s generous letter still did not answer the question of what to do. The president did not want to make Vallandigham a martyr, which would happen if he served in a military prison to the end of the war, but he also did not want to publicly reprimand Burnside. The president came up with his own resolution: Release Vallandigham, remove him from the Midwest, where he was becoming a folk hero, and banish him to the Confederacy. Burnside transferred Vallandigham as a prisoner to William Rosecrans"s Army of the c.u.mberland at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. On the morning of May 25, 1863, an Alabama cavalry officer on the Shelbyville Turnpike was surely surprised to be met by Union officers under a flag of truce presenting Clement L. Vallandigham.
BY THE MIDDLE OF APRIL, Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac were finally ready to move. Fighting Joe"s army of 133,868 outnumbered Lee"s army of 60,892 by more than two to one. On April 12, 1863, Hooker sent Daniel b.u.t.terfield, his chief of staff, to the White House to deliver to Lincoln his battle plan, complete with maps. Lincoln wanted to be included. Hooker, on the other hand, was terribly afraid that no one could keep a secret, so that he did not inform his senior commanders of his final plans until the last moment. On April 13, he told his infantry commanders to have their men ready in two days with eight days" rations and 140 rounds of ammunition. On April 14, George Stoneman, with more than 10,000 cavalry, was ready to make the first strike, intending to cross the Rappahannock, move around Lee"s left flank, and head for Culpeper Courthouse and Gordonsville, tearing up the railroads and communication lines along the way, with the goal of cutting off Lee"s supply line southeast to Richmond. Fighting Joe Hooker"s orders were "fight, fight, fight."
As the battle was about to begin, Lincoln was filled with anxiety. He spent long hours at the telegraph office in the War Department. On April 14, 1863, he telegraphed Hooker, "Would like to have a letter from you as soon as convenient." Lincoln became increasingly frustrated with the incomplete information he was receiving.
General Stoneman, so impressive in parading his cavalry before Lincoln on April 6, 1863, now moved unexplainably slowly. Before he could cross the Rappahannock, the rains came. At 11 p.m. Hooker wrote to Lincoln, but was not clear about the progress of his cavalry. Hooker did not like to send the president bad news.
On the morning of April 15, 1863, Hooker telegraphed Lincoln, a.s.suring him that Stoneman would cross the Rappahannock, and "if he should meet with no unusual delay, he will strike the Aquia and Richmond Rail Road on the night of the second day."
Lincoln was not a.s.sured. He replied that Hooker"s last letters gave him "considerable uneasiness." Lincoln, by now a veteran commander in chief, understood a great deal about tactics and terrain. He wrote, "He has now been out three days without hindrance from the enemy, and yet he is not twenty five miles from where he started." The president was not fooled. "To reach his point, he still has sixty to go; another river, the Rapidan, to cross, and will be hindered by the enemy." Lincoln concluded, "I greatly fear it is another failure already." He closed, "Write me often. I am very anxious."
Weather was always the wild card. The best military plans, long before scientific methods of weather prediction, could be derailed by the sudden appearance of rain that could continue for who knew how long.
Because the Civil War shone a bright light on the inability to predict the weather, many weather "experts" began appearing in Washington. On the morning of April 25, 1863, Lincoln was visited by Francis L. Capen, who described himself as "A Certified Practical Meteorologist & Expert in Computing the Changes in Weather." He wanted Lincoln to recommend him for a job. Three days later, Lincoln wrote to the War Department. "It seems to me Mr. Capen knows nothing about the weather, in advance. He told me three days ago it would not rain till the 30th of April or 1st of May. It is raining now & has been for ten hours. I can not spare any more time to Mr. Capen."
The weather forced Hooker to modify his strategy. Still concerned about secrecy, he sent a message to Lincoln on April 27, 1863, saying, "I fully appreciate the anxiety weighing upon your mind, and hasten to relieve you from so much of it as lies in my power." Hooker told Lincoln he intended to feint a crossing at Fredericksburg, while sending his main force thirty miles north to confront Lee"s forces. His ultimate goal was to trap a retreating Lee between two wings of his infantry and Stoneman"s cavalry. He would keep more than twenty thousand troops in reserve, able to move to the most urgent battle line.
Lincoln, receiving little communication, remained fretful. At 3:30 p.m. on the same day, he telegraphed Hooker one sentence: "How does it look now?" Hooker replied at 5 p.m. "I am not sufficiently advanced to give an opinion. We are busy. Will tell you all as soon as I can, and have it satisfactory."
Hooker"s grand plan began with promise. On April 29, 1863, two infantry corps crossed the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg while five infantry corps marched upriver, crossed the Rappahannock, and moved eastward toward Fredericksburg and Robert E. Lee.
