Abraham Lincoln

by Baron Godfrey Rathbone Benson Charnwood

Lincoln had come in order to learn the views of McClellan and all his corps commanders. They differed a good deal on important points, but a majority of them were naturally anxious to stay and fight there. Lincoln was left in some anxiety as to how the health of the troops would stand the climate of the coming months if they had to wait long where they were. He was also disturbed by McClellan's vagueness about the number of his men, for he now returned as present for duty a number which far exceeded that which some of his recent telegrams had given and yet fell short of the number sent him by an amount which no reasonable estimate of killed, wounded, and sick could explain. This added to Lincoln's doubt on the main question presented to him. McClellan believed that he could take Richmond, but he demanded for this very large reinforcements. Some part of them were already being collected, but the rest could by no means be given him without leaving Washington with far fewer troops to defend it than McClellan or anybody else had hitherto thought necessary.

On July 24, the day after his arrival at Washington, Halleck was sent to consult with McClellan and his generals. The record of their consultations sufficiently shows the intricacy of the problem to be decided. The question of the health of the climate in August weighed much with Halleck, but the most striking feature of their conversation was the fluctuation of McClellan's own opinion upon each important point—at one moment he even gave Halleck the impression that he wished under all the circumstances to withdraw and to join Pope. When Halleck returned to Washington McClellan telegraphed in passionate anxiety to be left in the Peninsula and reinforced. On the other hand, some of the officers of highest rank with him wrote strongly urging withdrawal. This latter was the course on which Lincoln and Halleck decided. In the circumstances it was certainly the simplest course to concentrate all available forces in an attack upon the enemy from the direction of Washington which would keep that capital covered all the while. It was in any case no hasty and no indefensible decision, nor is there any justification for the frequent assertion that some malignant influence brought it about. It is one of the steps taken by Lincoln which have been the most often lamented. But if McClellan had had all he demanded to take Richmond and had made good his promise, what would Lee have done? Lee's own answer to a similar question later was, "We would swap queens"; that is, he would have taken Washington. If so the Confederacy would not have fallen, but in all probability the North would have collapsed, and European Powers would at the least have recognised the Confederacy.

Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then have acted. But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long tale of hesitation, can be quickly told. It would be easy to represent them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the guidance of McClellan. But in the true perspective of the war, the point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North of the policy by which it won the war. McClellan, even if he had taken Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise of finally reducing the Confederacy. It is evident to-day that the right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand, the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next nine months, had no lasting influence. Jefferson Davis might perhaps have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him. He did not—perhaps could not—do this. But he concentrated his greatest resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real danger did not lie.

Pope had now set vigorously to work collecting and pulling together his forces, which had previously been scattered under different commanders in the north of Virginia. He was guilty of a General Order which shocked people by its boastfulness, insulted the Eastern soldiers by a comparison with their Western comrades, and threatened harsh and most unjust treatment of the civil population of Virginia. But upon the whole he created confidence, for he was an officer well trained in his profession as well as an energetic man. The problem was now to effect as quickly as possible the union of Pope's troops and McClellan's in an overwhelming force. Pope was anxious to keep McClellan unmolested while he embarked his men. So, to occupy the enemy, he pushed boldly into Virginia; he pushed too far, placed himself in great danger from the lightning movements which Lee now habitually employed Jackson to execute, but extricated himself with much promptitude, though with some considerable losses. McClellan had not been deprived of command; he was in the curious and annoying position of having to transfer troops to Pope till, for a moment, not a man remained under him, but the process of embarking and transferring them gave full scope for energy and skill. McClellan, as it appeared to Lincoln, performed his task very slowly. This was not the judgment of impatience, for McClellan caused the delay by repeated and perverse disobedience to Halleck's orders. But the day drew near when 150,000 men might be concentrated under Pope against Lee's 55,000. The stroke which Lee now struck after earnest consultation with Jackson has been said to have been "perhaps the most daring in the history of warfare." He divided his army almost under the enemy's eyes and sent Jackson by a circuitous route to cut Pope's communications with Washington. Then followed an intricate tactical game, in which each side was bewildered as to the movements of the other. Pope became exasperated and abandoned his prudence. He turned on his enemy when he should and could have withdrawn to a safe position and waited. On August 29 and 30, in the ominous neighbourhood of the Bull Run and of Manassas, he sustained a heavy defeat. Then he abandoned hope before he need have done so, and, alleging that his men were demoralised, begged to be withdrawn within the defences of Washington, where he arrived on September 3, and, as was inevitable in the condition of his army, was relieved of his command. McClellan, in Lincoln's opinion, had now been guilty of the offence which that generous mind would find it hardest to forgive. He had not bestirred himself to get his men to Pope. In Lincoln's belief at the time he had wished Pope to fail. McClellan, who reached Washington at the crisis of Pope's difficulties, was consulted, and said to Lincoln that Pope must be left to get out of his scrape as best he could. It was perhaps only an awkward phrase, but it did not soften Lincoln.

