Thus, a threatening message that might have embroiled the Union in two wars at the same time became instead the basis for a hard-line policy that effectively interrupted British momentum toward recognizing the Confederacy. Furthermore, France, whose ministers had promised to act in concert with Britain, followed suit. This was a critical victory for the Union, preventing for the time being the recognition that would have conferred legitimacy on the Confederacy in the eyes of the world, weakened Northern morale, and accorded "currency to Southern bonds."
History would later give Secretary of State Seward high marks for his role in preventing Britain and France from intervening in the war. He is considered by some to have been "the ablest American diplomatist of the century." But here, as was so often the case, Lincoln"s unseen hand had shaped critical policy. Only three months earlier, the frontier lawyer had confessed to Seward that he knew little of foreign affairs. His revisions of the dispatch, however, exhibit the sophisticated prowess of a veteran statesman: he had a.n.a.lyzed a complex situation and sought the least provocative way to neutralize a potential enemy while making crystal-clear his country"s position.
Seward was slowly but inevitably coming to appreciate Lincoln"s remarkable abilities. "It is due to the President to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman," he told his wife in mid-May. "His confidence and sympathy increase every day." As Lincoln began to trust his own abilities, Seward became more confident in him. In early June, he told Frances: "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and a.s.siduous cooperation." Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet. He committed himself "to his chief," Nicolay and Hay observed, "not only without reserve, but with a sincere and devoted personal attachment."
Seward"s mortification at not having received his party"s nomination in 1860 never fully abated, but he no longer felt compelled to belittle Lincoln to ease his pain. He settled into his position as secretary of state, and his optimistic and gregarious nature rea.s.serted itself. Once more, his elaborate parties and receptions became the talk of Washington. Five days after the dispatch was sent, Seward hosted "a brilliant a.s.semblage" at his new home. All the rooms were full, with dancing in one, drinks in another, and good conversation all around. Seward was "in excellent spirits," moving easily among cabinet members, military officers, diplomats, and senators. Even white-haired Secretary Welles, who, it was mockingly remarked, should have died, "to all intents and purposes, twenty years ago," was having such a good time that he seemed "good for, at least, twenty years more."
LINCOLN LOOKED TO CHASE for guidance on the complex problem of financing a war at a time when the government was heavily in debt. The economic Panic of 1857, corruption in the Buchanan administration, and the partial dismemberment of the Union had taken a ma.s.sive toll on the government coffers. With Congress not in session to authorize new tariffs and taxes, Chase was forced to rely on government loans to sustain war expenditures. Banks held back at first, demanding higher interest rates than the government could afford to pay, but eventually, Chase cobbled together enough revenue to meet expenses until Congress convened.
Chase later noted proudly that in the early days of the war, Lincoln relied on him to carry out functions that ordinarily belonged to the War Department. According to Chase, he a.s.sumed "the princ.i.p.al charge" of preventing the key border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee from falling into secessionist hands. He authorized a loyal state senator from Kentucky to muster twenty companies. He drew up the orders that allowed Andrew Johnson, the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union, "to raise regiments in Tennessee." He believed himself instrumental in keeping Kentucky and Missouri in the Union, seriously underestimating Lincoln"s critical role.
Indeed, Chase would never cease to underestimate Lincoln, nor to resent the fact that he had lost the presidency to a man he considered his inferior. In late April, he presumptuously sent Lincoln a New York Times article highly derogatory of the administration. "The President and the Cabinet at Washington are far behind the people," the Times argued. "They are like a person just aroused from sleep, and in a state of dreamy half-consciousness." This charge, Chase informed Lincoln, "has too much truth in it." Lincoln did not reply, well understanding Chase"s implacable yearning for the presidency. But for now he needed the Ohioan"s enormous talents and total cooperation.
