Lincoln (96 page)

Perhaps the strongest words of praise came from the
Chicago Tribune,
whose editor, Joseph Medill, had often been critical of Lincoln. After the President’s message, Medill felt, “the political future begins to look clear.” To finish off the war and bring about a restoration of the Union required “a clear head, an honest mind, and clean hands.” “Who [is] so fit to carry on what is begun,” asked the
Tribune,
“as he who has so well conducted us ... thus far?” Looking ahead to the next presidential election, the
Tribune
editors saw “many worthy men discharging important national trusts” but found only one “in whom the nation more and more confides—Abraham Lincoln.” In his private correspondence Medill was positive that “Old Abe has the inside track so completely that he will be nominated by acclamation when the [Republican] convention meets.”

That kind of talk, of course, made the problem of reconstruction a part of the contest for the next presidential race. From time to time during the previous year, there had been talk of reelecting Lincoln in 1864, but for the most part it had been desultory and not particularly fervent. Republican newspaper editors, when the question of a second term was raised, usually combined praise for Lincoln with commendation of other conceivable Republican presidential candidates—Seward, Chase, Banks, Butler, Frémont, and so on. Lincoln tried to think as little as possible about the 1864 election. Nowhere in his letters or his public papers during the first two and a half years of the war did he mention renomination or reelection. When newspapers began to agitate the issue, he remarked testily: “I wish they would stop thrusting that subject of the Presidency into my face. I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

But, for all the burdens of his office, he did desire reelection. As he remarked later, he viewed a second term not as just a personal compliment but as an expression of the people’s belief that he could “better finish a difficult work... than could any one less severely schooled to the task.” By the fall of 1863, when E. B. Washburne asked Lincoln to let some of his confidential friends know his intentions with regard to the next presidential
election, he answered with only a minimum of tentativeness: “A second term would be a great honor and a great labor, which together, perhaps I would not decline, if tendered.” By November he was more open, and an Illinois visitor who talked with him in the White House reported, “He will be a candidate again—if his friends so desire—of course.”

There was little that Lincoln could do openly to promote his renomination and reelection. Custom prohibited him from soliciting support, making public statements, or appearing to campaign for office. But as the nominating season approached, he made a point of hosting numerous social activities at the White House. Both the Lincolns were resolved to make the winter of 1863–1864 a brilliant social season, which could only boost the President’s hopes for a second term.

Mary Lincoln willingly cooperated in promoting her husband’s reelection. Her mental and physical health had improved, and she gained greater control over her emotions when she was obliged to contrast her own problems with those of her youngest half sister, Emilie Todd Helm, whose husband, Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm, was killed at Chickamauga. Seeking to return from the Deep South to her home in Kentucky, Emilie was passed through the Union lines in December and sought refuge in the White House. The Lincolns tried to keep her visit a secret, because the presence of the widow of a high-ranking Confederate officer in the White House was a potential source of embarrassment, especially since Emilie remained outspoken in her loyalty to the South. Inevitably the news leaked out, and General Daniel Sickles, who had lost a leg in the battle of Gettysburg, told the President, “You should not have that rebel in your house.” Firmly Lincoln responded: “General Sickles, my wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests. We do not need from our friends either advice or assistance in the matter.” After a week, with a pass from the President allowing her to cross the army lines, Emilie left for Kentucky.

Inspirited by Emilie’s visit, Mary shed her depressing mourning clothing and appeared at the White House New Year’s Day reception in a purple dress trimmed with black velvet. The President wore a long black coat, which, an English observer noted, “seemed to hang on him.” With more enthusiasm than they had displayed for many months, both the President and his wife greeted the visitors who thronged the White House. At this reception, for the first time in American history, the guests presented to the President included what one newspaper described as “four colored men of genteel exterior, and with the manners of gentlemen.” As each visitor was introduced, the President shook hands and bowed, usually saying only “Good morning, Mr. Jones” or “Mr. Smith, how do you do?” Occasionally he paused to exchange a few words with an old friend. Once when a woman asked whether these receptions were not hard work, he replied, “Oh, no—no.... Of course this is tiresome physically; but I am pretty strong, and it rests me, after all, for here nobody is cross or exacting, and no man asks me for what I can’t give him!”

