Still, Seward was recognized as the man who had the president"s ear. William Russell of The Times in London capitalized on this intimacy when he first arrived in Washington. Russell was then forty-one, a spectacled, lively, rotund Englishman whose sparkling reports from the Crimean War had made him a celebrity in London. At a dinner party on March 26, he was fascinated by Seward, "a subtle, quick man, rejoicing in power...fond of badinage, bursting with the importance of state mysteries." The next day, Seward arranged for Russell to slip into a White House reception for the Italian minister. Russell recalled that Lincoln "put out his hand in a very friendly manner, and said, "Mr. Russell, I am very glad to make your acquaintance, and to see you in this country. The London Times is one of the greatest powers in the world-in fact, I don"t know anything which has much more power-except perhaps the Mississippi.""
Russell attended the Lincolns" first state dinner that evening. Arriving at the White House, he noted that Mary "was already seated to receive her guests." He found her features "plain, her nose and mouth of an ordinary type, and her manners and appearance homely, stiffened, however, by the consciousness that her position requires her to be something more than plain Mrs. Lincoln, the wife of the Illinois lawyer; she is profuse in the introduction of the word "sir" in every sentence."
Once acquainted with all the cabinet officers and the various guests, Russell rated Chase, with his "fine forehead" and his "face indicating energy and power," as "one of the most intelligent and distinguished persons in the whole a.s.semblage." He was particularly taken with Kate Chase, whom he described as "very attractive, agreeable, and sprightly." Kate was in her element, talking "easily, with a low melodious voice...her head tilted slightly upward, a faint, almost disdainful smile upon her face, as if she were a t.i.tled English lady posing in a formal garden for Gainsborough or Reynolds." As her father"s hostess, Kate stood fourth in official Washington society. Her only real rival was Mrs. Lincoln, since neither Ellen Hamlin nor Frances Seward had any desire for social aggrandizement. "In reality, there was no one in Washington to compare with Kate Chase," one of Kate"s intimate friends later told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "She was the queen of society. Men showered adulation upon her and went on their knees to her. I have never seen a woman who has so much personal charm and magnetism." The possibly apocryphal story spread of Kate"s introduction to Mary that night. "I shall be glad to see you any time, Miss Chase," Mary said. Kate replied: "Mrs. Lincoln, I shall be glad to have you call on me at any time." Though Mary would later manifest intense jealousy of Kate, it is doubtful that Kate"s remark spoiled her pleasure that glittering evening.
At the formal dinner, "there was a Babel of small talk," Russell observed, "except when there was an attentive silence caused by one of the President"s stories...for which he is famous." As he reeled off one humorous anecdote after another, no one could have guessed that earlier that day, Lincoln had received devastating news from General Scott. In a written memorandum, Scott had advised that it was now unlikely, "according to recent information from the South, whether the voluntary evacuation of Fort Sumter alone would have a decisive effect upon the States now wavering between adherence to the Union and secession." Fort Pickens would also have to be abandoned, Scott argued, in order to "give confidence to the eight remaining slave-holding States."
Shortly before the state dinner ended, Lincoln called his cabinet colleagues aside and asked them to follow him into a different room. Montgomery Blair would long remember Lincoln"s agitation as he revealed the contents of Scott"s report. "A very oppressive silence succeeded," Blair recalled, interrupted only by his own angry retort that Scott was playing "politician and not General," a comment directed at Seward"s influence with Scott. Like his son, Blair Senior had long believed that Lincoln should have announced the reinforcement of Sumter at the time of his inauguration and he blamed Seward for Lincoln"s "timid temporizing policy." It was Andrew Jackson"s motto, he reminded, that "if you temporize, you are lost."
THAT NIGHT, Lincoln was unable to sleep. The time for musing and a.s.sessment was at an end. He must make the decision between a surrender that might compromise the honor of the North and tear it apart, or a reinforcement that might carry the country into civil war. Later he confessed to Browning, "of all the trials I have had since I came here, none begin to compare with those I had between the inauguration and the fall of Fort Sumpter. They were so great that could I have antic.i.p.ated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them."
