Lincoln (149 page)

291
a relief expedition:
“General M. C. Meigs on the Conduct of the Civil War,”
American Historical
Review
26 (Jan. 1921): 299–302. See also Russell F. Weigley’s excellent
Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M. C. Meigs
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

291
to Fox’s expedition:
Niven,
Gideon Welles,
pp. 332–336, gives a clear account of this episode.

292
“this cruel treachery”:
Virginia Woodbury Fox, Diary, Apr. 18, 1861, Levi Woodbury MSS, LC.

292
On April 4:
There has been a good deal of controversy about this date. The scholarly studies of J. G. Randall and David M. Potter are ranged on one side; those of Kenneth M. Stampp and Richard N. Current on the other. Stampp and Current argued that Lincoln ordered the Fort Sumter expedition to sail on Apr. 4—i.e., two days before he learned of the failure to reinforce Fort Pickens as he had directed on Mar. 11. (Meigs’s relief expedition is not part of this historiographical dispute. Everybody understood that Fort Sumter would be relieved or evacuated long before Meigs could reach Florida.) If the Apr. 4 date is correct, Lincoln’s report to Congress in July 1861 that he had planned a Sumter-for-Pickens swap (i.e., evacuating Anderson’s garrison from Fort Sumter after reinforcing Fort Pickens) could not be correct and was, at best, a subsequent rationalization to demonstrate his peaceful purposes. Randall and Potter, on the other hand, believed that Apr. 6, the day the disappointing news from Florida reached Washington, was the key date. Though preliminary orders had been sent on Apr. 4 for the sailing of the fleet and an attempt had been made to notify Anderson (which was repeated on Apr. 6), no irrevocable step had been taken. Because Lincoln knew Fox’s fleet would not actually leave New York for several days (it did not sail until Apr. 8 and 9), he still could have countermanded it had the news from Florida been good. I am persuaded by the Stampp-Current argument. See the admirable, concise summary of the evidence in Current,
Lincoln and the First Shot, pp.
194–199.

292
“without further notice”: CW,
4:323.

292
“Look to it”: CW,
4:324.

292
war had begun:
The historiographical controversy about Lincoln’s role in the dispute over Fort Sumter extends to the broader question of his objectives in the secession crisis. His admiring secretary-biographers, Nicolay and Hay
(Abraham Lincoln, 4:44–45),
wrote that he expected little from the Sumter expedition and was “reasonably certain” that it would provoke hostilities; he wanted to make sure that if the Confederates fired on the expedition “they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun civil war.” Charles W. Ramsdell concluded (“Lincoln and Fort Sumter,”
Journal of Southern History
3 [Aug. 1937]: 259–288, esp. p. 285) that he dispatched the Sumter expedition, which he knew would provoke war, to help solve pressing problems in the north: “Lincoln, having decided that there was no other way than war for the salvation of his administration, his party, and the Union, maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot in order that they, rather than he, should take the blame of beginning bloodshed.” John Shipley Tilley,
Lincoln Takes Command
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), made much the same argument, but with more hostility toward Lincoln. Kenneth M. Stampp (“Lincoln and the Strategy of Defense in the Crisis of 1861,”
Journal of Southern History
11 [Aug. 1945]: 297–323) held that Lincoln, opposed both to peaceful secession and to coercion of the South, recognized “disunion as sufficiently menacing to northern interests to justify resistance by force if necessary”; he developed a strategy of defense that anticipated Confederate resistance at Charleston and took steps that would force the rebels to put themselves fatally in the wrong by attacking Fort Sumter. J. G. Randall and David M. Potter, on the other hand, stressed Lincoln’s desire to avoid war and detailed the numerous steps he took, from toning down his inaugural address to giving Governor Pickens advance notice of an expedition to resupply, not reinforce, Sumter, in order to preserve peace. “To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side
if a first shot was fired,”
Randall observed, “is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired.” (Randall,
Lincoln the President,
1:350) The area of disagreement in this controversy has perhaps been exaggerated: all authorities agree that Lincoln wished to avoid war and all agree that he was willing to run the risk of war rather than evacuate Fort Sumter. None of these able scholars has, in my opinion, given enough attention to Lincoln’s newness to Washington, his inexperience as an administrator, and his fatigue after his exhausting journey and inauguration. Nor has Lincoln’s essential passivity, his preference to react to events rather than to take the initiative, been sufficiently stressed.

293
“a military
necessity”:
CW,
4:424–425.