Cameron, meanwhile, found the task of running the War Department unbearable. Unable to manage his vast responsibilities, he turned to both Seward and Chase for help. "Oh, it was a terrible time," Cameron remembered years later. "We were entirely unprepared for such a conflict, and for the moment, at least, absolutely without even the simplest instruments with which to engage in war. We had no guns, and even if we had, they would have been of but little use, for we had no ammunition to put in them-no powder, no saltpetre, no bullets, no anything." The demands placed on the War Department in the early days of the war were indeed excruciating. Not only were weapons in short supply, but uniforms, blankets, horses, medical supplies, food, and everything necessary to outfit the vast numbers of volunteer soldiers arriving daily in Washington were un.o.btainable. It would have taken thousands of personnel to handle the varied functions of the quartermaster"s department, the ordnance office, the engineering department, the medical office, and the pay department. Yet, in 1861, the entire War Department consisted of fewer than two hundred people, including clerks, messengers, and watchmen. As Cameron lamented afterward: "I was certainly not in a place to be envied."
Lincoln later explained that with "so large a number of disloyal persons" infiltrating every department, the government could not rely on official agents to manage contracts for manufacturing the weapons and supplies necessary to maintain a fighting force. With the cabinet"s unanimous consent, he directed Chase to dispense millions of dollars to a small number of trusted private individuals to negotiate and sign contracts that would mobilize the military. Acting "without compensation," the majority of these men did their utmost under the circ.u.mstances. A few, including Alexander c.u.mmings, one of Cameron"s lieutenants, would bring shame to the War Department.
AS SPRING GAVE WAY to the stifling heat of a Washington summer, Lincoln began work on the message he would deliver to Congress when the House and Senate a.s.sembled in special session on July 4. Needing time to think, he placed an "embargo" on all office seekers, "so strict" that they were not even allowed entry into the White House. As he labored in his newfound quiet, congressmen and senators gathered at Willard"s and Brown"s hotels, exchanging greetings and trading stories. They all antic.i.p.ated, one reporter stated, that they would "soon ascertain the exact intentions of the Administration, through the medium of the President"s message."
Lincoln worked long hours on the text, shifting words, condensing, deleting sentences. Even Senator Orville Browning, his old friend from Illinois who had come to see him, was told he was busy, but Lincoln overheard Browning talking and sent for him. It was after 9 p.m. on July 3, and he had just that moment finished writing. "He said he wished to read it to me, and did so," Browning recorded in his diary. "It is an able state paper and will fully meet the expectations of the Country."
Lincoln did not personally deliver his address on Capitol Hill. President Thomas Jefferson had denounced presidential appearances before Congress, considering them a monarchical remnant of the English system where kings personally opened parliamentary sessions. Since Jefferson, presidents had submitted their written messages to be read by a clerk. Yet, if the practice lacked theatricality, Lincoln"s arguments against secession and for the necessity of executive action in the midst of rebellion left an indelible impression. He traced the history of the struggle and called on Congress to "give the legal means for making this contest a short, and a decisive one."
He asked for "at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars...a less sum per head, than was the debt of our revolution." A "right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money," he a.s.sured Congress. For "this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a const.i.tutional republic, or a democracy-a government of the people, by the same people-can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes....
"This is essentially a People"s contest," the president a.s.serted. "On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men-to lift artificial weights from all shoulders-to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all-to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life." As evidence of the capacity of free inst.i.tutions to better the "condition" of the people, "beyond any example in the world," he cited the regiments of the Union Army, in which "there is scarcely one, from which could not be selected, a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself."
Northern newspapers generally praised the message, though some failed to appreciate the rigor of Lincoln"s appeal and the clear grace of his language. "In spite of obvious faults in style," the New York Times correspondent conceded, "I venture to say it will add to the popularity of the Rail-splitter. It is evidently the production of an honest, clear-headed and straightforward man; and its direct and forcible logic and quaint style of ill.u.s.tration will cause it to be read with peculiar pleasure by the ma.s.ses of the people." More important, the Congress responded with alacrity. Its members authorized more money and an even larger mobilization of troops than the president had requested. In addition, they provided retroactive authority for nearly all of Lincoln"s executive actions taken before they convened, remaining silent only on his suspension of habeas corpus. With the Southern Democrats gone, the Republicans had a substantial majority. And, for the moment, Northern Democrats also acceded, their dislike of Republicans overshadowed by patriotic fervor.