At noon the next day, the cabinet convened. Lincoln presented all the intelligence he had gathered, including Fox"s report on Major Anderson"s situation and Hurlbut"s conclusion that Unionism was essentially dead in South Carolina. Once more the members were asked to submit their opinions in writing. This time, shaped no doubt by Lincoln"s presentation and General Scott"s disturbing memo, the majority opinion-with only Seward and Smith clearly dissenting-advised that both Sumter and Pickens should be resupplied and reinforced.
Evidence suggests that Lincoln had reached a decision before the cabinet met, for he had already requested that Fox send a list of the "ships, men, and supplies he would need for his expedition." Several hours after the cabinet adjourned, he also implemented a drastic restructuring of his daily schedule. Much as he wanted to give office seekers their due, he needed time and s.p.a.ce to consider the grave problems facing the country. He ordered Nicolay to limit visiting hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., ending the hectic burden of twelve-hour days that Nicolay knew "would be impossible to sustain for a great length of time."
For Seward, Lincoln"s decision to reinforce Sumter was shattering. He was in his house on the evening of March 29 when George Harrington, a.s.sistant secretary of the treasury, knocked at the door. Harrington had just left the White House, where Welles, Blair, and Fox had met with Lincoln, and "it was finally determined, with the President"s approval to reinforce Fort Sumter."
"Thunder, George! What are you talking about?" Seward asked. "It cannot be." When Harrington repeated his news, Seward was irate. "I want no more at this time of the Administration which may be defeated. We are not yet in a position to go to war." Seward"s success in getting Lincoln to soften the tone of his inaugural address, coupled with the cabinet vote on March 15, decisively echoing his own advice to evacuate Sumter, had left him with the mistaken conviction that he was the power behind a weak president.
Flattering letters from the South had compounded Seward"s erroneous a.s.sumption. Frederick Roberts in North Carolina a.s.sured him that everyone was looking to him for "a peaceful adjustment of the difficulties." While Lincoln, the letter continued, was considered throughout the state as "a 3rd rate man," Seward was looked upon as "the Hector or Atlas of not only his Cabinet, but the giant intellect of the whole north." Another admirer swore that "Unionists look to yourself, and only to you Sir, as a member of the Cabinet-to save the country." With these judgments of both the president"s failings and his own stature, Seward wholeheartedly agreed. He confided to Adams that Lincoln had "no conception of his situation-much absorption in the details of office dispensation, but little application to great ideas." Adams needed little convincing. Despite accepting the high-ranking appointment as minister to Great Britain, he remained dismissive of Lincoln, writing in his diary: "The man is not equal to the hour." The only hope, he repeatedly wrote, lay in the secretary of state"s influence with the president.
For weeks, Seward had acted under "two supreme illusions": first, that he was in reality the man in charge; and second, that Southerners would be appeased by the abandonment of Sumter and would eventually return to the Union. He had risked his good name on his conviction that Lincoln would follow his advice and surrender Sumter. Three commissioners had been sent to Washington by the Confederacy to negotiate, among other issues, the question of the forts. Lincoln, however, had refused to allow any dealings with them on the grounds that direct communication would legitimize the seceded states. Stifled, Seward had resorted to an indirect link through Alabama"s John Campbell, who had remained on the Supreme Court despite the secession of his state. After the March 15 cabinet meeting, Seward, believing that his vote to evacuate would soon be confirmed by Lincoln, had sent a message that Campbell relayed to the commissioners, who reported to the Confederacy"s capital, then located in Montgomery, Alabama: Sumter "would be evacuated in the next five days."
Desperate to save his own honor and prevent the country from drifting into war, while the administration established no clear-cut policy, Seward composed an extraordinary memo that would become the source of great criticism and controversy. During the afternoon of April 1, Fred Seward recalled, his father wrote "Some thoughts for the President"s consideration." Since his "handwriting was almost illegible," he asked Fred to copy it over and bring it personally to Lincoln, not allowing it "to be filed, or to pa.s.s into the hands of any clerk."
"We are at the end of a month"s Administration, and yet without a policy either domestic or foreign," the contentious memo began. Seward proceeded to reiterate his argument for abandoning Fort Sumter, placing new emphasis on reinforcing Fort Pickens. He a.s.serted that focusing on Fort Pickens rather than on Sumter would allow Lincoln to retain "the symbolism of Federal authority" with far less provocation. Seward"s mistake was not the diabolical plot that some critics later charged, but a grave misreading of the situation and a grave misunderstanding of Lincoln.
