Within the circle of the Administration there was, of course, deep mortification. Old General Scott passionately declared himself to have been the greatest coward in America in having ever given way to the President's desire for action. Lincoln, who was often to prove his readiness to take blame on his own shoulders, evidently thought that the responsibility in this case was shared by Scott, and demanded to know whether Scott accused him of having overborne his judgment. The old general warmly, if a little ambiguously, replied that he had served under many Presidents, but never known a kinder master. Plainly he felt that his better judgment had somehow been overpowered, and yet that there was nothing in their relations for which in his heart he could blame the President; and this trivial dialogue is worth remembering during the dreary and controversial tale of Lincoln's relations with Scott's successor. Lincoln, however bitterly disappointed, showed no signs of discomposure or hesitancy. The business of making the army of the Potomac quietly began over again. To the four days after Bull Run belongs one of the few records of the visits to the troops which Lincoln constantly paid when they were not too far from Washington, cheering them with little talks which served a good purpose without being notable. He was reviewing the brigade commanded at Bull Run by William Sherman, later, but not yet, one of the great figures in the war. He was open to all complaints, and a colonel of militia came to him with a grievance; he claimed that his term of service had already expired, that he had intended to go home, but that Sherman unlawfully threatened to shoot him if he did so. Lincoln had a good look at Sherman, and then advised the colonel to keep out of Sherman's way, as he looked like a man of his word. This was said in the hearing of many men, and Sherman records his lively gratitude for a simple jest which helped him greatly in keeping his brigade in existence.
Not one of the much more serious defeats suffered later in the war produced by itself so lively a sense of discomfiture in the North as this; thus none will equally claim our attention. But, except for the first false alarms in Washington, there was no disposition to mistake its military significance. The "second uprising of the North," which followed upon this bracing shock, left as vivid a memory as the little disaster of Bull Run. But there was of necessity a long pause while McClellan remodelled the army in the East, and the situation in the West was becoming ripe for important movements. The eagerness of the Northern people to make some progress, again asserted itself before long, but to their surprise, and perhaps to that of a reader to-day, the last five months of 1861 passed without notable military events. Here then we may turn to the progress of other affairs, departmental affairs, foreign affairs, and domestic policy, which, it must not be forgotten, had pressed heavily upon the Administration from the moment that war began.
3. Lincoln's Administration Generally.
Long before the Eastern public was very keenly aware of Lincoln the members of his Cabinet had come to think of the Administration as his Administration, some, like Seward, of whom it could have been little expected, with a loyal, and for America most fortunate, acceptance of real subordination, and one at least, Chase, with indignant surprise that his own really great abilities were not dominant. One Minister early told his friends that there was but one vote in the Cabinet, the President's. This must not be taken in the sense that Lincoln's personal guidance was present in every department. He had his own department, concerned with the maintenance of Northern unity and with that great underlying problem of internal policy which will before long appear again, and the business of the War Department was so immediately vital as to require his ceaseless attention; but in other matters the degree and manner of his control of course varied. Again, it is far from being the case that the Cabinet had little influence on his action. He not only consulted it much, but deferred to it much. His wisdom seems to have shown itself in nothing more strongly than in recognising when he wanted advice and when he did not, when he needed support and when he could stand alone. Sometimes he yielded to his Ministers because he valued their judgment, sometimes also because he gauged by them the public support without which his action must fail. Sometimes, when he was sure of the necessity, he took grave steps without advice from them or any one. More often he tried to arrive with them at a real community of decision. It is often impossible to guess what acts of an Administration are rightly credited to its chief. The hidden merit or demerit of many statesmen has constantly lain in the power, or the lack of it, of guiding their colleagues and being guided in turn. If we tried to be exact in saying Lincoln, or Lincoln's Cabinet, or the North did this or that, it would be necessary to thresh out many bushels of tittle-tattle. The broad impression, however, remains that in the many things in which Lincoln did not directly rule he ruled through a group of capable men of whom he made the best use, and whom no other chief could have induced to serve so long in concord. As we proceed some authentic examples of his precise relations with them will appear, in which, unimportant as they seem, one test of his quality as a statesman and of his character should be sought.