Not everyone was pleased. Abolitionists and radical Republicans found the message disheartening. "No mention is, at all, made of slavery," Frederick Dougla.s.s lamented. "Any one reading that doc.u.ment, with no previous knowledge of the United States, would never dream from anything there written that we have a slaveholding war waged upon the Government...while all here know that that is the vital and animating motive of the rebellion."
Radicals tended to blame Seward for Lincoln"s reluctance to emphasize the role of slavery. "We have an honest President," Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist editor, proclaimed before a celebratory crowd on the Fourth of July, "but, distrusting the strength of the popular feeling behind him, he listens overmuch to Seward." Men like Phillips, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner could never forgive Seward for apparently lowering the antislavery banner he had once carried so triumphantly. Seward was accustomed to criticism, however, and while he had the president beside him, he remained secure in his position.
Meanwhile, the events of the war itself began to reshape the old order in ways few realized. At Fort Monroe, at the tip of the peninsula in Virginia, a bold decision by General Benjamin Butler proved a harbinger of things to come. One night, three fugitive slaves arrived at the fort after escaping from the Confederate battery that their master had ordered them to help build. When an agent of their owner demanded their return, Butler refused. The rebels were using slaves in the field to support their troops, Butler argued. The slaves were therefore contraband of war, and the federal government was no longer obliged to surrender them to their masters.
Coming from Butler, a conservative Democrat from Ma.s.sachusetts who had run for governor on the Breckinridge ticket in 1860, the decision delighted Republican stalwarts who had previously objected to Butler"s high position. Butler himself would soon be equally delighted by Lincoln"s magnanimity in making him a brigadier general. "I will accept the commission," Butler gratefully told Lincoln, but "there is one thing I must say to you, as we don"t know each other: That as a Democrat I opposed your election, and did all I could for your opponent; but I shall do no political act, and loyally support your administration as long as I hold your commission; and when I find any act that I cannot support I shall bring the commission back at once, and return it to you."
Lincoln replied, "That is frank, that is fair. But I want to add one thing: When you see me doing anything that for the good of the country ought not to be done, come and tell me so, and why you think so, and then perhaps you won"t have any chance to resign your commission." Had Butler known Lincoln, he would have been less astonished. The president commissioned officers with the same eye toward coalition building that he displayed in constructing his cabinet.
Butler"s order was approved by both Lincoln and Cameron, and eventually, the Congress pa.s.sed a confiscation law ending the rights of masters over fugitive slaves utilized to support the Confederate troops. Even conservative Monty Blair applauded Butler. "You were right when you declared secession n.i.g.g.e.rs contraband of war," he told his fellow Democrat. "The Secessionists have used them to do all their fortifying."
Blair"s approval of Butler"s measure as an act of war did not mean that he advocated emanc.i.p.ation. On the contrary, he advised Butler to "improve the code by restricting its operations to working people, leaving the Secessionists to take care of the non working cla.s.ses." The Union should provide safe harbor only to the "pick of the lot," the strong-bodied slaves who were helping the rebels in the field. Women and children and other "unproductive laborers" should be left for their Southern masters to house and feed.
Lincoln, as usual, was slowly formulating his own position on the slavery question. He told Blair that Butler"s action raised "a very important subject...one requiring some thought in view of the numbers of negroes we were likely to have on hand in virtue of this new doctrine." Indeed, in the weeks that followed, hundreds of courageous slaves worked their way into Union lines. The situation worried Lincoln; at this juncture, he still favored compensated emanc.i.p.ation and voluntary colonization, allowing blacks who wished to do so to return to their original homeland in Africa. Most important, he knew that any hint of total, direct emanc.i.p.ation would alienate the border states, whose continued loyalty was essential for victory, and would shatter the Republicans" fragile alliance with Northern Democrats.