293
“retaking the forts”:
Orville H. Browning to AL, Feb. 17, 1861, Lincoln MSS, LC.

293
“it otherwise could”:
Browning,
Diary,
1:477.

293
“by the result”:
Hoogenboom, “Gustavus Fox and the Relief of Fort Sumter,” p. 396.

293
“and immediate dissolution”: CW,
4:425.

294
“for its preservation”: CW,
4:426.

The fullest account of the first year of the Civil War is Allan Nevins,
The War for the Union,
vol. 1,
The Improvised War, 1861–1862
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959). John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
Abraham Lincoln: A History
(New York: Century Co., 1890), offers the most detailed account of Lincoln’s activities during this period. Kenneth P. Williams,
Lincoln Finds a General
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1949), presents a reinterpretation of the battle of Bull Run and a critical appraisal of George B. McClellan.

For Lincoln’s definition of the nature of the war and his expanded view of the President’s war powers, J. G. Randall,
Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln
(rev. ed.; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951), remains authoritative. More recent scholarship on these subjects is presented in Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek,
Equal Justice Under Law: Constitutional Development, 1835–1875
(New York: Harper & Row, 1982), esp. chap. 8. Mark E. Neely, Jr.,
The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), is a model of scholarly detective work and historical analysis.

My account of the Lincolns’ life in the White House is taken, with a few minor changes, from my essay “‘This Damned Old House’: The Lincolns in the White House,” in Frank Freidel and William Pencak, eds.,
The White House: The First Two Hundred Years
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1994), pp. 53–74.

The most recent overview of diplomatic relations during the Civil War is Howard Jones,
Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). On the
Trent
affair the basic works are Ephraim D. Adams,
Great Britain and the American Civil War
(2 vols.; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1925); D. P. Crook,
The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974); Norman B. Ferris,
The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977); and Brian Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974).

Allan Nevins,
Frémont: Pathmarker of the West
(New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1955), offers the fullest account of the Frémont imbroglio.

Stephen W. Sears,
George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon
(New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988), is a fine recent biography, notably anti-McClellan in tone. For the opposing view, see J. G. Randall,
Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1945). T. Harry Williams,
Lincoln and His Generals
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), is a spirited account.

On the Congresses with which Lincoln had to deal, there are two exemplary studies by Allan G. Bogue:
The Congressman’s Civil War
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), on the House of Representatives, and
The Earnest Men: Republicans of the Civil War Senate
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1981). For an account of the severe criticism to which the President was subjected, T. Harry Williams,
Lincoln and the Radicals
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1941), remains invaluable.

295
“4th of July”:
Otto Eisenschiml,
Why the Civil War?
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1958), p. 114; Wayne Andrews, ed.,
The Autobiography of Carl Schurz
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961), p. 172.

295
“and
vice versa”: Nicolay and Hay, 4:79.

296
“be duly executed”: CW,
4:332.

296
defend their country:
William M. Dickson to AL, Apr. 15, 1861; Richard M. Blatchford and Moses H. Grinnell to AL, Apr. 15, 1861—both in Lincoln MSS, LC; Frank Moore, ed.,
The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events
(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862), 1:25 (Diary).

296
“the Federal Capital”:
Robert W. Johannsen, ed.,
The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), p. 509.

296
“preparation for war”:
Damon Wells,
Stephen Douglas: The Last Years, 1857–1861
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), p. 287.

297
“of the Government”:
William B. Hesseltine,
Lincoln and the War Governors
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 146.

297
“and brave hearts”:
David C. Mearns, ed.,
The Lincoln Papers
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1948), 2:559.

297
“aureole of glory”:
“Your Affectionate Son” to “Dear Mother,” Fort Monroe, Va., May 25, 1861, MS used through the courtesy of Mrs. Jane Langton, Lincoln, Mass.

297
“from North Carolina”:
Nicolay and Hay, 4:90.

297
“inhuman and diabolical”:
Ibid.

297
“no troops here”:
William J. Evitts,
A Matter of Allegiances: Maryland from 1850 to 1861
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 178, shows that this telegram was sent before the attack on the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment.

298
than through, Baltimore:
Nicolay and Hay, 4:127.

298
“and that severely”: CW,
4:341–342.

298
“don’t they come!”:
Nicolay and Hay, 4:152.

299
“only Northern realities”:
Hay,
Diary,
p. 11.

299
“of habeas corpus”:
Neely,
The Fate of Liberty,
p. 7, gives the original text of this subsequently distorted order.