Lee was initially unsure about how to respond to the larger Union forces. He decided to adopt a risky strategy of dividing his outnumbered army and then dividing it again. He audaciously sent Stonewall Jackson to block Hooker"s left flank. Because Stoneman"s cavalry was in his rear, Jeb Stuart"s Confederate cavalry "owned" the s.p.a.ces between the dueling armies, which Lee now used for reconnaissance between his different units.
On May 1, 1863, a bright and breezy morning, Hooker"s seventy thousand troops encountered Lee"s twenty-five thousand troops along the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road just east of the hamlet of Chancellorsville, little more than a brick farmhouse occupied by the ten members of the Chancellor family. Suddenly, for reasons never fully explained, Hooker stopped, wavered, and ordered his troops to fall back and take up defensive positions around Chancellorsville.
Hooker lost the initiative. He later suggested that he intended to fight a defensive war and let the enemy attack him. Attack they did. On May 2, 1863, Jackson smashed the Union right flank.
In the late morning of May 3, 1863, just as a careworn Hooker leaned forward to receive a report, a twelve-pound shot fired by Confederate artillery hit a pillar on the south side of the Chancellor house veranda, splitting it in two. One of the beams struck Hooker on his head and side. For some time-a debate would ensue about how much time-the commander of the Army of the Potomac was out of action. By the middle of the day, the center of Hooker"s line was pushed back.
Lincoln, pacing back and forth from the White House to the War Department, telegraphed b.u.t.terfield: "Where is General Hooker? Where is Sedgwick? Where is Stoneman?"
On May 4, 1863, the left side of Hooker"s forces was forced back across the river. Early in the afternoon, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles met Lincoln at the War Department. The president told him "he had a feverish anxiety to get some facts." At 3:10 p.m. Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, "We have news here that the enemy has reoccupied heights above Fredericksburg. Is that so?" Hooker replied, "I am informed that is so, but attach no importance to it." Hooker was by now in almost total denial of what was happening.
On May 6, 1863, Hooker ordered the remaining troops to recross to the north side of the Rappahannock in a heavy rainstorm. The battle was lost. At Chancellorsville, the Union army had had all the advantages on its side-numbers of troops, horses, guns, supplies, telegraph wires, even balloons. The Union had far superior numbers, but once again, even after Lincoln had given him the strongest mandate, Hooker did not put into battle all of his men-he held out his reserves. The Union suffered a terrible loss at Chancellorsville-more than seventeen thousand casualties. Lee won perhaps his greatest victory, but it came at a huge cost: thirteen thousand Confederate casualties, a higher percentage of casualties than the Union forces.
When Lincoln received word at 3 p.m. that Hooker"s troops were retreating across the Rappahannock River, he was overcome. Noah Brooks, who was with the president, said his complexion, usually "sallow," turned "ashen in hue." The correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union Sacramento Daily Union said he had never seen the president "so broken, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. ... Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, "My G.o.d! my G.o.d! What will the country say! What will the country say!" " said he had never seen the president "so broken, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. ... Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, "My G.o.d! my G.o.d! What will the country say! What will the country say!" "
Frenchman Thomas Le Mere, who worked for Mathew Brady, told Lincoln there was "considerable call" for a full-length photograph of the president. Lincoln stood for it at Brady"s Washington studio on April 17, 1863.
23.
You Say You Will Not Fight to Free Negroes May 1863September 1863 PEACE DOES NOT APPEAR SO DISTANT AS IT DID. I HOPE IT WILL COME SOON, AND COME TO STAY; AND SO COME AS TO BE WORTH THE KEEPING IN ALL FUTURE TIME.
ABRAHAM LINCOLNSpeech to the Springfield rally, September 3, 1863 -URING HIS FIRST TWO YEARS AS PRESIDENT, LINCOLN TURNED DOWN all invitations to speak outside Washington. He believed he could not spare the time away; as he expanded his role as commander in chief, he wanted to stay close to the White House and the War Department in order to communicate with his generals and monitor the ebb and flow of military battles. all invitations to speak outside Washington. He believed he could not spare the time away; as he expanded his role as commander in chief, he wanted to stay close to the White House and the War Department in order to communicate with his generals and monitor the ebb and flow of military battles.
He broke his silence in 1863 in response to a deafening volley of criticism. The contest for public opinion escalated in May as rallies were organized in Detroit, Indianapolis, New York, and other Northern cities to protest Lincoln"s handling of the arrest and trial of Vallandigham. Copperheads led the way, but conservative Democrats, who did not approve of the actions of the Ohio congressman, saw this episode as an opportunity to attack an administration weakened by defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. On May 19, 1863, Erastus Corning, wealthy iron manufacturer, railroad owner, and conservative Democratic politician, forwarded to Lincoln the "Albany Resolves," ten resolutions from a boisterous public meeting in Albany, New York, on May 16. The resolutions called upon the president to "be true to the Const.i.tution" and "maintain the rights of States and the liberties of the citizen."