By shying from emanc.i.p.ation in these early months of the war, Lincoln aligned himself with the majority of the Northern people, the Republican Congress, and the whole of his cabinet. Two weeks into its session, the House pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that the purpose of the war was "to preserve the Union," not to eliminate slavery. Even Chase, the most fervent antislavery man in the cabinet, agreed that at this time the "sword" of total abolition should be left "in the sheath." If the conflict were drawn out, however, he told the historian John Motley, if "we find it much more difficult and expensive in blood and treasure to put it down than we antic.i.p.ated," then the sword would be drawn. "We do not wish this, we deplore it, because of the vast confiscation of property, and of the servile insurrections, too horrible to contemplate, which would follow. We wish the Const.i.tution and Union as it is, with slavery, as a munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution, existing till such time as each State in its wisdom thinks fit to mitigate or abolish it...but if the issue be distinctly presented-death to the American Republic or death to slavery, slavery must die."
BY MID-JULY, the outcry in the North for some form of significant action against the rebels reached fever pitch. "Forward to Richmond!" blared the headline in the New York Tribune. Senator Trumbull introduced a resolution calling for "the immediate movement of the troops, and the occupation of Richmond before the 20th July," the date set for the Confederate Congress to convene. General Scott hesitated, believing the army still unprepared for a major offensive, but Lincoln feared that without action, the morale of both the troops and the general public would diminish. European leaders would interpret Northern inaction as a faltering resolve in the Union.
General Irvin McDowell, a brigadier general from Ohio, devised a plan to engage the rebel forces under command of General Beauregard at Mana.s.sas, twenty-six miles southwest of Washington. It was an intelligent plan. Many Northerners had come to see Mana.s.sas as "a terrible, unknown, mysterious something...filled by countless thousands of the most ferocious warriors," poised to attack Washington, D.C. "Foreigners do not understand," Bates confided to a friend, "why we should allow a hostile army to remain so long almost in sight of the Capitol, if we were able to drive them off." With 30,000 Union troops at his disposal, McDowell could overrun Beauregard"s forces so long as Union general Robert Patterson prevented the 9,000 Confederate troops under General Joseph Johnston at Winchester, Virginia, from joining Beauregard. On June 29, Lincoln and his cabinet approved McDowell"s plan.
The Battle of Bull Run, as it later became known in the North, began in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 21. As the "roar of the artillery" reached the White House, Elizabeth Grimsley recalled, "the excitement grew intense." As far away as the Blair estate in Silver Spring, Monty"s sister, Elizabeth, took a walk in the woods to "stop the roar in [her] ears," but the sound of the guns only increased. As soldiers on both sides of the battlefield were discovering the gruesome carnage of war, hundreds of Washingtonians hastily prepared picnic baskets filled with bread and wine. They raced to the hill at Centreville and the fields below to witness what most presumed would be an easy victory for the North. Senators, congressmen, government employees, and their families peered through opera gla.s.ses to survey the battlefield. After "an unusually heavy discharge," the British journalist William Russell overheard one woman exclaim: "That is splendid. Oh, my! Is not that first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time to-morrow."
While Lincoln attended church, the Union troops pressed forward, forcing the rebels farther south into the woods. At midday, news of what seemed a complete Union victory reached Lincoln and the members of his cabinet at the telegraph office in the War Department. In the crowded s.p.a.ce that housed the telegraph instruments, operators found it hard to focus on their responsibilities. Each new dispatch, the New York Times noted, was posted and read aloud to hundreds of people gathered in front of the Willard Hotel. The jubilant throng "cheered vehemently, and seemed fairly intoxicated with joy."
