Lincoln (100 page)

“It seems clear to me that the people desire the re-election of Mr. Lincoln,” Representative James A. Garfield remarked in late February. His opinion was the more significant because he had recently been one of the leaders in the aborted Chase boom. After the appointment of Grant nearly all Republican leaders came to the same conclusion. From Maine came the report, “The feeling for Lincoln is very strong here, and his renomination seems now to be a foregone conclusion.” It was echoed from California: Lincoln “was the choice of the people overwhelmingly.”

But many politicians were sure that the unanimity was superficial. “The feeling for Mr. Lincoln’s re-election
seems
to be very general,” Lyman Trumbull
wrote, “but much of it I discover is only on the surface.” Some who conceded that the President would be renominated claimed to discover “a want of confidence in Lincoln with the people.” One alienated Ohio Republican wrote that voters were supporting the President simply because “everybody thinks that everybody else goes for Lincoln.”

Among the disaffected there was still no agreement on who could best replace Lincoln at the head of the Republican ticket. Lacking consensus, Lincoln’s critics proposed to delay the national convention scheduled to meet in Baltimore on June 7. William Cullen Bryant, editor of the
New York Evening Post,
Horace Greeley, editor of the
New York Tribune,
and other influential New York Republicans demanded that the convention be postponed until at least September 1. “The country is not now in a position to enter into a Presidential contest,” they announced in a widely circulated broadside. Upon the ability of the Lincoln administration “to finish the war during the present Spring and Summer, will depend the wish of the people to continue in power their present leaders, or to change them.” Approaching Republican leaders in other states, the New Yorkers gained support in Illinois from Medill of the
Chicago Tribune,
who declared, “I don’t care a pinch if the convention is put off till Aug[ust],” because Lincoln was exhibiting “some very weak and foolish traits of character.” But Simon Cameron in Pennsylvania opposed the delay.

The movement faded when it became clear that it was not possible to beat the President with nobody, and Lincoln’s opponents began touting several rival candidates. The
New York Herald
continued to beat the drum for General Grant, who showed no interest. Frémont’s support was largely confined to the Radical Germans of Missouri. Benjamin F. Butler let it be known that he would not enter into a combination with other rivals of the President—but did “not decline the use of his name for the office.” There was always the possibility that Chase might reenter the race. His supporters, detecting “a strong undercurrent—not yet noisy, nor visible to the masses—in favor of
pressing
Mr. C’s claim,” were convinced that the Secretary of the Treasury could take advantage of a likely division of Republican delegates between Lincoln and Frémont, since “both sides will prefer Chase to the Other.”

Lincoln was confident that Grant would not become a candidate, but he took as serious rivals the others mentioned for the presidency. He knew he could do nothing with Frémont; that general hated the President for ousting him from command first in Missouri and later in western Virginia and then for shelving his alleged military talents for the rest of the war. Frémont made it clear that if he could not break Lincoln’s hold on the Republican delegates he would run as an independent, and his backers called a convention to be held in Cleveland on May 31, just a week before the regular Republican meeting in Baltimore.

Butler the President handled with kid gloves, especially after learning that Chase’s backers had approached him with the offer of a vice presidential
nomination. He had scant respect for the general’s ability, but he recognized that Butler could cause trouble, and he attended to his wishes and complaints with considerable deference and protected the notoriously inept general when Grant wanted to remove him from command at Fort Monroe. Claiming to speak for the President, Cameron explored with the general the possibility of a Lincoln-Butler ticket, only to be told, laughingly, that Butler would accept the vice presidency only if Lincoln gave him “bond with sureties, in the full sum of his four years’ salary, that he will die or resign within three months after his inauguration.” No doubt the President was relieved as well as amused to hear Cameron’s report of the conversation.

