CHAPTER VIII
THE OPENING OF THE WAR AND LINCOLN'S ADMINISTRATION
1. Preliminary Stages.
On the morning after the bombardment of Fort Sumter there appeared a Proclamation by the President calling upon the Militia of the several States to furnish 75,000 men for the service of the United States in the suppression of an "unlawful combination." Their service, however, would expire by law thirty days after the next meeting of Congress, and, in compliance with a further requirement of law upon this subject, the President also summoned Congress to meet in extraordinary session upon July 4. The Army already in the service of the United States consisted of but 16,000 officers and men, and, though the men of this force, being less affected by State ties than their officers, remained, as did the men of the Navy, true almost without exception to their allegiance, all but 3,000 of them were unavailable and scattered in small frontier forts in the West. A few days later, when it became plain that the struggle might long outlast the three months of the Militia, the President called for Volunteers to enlist for three years' service, and perhaps (for the statements are conflicting) some 300,000 troops of one kind and another had been raised by June.
The affair of Fort Sumter and the President's Proclamation at once aroused and concentrated the whole public opinion of the free States in the North and, in an opposite sense, of the States which had already seceded. The border slave States had now to declare for the one side or for the other. Virginia as a whole joined the Southern Confederacy forthwith, but several Counties in the mountainous region of the west of that State were strongly for the Union. These eventually succeeded with the support of Northern troops in separating from Virginia and forming the new State of West Virginia. Tennessee also joined the South, though in Eastern Tennessee the bulk of the people held out for the Union without such good fortune as their neighbours in West Virginia. Arkansas beyond the Mississippi followed the same example, though there were some doubt and division in all parts of that State. In Delaware, where the slaves were very few, the Governor did not formally comply with the President's Proclamation, but the people as a whole responded to it. The attitude of Maryland, which almost surrounds Washington, kept the Government at the capital in suspense and alarm for a while, for both the city of Baltimore and the existing State legislature were inclined to the South. In Kentucky and Missouri the State authorities were also for the South, and it was only after a struggle, and in Missouri much actual fighting, that the Unionist majority of the people in each State had its way. The secession of Virginia had consequences even more important than the loss to the Union of a powerful State. General Robert E. Lee, a Virginian, then in Washington, was esteemed by General Scott to be the ablest officer in the service. Lincoln and his Secretary of War desired to confer on him the command of the Army. Lee's decision was made with much reluctance and, it seems, hesitation. He was not only opposed to the policy of secession, but denied the right of a State to secede; yet he believed that his absolute allegiance was due to Virginia. He resigned his commission in the United States Army, went to Richmond, and, in accordance with what Wolseley describes as the prevailing principle that had influenced most of the soldiers he met in the South, placed his sword at the disposal of his own State. The same loyalty to Virginia governed another great soldier, Thomas J. Jackson, whose historic nickname, "Stonewall," fails to convey the dashing celerity of his movements. While they both lived these two men were to be linked together in the closest comradeship and mutual trust. They sprang from different social conditions and were of contrasting types. The epithet Cavalier has been fitly enough applied to Lee, and Jackson, after conversion from the wild courses of his youth, was an austere Puritan. To quote again from a soldier's memoirs, Wolseley calls Lee "one of the few men who ever seriously impressed and awed me with their natural, their inherent, greatness"; he speaks of his "majesty," and of the "beauty," of his character, and of the "sweetness of his smile and the impressive dignity of the old-fashioned style of his address"; "his greatness," he says, "made me humble." "There was nothing," he tells us, "of these refined characteristics in Stonewall Jackson," a man with "huge hands and feet." But he possessed "an assured self-confidence, the outcome of his sure trust in God. How simple, how humble-minded a man. As his impressive eyes met yours unflinchingly, you knew that his was an honest heart." To this he adds touches less to be expected concerning a Puritan warrior, whose Puritanism was in fact inclined to ferocity—how Jackson's "remarkable eyes lit up for the moment with a look of real enthusiasm as he recalled the architectural beauty of the seven lancet windows in York Minster," how "intense" was the "benignity" of his expression, and how in him it seemed that "great strength of character and obstinate determination were united with extreme gentleness of disposition and with absolute tenderness towards all about him." Men such as these brought to the Southern cause something besides their military capacity; but as to the greatness of that capacity, applied in a war in which the scope was so great for individual leaders of genius, there is no question. A civilian reader, looking in the history of war chiefly for the evidences of personal quality, can at least discern in these two famous soldiers the moral daring which in doubtful circumstances never flinches from the responsibility of a well-considered risk, and, in both their cases as in those of some other great commanders, can recognise in this rare and precious attribute the outcome of their personal piety. We shall henceforth have to do with the Southern Confederacy and its armies, not in their inner history but with sole regard to the task which they imposed upon Lincoln and the North. But at this parting of the ways a tribute is due to the two men, pre-eminent among many devoted people, who, in their soldier-like and unreflecting loyalty to their cause, gave to it a lustre in which, so far as they can be judged, neither its statesmen nor its spiritual guides had a share.
