Lincoln (82 page)

The committee was invited for the same hour, and as senators and cabinet members met in the anteroom, they exchanged looks of wild surmise. The President began the meeting with a long statement, commenting “with some mild severity” on the resolutions presented by the senators the previous evening, admitting that he had not been very regular in consulting the cabinet as a whole, but arguing “that most questions of importance had received a reasonable consideration” and that he “was not aware of any divisions or want of unity.” He then called on the members of the cabinet to state “whether there had been any want of unity or of sufficient consultation.”

Most of the cabinet members unhesitatingly agreed that they had indeed been consulted on important matters, but Chase was in a very embarrassing position. If he now repeated his frequent complaints to the senators, his disloyalty to the President would be apparent. If he supported Lincoln’s statement, it would be evident that he had deceived the senators. Chase tried to get out of the trap by blustering “that he should not have come here had he known that he was to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate.” But finding no escape, he swallowed both truth and consistency and averred “that questions of importance had generally been considered by the Cabinet, though perhaps not so fully as might have been desired” and that there was no want of unity in the cabinet.

The meeting went on for some time after that, as senators repeated all the familiar charges against Seward, but it was evident that Chase’s forced admission had undercut the case against the Secretary of State. At one o’clock, when the senators and the cabinet officers left the White House, no conclusion had been reached, but there was a general feeling that there would be no changes in the cabinet.

Chase began to realize that his position was untenable and wrote out his resignation as Secretary of the Treasury. The next morning when Lincoln summoned him to the White House, he brought the letter with him. He, along with Stanton and Welles, was already in the executive office when the President arrived. Turning at once to the Treasury Secretary, Lincoln said: “I sent for you, for this matter is giving me great trouble.” Chase stammered that he, too, had been painfully affected by the meeting the previous night and that he had prepared his resignation.

“Where is it?” asked Lincoln quickly. “I brought it with me,” said Chase, taking a paper from his pocket. “I wrote it this morning.”

“Let me have it,” said Lincoln, his long arm and fingers reaching out for
the document, which Chase was apparently reluctant to release. Evidently the Secretary intended to say more, but Lincoln took the letter and opened it. “This ... cuts the Gordian knot,” he said with a triumphant laugh. “I can dispose of this subject now.”

Then Stanton offered his resignation, but Lincoln brushed him aside. “You may go to your Department,” he told the Secretary of War. “I don’t want yours.” Then he ended the interview abruptly: “I will detain neither of you longer.”

Having both Seward’s resignation and Chase’s in his hand, the President declined to accept either and insisted that both men remain in his cabinet. They balanced each other, he told Senator Ira Harris of New York. Remembering how as a boy in Indiana he had worked out a way to carry pumpkins while he was on horseback, he told the senator: “I can ride on now. I’ve got a pumpkin in each end of my bag!”

By the end of the week the cabinet crisis was over. In one sense not much had been solved. Yet there were lessons from the crisis. Radicals learned that, no matter how carefully they planned and intrigued, they lacked the power to take control of the government from the President. Lincoln told Browning firmly that “he was master, and they should not do that.” Chase’s reputation had suffered a serious blow. When the crisis was over, senators asked Collamer how Chase, after alleging that the President had no system and failed to consult his advisers, could have told the group that the cabinet was harmonious. The blunt Vermont senator replied, “He lied.” Fessenden accurately assessed the results: “He will never be forgiven by many for deliberately sacrificing his friends to the fear of offending his and their enemies.” Seward’s place was secure, and to some, like Nicolay, it seemed that the Secretary had “achieved a triumph over those who attempted to drive him out, in this renewed assurance of the President’s confidence and esteem.” But reflection suggested that Seward now, more than ever, owed his place to the goodwill of the President, and in the months ahead the Secretary became more discreet in his utterances and meddled less in the affairs of other departments.

Lincoln, too, learned from the experience. He now realized that he had not been either very businesslike or even courteous about consulting his cabinet colleagues. For a time, he meticulously invited their opinions on controversial issues. For instance, at the very end of the year he requested all of them to submit to him in writing their opinions as to whether he should veto or approve the bill that carved the new state of West Virginia out of the territory of Virginia. At a cabinet meeting on December 30 he made a point of distributing copies of his draft of the edict of emancipation to be issued on January 1, asking each member to offer suggestions. Ignoring most of the substantive changes that cabinet members proposed, he accepted several stylistic improvements, and he added to his final Emancipation Proclamation a concluding paragraph, embodying an idea Chase proposed at the instigation of Charles Sumner: “And upon this act, sincerely
believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”

But more than anything else, the crisis taught Lincoln his own strength. Looking back on his handling of the affair nearly a year later, he told John Hay: “I do not now see how it could have been done better. I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward the thing would all have slumped over one way and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase sent in his resignation I saw that the game was in my own hands and I put it through.” Proud that he was able to keep together an administration dominated neither by Radicals nor by Conservatives, he confided his final assessment of the crisis to Leonard Swett: “I may not have made as great a President as some other men, but I believe I have kept these discordant elements together as well as anyone could.”

What Will the Country Say!