The naval operations of the war afford many tales of daring on both sides which cannot here be noticed. They afford incidents of strange interest now, such as the exploit of the first submarine. (It belonged to the South; its submersion invariably resulted in the death of the whole crew; and, with full knowledge of this, a devoted crew went down and destroyed a valuable Northern iron-clad.) The ravages on commerce of the Alabama and some other Southern cruisers became only too famous in England, from whose ship-building yards they had escaped. The North failed too in some out of the fairly numerous combined naval and military expeditions, which were undertaken with a view to making the blockade more complete and less arduous by the occupation of Southern ports, and perhaps to more serious incursions into the South. Among those of them which will require no special notice, most succeeded. Thus by the spring of 1863 Florida was substantially in Northern hands, and by 1865 the South had but two ports left, Charleston and Wilmington; but the venture most attractive to Northern sentiment, an attack upon Charleston itself, proved a mere waste of military force. Moreover, till a strong military adviser was at last found in Grant there was some dissipation of military force in such expeditions. Nevertheless, the naval success of the North was so continuous and overwhelming that its history in detail need not be recounted in these pages. Almost from the first the ever-tightening grip of the blockade upon the Southern coasts made its power felt, and early in 1862 the inland waterways of the South were beginning to fall under the command of the Northern flotillas. Such a success needed, of course, the adoption of a decided policy from the outset; it needed great administrative ability to improvise a navy where hardly any existed, and where the conditions of its employment were in many respects novel; and it needed resourceful watching to meet the surprises of fresh naval invention by which the South, poor as were its possibilities for ship-building, might have rendered impotent, as once or twice it seemed likely to do, the Northern blockade. Gideon Welles, the responsible Cabinet Minister, was constant and would appear to have been capable at his task, but the inspiring mind of the Naval Department was found in Gustavus V. Fox, a retired naval officer, who at the beginning of Lincoln's administration was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. The policy of blockade was begun by Lincoln's Proclamation on April 19, 1861. It was a hardy measure, certain to be a cause of friction with foreign Powers. The United States Government had contended in 1812 that a blockade which is to confer any rights against neutral commerce must be an effective blockade, and has not lately been inclined to take lax views upon such questions; but when it declared its blockade of the South it possessed only three steamships of war with which to make it effective. But the policy was stoutly maintained. The Naval Department at the very first set about buying merchant ships in Northern ports and adapting them to warlike use, and building ships of its own, in the design of which it shortly obtained the help of a Commission of Congress on the subject of ironclads. The Naval Department had at least the fullest support and encouragement from Lincoln in the whole of its policy. Everything goes to show that he followed naval affairs carefully, but that, as he found them conducted on sound lines by men that he trusted, his intervention in them was of a modest kind. Welles continued throughout the member of his Cabinet with whom he had the least friction, and was probably one of those Ministers, common in England, who earn the confidence of their own departments without in any way impressing the imagination of the public; and a letter by Lincoln to Fox immediately after the affair of Fort Sumter shows the hearty esteem and confidence with which from the first he regarded Fox. Of the few slight records of his judgment in these matters one is significant. The unfortunate expedition against Charleston in the spring of 1863 was undertaken with high hopes by the Naval Department; but Lincoln, we happen to know, never believed it could succeed. He has, rightly or wrongly, been blamed for dealings with his military officers in which he may be said to have spurred them hard; he cannot reasonably be blamed for giving the rein to his expert subordinates, because his own judgment, which differed from theirs, turned out right. This is one of very many instances which suggest that at the time when his confidence in himself was full grown his disposition, if any, to interfere was well under control. It is also one of the indications that his attention was alert in many matters in which his hand was not seen.
He was no financier, and that important part of the history of the war, Northern finance, concerns us little. The real economic strength of the North was immense, for immigration and development were going on so fast, that, for all the strain of the war, production and exports increased. But the superficial disturbance caused by borrowing and the issue of paper money was great, and, though the North never bore the pinching that was endured in the South, it is an honourable thing that, for all the rise in the cost of living and for all the trouble that occurred in business when the premium on gold often fluctuated between 40 and 60 and on one occasion rose to 185, neither the solid working class of the country generally nor the solid business class of New York were deeply affected by the grumbling at the duration of the war. The American verdict upon the financial policy of Chase, a man of intellect but new to such affairs, is one of high praise. Lincoln left him free in that policy. He had watched the acts and utterances of his chief contemporaries closely and early acquired a firm belief in Chase's ability. How much praise is due to the President, who for this reason kept Chase in his Cabinet, a later part of this story may show.