Even as the crowds celebrated in the streets, the fiercest stage of the fighting was just beginning. The Confederates refused to give up, rallied by the steadfast General Thomas Jackson. "There is Jackson with his Virginians, standing like a stone wall," General Barnard Bee reportedly shouted to inspire his troops, and both Confederate and Union soldiers thereafter referred to Jackson as "Stonewall" Jackson. The two sides fought valiantly in the blazing sun as the line of battle shifted back and forth. At 3 p.m., Lincoln was in the telegraph office studying the maps on the wall and waiting anxiously for the updated bulletins, which arrived in fifteen-minute intervals. The telegraph line stretched only as far as the Fairfax Court House. News from the battlefront farther south was relayed to Fairfax by a troupe of mounted couriers established by the young Andrew Carnegie, who then worked with the U.S. Military Telegraph Corps. Noting some confusion in the battlefield reports, Lincoln crossed over to General Scott"s headquarters, "a small three-storied brick house" jammed with officers and clerks. Waking Scott from a nap, Lincoln expressed his concern. Scott, Nicolay reported, simply confirmed "his confidence in a successful result, and composed himself for another nap when the President left."
Succeeding dispatches became uniformly positive, conveying a.s.surances that the Confederate lines had broken. At about 4:30, the telegraph operator proclaimed that "the Union Army had achieved a glorious victory." Lincoln decided to take his usual carriage ride, accompanied by Tad, Willie, and Secretary Bates. As they rode together to the Navy Yard to talk with John A. Dahlgren, one of Lincoln"s favorite naval officers, Bates confided his anxiety for his son, Coalter, who was soon to be sent into battle. When young Coalter departed to join his regiment, Bates wrote, it was "the first time he ever left home." The carriage ride came to a close with Bates feeling a new intimacy with his president.
As Lincoln relaxed with Bates in his carriage, the tide of battle turned against the Union. Confederate general Johnston"s forces had escaped General Patterson"s grasp, and by midafternoon, nine thousand fresh Confederate troops arrived to reinforce Beauregard. McDowell had no reserve troops left. "A sudden swoop, and a body of [Confederate] cavalry rushed down upon our columns," Edmund Stedman reported from the battlefield. "They came from the woods...and infantry poured out behind them."
Exhausted Union infantrymen, including Sprague"s First Rhode Island Regiment, broke ranks. An uncontrolled retreat toward Washington began, further confused by the panicked flight of horrified spectators. Indeed, an acquaintance of Chase"s who had witnessed the battle "never stopped until he reached New-York." Young Stedman was appalled by the raging scene: "Army wagons, sutlers" teams, and private carriages, choked the pa.s.sage, tumbling against each other, amid clouds of dust, and sickening sights and sounds." Muskets and small arms were discarded along the way. Wounded soldiers pled for help. Horses, running free, exacerbated the human stampede.
The shocking news reached Washington in Lincoln"s absence. "General McDowell"s army in full retreat through Centerville," the dispatch read; "the day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of the Army." Seward grabbed the telegram and ran to the White House. With "a terribly frightened and excited look" on his face, he asked Nicolay for the latest news. Lincoln"s secretary read him an earlier exultant dispatch. "Tell no one. That is not so. The battle is lost," Seward revealed. "Find the President and tell him to come immediately to Gen. Scott"s."
When Lincoln returned, his young aides relayed Seward"s message. "He listened in silence," they later reported, "without the slightest change of feature or expression, and walked away to army headquarters." He remained there with Scott and his cabinet until a telegram from McDowell verified the loss. Immediate reinforcements were summoned to defend the capital. With no further recourse, the disconsolate team dispersed.
"Oh what a sad long weary day has this sabbath been," Elizabeth Blair told her husband. For Simon Cameron, the day brought a sharper personal grief. His brother James, in the service of Colonel William Sherman"s brigade, was among the nearly nine hundred soldiers killed. "I loved my brother," Cameron wrote Chase, "as only the poor and lonely can love those with whom they have toiled & struggled up the rugged hill of life"s success-but he died bravely in the discharge of his duty."