Seward continued under the heading of "For Foreign Nations," suggesting that Lincoln deflect attention from the domestic crisis by demanding that Spain and France explain their meddling in the Western Hemisphere and that Great Britain, Canada, and Russia account for their threats to intervene in the American crisis. If the explanations of any country proved unsatisfactory, war should be declared. In fact, some such explanations were eventually demanded, convincing European leaders to be more careful in their response to the American situation. It was Seward"s wilder proposal of declaring war, if necessary, that would arouse the harsh rebuke of biographers and historians.
Nor did Seward"s overreaching end there. The previous February, Seward had informed a German diplomat "that there was no great difference between an elected president of the United States and an hereditary monarch." Neither truly ran things. "The actual direction of public affairs belongs to the leader of the ruling party." Seward had conceived of himself as a prime minister, with Lincoln the figurehead. Testing this presumptuous notion, Seward closed with the idea that "whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it.... Either the President must do it himself...or DEVOLVE it on some member of his Cabinet.... It is not in my especial province. But I neither seek to evade nor a.s.sume responsibility." As Nicolay later wrote, "had Mr. Lincoln been an envious or a resentful man, he could not have wished for a better occasion to put a rival under his feet." Seward"s effrontery easily could have provoked a swift dismissal. Yet, as happened so often, Lincoln showed an "unselfish magnanimity," which was "the central marvel of the whole affair."
The president immediately dashed off a reply to Seward that he would never send, probably preferring to respond in person. Buried in Lincoln"s papers, the doc.u.ment was not unearthed until decades later, as Nicolay and Hay labored on their ma.s.sive Lincoln biography. Lincoln"s response was short but pointed. Concerning the a.s.sertion that the administration was "without a policy," Lincoln reminded Seward of his inaugural pledge that "the power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government." This was the "exact domestic policy" that Seward called for, "with the single exception, that it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumpter." As for the charge that the administration lacked a foreign policy, "we have been preparing circulars, and instructions to ministers...without even a suggestion that we had no foreign policy." The idea of engineering a foreign war to reunify the country did not even rate a response.
Lincoln responded most emphatically to Seward"s suggestion that perhaps the secretary of state was needed to design and pursue a vigorous policy where the president had not. In unmistakable language, Lincoln wrote: "I remark that if this must be done, I must do it."
Undaunted, Seward worked furiously to complete his plans for reinforcing Fort Pickens, hopeful that Lincoln might change his mind before the Fox expedition to Fort Sumter was launched. The previous day, he had sent an urgent summons to Captain Montgomery Meigs to come to his house. Recognizing that time was short, Seward requested Meigs "to put down upon paper an estimate & project for relieving & holding Fort Pickens" and "to bring it to the Presidents before 4 p.m." Lincoln was happy to receive the army captain"s report, though in his mind, reinforcing Pickens did not mean choosing between the two garrisons. "Tell [Scott]," the president said, "that I wish this thing done & not to let it fail unless he can show that I have refused him something he asked for as necessary. I depend upon you gentlemen to push this thing through."
Lincoln was cautioned by Seward that the army"s expedition to Pickens should be kept from naval authorities, given the number of navy men who were openly disloyal to the Union. Lincoln signed orders on April 1 to Andrew Foote, the commandant of the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, to "fit out the Powhatan without delay" for a secret mission to Pensacola under the command of Lieutenant David Porter. The Powhatan was the U.S. Navy"s most powerful warship. "Under no circ.u.mstances" should "the fact that she is fitting out" be disclosed to the Navy Department, Lincoln emphasized. Both Navy Secretary Welles and Captain Fox, whose plans for the relief of Sumter depended on the Powhatan, remained unaware of the secret orders. With its mighty guns and three hundred sailors, the Powhatan was supposed to play an essential role in backing up the tugboats carrying supplies to Sumter.
Lincoln had failed to peruse the orders carefully and inadvertently a.s.signed the Powhatan simultaneously to both Pickens and Sumter. In the confusion of the first weeks, it was not unusual for Lincoln to sign doc.u.ments from Seward without reading them. Fred Seward later recalled that when he brought papers over to the White House for signature, Lincoln would say: "Your father says this is all right, does he? Well, I guess he knows. Where do I put my name?"
