Our One Common Country (40 page)

On a misty, overcast day in Richmond, after fire had destroyed its newspapers, after Lee had surrendered its leverage and its government had fled, thirty-three Virginians—including the
Enquirer
's editor, the
Examiner
's publisher, eight legislators, and Richmond's aged mayor—came together and issued an “Address to the People of Virginia.” Written by Campbell and signed by the others, it “earnestly” summoned twenty-two other leading Virginians, Hunter among them, and called for the governor and the legislature to reconvene on April 25, not only for a “free deliberation” on the restoration of peace in Virginia, but also for “the adjustment of questions involving life, liberty, and property that have arisen in the State as a consequence of the war,” a steep jurisdictional step beyond Lincoln's mandate to let the legislature withdraw Virginia from the rebellion. The US Army would guarantee their freedom and provide transportation. The people were assured that their persons and property were safe. Campbell submitted the document to Weitzel and Shepley. It was sent after Shepley made revisions.

In Washington City, the Cabinet met that day without its suffering Secretary of State. According to Gideon Welles, the subject was cotton. The reassembly of the Virginia legislature was touched upon only briefly.
Stanton and Attorney General James Speed spoke ill of the idea. No one but the president had a good word to say.

In “a mean room” in Greensboro, North Carolina, to which they had fled, Davis and some Cabinet members met that day with generals Johnston and Pierre Beauregard, the victor at First Bull Run. No one could be sure whether they despised their commander in chief more than he despised them. His Secretary of the Navy called their dealings with Davis “smothered quarrels.”

Davis held forth on “future operations” like a man in an opium dream. He would later say he understood the gravity of the Confederacy's position, “seriously affected” as it was by the fall of its capital, the surrender of Robert E. Lee, the loss of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the resulting “discouragement,” but “I did not think we should despair” with three armies still standing “and a vast extent of rich and productive territory both east and west of the Mississippi,
whose citizens had evidenced no disposition to surrender
” [emphasis added]. Varina said of her husband that even in the darkest hours before Richmond fell, “his piety held out the hope that God would miraculously shield us.” He had summoned his generals now, not to discuss a peace negotiation, but to solve a military problem. In the mind of Jefferson Davis, many of Lee's deserters had gone home to continue the struggle deeper south, and “I had reason to believe that the spirit of the army in North Carolina was unbroken.”

Had Davis stayed in his capital, it would have been he, not Campbell, who sat in his parlor with Lincoln, with Lee still armed and dangerous, and received Lincoln's offer to consider peace and reunion on “any condition whatever.” As it was, Lee was out of the war and Davis was with his generals in a mean room in Greensboro. He could look neither man in the eye, staring at a torn strip of paper, twisting it in his hands. In the mind of Jefferson Davis, “the war had now shrunk into narrow proportions.” General Johnston, he thought, “seemed far less than sanguine.”

When he asked for Johnston's views, he got a straight answer: “Sir, my views are that our people are tired of the war, feel themselves whipped and will not fight.” His men were stealing artillery horses to facilitate
desertions. His remaining North Carolinians would desert if he left their state. It would be “the greatest of human crimes for us to attempt to continue the war . . . to complete the devastation of our country and ruin of its people.” Johnston proposed that Davis should “exercise at once the only function of government still in his possession and open negotiations for peace.” General Beauregard, Secretary of War Breckinridge, and two other Cabinet members concurred. Davis and Judah Benjamin did not. Davis thought that even from “the gloomiest view”—that reunion was inevitable—they could get better terms with armies in the field, a thought he might have had in February, when Lee still had one. But Davis would later say he “yielded to the judgment of my Constitutional advisors,” of whom only Benjamin had the stomach and poor judgment to keep fighting. He gave Johnston leave to propose to Sherman that the civil authorities should meet and negotiate peace.

A crowd assembled on the White House lawn on the night of Lee's surrender. They cheered themselves hoarse when Tad leaned out of the center window and waved the captured Rebel battle flag that someone had given him at City Point. When a keeper pulled him back by the seat of his pants, his father appeared in his wake, turning the buoyant crowd into “an agitated sea of hats, faces, and men's arms.” He spoke for just a moment and drew an appreciative laugh when he said he would speak more formally soon: “I shall have nothing to say then if it is all dribbled out of me now.”

He honored his pledge on the following night and appeared once again at the window. A lamp was produced to illuminate him. The ovation took minutes to subside. He delivered “a carefully prepared speech,” according to Gideon Welles, “intended to promote harmony and union.” Tad crouched this time at his feet, gathering the pages as he dropped them one by one, calling for another, thrilled by his part in the show.

Lincoln thanked Grant, his officers and men, and “He from Whom all blessings flow.” Then he spoke of the problem of healing. Whether the wayward states had truly gone out of the Union or had never really left it was a “pernicious abstraction.” They had surely departed from “their
proper, practical relation” to it. The object was to get them back in. There had been no war between independent nations; there was no legal government with which to treat, no one with authority to give up the rebellion for any other man, no one with whom to speak but “disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and means of reconstruction.” He added a note of mystery. It might become his duty “to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action will be proper.” He alluded, no doubt, to the thought that he had vetted with Judge Campbell and was still turning over in his mind—the prospect of inviting the Southern state legislatures to recall their troops voluntarily and freely rejoin the Union. He may not have abandoned entirely the possibility of fair incentives.