Washington was now too strongly held to be attacked, but Lee determined to invade Maryland. At least this would keep Virginia safe during harvest time. It might win him many recruits in Maryland. It would frighten the North, all the more because a Confederate force further west was at that same time invading Kentucky; it might accomplish there was no saying how much. This much, one may gather from the "Life of Lord John Russell," any great victory of the South on Northern soil would probably have accomplished: the Confederacy would have been recognised, as Jefferson Davis longed for it to be, by European Powers. Lincoln now acted in total disregard of his Cabinet and of all Washington, and in equal disregard of any false notions of dignity. By word of mouth he directed McClellan to take command of all the troops at Washington. His opinion of McClellan had not altered, but, as he said to his private secretaries, if McClellan could not fight himself, he excelled in making others ready to fight. No other step could have succeeded so quickly in restoring order and confidence to the Army. Few or no instructions were given to McClellan. He was simply allowed the freest possible hand, and was watched with keen solicitude as to how he would rise to his opportunity.

Lee, in his advance, expected his opponent to be slow. He actually again divided his small army, leaving Jackson with a part of it behind for a while to capture, as he did, the Northern fort at Harper's Ferry. A Northern private picked up a packet of cigars dropped by some Southern officer with a piece of paper round it. The paper was a copy of an order of Lee's which revealed to McClellan the opportunity now given him of crushing Lee in detail. But he did not rouse himself. He was somewhat hampered by lack of cavalry, and his greatest quality in the field was his care not to give chances to the enemy. His want of energy allowed Lee time to discover what, had happened and fall back a little towards Harper's Ferry. Yet Lee dared, without having yet reunited his forces, to stop at a point where McClellan must be tempted to give him battle, and where, if he could only stand against McClellan, Jackson would be in a position to deliver a deadly counter-stroke. Lee knew that for the South the chance of rapid success was worth any risk. McClellan, however, moved so slowly that Jackson was able to join Lee before the battle. The Northern army came up with them near the north bank of the Potomac on the Antietam Creek, a small tributary of that river, about sixty miles north-east of Washington. There, on September 17, 1862, McClellan ordered an attack, to which he did not attempt to give his personal direction. His corps commanders led assaults on Lee's position at different times and in so disconnected a manner that each was repulsed singly. But on the following morning Lee found himself in a situation which determined him to retreat.

As a military success the battle of Antietam demanded to be followed up. Reinforcements had now come to McClellan, and Lincoln telegraphed, "Please do not let him get off without being hurt." Lee was between the broad Potomac and a Northern army fully twice as large as his own, with other large forces near. McClellan's subordinates urged him to renew the attack and drive Lee into the river. But Lee was allowed to cross the river, and McClellan lay camped on the Antietam battlefield for a fortnight. He may have been dissatisfied with the condition of his army and its supplies. Some of his men wanted new boots; many of Lee's were limping barefoot. He certainly, as often before, exaggerated the strength of his enemy. Lee recrossed the Potomac little damaged. Lincoln, occupied in those days over the most momentous act of his political life, watched McClellan eagerly, and came to the Antietam to see things for himself. He came back in the full belief that McClellan would move at once. Once more undeceived, he pressed him with letters and telegrams from himself and Halleck. He was convinced that McClellan, if he tried, could cut off Lee from Richmond. Hearing of the fatigue of McClellan's horses, he telegraphed about the middle of October, "Will you pardon me for asking what your horses have done since the battle of Antietam that tires anything." This was unkind; McClellan indeed should have seen about cavalry in the days when he was organising in Washington, but at this moment the Southern horse had just raided right round his lines and got safe back, and his own much inferior cavalry was probably worn out with vain pursuit of them. On the same day Lincoln wrote more kindly, "My dear Sir, you remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Change positions with the enemy, and think you not, he would break your communications with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours." And after a brief analysis of the situation, which seems conclusive, he ends: "I say 'try'; if we never try we shall never succeed. . . . If we cannot beat him now when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him." His patience was nearing a limit which he had already fixed in his own mind. On October 28, more than five weeks after the battle, McClellan began to cross the Potomac, and took a week in the process. On November 5, McClellan was removed from his command, and General Burnside appointed in his place.