Lincoln could easily have been defensive at the tone of the protests but as a political leader, he realized they presented an opportunity for him to make his case, not simply to a local group of New York Democrats, but to a national audience. He replied to Corning on May 28, 1863, that he intended to "make a respectful response."
By the early summer of 1863, Lincoln began to take considerable care in drafting his "public letters." Although he worked hard in the last days of May on his response to Erastus Corning, he told Congressman James F. Wilson of Iowa that when he started to write the letter, "I had it nearly all in there," pointing to the drawer in his desk, "but it was in disconnected thoughts, which I had jotted down from time to time on separate sc.r.a.ps of paper." Lincoln was referring to the notes to himself he had been writing for decades. He told Wilson it was by this method that "I saved my best thoughts on the subject." He added, "Such things often come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out."
A measure of Lincoln"s seriousness was that he took the unusual step of bringing his letter to a cabinet meeting on June 5, 1863. Lincoln read it in its entirety, which, at more than 3,800 words, would have taken at least twenty-five minutes. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles wrote in his diary, "It has vigor and ability and with some corrections will be a strong paper." One week later, on June 12, Lincoln mailed the letter to Corning, sending it at the same time to Horace Greeley"s New York Tribune, New York Tribune, which published it on June 15. which published it on June 15.
Lincoln began his letter not with confrontation but with commendation. He lauded those who met in Albany for "doing their part to maintain our common government and country." He described their intention as "eminently patriotic." He sought to stand with them in their commitment to the Union. "My own purpose is the same." Lincoln sounded like he was back in Illinois putting the arguments of the opposing lawyer in their own words. He emphasized their common purpose at the very moment when his opponents were seeking to incite division. He lowered his voice even as his opponents were raising theirs. He finally joined the fray when he said, "The meeting and myself have a common object, and can have no difference, except in the means or measures for effecting that object."
The "except" was the transition to the purpose of the letter. The "means" became the occasion for Lincoln"s disquisition on the meaning and proper interpretation of the Const.i.tution. The supplicants "a.s.sert and argue, that certain military arrests and proceedings following them for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconst.i.tutional. I think they are not."
Lincoln, in this public letter, did not allow his opponents to set the agenda. Although he had addressed the question of civil liberties in his message to Congress in July 1861, Lincoln now used Corning"s complaints to put the issue into a much larger context. He started with what he declared were the real origins of the war. "The insurgents had been preparing for it more than thirty years, while the government had taken no steps to resist them." The South, he argued, had set out on "an unrestricted effort to destroy Union, const.i.tution, and law," whereas the government was "restrained by the same const.i.tution and law, from arresting their progress."
Once the war started, everyone, including the South, knew that there must be detentions to thwart the actions of "a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors." They fully understood, Lincoln said, that habeas corpus would be suspended, and then his opponents would set up a "clamor" of protests. Lincoln"s only apology, ironically, was that "thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals, I was slow to adopt strong measures."
At this point, Lincoln made a telling comment on the judicial system. He argued that the courts worked well in peacetime for cases involving individuals, but in "a clear, flagrant, and gigantic case of Rebellion," the ordinary courts were often "incompetent" to deal with whole cla.s.ses or groups of individuals. By way of example, he said it was common knowledge in the first days after his inauguration that many leading officers, including Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and John B. Magruder, were about to defect from their military obligations to the Union. In hindsight, Lincoln said, they could have been arrested as traitors. If this had been done, "the insurgent cause would be much weaker." Lincoln declared, "I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many."
When Lincoln turned to the case of Ohio Peace Democrat Clement Vallandigham, he argued that the resolutions from Albany had it all wrong. The former Ohio congressman "was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the administration, or the personal interests of the commanding general; but because he was damaging the army, upon the existence, and vigor of which, the life of the nation depends." It was his attack on the military that gave the military "const.i.tutional jurisdiction to lay hands on him." Lincoln even offered to review the case if it could be shown that Vallandigham "was not damaging the military power of this country." He knew his opponents had no such proof.
Lincolns letter to Erastus Corning, the first of a number of public letters published in newspapers across the country in 1863, allowed Lincoln to communicate his views on the meaning of the Civil War to a wider public.
To embody his logic, Lincoln offered one of his favorite literary devices-a dramatic contrast: "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him to desert?" One of Lincoln"s great agonies in the war was signing off on an execution order as the punishment for desertion. Lincoln brought into sharp focus not simply the sympathetic picture of the "soldier boy," but a portrait of a Copperhead fomenting such desertions. Lincoln"s term "wiley agitator" stuck with the public. "I think that in such a case, to silence the agitator, and save the boy, is not only const.i.tutional, but withal, a great mercy." Lincoln"s opponents had been arguing for justice for Vallandigham; he inverted their argument by putting the focus on the real victims, young soldiers, and calling for the Christian virtue that was higher than justice-mercy. This empathic figure immediately became the "sound bite" of his public letter.