Still ignorant of the mix-up, Welles wrote to Samuel Mercer, the current commander of the Powhatan, on April 5, instructing him to "leave New York with the Powhatan in time to be off Charleston bar" by the morning of the 11th. If the supply boats were permitted to land at Fort Sumter, he should return to New York at once. If their entry was opposed, then the Powhatan and its support ships should be used "to open the way." Should the "peaceable" supply mission fail, "a reinforcement of the garrison" should be attempted by "disposing of your force," as needed. The orders from Welles to Mercer were read to the president that same day and authorized.
The next day, Lincoln drafted a letter for Cameron to send through a messenger to the governor of South Carolina: "I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made, to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made without further notice." Lincoln had devised a means to separate the peaceful supply mission from the more controversial issue of reinforcement, forging, at least for the record, a final alternative to war.
While Lincoln"s strategy was creative, its execution was fatally bungled. Learning that the Pickens expedition was "embarra.s.sed by conflicting orders from the Secretary of the Navy," Captain Meigs had telegraphed Seward for an explanation. Placed in an awkward situation, Seward knew he would have to reveal the secret Pickens mission to Welles. Sometime after 11 p.m., Seward and Fred took a short walk to the Willard to talk with Welles. Earlier that evening, Welles, a.s.suming that the Powhatan and its accompanying ships had already set sail for Sumter, had congratulated himself on accomplishing so much in such a short time.
Seward showed Welles the telegram, explaining that it must relate to the Powhatan, which was now under command of David Porter and on its way to Pensacola. Welles insisted that was impossible. The Powhatan was "the flagship" of the mission to Sumter. They decided to consult the president at once. Though midnight was approaching, Lincoln was still awake. Upon hearing the problem, he "looked first at one and then the other, and declared there was some mistake." Once the error was clear, he told Seward to send Porter a telegram, ordering him to "return the Powhatan to Mercer without delay," so that the Sumter expedition could proceed. Seward tried to champion the Pickens expedition, but Lincoln "was imperative," insisting that the telegram go out that night.
To the astonishment of Welles, Lincoln "took upon himself the whole blame-said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part-he ought to have been more careful and attentive." In fact, Welles continued, Lincoln "often declared that he, and not his Cabinet, was in fault for errors imputed to them." Seward reluctantly sent the telegram; but Porter had already set sail for Florida. A fast ship was dispatched to catch up with the Powhatan, but when Porter read the telegram, bearing Seward"s signature instead of the president"s, he continued to Florida, on the a.s.sumption that the previous order signed by the president had priority.
When Gustavus Fox reached Charleston, he spent hours futilely searching for the Powhatan, having no clue the vessel had been misrouted. Nor did he know that Confederate authorities in Montgomery had intercepted his plans and ordered the commander in Charleston, Brigadier General Pierre Beauregard, to attack the fort before the Powhatan and Union convoy were due to arrive. At 3:30 a.m. on April 12, Beauregard sent a note to Anderson announcing his intent to commence firing in one hour. Anderson"s small garrison of sixty men returned fire but were quickly overwhelmed by the Confederate force of nine thousand. They had no chance, Fox lamented, without the Powhatan"s men, howitzers, and "fighting launches." Abner Doubleday, an officer on Anderson"s staff, recalled that "the conflagration was terrible and disastrous.... One-fifth of the fort was on fire, and the wind drove the smoke in dense ma.s.ses into the angle where we had all taken refuge."
Thirty-four hours after the fighting began, Major Anderson surrendered. In a gesture that forever endeared him to the North, he brought his men together and fired a dignified fifty-round salute to the shredded American flag before hauling it down and leaving the fort. Incredibly, only one Union soldier died, the result of an accidental explosion of gunpowder during the salute to the flag. Beauregard, who had been taught by Anderson at West Point and had great respect for him, waited until Anderson had departed before entering the fort, as "it would be an unhonorable thing...to be present at the humiliation of his friend."
Captain Fox was inconsolable. Convinced that his mission would have been successful with the missing Powhatan, he believed that for a failure that was not his fault, he had lost his "reputation with the general public." Lincoln, once more, a.s.sumed the blame, a.s.suring him that "by an accident, for which you were in no wise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent was, you were deprived of a war vessel with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprize. I most cheerfully and truly declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort, have greatly heightened you, in my estimation.