Seward stayed up past midnight composing a letter to Frances. "Every thing is being done that mortal man can do. Scott is grieved and disappointed.... What went out an army is surging back toward Washington as a disorganized mob. They fought well, did n.o.bly, and apparently had gained the day, when some unreasonable alarm started a retreat. If the officers had experience and the men discipline, they could be rallied, and could be marched clear back to the field."
Lincoln returned to the White House, where he watched the returning soldiers straggle down the street, listened to the mournful sounds of ambulances, and sat for hours with various senators and congressmen who had witnessed the battle from the hill. Early the following morning, with rain pouring down, General Scott arrived, urging Mary to take the children to the North until Washington was deemed safe from capture. Elizabeth Grimsley recollected the exchange as Mary turned to her husband: "Will you go with us?" she asked. "Most a.s.suredly I will not leave at this juncture," he replied. "Then I will not leave you at this juncture," she answered with finality.
Lincoln did not sleep that dreadful night. Finding his only comfort in forward motion, he began drafting a memo incorporating the painful lessons of Bull Run into a coherent future military policy. Understanding that the disorder of the newly formed troops had contributed to the debacle, he called for the forces to "be constantly drilled, disciplined and instructed." Furthermore, when he learned that soldiers preparing to end their three months of service had led the retreat, Lincoln proposed to let all those short-termers "who decline to enter the longer service, be discharged as rapidly as circ.u.mstances will permit." Antic.i.p.ating European reactions to the defeat, he determined to move "with all possible despatch" to make the blockade operative. That night, a telegram was also sent to General George McClellan in western Virginia with orders to come to Washington and take command of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln then devised a strategy consisting of three advances: a second stand at Mana.s.sas; a move down the Mississippi toward Memphis; and a drive from Cincinnati to East Tennessee.
"If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with," Walt Whitman reflected, "it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall-indeed a crucifixion day-that it did not conquer him-that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it."
Recriminations were plentiful. The Democratic New York Herald placed responsibility on "a weak, inharmonious and inefficient Cabinet." General Patterson was blamed for failing to keep Johnston"s troops from joining Beauregard. "Two weeks ago," Chase self-righteously complained to a friend, "I urged the sending of Fremont to this command; and had it been done we should now have been rejoicing over a great victory." Still, the historian James Rowley concludes that "public censure touched too lightly on Lincoln," who should have held back the a.s.sault until the troops were ready.
"The sun rises, but shines not," Whitman wrote of the dismal day after the defeat. Rain continued to fall as the defeated troops flooded into Washington. From his window at Willard"s, Russell observed these bedraggled soldiers. "Some had neither great-coats nor shoes, others were covered with blankets." Nettie Chase recalled being "awakened in the gray dawn by the heavy, unwonted, rumbling of laden wagons pa.s.sing along the street below." Thinking at first they were bound for market, she was sickened to realize they were filled with wounded soldiers heading for the hospital nearby. To relieve the crowded hospital wards, Chase opened his s.p.a.cious home to nearly a dozen wounded men. Bishop McIlvaine, a friend visiting from Ohio who happened to be staying with Chase at the time, tended to the sick and dying. Nettie recalled the bishop"s uneasiness when one of the wounded men cursed loudly with each pain. "Just let me swear a bit," the young man entreated the stunned bishop, "it helps me stand the hurting."
"The dreadful disaster of Sunday can scarcely be mentioned," Stanton wrote to former president Buchanan five days after Bull Run. "The imbecility of this Administration culminated in that catastrophe," he p.r.o.nounced with a sycophantic nod to his former boss, calling the fiasco "the result of Lincoln"s "running the machine" for five months.... The capture of Washington seems now to be inevitable-during the whole of Monday and Tuesday it might have been taken without any resistance.... Even now I doubt whether any serious opposition to the entrance of the Confederate forces could be offered."