At this point, Lincoln pasted a sc.r.a.p of paper to his draft, wanting to use an argument that probably had been sitting as a note in his desk drawer for some time. He invoked Democratic president Andrew Jackson in order to make his case against his Democratic critics. Lincoln grew into political manhood in steadfast opposition to Jackson. He may have chuckled as he brought into his letter an episode that followed Jackson"s victory over the British at New Orleans in 1815. Lincoln recounted how, after the battle was over, the hero of New Orleans "maintained martial, or military law" by making a number of crucial arrests.
Lincoln understood that his critics were foisting upon the public the notion that the president was changing the understanding of the Const.i.tution and the rule of law in American society. He was at pains to disabuse them of the notion that "throughout the indefinite peaceful future" the American people will lose the basic freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Lincoln would not admit this danger because he was not able to believe "that a man could contract so strong an appet.i.te for emetics during temporary illness, as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of his healthful life." Where were the government printer, John D. Defrees, and the National Intelligencer National Intelligencer literary editor, James C. Welling, who both had tried to talk Lincoln out of indelicate language in previous communications? One of the marks of Lincoln"s communication skills was his ability to combine in the same speech or public letter various styles of language and a.n.a.logies that helped him appeal to a wide audience. literary editor, James C. Welling, who both had tried to talk Lincoln out of indelicate language in previous communications? One of the marks of Lincoln"s communication skills was his ability to combine in the same speech or public letter various styles of language and a.n.a.logies that helped him appeal to a wide audience.
Lincoln wrote his letter to Corning at a time of rapidly diminishing confidence in himself and his administration. He knew he needed to calm the fears of the nation. Even though he thought the letter to be one of his best efforts, he must have been surprised by the responses to it. John W. Forney, editor of the Washington Chronicle, Washington Chronicle, wrote, "G.o.d be praised the right word has at last been spoken by the right man, at the right time, and from the right place. It will thrill the whole land." It was "timely, wise, one of your best State Papers," was the response of New York senator Edwin D. Morgan. Roscoe Conkling, born in Albany, one of the founders of the Republican Party in New York who had been defeated for reelection to Congress in the fall of 1862, wrote to thank Lincoln for a letter that "covered all essential ground in few words, and in a temper as felicitous and timely, as could be." Secretaries Nicolay and Hay recalled, "There are few of the President"s state papers which produced a stronger impression upon the public mind." wrote, "G.o.d be praised the right word has at last been spoken by the right man, at the right time, and from the right place. It will thrill the whole land." It was "timely, wise, one of your best State Papers," was the response of New York senator Edwin D. Morgan. Roscoe Conkling, born in Albany, one of the founders of the Republican Party in New York who had been defeated for reelection to Congress in the fall of 1862, wrote to thank Lincoln for a letter that "covered all essential ground in few words, and in a temper as felicitous and timely, as could be." Secretaries Nicolay and Hay recalled, "There are few of the President"s state papers which produced a stronger impression upon the public mind."
Wanting this letter to be read by as wide an audience as possible, Lincoln had John Nicolay send it to leading Republicans. Francis Lieber, law professor at Columbia, and president of the recently formed Loyal Publication Society of New York, wrote Lincoln telling him that he was planning to print an initial installment of ten thousand copies. "The Publication Society will do it with great pleasure." At least five hundred thousand copies of the public letter to Corning were read by upward of ten million people. The letter served to damp down, for the moment, the pervasive despair and fear across the North. Most important, it lifted Lincoln"s standing among members of his own Republican Party. Comfortable with pen and ink, and perhaps surprised by the results of the letter, Lincoln learned an important lesson about public communication that he would apply again and again in the coming months.
The letter did not, however, put an end to dissent. On June 25, 1863, Lincoln received a delegation from Ohio who came to protest the treatment of Vallandigham. They were coming fresh from a June 11 state Democratic convention where they had nominated Vallandigham, in absentia, for governor. David Tod, the present Republican governor of Ohio, had written Lincoln on June 14, "Allow me to express the hope that you will treat the Vallandigham Committee about to call on you with the contempt they richly merit." Tod did not know Lincoln.
The lobbying group arrived with the advantage of having read the Corning letter. They were more strident in their criticisms of Lincoln than their New York co-belligerents. Cabinet secretaries Chase and Stanton, both Ohioans, having witnessed the positive reactions to Lincoln"s public letter to Corning, advised the president not to reply to the committee in person, but to tell them he would write a public letter.
