Abraham Lincoln: The People's Leader in the Struggle for National Existence

by George Haven Putnam

In November, 1861, occurred an incident which for a time threatened a very grave international complication, a complication that would, if unwisely handled, have determined the fate of the Republic. Early in the year, the Confederate government had sent certain representatives across the Atlantic to do what might be practicable to enlist the sympathies of European governments, or of individuals in these governments, to make a market for the Confederate cotton bonds, to arrange for the purchase of supplies for the army and navy, and to secure the circulation of documents presenting the case of the South. Mr. Yancey of Mississippi was the best-known of this first group of emissaries. With him was associated Judge Mann of Virginia and it was Mann who in November, 1861, was in charge of the London office of the Confederacy. In this month, Mr. Davis appointed as successor to Mann, Mr. Mason of Virginia, to whom was given a more formal authorisation of action. At the same time, Judge Slidell of Louisiana was appointed as the representative to France. Mason and Slidell made their way to Jamaica and sailed from Jamaica to Liverpool in the British mail steamer Trent. Captain Charles Wilkes, in the United States frigate San Jacinto, had been watching the West Indies waters with reference to blockade runners and to Wilkes came knowledge of the voyage of the two emissaries. Wilkes took the responsibility of stopping the Trent when she was a hundred miles or more out of Kingston and of taking from her as prisoners the two commissioners. The commissioners were brought to Boston and were there kept under arrest awaiting the decision from Washington as to their status. This stopping on the high seas of a British steamer brought out a great flood of indignation in Great Britain. It gave to Palmerston and Russell, who were at that time in charge of the government, the opportunity for which they had been looking to place on the side of the Confederacy the weight of the influence of Great Britain. It strengthened the hopes of Louis Napoleon for carrying out, in conjunction with Great Britain, a scheme that he had formulated under which France was to secure a western empire in Mexico, leaving England to do what she might find convenient in the adjustment of the affairs of the so-called United States.

The first report secured from the law officers of the Crown took the ground that the capture was legal under international law and under the practice of Great Britain itself. This report was, however, pushed to one side, and Palmerston drafted a demand for the immediate surrender of the commissioners. This demand was so worded that a self-respecting government would have had great difficulty in assenting to it without risk of forfeiting support with its own citizens. It was in fact intended to bring about a state of war. Under the wise influence of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria refused to give her approval to the document. It was reworded by Albert in such fashion as to give to the government of the United States an opportunity for adjustment without loss of dignity. Albert was clear in his mind that Great Britain ought not to be committed to war for the destruction of the great Republic of the West and for the establishment of a state of which the corner-stone was slavery. Fortunately, Victoria was quite prepared to accept in this matter Albert's judgment. Palmerston protested and threatened resignation, but finally submitted.

When the news of the capture of the commissioners came to Washington, Seward for once was in favour of a conservative rather than a truculent course of action. He advised that the commissioners should be surrendered at once rather than to leave to Great Britain the opportunity for making a dictatorial demand. Lincoln admitted the risk of such demand and the disadvantage of making the surrender under pressure, but he took the ground that if the United States waited for the British contention, a certain diplomatic advantage could be gained. When the demand came, Lincoln was able, with a rewording (not for the first time) of Seward's despatch, to take the ground that the government of the United States was "well pleased that Her Majesty's government should have finally accepted the old-time American contention that vessels of peace should not be searched on the high seas by vessels of war." It may be recalled that the exercise of the right of search had been one of the most important of the grievances which had brought about the War of 1812-1814. In the discussion of the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, the English and American commissioners, while agreeing that this right of search must be given up, had not been able to arrive at a form of words, satisfactory to both parties, for its revocation. Both sets of commissioners were very eager to bring their proceedings to a close. The Americans could of course not realise that if they had waited a few weeks the news of the battle of New Orleans, fought in January, 1815, would have greatly strengthened their position. It was finally agreed "as between gentlemen" that the right of search should be no longer exercised by Great Britain. This right was, however, not formally abrogated until December, 1861, nearly half a century later. This little diplomatic triumph smoothed over for the public of the North the annoyance of having to accept the British demand. It helped to strengthen the administration, which in this first year of the War was by no means sure of its foundations. It strengthened also the opinion of citizens generally in their estimate of the wise management and tactfulness of the President.