Chase had to be handled differently. After the fiasco of the Pomeroy Circular and Chase’s forced withdrawal from the presidential race, Lincoln’s supporters wondered why he let the Secretary of the Treasury remain in the cabinet, and even Butler advised the President that “tipping him out” was the only remedy for the Chase problem. But Lincoln knew that Chase was less dangerous as a disgruntled member of the cabinet than he would be if he left the administration.

During these months, facing mounting government deficits, a Congress reluctant to enact a realistic tax program, and the constantly mounting price of gold as compared to greenbacks, Chase often thought of resigning, and it seemed that he had found a pretext when Lincoln began planning changes in the New York Customs House, which offered the most remunerative patronage positions at the disposal of the federal government. Conservative Republicans in New York felt that Hiram Barney, whom Chase had selected as the collector back in 1861, favored the Radical wing of the party, and they demanded his removal. Lincoln liked Barney and had confidence in his honor and integrity but, suspecting that the collector had “ceased to be master of his position,” proposed sending him as minister to Portugal. Barney refused to resign under fire, and Chase dug in his heels. Angrily he warned that if the collector left the New York Customs House he would resign. Reluctantly Lincoln backed down.

In so doing, he grievously offended New York Conservatives led by Thurlow Weed. “Distinctly and emphatically” Weed asked David Davis to tell the President “that if this Custom House is left in custody of those who have for two years sent ‘aid and comfort’ to the enemy,
his
fitness for President will be questioned.” Disaffection among Conservatives became greater when Lincoln, without notice, followed the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury and named John T. Hogeboom as appraiser in the New York Customs House. “The President [had] rather appoint Chase’s friends
than to say no,”
Senator Edwin D. Morgan grieved. Weed was enraged. “After
this
outrage and insult,” he fumed, he would cease to annoy the President with the letters and advice he had constantly showered on him since his election; he could no longer be subjected “to the mortifications of knowing that the President has no respect for my opinions.” Deeply troubled, Lincoln sent his private secretary to New York to make peace with the
aging boss, but Nicolay found him “quite disheartened and disappointed.” Privately Weed began expressing his belief that the people had “not had the worth of their Blood and Treasure” from the Lincoln administration and his doubts about the advisability of renominating the President were so public that rumor had it that “old Weed was undoubtedly opposed to Lincoln.”

If the President seemed to support the Radicals in New York, in Washington he appeared to back the Conservatives. In late April, Representative Francis P. Blair, Jr., outraged by charges, made with the apparent connivance of Treasury Department officials, that he had profited from illegal trade along the Mississippi River, took the floor to denounce Secretary Chase for fostering fraud and corruption in order to boost his chances for the presidency. In a blistering attack Blair charged that Chase had not really withdrawn from the race after the “disgraceful and disgusting” Pomeroy Circular; he simply “wanted to get down under the ground and work there in the dark as he is now doing, and running the Pomeroy machine on the public money as vigorously as ever.” Chase, he continued, was using “that poor creature” Frémont as a cat’s-paw, believing that the threat of an independent third party would frighten the Republicans into dropping Lincoln. Then “Chase, who has
so magnanimously
declined to be a candidate, will then be taken up as a compromise candidate.”

What made Blair’s vituperative speech the more infuriating to Radicals was his announcement immediately afterward that he was giving up his seat in Congress to resume his commission as major general commanding a corps in Sherman’s army. Blair, it became known, had a “distinct verbal understanding” with Lincoln that he might resign his commission in order to serve in Congress but that he could, “at any time during the session, at his own pleasure, withdraw said resignation, and return to the field.” Lincoln’s enemies raged that this arrangement was both illegal and unconstitutional; it proved that the President had been behind Blair’s assault on the Secretary of the Treasury. Indignant, Chase planned to resign, but he allowed his friends to persuade him to delay until they could see the President.