Lincoln, buoyed up by the response to the Corning letter, was much more forceful in his letter to Matthew Birchard and the Ohio delegation. He challenged their misrepresentations of his previous comments on the subject. He disputed their "phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative." As for Vallandigham, Lincoln went further than he had in the Corning letter, charging that the acts against the military were "due to him personally, in a greater degree than to any other one man." In his conclusion, Lincoln offered to return Vallandigham to Ohio, provided each member of the delegation would sign a pledge "to do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided and supported."
The delegation would not accept this responsibility. They replied on July 1, 1863, that to do so would be at the "sacrifice of their dignity and self-respect." They offered a defensive response to a president who was now on the offensive. In this second public letter, Lincoln again forcefully enunciated his principles, which began to win the day with Unionists across the North.
IN MAY 1863, Lincoln studied the framed and rolled-up maps in his office. In the East, Joseph Hooker had been beaten at Chancellorsville. In the West, Grant was stalled, and Lincoln did not know where, near Vicksburg. The president knew that Lee"s next high-stakes gamble was yet to be revealed.
By the middle of 1863, Lincoln had settled into a pattern of leadership both as commander in chief and, in effect, general in chief. Halleck may have held that t.i.tle, but Lincoln had decided to ride both horses with a tight rein. As irritated as Lincoln may have been with "Old Brains"s" pa.s.sivity, Halleck"s inaction created s.p.a.ce for Lincoln"s action.
During the next two months, two decisive battles would be fought in the war"s eastern and western theaters. In Washington, the gaunt man in the White House often worked eighteen hours a day, walking back and forth to the War Department several times daily.
Lincoln typically downplayed his contribution. He closed a letter to Hooker by recalling the story of Jesus"s commendation of the widow who willingly gave out of her poverty an ancient coin called a mite, saying that he, although less qualified than his generals, would continue to contribute "his poor mite."
At each crucial moment of the war, Lincoln sought face-to-face communication with his key generals. On May 6, 1863, within only one hour of learning of the retreat of the Army of the Potomac back across the Rappahannock, Lincoln traveled to Hooker"s headquarters at Fal-mouth. To the surprise of Hooker and his senior officers, Lincoln did not come to question or to criticize. He was sympathetic to the fact that Hooker had been injured and perhaps not able to be in full command of his troops. He was distressed to hear Hooker"s criticisms of his key officers-Stoneman, Leftwich, Reynolds-blaming them for missteps in his battle plan. During Lincoln"s visit, and in subsequent meetings and letters, he learned that many of the senior officers blamed Hooker for the defeat. "I have some painful intimations that some of your corps and division commanders are not giving you their entire confidence. This would be ruinous, if true." Lincoln was doing his own reconnaissance.
Lincoln always followed up a personal conversation with a letter that usually combined both commendation and questions. On May 7, 1863, the president expressed his confidence in Hooker but encouraged him to plan to move forward. "Have you already in your mind a plan wholly or partially formed?" Lincoln let Hooker know he wanted to stay involved, but he expressed his wish in a winsome self-deprecation. "If you have, prossecute it without interference from me. If you have not, please inform me, so that I, incompetent as I may be, can try [to] a.s.sist in the formation of some plan for the Army."
LINCOLN WAS RESTLESS to hear any news about Grant and Vicksburg. Having heard nothing at the telegraph office, and with no news from war correspondents in the Northern newspapers, on May 11, 1863, he telegraphed General John A. Dix at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, "Do the Richmond papers have anything about Grand Gulf or Vicksburg?" to hear any news about Grant and Vicksburg. Having heard nothing at the telegraph office, and with no news from war correspondents in the Northern newspapers, on May 11, 1863, he telegraphed General John A. Dix at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, "Do the Richmond papers have anything about Grand Gulf or Vicksburg?"
On May 19, 1863, unbeknownst to Lincoln, Grant attacked Confederate general John Pemberton"s garrison at Vicksburg. At 2 p.m. Pemberton ordered three volleys fired from each piece of artillery high atop the bluffs. Union forces advanced but, met by an overwhelming barrage of cannon and bullets, fell back.
Three days later, on May 22, 1863, Grant"s men mounted a second attack, applying the force of two hundred pieces of artillery plus one hundred guns from Admiral Porter"s ironclads, only to be repulsed again. The Union forces sustained almost four thousand casualties in these two days of fighting. Grant, though stymied, knew he was not to be stopped. He prepared to lay siege to Vicksburg. Grant wrote Halleck on May 24, "The fall of Vicksburg, and the capture of most of the garrison, can only be a question of time."