Standing in the crowd was the actor John Wilkes Booth, up close to the portico with a psychopathic admirer named Lewis Powell, a burly Rebel veteran of Gettysburg. Beside them was another angry Southerner, close enough to marvel at the president's height.

Lincoln touched on the issue of whether “the colored man” should be given the vote. “I would myself prefer,” he said, “that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and those who serve our cause as soldiers.”

Booth turned to his twisted friends. “That means nigger citizenship. That's the last speech he will ever make. Now, by God, I'll put him through.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I Am as One Walking in a Dream

Lincoln needed someone to talk to, and Seward's jaw was broken. He was having second thoughts about reconvening the Virginia legislature. He summoned Gideon Welles and asked for his opinion. Stanton and the others didn't like it, Welles said. Welles doubted its wisdom himself. To assemble a Rebel legislature would recognize their legitimacy, and they might “conspire against us.”

Fresh from Richmond, Lincoln had no fear of that. The Rebels were beaten and done, he said. It would be better for the Virginians to “undo their own work.” He felt sure that they would. Lee had quit the war, mooting any need to withdraw his Virginians from it, but self-­government must be reestablished as soon as possible. It would be best for Virginia's leaders to turn themselves and their neighbors into good Union men again. On the other hand, with his Cabinet against him, perhaps he had made a mistake. He was ready to correct it if he had.

Welles said Virginia's “so-called Legislature” would probably offer terms that seemed reasonable but were not; why let that happen when we are now in charge?

Lincoln said he wanted conciliation and cared less about form than results. The Rebels had been in error. They had resorted to arms and fought well. Now they were beaten and humbled. It was best to meet them as fellow countrymen, reasonable, intelligent men with “rights that we are willing and disposed to respect.”

Welles stood his ground. We never recognized them when they were in arms against us, he said. Why now? The legislature might be defiant, refuse to urge their people to submit. And then there was Pierpont's
government in Alexandria. How can we renounce it and recognize the rival it helped us resist?

Lincoln said again that the Rebels were whipped. He had seen it himself. There might be something in the other concerns—Pierpont's government, the taint of a Rebel legislature—but he did not think much of them. Pierpont's was the only
legal
government, but public sentiment must not be overlooked. (Most Virginians out of reach of Northern bayonets thought the Alexandria government was a sham.) Lincoln had never intended to treat the Rebel legislature as legitimate, he said—a thought he had not shared with Campbell—but its members were the leaders of their counties, and their influence should be used in this transition.

As he spoke, indignation crept in. He was surprised to be so misconstrued, he said. The Confederacy would disintegrate if its states embraced reunion. The very act of Rebel legislators dissolving their own body would have a good influence. All of that said, it might be best to abandon the idea. He could not move it forward “with all of you opposed.” Welles could see that Lincoln's friends had disappointed him yet again, Uncle Gideon most of all, an old states' rights Democrat, but Lincoln gave it up. More or less.

He sent General Weitzel a wire: “Is there any sign of the rebel Legislature coming together on the understanding of my letter to you? If there is any such sign, inform me what it is. If there is no such sign you may as [well] withdraw the offer.” The wobble in his message was plain. The president needed stiffening. Stanton worked on him for hours in the morning in the White House and well into the afternoon at the War Department. When Weitzel replied to Lincoln's wire, he sensed its ambivalence too: “The passports have gone out for the Legislature,” he wrote, “and it is common talk that they will come together.”
Then the general reminded the president about letting the people up easy.

Stanton kept pressing Lincoln. To empower the legislature “would be giving away the scepter of the conqueror.” Congress would not stand for it. There was no further need to remove Virginia's troops; Lee had done that. A legislature of beaten Rebels would deny the vote to Negroes, whom men had died to free. They would have no rights, no hope, no more than a change of title. To hand power back to the traitors as if nothing
had happened would squander the lives and sacrifices that had won the war. Stanton was “full of feeling,” a witness said, and the president listened silently, “in profound thought.”

In the end Lincoln buckled. He had never authorized an open-ended mandate for a reconvened legislature. Nonetheless, he sat at Stanton's desk and composed a message to Weitzel. He had just seen Judge Campbell's letter, it said, which falsely assumed that he had recognized the legislature and empowered it “to settle all differences with the United States. I have done no such thing. I spoke of them as ‘the gentlemen who have
acted
as the Legislature of Virginia in support of the rebellion,' ” and authorized them only to withdraw Virginia's troops. Now Grant had captured those troops. Judge Campbell had mistaken his meaning and was pressing for a truce despite his refusal to grant one. The authorization to recall the legislature should be withdrawn, along with the paper he had given to Judge Campbell.