In addition to receptions, the Lincolns gave a number of dinner parties, to which political friends and possible supporters were invited. Fiercely loyal, Mary wanted to exclude her husband’s rivals, and when Nicolay came up with a guest list for the annual cabinet dinner on January 14, she struck off Chase, his daughter, Kate, and his son-in-law, William Sprague. Nicolay appealed to the President, who ordered the names restored. “There soon arose such a rampage as the [White] House hasn’t seen for a year,” Nicolay reported, and Mary, whom the secretary referred to as “her Satanic Majesty,” announced that she was going to take charge of all the arrangements for the dinner. Finding that she was unable to manage, she summoned Nicolay on the very afternoon of the dinner, apologized to him, and asked his help. “I think,” reported the young secretary smugly, “she has felt happier since she cast out that devil of stubbornness.”

Both Lincolns gave particular attention to Charles Sumner, who had shown a disturbing tendency during the previous summer to oppose the administration’s policies. Lincoln respected Sumner for his knowledge, his sacrifices in the antislavery cause, and his seriousness of purpose, and, as they became better acquainted, found the man behind the cold and haughty senatorial mask. Sumner and Lincoln, Mary said, used to talk and “laugh together like
two
school boys.” Mary found the handsome bachelor senator equally attractive, and they became fast friends. They wrote each other notes in French, they went for carriage drives, and they lent each other books; he let her read his correspondence from European notables, and she sent him bouquets from the White House conservatory. The senator, Mary recalled later, “was a constant visitor at the W[hite] H[ouse]. both in office and drawing room—he appreciated my noble husband and I learned to converse with him, with more freedom and
confidence
than any of my other friends.” No doubt a good deal of calculation lay behind the attentions that Sumner received from the White House, for the President realized that the senator was a powerful force in the extreme abolitionist wing of his party.

But Lincoln knew that it was going to take more than White House receptions or bouquets for Charles Sumner to assure his reelection. No President since Andrew Jackson had served a second term, and within the Republican party there was considerable sentiment in favor of rotation in office—especially among those opposed to Lincoln. He could readily identify several groups of such opponents. The most vocal were abolitionists, mostly in New England but also powerful in the West, who feared he might negotiate a peace that did not completely eradicate slavery. Typical was an Iowa caucus of abolitionists that condemned the President as “an insignificant man,” who had “clogged and impeded the wheels and movements of the revolution”; moreover, because he was “a Kentuckian by birth, and his brothers-in-law being in the rebel army,” he had “always shielded the rebels.” German-Americans were also disaffected. Many thought that Lincoln, together with Stanton and especially Halleck, was at heart a nativist who discriminated against German-born generals like Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz. As the prominent
Indiana Freie Presse
said, “We cannot and dare not vote for Lincoln, unless we are willing to participate in the betrayal of the republic, unless we are willing to remain for all future the most despicable step-children of the nation.” The Charcoal, or Radical, faction of Missouri Republicans was especially hostile, believing that the President had shabbily rejected their overtures of friendship.

In nearly every Northern state Lincoln’s reelection was opposed by one or more factions within the Republican party. Sometimes these factions continued the rivalry between former Whigs and former Democrats; in other states they reflected nothing more than intense personal rivalries. Thus in New York one faction consisted of the supporters of Seward and Thurlow Weed, who seemed to be the principal beneficiaries of the appointments and contracts given by the Lincoln administration; the other, which clustered around Greeley and David Dudley Field, was usually critical of the President. In Maryland an intense struggle between the Blairs and Henry Winter Davis continued; when Lincoln sustained his Postmaster General, Davis became one of the President’s most articulate and vituperative enemies.