Lincoln had longed for the clear victory that he thought McClellan would win; he gloomily foreboded that he might not find a better man to put in his place; he felt sadly how he would be accused, as he has been ever since, of displacing McClellan because he was a Democrat. "In considering military merit," he wrote privately, "the world has abundant evidence that I disregard politics." A friend, a Republican general, wrote to him a week or so after McClellan had been removed to urge that all the generals ought to be men in thorough sympathy with the Administration. He received a crushing reply (to be followed in a day or two by a friendly invitation) indignantly proving that Democrats served as well in the field as Republicans. But in regard to McClellan himself we now know that a grave suspicion had entered Lincoln's mind. He might, perhaps, in the fear of finding no one better, have tolerated his "over-cautiousness"; he did not care what line an officer who did his duty might in civil life take politically; but he would not take the risk of entrusting the war further to a general who let his politics govern his strategy, and who, as he put it simply, "did not want to hurt the enemy." This, he had begun to believe, was the cause of McClellan's lack of energy. He resolved to treat McClellan's conduct now, in fighting Lee or in letting him escape South, as the test of whether his own suspicion about him was justified or not. Lee did get clear away, and Lincoln dismissed McClellan in the full belief, right or wrong, that he was not sorry for Lee's escape.

It is not known exactly what further evidence Lincoln then had for his belief, but information which seems to have come later made him think afterwards that he had been right. The following story was told him by the Governor of Vermont, whose brother, a certain General Smith, served under McClellan and was long his intimate friend. Lincoln believed the story; so may we. The Mayor of New York, a shifty demagogue named Fernando Wood, had visited McClellan in the Peninsula with a proposal that he should become the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and with a view to this should pledge himself to certain Democratic politicians to conduct the war in a way that should conciliate the South, which to Lincoln's mind meant an "inefficient" way. McClellan, after some days of unusual reserve, told Smith of this and showed him a letter which he had drafted giving the desired pledge. On Smith's earnest remonstrance that this "looked like treason," he did not send the letter then. But Wood came again after the battle of Antietam, and this time McClellan sent a letter in the same sense. This he afterwards confessed to Smith, showing him a copy of the letter. Smith and other generals asked, after this, to be relieved from service under him. If, as can hardly be doubted, McClellan did this, there can be no serious excuse for him, and no serious question that Lincoln was right when he concluded it was unsafe to employ him. McClellan, according to all evidence except his own letters, was a nice man, and was not likely to harbour a thought of what to him seemed treason; it is honourable to him that he wished later to serve under Grant but was refused by him. But, to one of his views, the political situation before and after Antietam was alarming, and it is certain that to his inconclusive mind and character an attitude of half loyalty would be easy. He may not have wished that Lee should escape, but he had no ardent desire that he should not. Right or wrong, such was the ground of Lincoln's independent and conscientiously deliberate decision.

The result again did not reward him. His choice of Burnside was a mistake. There were corps commanders under McClellan who had earned special confidence, but they were all rather old. General Burnside, who was the senior among the rest, had lately succeeded in operations in connection with the Navy on the North Carolina coast, whereby certain harbours were permanently closed to the South. He had since served under McClellan at the Antietam, but had not earned much credit. He was a loyal friend to McClellan and very modest about his own capacity. Perhaps both these things prejudiced Lincoln in his favour. He continued in active service till nearly the end of the war, when a failure led to his retirement; and he was always popular and respected. At this juncture he failed disastrously. On December 11 and 12, 1862, Lee's army lay strongly posted on the south of the Rappahannock. Burnside, in spite, as it appears, of express warnings from Lincoln, attacked Lee at precisely the point, near the town of Fredericksburg, where his position was really impregnable. The defeat of the Northern army was bloody and overwhelming. Burnside's army became all but mutinous; his corps commanders, especially General Hooker, were loud in complaint. He was tempted to persist, in spite of all protests, in some further effort of rashness. Lincoln endeavoured to restrain him. Halleck, whom Lincoln begged to give a definite military opinion, upholding or overriding Burnside's, had nothing more useful to offer than his own resignation. After discussions and recriminations among all officers concerned, Burnside offered his resignation. Lincoln was by no means disposed to remove a general upon a first failure or to side with his subordinates against him, and refused to accept it. Burnside then offered the impossible alternative of the dismissal of all his corps commanders for disaffection to him, and on January 25, 1863, his resignation was accepted.