Some of the most serious of the perplexities that came upon Lincoln during the first two years of the War were the result of the peculiar combination of abilities and disabilities that characterised General McClellan. McClellan's work prior to the War had been that of an engineer. He had taken high rank at West Point and later, resigning from the army, had rendered distinguished service in civil engineering. At the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, McClellan was president of the Illinois Central Railroad. He was a close friend and backer of Douglas and he had done what was practicable with the all-important machinery of the railroad company to render comfortable the travelling of his candidate and to insure his success. Returning to the army with the opening of the War, he had won success in a brief campaign in Virginia in which he was opposed by a comparatively inexperienced officer and by a smaller force than his own. Placed in command of the army of the Potomac shortly after the Bull Run campaign, he had shown exceptional ability in bringing the troops into a state of organisation. He was probably the best man in the United States to fit an army for action. There were few engineer officers in the army who could have rendered better service in the shaping of fortifications or in the construction of an entrenched position. He showed later that he was not a bad leader for a defeated army in the supervision of the retreat. He had, however, no real capacity for leadership in an aggressive campaign. His disposition led him to be full of apprehension of what the other fellow was doing. He suffered literally from nightmares in which he exaggerated enormously the perils in his paths, making obstacles where none existed, multiplying by two or by three the troops against him, insisting upon the necessity of providing not only for probable contingencies but for very impossible contingencies. He was never ready for an advance and he always felt proudly triumphant, after having come into touch with the enemy, that he had accomplished the task of saving his army.

The only thing about which he was neither apprehensive nor doubtful was his ability as a leader, whether military or political. While he found it difficult to impress his will upon an opponent in the field, he was very sturdy with his pen in laying down the law to the Commander-in-chief (the President) and in emphasising the importance of his own views not only in things military but in regard to the whole policy of the government. The peculiarity about the nightmares and miscalculations of McClellan was that they persisted long after the data for their correction were available. In a book brought into print years after the War, when the Confederate rosters were easily accessible in Washington, McClellan did not hesitate to make the same statements in regard to the numbers of the Confederate forces opposed to him that he had brought into the long series of complaining letters to Lincoln in which he demanded reinforcements that did not exist.

The records now show that at the time of the slow advance of McClellan's army by the Williamsburg Peninsula, General Magruder had been able, with a few thousand men and with dummy guns made of logs, to give the impression that a substantial army was blocking the way to Richmond. McClellan's advance was, therefore, made with the utmost "conservatism," enabling General Johnston to collect back of Magruder the army that was finally to drive McClellan back to his base. It is further in evidence from the later records that when some weeks later General Johnston concentrated his army at Gaines's Mill upon Porter, who was separated from McClellan by the Chickahominy, there was but an inconsiderable force between McClellan and Richmond.

At the close of the seven days' retreat, McClellan, who had with a magnificent army thrown away a series of positions, writes to Lincoln that he (Lincoln) "had sacrificed the army." In another letter, McClellan lays down the laws of a national policy with a completeness and a dictatorial utterance such as would hardly have been justified if he had succeeded through his own military genius in bringing the War to a close, but which, coming from a defeated general, was ridiculous enough. Lincoln's correspondence with McClellan brings out the infinite patience of the President, and his desire to make sure that before putting the General to one side as a vainglorious incompetent, he had been allowed the fullest possible test. Lincoln passes over without reference and apparently without thought the long series of impertinent impersonalities of McClellan. In this correspondence, as in all his correspondence, the great captain showed himself absolutely devoted to the cause he had in mind. Early in the year, months before the Peninsular campaign, when McClellan had had the army in camp for a series of months without expressing the least intention of action, Lincoln had in talking with the Secretary of War used the expression: "If General McClellan does not want to use the army just now, I would like to borrow it for a while." That was as far as the Commander-in-chief ever went in criticism of the General in the field. While operations in Virginia, conducted by a vacillating and vainglorious engineer officer, gave little encouragement, something was being done to advance the cause of the Union in the West. In 1862, a young man named Grant, who had returned to the army and who had been trusted with the command of a few brigades, captured Fort Donelson and thus opened the Tennessee River to the advance of the army southward. The capture of Fort Donelson was rendered possible by the use of mortars and was the first occasion in the war in which mortars had been brought to bear. I chanced to come into touch with the record of the preparation of the mortars that were supplied to Grant's army at Cairo. Sometime in the nineties I was sojourning with the late Abram S. Hewitt at his home in Ringwood, New Jersey. I noticed, in looking out from the piazza, a mortar, properly mounted on a mortar-bed and encompassed by some yards of a great chain, placed on the slope overlooking the little valley below, as if to protect the house. I asked my host what was the history of this piece of ordnance. "Well," he said, "the chain you might have some personal interest in. It is a part of the chain your great-uncle Israel placed across the river at West Point for the purpose of blocking or at least of checking the passage of the British vessels. The chain was forged here in the Ringwood foundry and I have secured a part of it as a memento. The mortar was given to me by President Lincoln, as also was the mortar-bed." This report naturally brought out the further question as to the grounds for the gift. "I made this mortar-bed," said Hewitt, "together with some others, and Lincoln was good enough to say that I had in this work rendered a service to the State. It was in December, 1861, when the expedition against Fort Donelson and Fort Henry was being organised at Fort Cairo under the leadership of General Grant. Grant reported that the field-pieces at his command would not be effective against the earthworks that were to be shelled and made requisition for mortars." The mortar I may explain to my unmilitary readers is a short carronade of large bore and with a comparatively short range. The mortar with a heavy charge throws its missile at a sharp angle upwards, so that, instead of attempting to go through an earthwork, it is thrown into the enclosure. The recoil from a mortar is very heavy, necessitating the construction of a foundation called a mortar-bed which is not only solid but which possesses a certain amount of elasticity through which the shock of the recoil is absorbed. It is only through the use of such a bed that a mortar can be fired from the deck of a vessel. Without such, protection, the shock would smash through the deck and might send the craft to the bottom.