Meanwhile, time was pa.s.sing slowly for Lincoln in Washington. More oppressive than the onset of warm, humid weather was the sense of despair about Union armies east and west. Finally, word of Grant"s advance on Vicksburg began filtering into the capital. Lincoln, who was learning not to make predictions, could not contain his jubilation upon hearing the news that Grant was now investing the Southern Gibraltar. On May 26, 1863, the president replied to a letter from Chicago congressman Isaac Arnold, "Whether Gen. Grant shall or shall not consummate the capture of Vicksburg, his campaign from the beginning of this month to the twenty second day of it, is one of the most brilliant in the world." Lincoln, despite his many misgivings about Grant"s strategy, was eager to salute him for his efforts.
WHILE JOSEPH HOOKER STRUGGLED with his own plan, Robert E. Lee was sure of his next move. He determined that he could not remain below the Rappahannock River in Virginia and wait for the Army of the Potomac to attack him yet a third time. Lee regularly scanned Northern newspapers. Heartened by victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, he became convinced that the way forward against a larger and better-equipped foe was to move north again in another daring military move that might convince the North that they could not win. Lee had come to believe that the more the Confederacy was successful on the battlefield, the greater the chance for anti-Lincoln forces to be successful at the ballot box in the elections of 1863 and 1864. On April 19, 1863, Lee wrote his wife, Mary Anna, "I do not think our enemies are so confident of success as they used to be. ... If successful this year, next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong that the next administration will go in on that basis." Lee, always realistic about the odds his smaller armies faced, believed the road to a third morale-crushing victory lay in another invasion of the North. with his own plan, Robert E. Lee was sure of his next move. He determined that he could not remain below the Rappahannock River in Virginia and wait for the Army of the Potomac to attack him yet a third time. Lee regularly scanned Northern newspapers. Heartened by victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, he became convinced that the way forward against a larger and better-equipped foe was to move north again in another daring military move that might convince the North that they could not win. Lee had come to believe that the more the Confederacy was successful on the battlefield, the greater the chance for anti-Lincoln forces to be successful at the ballot box in the elections of 1863 and 1864. On April 19, 1863, Lee wrote his wife, Mary Anna, "I do not think our enemies are so confident of success as they used to be. ... If successful this year, next fall there will be a great change in public opinion at the North. The Republicans will be destroyed & I think the friends of peace will become so strong that the next administration will go in on that basis." Lee, always realistic about the odds his smaller armies faced, believed the road to a third morale-crushing victory lay in another invasion of the North.
However, the whole South had heard the story of their greatest loss at Chancellorsville. On the evening of May 2, 1863, just before 9:30 p.m., Stonewall Jackson, with a few of his officers, rode beyond Confederate lines to try to gain information about Union positions. As he and his party rode back toward their lines, in the darkness they were mistaken for Union cavalry and fired upon. Three bullets struck Jackson. Initially there was hope that he would recover, but he died on Sunday, May 10. His death took away Lee"s right-hand man and severely tested the South"s belief that G.o.d was on their side.
Three days later, Lincoln read in the Washington Chronicle Washington Chronicle an appreciative editorial on Jackson. That same day, Lincoln wrote editor John W. Forney, "I wish to lose no time in thanking you for the excellent and manly article in the Chronicle on "Stonewall Jackson." " Lincoln"s respect for a Christian gentleman and soldier knew no borders. an appreciative editorial on Jackson. That same day, Lincoln wrote editor John W. Forney, "I wish to lose no time in thanking you for the excellent and manly article in the Chronicle on "Stonewall Jackson." " Lincoln"s respect for a Christian gentleman and soldier knew no borders.
Lee began his next march north on June 3, 1863. For several days, the Northern intelligence service, the Bureau of Military Information, struggled to discern his intentions. What was his objective? Baltimore? Philadelphia? Harrisburg? Anxious crowds gathered at the Willard Hotel hoping for some credible information.
On the morning of June 5, 1863, Hooker sent a telegram to Lincoln proposing a response. As Lee moved north, Hooker wanted "to pitch into his rear." Lincoln, seeing more clearly than Hooker, believed Lee was "tempting" Hooker and saw this offensive as an opening. After first stating his objection in military language, Lincoln employed a colorful a.n.a.logy to make his point. "I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other."
Hooker, not convinced that Lee intended to take his whole army on a raid into Maryland or Pennsylvania, presented a plan to Lincoln and Halleck on June 10, 1863. He believed he could strike a mortal blow by crossing the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg and marching directly to Richmond, which he believed was defended by only 1,500 men.
Lincoln replied within ninety minutes. "I would not go South of the Rappahannock upon Lee"s moving North of It." Furthermore, "If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile, your communications, and with them, your army, would be ruined." The president told Hooker what he had told McClellan and Burnside. "I think Lee"s Lee"s Army, and not Army, and not Richmond, Richmond, is your true objective point." He then offered military advice. "If he comes towards the Upper Potomac, follow on his flank, and on the inside track, shortening your lines, while he lengthens his. Fight him when opportunity affords. If he stays where he is, fret him, and fret him." With his growing sense of military strategy, Lincoln was out-generaling one of his leading generals. is your true objective point." He then offered military advice. "If he comes towards the Upper Potomac, follow on his flank, and on the inside track, shortening your lines, while he lengthens his. Fight him when opportunity affords. If he stays where he is, fret him, and fret him." With his growing sense of military strategy, Lincoln was out-generaling one of his leading generals.