When former Congressman Albert G. Riddle of Ohio, accompanied by Rufus P. Spalding, “the personal and confidential friend nearest the Secretary,” met with Lincoln on April 25, they received a frosty reception. He melted, however, after Riddle explained that he had come not to confront the President but to hear his assurance that he was “in no way a party to or responsible for a word uttered by Mr. Blair.” Lincoln explained that he had not known in advance of Blair’s speech; indeed, he did not learn of it until three hours after he had reinstated the general in command. Realizing
“that another beehive was kicked over,”
he initially thought of canceling the order restoring Blair’s commission but on reflection decided to let it stand. “If I was wrong in this,” he told his visitors, “the injury to the service can be set right.”

As the time for the Baltimore convention approached, the stress of mediating between the two Republican factions was beginning to tell on the
President. Riddle, who had not seen him for five months, was shocked by the change in his appearance. Now, he reported, the President “looked like a man worn and harassed with petty faultfinding and criticisms, until he had turned at bay, like an old stag pursued and hunted by a cowardly rabble of men and dogs.”

These days Lincoln found it easier to get along with his generals than with the politicians. In Grant he had a commander whom he liked and trusted. Everything about the unpretentious, businesslike general pleased the President. It was an advantage that Grant was from Illinois. His lack of flamboyance, his seeming inattentiveness to rank and protocol endeared him to the President. Lincoln was struck by the simplicity and directness of the language Grant used in his reports. He was even more impressed by their infrequency and brevity. “Gen. Grant,” he had noted back in July 1863, “is a copious worker, and fighter, but a very meagre writer, or telegrapher.” He was pleased that Grant, unlike McClellan, Buell, and some other generals, unquestioningly accepted his policies on emancipation and the recruitment of Negro troops. Most of all, he told another officer, he liked Grant because “he doesn’t worry and bother me. He isn’t shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him ... and does the best he can with what he has got.”

The President wanted to give the new general-in-chief everything that he reasonably could. He approved the general’s decision to reorganize and consolidate the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac into a separate corps, and he agreed to the appointment of Grant’s young favorite, Philip Sheridan, to command it. He backed Grant’s decision to make sharp reductions in the numbers of soldiers stationed far behind the lines maintaining civil order in the border states and guarding lines of transportation, and he accepted the general’s decision to terminate profitless expeditions like the months-long siege of Charleston harbor. When Grant demanded that the quartermaster, ordnance, and commissary departments be brought under his control, Lincoln replied that, though he could not legally give him the command of these departments, “there is no one but myself that can interfere with your orders, and you can rest assured that I will not.” Once Grant offended Stanton by withdrawing too many men from the fortifications of Washington, and both men took their cases to the White House. After hearing them out, Lincoln told his Secretary of War: “You and I, Mr. Stanton, have been trying to boss this job, and we have not succeeded very well with it. We have sent across the mountains for Mr. Grant, as Mrs. Grant calls him, to relieve us, and I think we had better leave him alone to do as he pleases.”

In his first private interview with the general, the President assured him “that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them.” In the past,
“procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the people at the North and Congress,
which was always with him,”
had forced him to play a more active role. But “all he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering such assistance.” “The particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to know,” he wrote Grant later. “You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you.”

It was a tribute to Lincoln’s skill in managing men that, even while giving the general these assurances of independence, he succeeded in reshaping Grant’s strategy—and that his tact and diplomacy permitted the general to think that he was conducting the war with a free hand. It was probably the President’s quiet influence that caused Grant to give up his plan, ardently urged on him by Sherman, to avoid the political atmosphere in Washington by having his headquarters in the West; instead, he set up his command near the Army of the Potomac, over which he exercised strategic control while Meade remained in tactical command. It was not Grant’s wish, but the President’s, that Halleck became chief of staff, a position in which he performed well, acting as intermediary between the commander-in-chief, the Secretary of War, and the general-in-chief. For political reasons Lincoln picked officers for several subordinate commands who were not favored by Grant. For instance, Benjamin F. Butler, despite his well-known incompetence, remained at the head of the Army of the James because he had a powerful following among Radical Republicans, and Franz Sigel, who had minimal military skills but was a favorite of German-Americans, was chosen to head the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley.