Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The Democrats of Ohio took up the arrest of Vallandigham with especial earnestness, and were guilty of the unspeakable folly of nominating him as their candidate for governor. They appointed an imposing committee—one from each Congressional district of the State—to communicate with the President in regard to the sentence of banishment. They arrived in Washington about the last of June, and addressed a long communication to Mr. Lincoln, demanding the release and return of Mr. Vallandigham. They argued the case with ability. No less than eleven of the committee were or had been members of Congress, with George H. Pendleton at their head. Mr. Lincoln's reply under date of June 29 to their communication was as felicitous, as conclusive, as his reply to the Albany Committee. He expressed his willingness in answer to their request, to release Mr. Vallandigham without asking pledge, promise, or retraction from him, and with only one simple condition. That condition was that "the gentlemen of the committee themselves, representing as they do the character and power of the Ohio Democracy, will subscribe to three propositions: First, That there is now a rebellion in the United States, the object and tendency of which are to destroy the National Union, and that in your opinion an army and navy are constitutional means for suppressing that rebellion. Second, That no one of you will do any thing which in his own judgment will tend to hinder the increase or favor the decrease or lessen the efficiency of the army and navy while engaged in the effort to suppress that rebellion. And Third, That each of you will in his sphere do all he can to have the officers, soldiers, and seamen of the army and navy, while engaged in the effort to suppress the Rebellion, paid, fed, clad, and otherwise well provided for and supported."

Mr. Lincoln sent duplicates of these three conditions to the committee, one of which was to be returned to him indorsed with their names as evidence of their agreement thereto, the publication of which indorsement should be of itself a revocation of the order in relation to Mr. Vallandigham. If the Ohio gentlemen subscribed to these conditions as essential and obligatory, they thereby justified the arrest of Vallandigham for resisting each and every one of them. If they would not subscribe to them they placed themselves before the people of Ohio in an attitude of hostility to the vigorous and successful conduct of the war, on which the fate of the Union depended. The committee made a very lame rejoinder to the President. He had in truth placed them in a dilemma, from which they could not extricate themselves, and they naturally fell under popular condemnation. Mr. Lincoln's hit had indeed been so palpable that its victims were laughed at by the public, and their party was foredoomed by their course to political annihilation in the coming election.

THE BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE.

While these interesting events were in progress the military exigency was engaging the attention of the people with an interest almost painfully intense. There was an urgent demand for an early movement by the Army of the Potomac. Mr. Lincoln realized that prompt success was imperatively required. The repetition of the disasters of 1862 might fatally affect our financial credit, and end with the humiliation of an intervention by European Powers. General Hooker was impressed by Mr. Lincoln with the absolute necessity of an early and energetic movement of the Army of the Potomac. On the 2d and 3d of May he fought the battle of Chancellorsville. He had as large a force as the Union army mustered on a single battle- field during the war,—not less perhaps than one hundred and twenty thousand men. He made a lamentable failure. Without bringing more than one-third of his troops into action he allowed himself to be driven across the Rappahannock by Lee, who, on the 7th of May, issued a highly congratulatory and boastful order detailing his victory.

In the issuing of orders General Hooker was one day in advance of Lee. He tendered to the soldiers his "congratulations on the achievements of the past seven days," and assured them that "if all has not been accomplished that was expected, the reasons are well known to the army." He further declared that "in withdrawing from the south bank of the Rappahannock before delivering a general battle to our adversaries, the army has given renewed evidence of its confidence in itself and its fidelity to the principles it represents. Profoundly loyal and conscious of its strength," the General continued, "the Army of the Potomac will give or decline battle whenever its interest or its honor may demand." The General thought "the events of the past week may swell with pride the heart of every officer and soldier in the army. By your celerity and secrecy of movement our advance was undisputed; and on our withdrawal, not a rebel ventured to follow." The questionable character of these compliments exposed General Hooker to ridicule, and increased the public sense of his unfitness for high command, though he was a gallant and brave soldier and admirably fitted for a division or a corps. The Union loss was serious. The killed and wounded exceeded eleven thousand. The year thus opened very inauspiciously. The gloom of 1862 was not dispelled. The shadows had not lifted. The weightiest anxiety oppressed both the government and the people. The Confederacy had sustained a heavy loss in the death of Stonewall Jackson. He had a genius for war, and in a purely military point of view it would perhaps have been better for the Confederates to lose the battle than to lose the most aggressive officer in their Army.

