Expansion and Conflict

by William Edward Dodd

The unexpected often happens. While Charles Francis Adams was being coldly elbowed out of the salons of an unsympathetic English nobility, and when Confederate bonds were selling both in London and Paris at or near par, Secretary Chase sent Robert J. Walker, the former Mississippi repudiator and successful Secretary of the Treasury under Polk, to Europe for the purpose of breaking down Confederate credit and building up that of the United States.

The commissioner of the Treasury Department began the publication of a series of articles on the financial page of the London Times which seemed to show that Davis had been responsible for the repudiation of a large issue of state bonds, many of them held in London, in 1843. All that Mason and Slidell could do did not remove the suspicion that the Confederate President would “repudiate” again. Men who had loaned large sums of money to Mississippi could not be made to understand that Walker himself had been the responsible agent of Mississippi in those days. From the beginning of this unpleasant advertising of former American financiering, in which Northern States had sinned quite as flagrantly as Southern, Confederate credit in Europe declined. Her bonds were soon withdrawn from the market. At the same time Walker succeeded in borrowing $250,000,000 from European bankers, and thus at a critical period he was able to prop the declining fortunes of his country. To say that Walker destroyed the credit of the Confederacy and at the same time restored that of the Union would be an exaggeration. But his services were of incalculable value to the nationalist cause. When, therefore, Napoleon asked England to join him in intervening between the warring parties of the United States there was other reason, besides the strong and vigorous activity of Charles Francis Adams, for the British Ministry to postpone or decline coöperation.

Thus the bright Confederate outlook of 1862 had become dark in May, 1864, when General Grant, who had been brought from the field of his brilliant operations in the West, took command of the army with which Meade had expelled Lee from Pennsylvania. But conditions were not encouraging in the North. Lincoln's popularity was still in eclipse. Congress was resentful of his failures. Charles Sumner was denouncing him every day in private and opposing him in public. Secretary Chase was using the machinery of his great office to deprive his chief of a renomination. The radicals of the East were still refusing their approval of a policy which compromised with slavery in the border States, and the Unionists of the Northwest were resentful toward a President who was making war upon slavery. The Democrats of the North were apparently stronger than ever, and their criticism of the Government for suspending the writ of habeas corpus and for hundreds of arbitrary arrests gave conservative men pause. To all this must be added the resistance in 1863 to the military drafts, the riots, the extraordinary prosperity of business men which made recruiting, even with the aid of laws almost as drastic as those of the South, almost impossible. The cost in bounties to nation, state, and counties of one enlistment in 1864 was about $1000; and when a regiment was thus made up, a third of the men sometimes deserted within a few months and reënlisted under other names, thus securing a second or a third series of bounties.

Still the success of the Northern cause seemed to depend on the renomination of Lincoln, for any other Republican Unionist would certainly be defeated by the Democrats, who were fast uniting upon General McClellan, exceedingly popular with both War Democrats and those who had opposed the war from the beginning. If the outlook in the South was discouraging, that of the North was almost as depressing.

With public opinion keen, critical, and watchful, the great duel reopened in Virginia and Georgia in May, 1864. Grant attacked with an army of 120,000 men; Lee returned the blow with a force of about 60,000 seasoned and resolute soldiers. From May 3 to June 12 the two great generals fought over the tangled thickets and sandy ridges which extend from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor near Richmond, where McClellan had failed in 1862. Grant failed in every attempt to defeat his foe, and he lost in that short period about 54,000 brave men—an army almost equal in numbers to that which they opposed. The people and the papers of the North were demanding the removal of their last general; United States bonds and paper money were a drug on the stock market; it was reported that Grant was drinking deeply. Lincoln knew that to remove his general would be tantamount to surrender, for B. F. Butler, then on the lower James, would be the only and last resort, and Lee would make short work of that remarkable commander. There was a little encouragement in the fighting of Sherman against Joseph E. Johnston, who was yielding more and more of northern Georgia to his rival. But June and July, 1864, were the darkest hours of the Union cause and of Lincoln, its champion.

Lee now felt himself secure in his position near Malvern Hill, and expected daily to hear of the removal of his antagonist. But Grant, to the surprise of all, performed the greatest feat of his military career by safely placing all his army, still 120,000 strong, on the south side of the James River, where there were no intrenchments and no other obstacles to their marching upon Petersburg, the key to Richmond. This was done with incredible facility, June 16, 17, and 18, while Lee quietly waited for the enemy to attack him once more. While Lee thus rested on his arms, Grant carried his army through the open country east of Petersburg. Too late, June 18, the Confederate commander hastened all his forces to the new scene of war. Grant had played an incomparable ruse, and the Union army entered, with returning faith in its leader, upon the last phase of its great task—the ruin of Lee.