There were Virginian officers who did not thus go with their State. Of these were Scott himself, and G. H. Thomas; and Farragut, the great sailor, was from Tennessee.
Throughout the free States of the North there took place a national uprising of which none who remember it have spoken without feeling anew its spontaneous ardour. Men flung off with delight the hesitancy of the preceding months, and recruiting went on with speed and enthusiasm. Party divisions for the moment disappeared. Old Buchanan made public his adhesion to the Government. Douglas called upon Lincoln to ask how best he could serve the public cause, and, at his request, went down to Illinois to guide opinion and advance recruiting there; so employed, the President's great rival, shortly after, fell ill and died, leaving the leadership of the Democrats to be filled thereafter by more scrupulous but less patriotic men. There was exultant confidence in the power of the nation to put down rebellion, and those who realised the peril in which for many days the capital and the administration were placed were only the more indignantly determined. Perhaps the most trustworthy record of popular emotions is to be found in popular humorists. Shortly after these days Artemus Ward, the author who almost vied with Shakespeare in Lincoln's affections, relates how the confiscation of his show in the South led him to have an interview with Jefferson Davis. "Even now," said Davis, in this pleasant fiction, "we have many frens in the North." "J. Davis," is the reply, "there's your grate mistaik. Many of us was your sincere frends, and thought certin parties amung us was fussin' about you and meddlin' with your consarns intirely too much. But, J. Davis, the minit you fire a gun at the piece of dry goods called the Star-Spangled Banner, the North gits up and rises en massy, in defence of that banner. Not agin you as individooals—not agin the South even—but to save the flag. We should indeed be weak in the knees, unsound in the heart, milk-white in the liver, and soft in the hed, if we stood quietly by and saw this glorus Govyment smashed to pieces, either by a furrin or a intestine foe. The gentle-harted mother hates to take her naughty child across her knee, but she knows it is her dooty to do it. So we shall hate to whip the naughty South, but we must do it if you don't make back tracks at onct, and we shall wallup you out of your boots!" In the days which followed, when this prompt chastisement could not be effected and it seemed indeed as if the South would do most of the whipping, the discordant elements which mingled in this unanimity soon showed themselves. The minority that opposed the war was for a time silent and insignificant, but among the supporters of the war there were those who loved the Union and the Constitution and who, partly for this very reason, had hitherto cultivated the sympathies of the South. These—adherents mainly of the Democratic party—would desire that civil war should be waged with the least possible breach of the Constitution, and be concluded with the least possible social change; many of them would wish to fight not to a finish but to a compromise. On the other hand, there were those who loved liberty and hated alike the slave system of the South and the arrogance which it had engendered. These—the people distinguished within the Republican party as Radicals—would pay little heed to constitutional restraints in repelling an attack on the Constitution, and they would wish from the first to make avowed war upon that which caused the war—slavery. In the border States there was of course more active sympathy with the South, and in conflict with this the Radicalism of some of these States became more stalwart and intractable. To such causes of dissension was added as time went on sheer fatigue of the war, and strangely enough this influence was as powerful with a few Radicals as it was with the ingrained Democratic partisans. They despaired of the result when success at last was imminent, and became sick of bloodshed when it passed what they presumably regarded as a reasonable amount.
It was the task of the Administration not only to conduct the war, but to preserve the unity of the North in spite of differences and its resolution in spite of disappointments. Lincoln was in more than one way well fitted for this task. Old experience in Illinois and Kentucky enabled him to understand very different points of view in regard to the cause of the South. The new question that was now to arise about slavery was but a particular form of the larger question of principle to which he had long thought out an answer as firm and as definite as it was moderate and in a sense subtle. He had, moreover, a quality of heart which, as it seemed to those near him, the protraction of the conflict, with its necessary strain upon him, only strengthened. In him a tenacity, which scarcely could falter in the cause which he judged to be right, was not merely pure from bitterness towards his antagonists, it was actually bound up with a deep-seated kindliness towards them. Whatever rank may be assigned to his services and to his deserts, it is first and foremost in these directions, though not in these directions alone, that the reader of his story must look for them. Upon attentive study he will probably appear as the embodiment, in a degree and manner which are alike rare, of the more constant and the higher judgment of his people. It is plainer still that he embodied the resolute purpose which underlay the fluctuations upon the surface of their political life. The English military historians, Wood and Edmonds, in their retrospect over the course of the war, well sum up its dramatic aspect when they say: "Against the great military genius of certain of the Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate devotion to the Union, which he worshipped, of the great Northern President. As long as he lived, and ruled the people of the North, there could be no turning back."