The spirit of the Confederates rose high. They believed they would be able to hold the line of the Mississippi against the army of Grant, and in the defeat and demoralization of the army of the Potomac they saw their way clear to an invasion of Pennsylvania, for which General Lee began his preparations with leisure and completed them with thoroughness. After General Hooker's failure at Chancellorsville, and his remarkable order which followed it, he evidently lost the confidence of the President. Some of the hasty notes and telegrams sent to General Hooker after his defeat are in Mr. Lincoln's most characteristic vein. June 5 the President wrote, "If you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it. . . . In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled up on the river like an ox jumped half over a fence, liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other." Later, on June 10, the President wrote, "Lee's Army and not Richmond is your true objective point. If he comes towards the upper Potomac, follow on his flank on the inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is fret him and fret him."* Lee was, by the date of this note, well on his way towards the North, and the military situation grew every hour more critical.

THE THREE DAYS' BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG.

The indispensable requisite to Union success was a commander for the Army of the Potomac in whose competency the Administration, the people, and most of all the soldiers would have confidence. In the judgment of military men it was idle to intrust another battle to the generalship of Hooker; and as the army moved across Maryland to meet Lee on the soil of Pennsylvania, General Hooker was relieved and the command of the army assigned to General George G. Meade. This change of commanders was made by order of the President on the 28th of June, only two days before the opening engagement of the great battle of Gettysburg. By the middle of June the advance guard of Lee's army had reached the upper Potomac, and on its way had literally destroyed the division of the Union army commanded by General Milroy and stationed at Winchester. The agitation throughout the country was profound. On the 15th of June as the magnitude of Lee's movement became more apparent, the President issued a proclamation stating that "Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio were threatened with invasion and required an immediate addition to the military forces." He called therefore for one hundred thousand militia from these four States to serve for six months; ten thousand each from Maryland and West Virginia, thirty thousand from Ohio, and fifty thousand from Pennsylvania. All the surrounding States were aroused. Governor Seymour sent fifteen thousand extra men from New York. Governor Parker sent a valuable contingent from New Jersey. Western Maryland was occupied at various points as early as the 20th of June, and during the last week of that month rebel detachments were in the southern counties of Pennsylvania committing depredations and exacting tribute,—in York, Cumberland, Franklin, Fulton and Adams.

The two armies finally converged at Gettysburg, and on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of July the battle was fought which in many of its aspects was the most critical and important of the war. The Confederates began with the self-assurance of victory; and with victory they confidently counted upon the occupation of Philadelphia by Lee's army, upon the surrender of Baltimore, upon the flight of the President and his Cabinet from Washington. It was within the extravagant and poetic dreams of the expectant conquerors to proclaim the success of the Confederacy from the steps of Independence Hall, and to make a treaty with the fugitive Government of the United States for half the territory of the Republic. But it was not so fated. The army under Meade proved unconquerable. In conflicts on Virginia soil the army of Lee had been victorious. Its invasion of the North the preceding year had been checked by McClellan before it reached the border of the free States. It was now fighting on ground where the spirit which had nerved it in Virginia was transferred to the soldiers of the Union. With men of the North the struggle was now for home first, for conquest afterwards, and the tenacity and courage with which they held their ground for those three bloody days attest the magnificent impulse which the defense of the fireside imparts to the heart and to the arm of the soldier.

General Meade had not been widely known before the battle, but he was at once elevated to the highest rank in the esteem and love of the people. The tide of invasion had been rolled back after the bloodiest and most stubbornly contested field of the war. The numbers on each side differed but little from the numbers engaged at Waterloo, and the tenacity with which the soldiers of the British Isles stood that day against the hosts of Napoleon, was rivaled on the field of Gettysburg by men of the same blood, fighting in the ranks of both armies.