T
hrongs attended the White House reception on New Year’s Day of 1863. First came the members of the diplomatic corps, in full court dress, who were presented to the President by the Secretary of State. Lincoln shook hands with everyone in a cordial but businesslike manner, which reminded some observers of a farmer sawing wood. Then he passed the guests along to Mrs. Lincoln, who wore a rich dress of velvet, with lozenge trimming at the waist; it was black since she was still in mourning for Willie. Members of the cabinet followed the diplomats, and then came officers of the army and navy. In their wake what young Fanny Seward, daughter of the Secretary of State, called “people generally” passed through the reception line. Not until after noon could Lincoln escape upstairs to his office, where Seward and his son Frederick, the assistant secretary of state, presently brought him the duly engrossed copy of the final proclamation of emancipation. Excepting Tennessee and portions of other Southern states that were already under the control of Union armies, it declared that all slaves in the states or portions of states still in rebellion “are, and henceforward shall be free.” For this “act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity,” the President invoked “the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.” “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” Lincoln remarked, but he added ruefully that his arm was so stiff and numb from so many handshakes that he was not sure he could control a pen. “Now, this signature is one that will be closely examined,” he said, “and if they find my hand trembled, they will say ‘he had some compunctions.’ But, any way, it is going to be done!”
Then, grasping the pen firmly, he slowly and carefully wrote his name at the end of the proclamation.

In the months ahead he would frequently need to exhibit the same care and firmness, for his administration was beset from all sides. Union armies were defeated or immobilized. Union naval expeditions were spectacular failures. The border states were in turmoil, and Missouri was the scene of a guerrilla war. Foreign powers offered to mediate the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy. Discontent was on the rise in the North, and confidential sources told the President that secret pro-Confederate societies were plotting to overthrow the administration. Within the Republican party factional lines sharpened, and both Conservatives and Radicals agreed that Lincoln was a failure as President. Whatever self-assurance Lincoln had gained from the cabinet crisis of December 1862 was sorely tested during the first six months of 1863, for he found that the shrewdness, tact, and forbearance that had served him so well in face-to-face disagreements were not easily applied to large groups in conflict. In short, Lincoln still had much to learn about how to be President.

The year began with little good news from the armies. To be sure, in eastern Tennessee Rosecrans’s army more than held its own against Bragg’s in the protracted and costly battle of Stones River (December 30-January 2), and Lincoln praised the general’s “skill, endurance, and da[u]ntless courage.” But when the Confederates withdrew from the field, Union forces did not follow. For the rest of the winter Rosecrans remained immobile at Murfreesboro, ignoring the President’s prompting to advance against Chattanooga. Like Buell, Rosecrans found the roads impassable, supplies too hard to collect, and his lines of communication with Nashville and Louisville too tenuous. When Lincoln gently pointed out that the Confederates faced similar difficulties but still were able to do much damage with small raids, “harrassing, and discouraging loyal residents, supplying themselves with provisions, clothing, horses, and the like,” and proposed mounting
“counter-raids,”
Rosecrans ignored his letter, doubtless resenting civilian interference in military decisions. Instead of acting against the enemy, he brooded over perceived slights. He complained bitterly that he was outranked because Grant was issued a commission as major general that antedated his own. The President was finally obliged to tell him bluntly: “Truth to speak, I do not appreciate this matter of rank on paper, as you officers do. The world will not forget that you fought the battle of ‘Stone River’ and it will never care a fig whether you rank Gen. Grant on paper, or he so, ranks you.” Still, Rosecrans would not move.

Farther west, the outlook for the Union forces was even bleaker. On January 1 the federal garrison at Galveston, Texas, surrendered to attacking
Confederates. In Louisiana, General Benjamin F. Butler proved so rapacious that the President had to replace him, and the new commander, N. P. Banks, had yet to demonstrate his ability. Most serious of all was Grant’s failure to capture Vicksburg. After an unsuccessful attempt to proceed overland through central Mississippi, Grant entrusted the offensive to W. T. Sherman, who led his troops on December 29 in a disastrous assault on the Chickasaw Bluffs defending Vicksburg that was reminiscent, on a smaller scale, of Burnside’s fiasco at Fredericksburg. Recognizing how vital Vicksburg was, the President watched these operations closely, but in the months after Sherman’s defeat he heard mostly complaints about Grant. The general, reported Murat Halstead of the
Cincinnati Commercial,
“is a jackass in the original package. He is a poor drunken imbecile. He is a poor stick sober, and he is most of the time more than half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk.” Further controversy rose over Grant’s ill-conceived order banning “Jew peddlers” from his lines. The President promptly revoked it “as it... proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks.”

Most troubling of all was the situation of the Army of the Potomac, demoralized after Fredericksburg. Burnside gained some credibility from his manly acknowledgment that he alone, and not the President nor the War Department, was responsible for the defeat. Greatly pleased at this statement, because he was used to being blamed for his subordinates’ failures, Lincoln told Burnside “he was the first man he had found who was willing to relieve him of a particle of responsibility.” But the general had lost the confidence of his subordinate officers and his troops. Learning that Burnside was preparing another assault on the impregnable Confederate defenses at Fredericksburg, two of his major generals, William B. Franklin and William F. Smith, violated military protocol by writing directly to the President, warning that “the plan of campaign already commenced will not be successful.” But when Halleck complained of the “very disheartening” inactivity of the Army of the Potomac, Burnside pushed ahead and began organizing a wide flanking movement to cross the Rappahannock River below Fredericksburg.