The Ordnance Department reported to the Secretary of War and the Secretary to Lincoln that mortars were on hand but that no mortar-beds were available. It was one of the many cases in which the unpreparedness of the government had left a serious gap in the equipment. The further report was given to Lincoln that two or three months' time would be required to manufacture the thirty mortar-beds that were needed. A delay of any such period would have blocked the entire purpose of Grant's expedition. In his perplexity, Lincoln remembered that in his famous visit to New York two years before, he had been introduced to Mr. Hewitt, "a well-known iron merchant," as "a man who does things." Lincoln telegraphed to Hewitt asking if Hewitt could make thirty mortar-beds and how long it would take. Hewitt told me that the message reached him on a Saturday evening at the house of a friend. He wired an acknowledgment with the word that he would send a report on the following day. Sunday morning he looked up the ordnance officer of New York for the purpose of ascertaining where the pattern mortar-bed was kept. "It was rather important, Major," said Hewitt to me, "that I should have an opportunity of examining this pattern for I had never seen a mortar-bed in my life, but this of course I did not admit to the ordnance officer." The pattern required was, it seemed, in the armory at Springfield. Hewitt wired to Lincoln asking that the bed should be forwarded by the night boat to him in New York. Hewitt and his men met the boat, secured the pattern bed, and gave some hours to puzzling over the construction. At noon on Monday, Hewitt wired to Lincoln that he could make thirty mortar-beds in thirty days. In another hour he received by wire instructions from Lincoln to go ahead. In twenty-eight days he had the thirty mortar-beds in readiness; and Tom Scott, who had at the time, very fortunately for the country, taken charge of the military transportation, had provided thirty flat-cars for the transit of the mortar-beds to Cairo. The train was addressed to "U.S. Grant, Cairo," and each car contained a notification, painted in white on a black ground, "not to be switched on the penalty of death." That train got through and as other portions of the equipment had also been delayed, the mortars were not so very late. Six schooners, each equipped with a mortar, were hurried up the river to support the attack of the army on Fort Donelson. A first assault had been made and had failed. The field artillery was, as Grant had anticipated, ineffective against the earthworks, while the fire of the Confederate infantry, protected by their works, had proved most severe. The instant, however, that from behind a point on the river below the fort shells were thrown from the schooners into the inner circle of the fortifications, the Confederate commander, Floyd, recognised that the fort was untenable. He slipped away that night leaving his junior, General Buckner, to make terms with Grant, and those terms were "unconditional surrender," which were later so frequently connected with the initials of U.S.G.

Buckner's name comes again into history in a pleasant fashion. Years after the War, when General Grant had, through the rascality of a Wall Street "pirate," lost his entire savings, Buckner, himself a poor man, wrote begging Grant to accept as a loan, "to be repaid at his convenience," a check enclosed for one thousand dollars. Other friends came to the rescue of Grant, and through the earnings of his own pen, he was before his death able to make good all indebtedness and to leave a competency to his widow. The check sent by Buckner was not used, but the prompt friendliness was something not to be forgotten.

Hewitt's mortar-beds were used again a few weeks later for the capture of Island Number Ten and they also proved serviceable, used in the same fashion from the decks of schooners, in the capture of Forts Jackson and St. Philip which blocked the river below New Orleans. It was only through the fire from these schooners, which were moored behind a point on the river below the forts, that it was possible to reach the inner circle of the works.