"You and I," he continued, "both antic.i.p.ated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our antic.i.p.ation is justified by the result."
Critics later claimed that Lincoln had maneuvered the South into beginning the war. In fact, he had simply followed his inaugural pledge that he would "hold" the properties belonging to the government, "but beyond what may be necessary" to accomplish this, "there will be no invasion-no using of force." Fort Sumter could not be held without food and supplies. Had Lincoln chosen to abandon the fort, he would have violated his pledge to the North. Had he used force in any way other than to "hold" government properties, he would have breached his promise to the South.
The Confederates had fired the first shot. A war had begun that no one imagined would last four years and cost greater than six hundred thousand lives-more than the c.u.mulative total of all our other wars, from the Revolution to Iraq. The devastation and sacrifice would reach into every community, into almost every family, in a nation of 31.5 million. In proportion to today"s population, the number of deaths would exceed five million.
CHAPTER 13
"THE BALL HAS OPENED"
NEWS OF THE CONFEDERATE ATTACK on Fort Sumter spread throughout the North that weekend. Walt Whitman recalled hearing the shouts of newsboys after he emerged from an opera on 14th Street and was strolling down Broadway late Sat.u.r.day night. At the Metropolitan Hotel, "where the great lamps were still brightly blazing," the news was read to a crowd of thirty or forty suddenly gathered round. More than twenty years later, he could "almost see them there now, under the lamps at midnight again."
The "firing on the flag" produced a "volcanic upheaval" in the North, Whitman observed, "which at once substantially settled the question of disunion." The National Intelligencer spoke for many Northerners: "Our people now, one and all, are determined to sustain the Government and demand a vigorous prosecution of the war inaugurated by the disunionists. All sympathy with them is dead."
The fevered excitement in the North was mirrored in the South. "The ball has opened," a dispatch from Charleston, South Carolina, began. "The excitement in the community is indescribable. With the very first boom of the guns thousands rushed from their beds to the harbor front, and all day every available place has been thronged by ladies and gentlemen, viewing the spectacle through their gla.s.ses."
On Sunday, Lincoln returned from church and immediately called his cabinet into session. He had decided to issue a proclamation to the North, calling out state militias and fixing a time for Congress to reconvene. The number of volunteer soldiers to be requested came under debate. Some wanted 100,000, others 50,000; Lincoln settled on 75,000. The timing of the congressional session also posed a difficult question. While the executive branch needed Congress to raise armies and authorize spending, Lincoln was advised that "to wait for "many men of many minds" to shape a war policy would be to invite disaster." Seward was particularly adamant on this point, believing that "history tells us that kings who call extra parliaments lose their heads." Lincoln and his cabinet set the Fourth of July as the date for Congress to reconvene, relying on "their patriotism to sanction the war measures taken prior to that time by the Executive."
John Nicolay made a copy of the president"s proclamation and delivered it to the secretary of state, who stamped the great seal and sent it for publication the following day. That afternoon, Lincoln took a carriage ride with his boys and Nicolay, trying for a moment to distract himself from the increasingly onerous events. Upon his return, he welcomed his old rival Stephen Douglas for a private meeting of several hours. Douglas was not well; a lifetime of alcohol and frenetic activity had taken its toll. In two months" time, he would be dead. Nevertheless, he offered his solid support to Lincoln, afterward publicly declaring himself ready "to sustain the President in the exercise of his const.i.tutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the Government." His statement proved tremendously helpful in mobilizing Democratic support. "In this hour of trial it becomes the duty of every patriotic citizen to sustain the General Government," one Douglas paper began. Another urged "every man to lay aside his party bias...give up small prejudices and go in, heart and hand, to put down treason and traitors."
"The response to the Proclamation at the North," Fred Seward recalled, "was all or more than could be antic.i.p.ated. Every Governor of a free State promptly promised that his quota should be forthcoming. An enthusiastic outburst of patriotic feeling-an "uprising of the North" in town and country-was reported by telegraph." Northern newspapers described ma.s.sive rallies, with bands blaring and volunteers marching in support of the Union. Old party lines seemed to have evaporated. "We begin to look like a United North," George Templeton Strong recorded in his diary, prophesying that the Democratic New York Herald would soon "denounce Jefferson Davis as it denounced Lincoln a week ago."