As Lee"s divisions moved north down the Shenandoah Valley, Jeb Stuart"s cavalry guarded the pa.s.ses and gaps of the Blue Ridge to screen these movements from federal eyes. Hooker had been instructed by Lincoln and Halleck to keep the bulk of his army between Lee and Washington in order to protect the capital from any sudden Confederate incursion. Lee skillfully had his division commanders move their troops at different times and in different directions.
Lincoln, listening to the chatter at the telegraph office, understood that Lee"s line of march must be strung out over many miles. Accordingly, on June 14, 1863, he wrote to Hooker, "If the head of Lee"s army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the Plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?"
That same Sunday, Gideon Welles wrote in his diary, "Scary rumors abroad of army operations and a threatened movement of Lee upon Pennsylvania." In the evening, Welles found Lincoln and Halleck at the War Department. The president told Welles "he was feeling very bad." Welles volunteered that if Lee was moving, this could be an opportunity for Hooker to "take advantage and sever his forces." Lincoln agreed, replying that "our folks ... showed no evidence that they ever availed themselves of any advantage."
The next day, June 15, 1863, Lincoln learned that the Union garrison at Winchester, Virginia, had fallen to Confederate general Richard Ewell"s troops. He also received reports that the advance units of Lee"s army were beginning to cross the Potomac into Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Growing more upset with Hooker, on June 16, 1863, Lincoln told him that his strategy "looks like defensive merely, and seems to abandon the fair chance now presented of breaking the enemy"s long and necessarily thin line." In Lincoln"s third communication of the day to Hooker, the president, exasperated, placed Hooker under Halleck"s direct command.
This break was the beginning of the end for Hooker. Lincoln made a mistake at the outset in allowing him to go around Halleck and report directly to the president. In the next ten days, Hooker quarreled with Halleck, especially over Hooker"s request to have the troops guarding Harpers Ferry transferred to his command. The break was painful. On June 26, 1863, Welles confided in his diary that "the President in a single remark to-day betrayed doubts about Hooker, to whom he is quite partial."
The next evening, Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck, agreeing that Hooker was no longer the man to face Lee, selected General George Gordon Meade to replace him. A native of Pennsylvania, Meade "would fight well on his own dunghill," Lincoln remarked. The next day, June 28, 1863, Lincoln pulled from his pocket a resignation letter from Hooker that he had accepted and told his cabinet he had "observed in Hooker the same failings that were witnessed in McClellan after the battle of Antietam-a want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not, and ought not to be taken from other points." He announced that the new commander would be Meade.
Even before informing the cabinet, Stanton and Lincoln had dispatched Colonel James A. Hardie to Pennsylvania with orders for Meade. Clad in civilian clothes, Hardie persuaded Meade"s staff members to let him enter the general"s tent at three o"clock in the morning. Waking Meade, Hardie"s first words to him were that he had come from the War Department to bring him trouble. Startled out of his sleep, hearing this ill-timed humor, Meade later wrote his wife that his first thought was that Hooker had sent this man to arrest him.
George Meade was born in 1815 in Cadiz, Spain, where his father was an agent for the navy. Young George, tall and slender, graduated from West Point in 1835. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he was appointed brigadier general of the Pennsylvania Reserves. He fought under McClellan on the Virginia peninsula campaign in 1862 and was seriously wounded at Glendale when a musket ball hit him above his hip and just missed his spine. An additional bullet struck his arm, but Meade had stayed on his horse and persisted in commanding his troops until his loss of blood forced him to retire from the field.
After recuperating in a Philadelphia hospital, Meade led his Pennsylvania troops at South Mountain and Antietam. As a corps commander at Chancellorsville, he was dismayed by Hooker"s defensive tactics, but he led his own troops with great skill. In the aftermath of the battle, when Hooker"s leading generals believed their leader had lost his nerve in battle, the talk in the officers" tents was that they wanted Meade to replace Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac, but he had refused to be part of any uprising.
Lincoln appointed George Meade to succeed Joseph Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac at the end of June 1863.
Lincoln dealt differently with this new commander. Perhaps learning a lesson after trying to offer fatherly advice to Burnside and Hooker, he let his intentions be communicated through Halleck. Meade, at age forty-seven, was in no danger of being mistaken for a prima donna. Competent, if colorless, he gained the nickname "the Old Snapping Turtle" because he was short-tempered, especially with civilians and newspapermen. Unlike Hooker at Chancellorsville, Meade always led from the front.