Meanwhile General Sherman, with a force of 80,000, had been driving Joseph E. Johnston, with 50,000 men, from Dalton in northern Georgia toward Atlanta. From May 4 until July 18 the two armies maneuvered and fought—each seeking without success to surprise the other. On the 17th of July Sherman crossed the Chattahoochee some twenty miles north of Atlanta. Georgia and the cotton belt of the lower South were in a panic. Davis, never quite satisfied with Johnston's operations, yielded to the clamors of Senators and Representatives, as well as military men, and removed the general. John B. Hood, the new commander, began at once a series of battles around the doomed city, losing in every encounter. Atlanta fell on September 2. Sherman was left in quiet possession of northern Georgia, while the Confederate army marched toward Nashville in the hope of forcing a retreat and perhaps of regaining Tennessee. With Grant at Petersburg, whose fall would compel the evacuation of Richmond, and Sherman the master of Georgia, for such was the meaning of Hood's movements, the days of the Confederacy seemed to be numbered.

Before these military successes had been gained, the leaders of the Union cause were compelled to nominate a candidate for the Presidency. Sumner, Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, and many other men of great influence opposed Lincoln's renomination. A convention of radical Republicans met at Cleveland during the last days of May. It nominated John C. Frémont for President. But the regular Republican Convention met a week later in Baltimore, formally disavowed its name, and assumed that of the National Union party. Its chairman was Robert J. Breckinridge, a Kentucky preacher and Unionist. Lincoln was renominated without opposition, and, as a bid to the border States, Andrew Johnson, Union Democrat of Tennessee, was nominated for Vice-President. However, the reverses of Grant in Virginia weakened the position of the Administration, and before the 1st of August trusted advisers of the Government telegraphed “The apathy of the public mind is fearful.” The price of gold ranged during the summer from 200 to 285, and United States securities sold at less than half their face value. The President was compelled to order a draft of 500,000 men in July; the country met the order with a groan. Congress asked for the appointment of a day of fasting and penance, and Lincoln set the first Thursday in August as a “day of national humiliation and prayer.” So portentous was the outlook that before the middle of August most of the eminent men in the Union party had lost all heart. Greeley wrote, “Lincoln is already beaten.” A committee waited on the President to ask his formal withdrawal from the canvass.

Late in August, when the Unionist hopes were at their lowest, the Democrats met in Chicago. Governor Seymour, of New York, Representatives Pendleton, of Ohio, Voorhees, of Indiana, and the unpopular Clement L. Vallandigham were in charge of the proceedings. Southern leaders came over from Canada and even representatives of the Sons of Liberty, a group of Northwesterners who were resisting the National Administration, were participants in the convention. Vallandigham, a “peace-at-any-price” man, secured the passage of a resolution which declared the war a failure, but the War Democrats dictated the nomination and made George B. McClellan the candidate of the party. The general, who had fought some of the great battles of the war, repudiated the Vallandigham resolution, but accepted the proffered leadership. On the day the convention adjourned it seemed clear to the thoughtful men of the country that the Democrats would win the election, and that they would in that event bring the war to a close by acknowledging Southern independence.

But before the delegates had reached their homes, the telegraph announced the fall of Atlanta. Commodore Farragut had just taken Mobile after a long and heroic struggle. President Lincoln, a masterful manipulator of popular opinion, now called upon the country to assemble in their churches and give thanks to God for the splendid victories of Sherman and Farragut. Early in September General Phil Sheridan invaded the Shenandoah Valley, made famous by Jackson in the beginning of the war, and won a decisive victory at Winchester. Before the end of the month he had burned thousands of barns, slaughtered many thousands of cattle, and destroyed the newly harvested grain in all that rich region. His terse remark that a crow could not cross the Valley without taking with him his provisions received widespread applause, and showed what a desperate character the war had taken. Sherman, too, took up his march through the rich black belt of Georgia, destroying everything that came within his reach. The people of the North took heart, especially the stiff-backed Republicans who during the two years preceding had found little to approve in the measures of the Government. Sumner, who had called Lincoln the American Louis XVI; Thaddeus Stevens, who had declared that he knew only one Lincoln man in the House of Representatives; Horace Greeley, Secretary Chase, and even Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, all united now to praise the President and urge his cause before the country. The last great crisis of the war in the North had been passed. A decisive victory at the polls was the verdict of the people, and the homely, honest, and kindly Lincoln was commissioned to bring the war to a conclusion and then to reconstruct the Union.