There are plenty of indications in the literature of the time that Lincoln's determination soon began to be widely felt and to be appreciated by common people. Literally, crowds of people from all parts of the North saw him, exchanged a sentence or two, and carried home their impressions; and those who were near him record the constant fortitude of his bearing, noting as marked exceptions the unrestrained words of impatience and half-humorous despondency which did on rare occasions escape him. In a negative way, too, even the political world bore its testimony to this; his administration was charged with almost every other form of weakness, but there was never a suspicion that he would give in. Nor again, in the severest criticisms upon him by knowledgeable men that have been unearthed and collected, does the suggestion of petty personal aims or of anything but unselfish devotion ever find a place. The belief that he could be trusted spread itself among plain people, and, given this belief, plain people liked him the better because he was plain. But if at the distance at which we contemplate him, and at which from the moment of his death all America contemplated him, certain grand traits emerge, it is not for a moment to be supposed that in his life he stood out in front of the people as a great leader, or indeed as a leader at all, in the manner, say, of Chatham or even of Palmerston. Lincoln came to Washington doubtless with some deep thoughts which other men had not thought, doubtless also with some important knowledge, for instance of the border States, which many statesmen lacked, but he came there a man inexperienced in affairs. It was a part of his strength that he knew this very well, that he meant to learn, thought he could learn, did not mean to be hurried where he had not the knowledge to decide, entirely appreciated superior knowledge in others, and was entirely unawed by it. But Senators and Representatives in Congress and journalists of high standing, as a rule, perceived the inexperience and not the strength. The deliberation with which he acted, patiently watching events, saying little, listening to all sides, conversing with a naïveté which was genuine but not quite artless, seemingly obdurate to the pressure of wise counsels on one side and on the other—all this struck many anxious observers as sheer incompetence, and when there was just and natural cause for their anxiety, there was no established presumption of his wisdom to set against it. And this effect was enhanced by what may be called his plainness, his awkwardness, and actual eccentricity in many minor matters. To many intelligent people who met him they were a grievous stumbling-block, and though some most cultivated men were not at all struck by them, and were pleased instead by his "seeming sincere, and honest, and steady," or the like, it is clear that no one in Washington was greatly impressed by him at first meeting. His oddities were real and incorrigible. Young John Hay, whom Nicolay, his private secretary, introduced as his assistant, a humorist like Lincoln himself, but with leanings to literary elegance and a keen eye for social distinctions, loved him all along and came to worship him, but irreverent amusement is to be traced in his recently published letters, and the glimpses which he gives us of "the Ancient" or "the Tycoon" when quite at home and quite at his ease fully justify him. Lincoln had great dignity and tact for use when he wanted them, but he did not always see the use of them. Senator Sherman was presented to the new President. "So you're John Sherman?" said Lincoln. "Let's see if you're as tall as I am. We'll measure." The grave politician, who was made to stand back to back with him before the company till this interesting question was settled, dimly perceived that the intention was friendly, but felt that there was a lack of ceremony. Lincoln's height was one of his subjects of harmless vanity; many tall men had to measure themselves against him in this manner, and probably felt like John Sherman. On all sorts of occasions and to all sorts of people he would "tell a little story," which was often enough, in Lord Lyons' phrase, an "extreme" story. This was the way in which he had grown accustomed to be friendly in company; it served a purpose when intrusive questions had to be evaded, or reproofs or refusals to be given without offence. As his laborious and sorrowful task came to weigh heavier upon him, his capacity for play of this sort became a great resource to him. As his fame became established people recognised him as a humorist; the inevitable "little story" became to many an endearing form of eccentricity; but we may be sure it was not so always or to everybody.
"Those," says Carl Schurz, a political exile from Prussia, who did good service, military and political, to the Northern cause—"those who visited the White House—and the White House appeared to be open to whosoever wished to enter—saw there a man of unconventional manners, who, without the slightest effort to put on dignity, treated all men alike, much like old neighbours; whose speech had not seldom a rustic flavour about it; who always seemed to have time for a homely talk and never to be in a hurry to press business; and who occasionally spoke about important affairs of State with the same nonchalance—I might almost say irreverence—with which he might have discussed an every-day law case in his office at Springfield, Illinois."