AS ROBERT E. LEE invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln stepped up his monitoring of the telegraph traffic. But he did not simply receive information; he constantly asked for updates. On June 24, 1863, he wired General Darius N. Couch, in command of the Department of the Susquehanna, "Have you any reports of the enemy moving into Pennsylvania?" On the day that Meade a.s.sumed command, he asked Couch, "What news now? What are the enemy firing at four miles from your works?" invaded Pennsylvania, Lincoln stepped up his monitoring of the telegraph traffic. But he did not simply receive information; he constantly asked for updates. On June 24, 1863, he wired General Darius N. Couch, in command of the Department of the Susquehanna, "Have you any reports of the enemy moving into Pennsylvania?" On the day that Meade a.s.sumed command, he asked Couch, "What news now? What are the enemy firing at four miles from your works?"
Although Lincoln"s steady stream of telegrams might sound like he was pushing a panic b.u.t.ton along with everyone else in Washington, his true beliefs were revealed in an exchange of letters with Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey. Parker wrote on June 29, 1863, "The people of New Jersey are apprehensive." The governor insisted on telling the president what to do. McClellan should be reinstated as commander of the Army of the Potomac and "the enemy should be driven from Pennsylvania." Lincoln responded on the day before the commencement of the battle at Gettysburg with the exact opposite opinion. "I really think the att.i.tude of the enemies" army in Pennsylvania, presents us the best opportunity we have had since the war began." Lincoln, almost alone, saw Lee"s invasion not as a dire tragedy, but as an opportunity. The president was also fully aware that he was placing Meade in command of a recently twice-beaten army whose morale, from fighting for so long in Virginia, was fragile. His basic concern was that Meade"s Army of the Potomac needed to fulfill two functions at once: protect Washington and Baltimore and strike at Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia as they entered Pennsylvania.
THE STRIKE CAME SOONER than Meade or Lee or even Lincoln expected. On the morning of June 30, 1863, John Buford, one of the best intelligence men in the Union army, rode into Gettysburg, a market town and county seat of 2,400 residents 75 miles north of Washington, 115 miles west of Philadelphia, and only 8 miles across the Maryland border. Brigadier General Buford rode at the head of 2,950 men in two divisions of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry. At 12:20 p.m. he wrote General Alfred Pleasanton, "I entered this place to-day at 11 a.m. Found everybody in a terrible state of excitement on account of the enemy"s advance upon this place." Buford, carefully reconnoitering the countryside, deployed his horse soldiers in ever-wider arcs of defensive pickets seven miles long around the town. than Meade or Lee or even Lincoln expected. On the morning of June 30, 1863, John Buford, one of the best intelligence men in the Union army, rode into Gettysburg, a market town and county seat of 2,400 residents 75 miles north of Washington, 115 miles west of Philadelphia, and only 8 miles across the Maryland border. Brigadier General Buford rode at the head of 2,950 men in two divisions of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry. At 12:20 p.m. he wrote General Alfred Pleasanton, "I entered this place to-day at 11 a.m. Found everybody in a terrible state of excitement on account of the enemy"s advance upon this place." Buford, carefully reconnoitering the countryside, deployed his horse soldiers in ever-wider arcs of defensive pickets seven miles long around the town.
On the morning of July 1, 1863, with a "blood red sunrise" in the east, A. P. Hill, one of Lee"s senior commanders, sent one of his divisions led by Major General Henry Heth down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg, where information said there was a supply of shoes. As his men approached this hub town, where twelve roads converged, the two armies simultaneously spied each other. At 7:30 a.m., Lieutenant Marcellus E. Jones of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry borrowed his sergeant"s carbine, steadied it on a fence rail, and fired the first shot of what would become the largest battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.
Both sides had stumbled into what the military textbooks called a "meeting engagement." Neither side was prepared to fight at this place at this time; the approaching battle was "unintended;" neither side held an obvious advantage. General Meade, on only the fourth day of his command, would discover that 165,000 soldiers would soon converge on a town of 2,400.
The engagement, like a spontaneous three-act play, grew as more and more actors converged on Gettysburg. Meade, perched on "Old Baldy," his hat pulled low over his face, was by nature a cautious general, and once engaged, fought mostly from a defensive posture. Lee, who had invaded the North to pull the Union troops away from Washington and to relieve the pressure upon Virginia, wanted to fight in Pennsylvania at a time and a place of his own choosing. He did not choose Gettysburg.
Seventy-five miles away, Washington watched and waited. Lincoln now believed a battle was looming. He did not attend the regularly scheduled cabinet meeting on June 30, 1863, but camped out at the War Department with Stanton and Halleck.