In most cases dissatisfaction with the President did not derive from fundamental ideological differences. Virtually all Republicans agreed that the war must be fought until victory, that slavery had to be abolished, and that some conditions had to be imposed on the Southern states before they could be readmitted to the Union. But there was disagreement over Lincoln’s ability to attain these goals. Many considered him an ineffectual administrator who tolerated looseness and inefficiency throughout the government. The best evidence was that, after two and a half years of costly, bloody warfare, the 20,000,000 loyal citizens of the North were unable to overcome 5,000,000 rebellious white Southerners.

Republican members of Congress, who were in the best position to observe the workings of the administration, gave little support for Lincoln’s renomination. The chairmen of the most important Senate committees—such as Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee; Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Territories; Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, chairman of the Commerce Committee; and James W. Grimes of Iowa, chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia—were openly opposed to a second term, and only careful management kept Sumner, who headed the Foreign Relations Committee, from joining the opposition. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were also mostly hostile to Lincoln. Early in 1864 when a visiting editor asked Thaddeus Stevens to introduce him to some congressmen who favored Lincoln’s renomination, the Pennsylvania congressman brought him to Representative Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois, explaining: “Here is a man who wants to find a Lincoln member of Congress. You are the only one I know and I have come over to introduce my friend to you.”

Aware of this congressional dissatisfaction, Lincoln and his friends took solace in the belief that it was shared by only a few disgruntled politicians.
Surely the mass of the people thought differently, and his supporters convinced themselves that there was “a widespread and constantly increasing concurrence of sentiment in favor of the reelection of Mr. Lincoln.” “Mr. Lincoln has the inside track,” announced the
Chicago Tribune;
“he has the confidence of the people, and even the respect and affections of the masses.” Lincoln’s mail was filled with repeated assurances of the support of the voters. “Acting upon
your
own convictions—irrespective of those who threaten, as well as of those who fawn and flatter,” wrote a Bostonian, “you have touched and
taken
the popular heart—and secured your re-election beyond a peradventure—should you desire it.” Especially heartening were the expressions of support from the army. “The soldier will trust no one but Abraham Lincoln,” announced one veteran in the Army of the Potomac. “I believe it is God’s purpose ... to call Abraham Lincoln again to the Presidential chair.”

Such letters encouraged Lincoln’s managers to present him in the role of an outsider, who had the support of the people if not the politicians. In several states, Union meetings begged the President to become “the People’s candidate for re-election,” accepting “the nomination so generously tendered without awaiting a nomination from a [Republican] National Convention.” Nowhere was this movement stronger than in New York City, where a National Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln Association, headed by the wealthy Simeon Draper, urged the people throughout the nation to meet on February 22 and express their support for Lincoln’s reelection. The Democratic
New York World
thought it reasonably certain that Lincoln would “nominate himself and leave the Republican Convention, if there should be one, nothing to do but hold a ratification meeting.”

That prospect helped to mobilize Lincoln’s opponents within the Republican party, but to have any chance of success they needed a rival candidate. Some looked to General Grant. Others thought of Benjamin F. Butler, famous for his severity during the occupation of New Orleans, but Lincoln largely neutralized him by giving him a dead-end job as commander at Fort Monroe. John C. Frémont had backers as well, both because he was known to hate Lincoln and because he had substantial support among the Germans and the Radicals, especially in Missouri. But in the winter of 1863–1864 most rested their hopes on Salmon P. Chase.

Chase’s disaffection with the administration of which he was part had steadily increased since his embarrassing role in the cabinet crisis of December 1862. Though he and Lincoln had developed an effective working relationship, they were not personally congenial. Chase was stiff, reserved, and ponderous. In the course of a general conversation he was given to uttering profundities like: “It is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery failing after enormous exertions and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose.” He resented the easygoing relationship Lincoln had established with Seward; the President often made impromptu evening visits
to Seward’s home to pass along the latest news and gossip or to share his most recent joke, but he never thought of dropping in on Chase. But there was more to it than that. Chase’s discontent stemmed fundamentally from his conviction that he was superior to Lincoln both as a statesman and as an administrator.