Historians have long pondered the reluctance of the Confederates to capitalize on their victory by attacking Washington. Jefferson Davis later cited "an overweening confidence" after the initial victory that led to lax decisions. General Johnston observed that hundreds of volunteers, believing the war already won, simply left their regiments and returned home to "exhibit the trophies picked up on the field." Other soldiers melted into the countryside, accompanying wounded comrades to faraway hospitals. Perhaps the most straightforward explanation of both the dismal Union retreat and the Confederate failure to march into Washington is manifest in the plain a.s.sessment Nancy Bates posted to her young niece Hester: "Well we fought all day Sunday. Our men were so tired that they had to come away from Mana.s.sa I expect that the others were very tired too or they would have followed our men."
While Lincoln brooded in private, confiding in Browning that he was "very melancholy," he maintained a stoic public image. He refrained from answering Horace Greeley"s acerbic letter, written in "black despair" after the Tribune editor had endured a week without sleep. "You are not considered a great man," Greeley charged, adding that if the Confederacy could not be defeated, Lincoln should "not fear to sacrifice [himself] to [his] country." Despite a blizzard of such indictments, Lincoln listened patiently to reports from the field of what went wrong. He told humorous stories to provide relief. And in the days that followed, with Seward by his side, he visited a number of regiments, raising spirits at every stop along the way.
At Fort Corcoran, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, he asked Colonel William T. Sherman if he could address the troops. Sherman was delighted, though he asked Lincoln to "discourage all cheering." After the boasts that preceded Bull Run, he explained, "what we needed were cool, thoughtful, hard-fighting soldiers-no more hurrahing, no more humbug." Lincoln agreed, proceeding to deliver what Sherman considered "one of the neatest, best, and most feeling addresses" he had ever heard. Lincoln commented on the lost battle but emphasized "the high duties that still devolved on us, and the brighter days yet to come." At various points, "the soldiers began to cheer, but [Lincoln] promptly checked them, saying: "Don"t cheer, boys. I confess I rather like it myself, but Colonel Sherman here says it is not military; and I guess we had better defer to his opinion.""
The president closed his graceful speech with a pledge to provide the troops with all they needed, and even encouraged them to call on him "personally in case they were wronged." One aggrieved officer took him at his word, revealing that, as a three-month volunteer, he had tried to leave, but Sherman had "threatened to shoot" him. In a "stage-whisper," Lincoln counseled the officer: "Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot, I would not trust him, for I believe he would do it." The response produced gales of laughter among the men while upholding Sherman"s discipline.
Northern public opinion reflected Lincoln"s firm resolve. Republican newspapers across the land reported a "renewed patriotism," bringing thousands of volunteers to sign up for three years. "Let no loyal man be discouraged by the reverse," the Chicago Tribune proclaimed. "Like the great Antaeas, who, when thrown to the ground, gathered strength from the contact with mother earth and arose refreshed and stronger than before, to renew the contest, so of the Sons of Liberty; the loss of this battle will only nerve them to greater efforts." Several papers compared the Bull Run disaster to George Washington"s early defeats in the Revolutionary War, which eventually resulted in triumph at Yorktown. "The spirit of the people is now thoroughly aroused," the New York Times announced, "and, what is equally important, it has been chastened and moderated by the stern lessons of experience."
With the stunning reversal and rout at Bull Run, however, Northern delusions of easy triumph dissolved. "It is pretty evident now that we have underrated the strength, the resources and the temper of the enemy," the Times conceded. "And we have been blind, moreover, to the extraordinary nature of the country over which the contest is to be waged,-and to its wonderful facilities for defence." Yet the harrowing lessons of Bull Run generated a perverse confidence that the North could "take comfort" in already knowing the worst that could happen. It was unimaginable in the anxious chaos following the first major battle of the Civil War that far worse was yet to come.