Lincoln handed what he had written to the Secretary of War. “There,” he said, “I think this will suit you.” Stanton told him no. The legislators were on their way to Richmond. Weitzel should keep them out. Lincoln added a final sentence: “Do not allow them to assemble; but if any have come, allow them safe-return to their homes.” He handed it back to the secretary. “Exactly right,” Stanton said. As Mars later crowed, he had won his battle to “exclude the Southern leaders from any participation in the restoration of the Union.”

The news did not please Grant. Mistakenly believing that Stanton had countermanded the summoning of the legislature on his own, Grant called him “a man who never questioned his own authority, and who always did in wartime what he wanted to do.” Indeed he had, but not on his own authority. He had worn Lincoln down.

Hunter was back in Richmond, to meet with the Virginia legislature and add his stature to Campbell's in their stand for reunion. He was ordered to leave within twenty-four hours.

Before he complied, he and Campbell joined forces one last time and went to see General Ord, the new man in charge in Richmond
(Weitzel had been relieved) and told him they would like to see President Lincoln. For Campbell, the Confederacy's leaders had been paralyzed by the necessity to accept reunion. Now every man was “making his separate treaty,” swearing allegiance to the old flag in return for food and amnesty.

On Thursday, April 13, General Ord wrote to Campbell by instruction of the president. Since the gentlemen of the “insurrectionary government of the Legislature of Virginia” had been allowed to reconvene, their meeting had become unnecessary. The president wanted the authorizing paper withdrawn. Campbell sent Ord the only paper he had—the term sheet Lincoln had given him on the
Malvern.
He had acted on the authority of the president and General Weitzel, he said, to bring peace to Virginia on the president's terms, by the agency of the very authorities that had fought the United States. Lee's surrender would “preclude the possibility of failure.” There could be no better plan. Ord issued a public order rescinding it.

On Friday, April 14, Stanton unveiled to the Cabinet a memorandum on the fate of Virginia and North Carolina, a glimpse of the Southern future. Grant was there to see it, at the president's invitation. Lincoln said he had not reviewed it but was glad to have it. A plan should be in place before Congress returned in December. He asked Stanton to read it aloud. Its essence was simple: The prodigal states would be ruled by martial law. Self-government and readmission to the Union would come, but only in deliberate due course.

The president played for time. He wanted his advisers to think hard on it and deliberate later, he said, for “no more important issue could come before us or any future Cabinet.” He had not had time to study the plan. Mr. Stanton had given it to him only yesterday. “We should probably make modifications.” Stanton said it was only a draft.

Gideon Welles agreed that immediate action must be taken, and thanked the Secretary of War for his work, but objected to the element of military control. Having defended the Pierpont administration as Virginia's lawful government, “how can we now abandon it?” Lincoln called
Welles's exceptions well taken—some of them, at least. He said he had once been willing to have General Weitzel summon Virginia's “leading Rebels” (no longer its leading men), but they were not the legitimate legislature. The Pierpont legislature was. Ever bristling when challenged, Stanton said again that his plan was just a draft.

Lincoln said it was nothing less than providential that the rebellion had been crushed just as Congress adjourned, leaving none of “the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us.” If the Cabinet acted wisely, the Southern states could be “reanimated” before Congress returned. Congress had the right to admit or exclude its members—he could not control that—but he could recognize state governments that renewed their loyalty whether Congress liked it or not. He could give them federal judges, marshals, post offices, all the other accoutrements of normalcy. There were men who objected to these views, but those men were not here, “and we must make haste to do our duty before they come here.” He could not join in their vindictiveness. He wanted no persecutions, no “bloody work.” No one should expect
him
to hang these Southern men, even the worst of them. He threw up his hands and shook them. “Frighten them out of the country,” he said, “let down the bars, scare them off. Enough lives have been lost.”

Jacob Thompson, who had served with Stanton as Secretary of the Interior in Buchanan's Cabinet and was one of Davis's agents in the Niagara Falls fiasco, had lately been plotting in Canada to torch Northern cities, a hanging offense if ever there was one. Late that afternoon, Charles Dana, who was back at the War Department, received a wire from a federal official in Maine who had learned that Thompson would arrive that night in Portland to board a ship for England. “What are the orders?” When Dana took the news to the Secretary of War, Stanton did not hesitate. “Arrest him!” But as Dana turned to leave, the secretary thought better of it, no doubt recalling what Lincoln had said about letting down the bars. “No, wait. Better go over and see the President.”

Dana crossed the lawn. It was Good Friday. The business day was done and the White House was eerily empty. He walked upstairs to the
president's office, encountering not a soul. As he turned to leave, Lincoln called out from an anteroom. He was washing his hands.

“Halloo, Dana! What is it? What's up?” Dana read him the telegram about Thompson's impending escape.

“What does Stanton say?”

“He says arrest him, but I should refer the question to you.”

“Well,” said Lincoln slowly, wiping his hands as he spoke. “No, I rather think not. When you have an elephant by the hind leg and he's trying to run away, it's best to let him run.”

When Dana returned, Stanton was not pleased. “Oh stuff!” he is said to have exclaimed. Or words to that effect.

As Thompson the Rebel arsonist prepared to sail for Britain, blissfully unaware of his surreptitious pardon, his benefactor was dressing for the theater.