The enthusiastic solidarity of the North dangerously underestimated the strength and determination of the South. Seward predicted that the war would be over in sixty days. John Hay expressed the condescending wish that it would "be b.l.o.o.d.y and short, in pity to the maniac South. They are weak, ignorant, bankrupt in money and credit. Their army is a vast mob, insubordinate and hungry.... What is before them but defeat, poverty, dissensions, insurrections and ruin."
Ominous signals from the South soon deflated these facile forecasts. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky refused to send troops "for the wicked purpose of subduing [their] sister Southern States." Then, on April 17, citing the president"s call to arms, the vital state of Virginia seceded from the Union. The historian James Randall would designate this act "one of the most fateful events in American history." News of Virginia"s decision provoked jubilation throughout the South. "We never saw our population so much excited as it was yesterday afternoon, when the glorious news spread all over town as wildfire, that Virginia, the "Mother of Presidents," had seceded at last," the New Orleans Daily Picayune reported. "Citizens on the sidewalks, were shaking each other by the hand, our office was overcrowded, the boys were running to and fro, unable to restrain their delight, and now and then venting their enthusiasm by giving a hearty hurrah."
In their excitement, Southerners fell victim to the same hectic misjudgment that plagued the North, overstating their own chances as they underestimated their opponent"s will. "And now we are eight!" the Picayune exulted, predicting they would soon be fifteen when all the remaining slave states followed Virginia"s lead. In fact, the Old Dominion"s action prodded only three more states to join the Confederacy-North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. For many agonizing months, however, Lincoln would remain apprehensive about the border states of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky.
The day after Virginia seceded, Francis Blair, Sr., invited Colonel Robert E. Lee to his yellow house on Pennsylvania Avenue. A graduate of West Point, the fifty-four-year-old Lee had served in the Mexican War, held the post of superintendent at West Point, and commanded the forces that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. General Scott regarded him as "the very best soldier I ever saw in the field." Lincoln had designated Blair to tender Lee the highest-ranking military position within the president"s power to proffer.
"I come to you on the part of President Lincoln," Blair began, "to ask whether any inducement that he can offer will prevail on you to take command of the Union army?" Lee responded "as candidly and as courteously" as he could: "Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?"
When the meeting ended, Lee called upon old General Scott to discuss the dilemma further. Then he returned to his Arlington home to think. Two days later, he contacted Scott to tender his resignation from the U.S. Army. "It would have been presented at once," Lee explained, "but for the struggle it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed. During the whole of that time, more than 30 years, I have experienced nothing but kindness from my superiors, & the most cordial friendship from my companions.... I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to me."
That same day, a distraught Lee wrote to his sister: "Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing." Though he could apprehend "no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed," he was unable, he explained, "to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State (with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed) I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword." Shortly thereafter, Lee was designated commander of the Virginia state forces.
While Lee wrestled with the grim personal consequences of his decision, Lincoln"s brother-in-law Benjamin Hardin Helm confronted a painful decision of his own. Helm, a native of Kentucky and a graduate of West Point, had married Mary"s half sister Emilie in 1856. While conducting business in Springfield, he had stayed with the Lincolns. According to his daughter Katherine, he and Lincoln "formed a friendship which was more like the affection of brothers than the ordinary liking of men." Two weeks after Sumter, Lincoln brought Helm, a staunch "Southern-rights Democrat," into his office. "Ben, here is something for you," Lincoln said, placing a sealed envelope in his hands. "Think it over and let me know what you will do." The letter offered Helm the rank of major and the prestigious position of paymaster in the Union Army. That afternoon, Helm encountered Lee, whose face betrayed his anxiety. "Are you not feeling well, Colonel Lee?" Helm asked. "Well in body but not in mind," Lee replied. "In the prime of life I quit a service in which were all my hopes and expectations in this world." Helm showed Lee Lincoln"s offer and asked for advice, saying, "I have no doubt of his kindly intentions. But he cannot control the elements. There must be a great war." Lee was "too much disturbed" to render advice, urging Helm to "do as your conscience and your honor bid."