One function of Government was that of the President alone. An English statesman is alleged to have said upon becoming Prime Minister, "I had important and interesting business in my old office, but now my chief duty will be to create undeserving Peers." Lincoln, in the anxious days that followed his first inauguration, once looked especially harassed; a Senator said to him: "What is the matter, Mr. President? Is there bad news from Fort Sumter?" "Oh, no," he answered, "it's the Post Office at Baldinsville." The patronage of the President was enormous, including the most trifling offices under Government, such as village postmasterships. In the appointment to local offices, he was expected to consult the local Senators and Representatives of his own party, and of course to choose men who had worked for the party. In the vast majority of cases decent competence for the office in the people so recommended might be presumed. The established practice further required that a Republican President on coming in should replace with good Republicans most of the nominees of the late Democratic administration, which had done the like in its day. Lincoln's experience after a while led him to prophesy that the prevalence of office-seeking would be the ruin of American politics, but it certainly never occurred to him to try and break down then the accepted rule, of which no party yet complained. It would have been unmeasured folly, even if he had thought of it, to have taken during such a crisis a new departure which would have vexed the Republicans far more than it would have pleased the Democrats. And at that time it was really of great consequence that public officials should be men of known loyalty to the Union, for obviously a postmaster of doubtful loyalty might do mischief. Lincoln, then, except in dealing with posts of special consequence, for which men with really special qualifications were to be found, frankly and without a question took as the great principle of his patronage the fairest possible distribution of favours among different classes and individuals among the supporters of the Government, whom it was his primary duty to keep together. His attitude in the whole business was perfectly understood and respected by scrupulous men who watched politics critically. It was the cause in one way of great worry to him, for, except when his indignation was kindled, he was abnormally reluctant to say "no,"—he once shuddered to think what would have happened to him if he had been a woman, but was consoled by the thought that his ugliness would have been a shield; and his private secretaries accuse him of carrying out his principle with needless and even ridiculous care. In appointments to which the party principle did not apply, but in which an ordinary man would have felt party prejudice, Lincoln's old opponents were often startled by his freedom from it. If jobbery be the right name for his persistent endeavour to keep the partisans of the Union pleased and united, his jobbery proved to have one shining attribute of virtue; later on, when, apart from the Democratic opposition which revived, there arose in the Republican party sections hostile to himself, the claims of personal adherence to him and the wavering prospects of his own reelection seem, from recorded instances, to have affected his choice remarkably little.
4. Foreign Policy and England.
The question, what was his influence upon foreign policy, is more difficult than the general praise bestowed upon it might lead us to expect; because, though he is known to have exercised a constant supervision over Seward, that influence was concealed from the diplomatic world.
For at least the first eighteen months of the war, apart from lesser points of quarrel, a real danger of foreign intervention hung over the North. The danger was increased by the ambitions of Napoleon III. in regard to Mexico, and by the loss and suffering caused to England, above all, not merely from the interruption of trade but from the suspension of cotton supplies by the blockade. From the first there was the fear that foreign powers would recognise the Southern Confederacy as an independent country; that they were then likely to offer mediation which it would at the best have been embarrassing for the President to reject; that they might ultimately, when their mediation had been rejected, be tempted to active intervention. It is curious that the one European Government which was recognised all along as friendly to the Republic was that of the Czar, Alexander II. of Russia, who in this same year, 1861, was accomplishing the project, bequeathed to him by his father, of emancipating the serfs. Mercier, the French Minister in Washington, advised his Government to recognise the South Confederacy as early as March, 1861. The Emperor of the French, though not the French people, inclined throughout to this policy; but he would not act apart from England, and the English Government, though Americans did not know it, had determined, and for the present was quite resolute, against any hasty action. Nevertheless an almost accidental cause very soon brought England and the North within sight of a war from which neither people was in appearance averse.