XI. The Turning Point of the Civil War
In the summer of 1863 the Confederate armies
reached their greatest strength. It was then that, flushed
with military ardor,
and made bold by what seemed to the southern leaders an unbroken
series of victories on the Virginia battlefields, General
Lee again crossed the Potomac River, and led his Army into
the North.
He went as far as Gettysburg in Pennsylvania; but there,
on the
third of July, 1863, suffered a disastrous defeat, which
shattered forever the Confederate dream of taking Philadelphia
and dictating peace from Independence Hall. This battle of
Gettysburg should have ended the war, for General Lee, on
retreating southward, found the Potomac River so swollen
by heavy
rains that he was obliged to wait several days for the floods
to
go down. In that time it would have been quite possible for
General Meade, the Union commander, to follow him and utterly
destroy his Army . He proved too slow, however, and Lee and
his
beaten Confederate soldiers escaped. President Lincoln was
inexpressibly grieved at this, and in the first bitterness
of his
disappointment sat down and wrote General Meade a letter.
Lee "was within your easy grasp," he told him, "and
to have closed
upon him would, in connection with our other late successes,
have
ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.
. . . Your golden opportunity is gone and I am distressed
immeasurably because of it." But Meade never received
this
letter. Deeply as the President felt Meade's fault, his spirit
of
forgiveness was so quick, and his thankfulness for the measure
of
success that had been gained, so great, that he put it in
his desk, and it was never signed or sent.
The battle of Gettysburg was indeed a notable victory, and
coupled with the fall of Vicksburg, which surrendered to General
Grant on that same third of July, proved the real turning-point
of the war. It seems singularly appropriate, then, that
Gettysburg should have been the place where President Lincoln
made his most beautiful and famous address. After the battle
the
dead and wounded of both the Union and Confederate armies had
received tender attention there. Later it was decided to set
aside a portion of the battlefield for a great national military
cemetery in which the dead found orderly burial. It was dedicated
to its sacred use on November 19, 1863. At the end of the stately
ceremonies President Lincoln rose and said:
"Fourscore and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated
to
the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great
civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting
place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might
live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate--we cannot consecrate-
-we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It
is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so
nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that
these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the
earth."
With these words, so brief, so simple,
so full of reverent feeling, he set aside the place of strife
to be the resting place
of heroes, and then went back to his own great task--for which
he, too, was to give "the last full measure of devotion."
Up to within a very short time little
had been heard about Ulysses S. Grant, the man destined to
become the most successful general of the war. Like General
McClellan, he was a graduate of
West Point; and also like McClellan, he had resigned from the
Army after serving gallantly in the Mexican war. There the
resemblance ceased, for he had not an atom of McClellan's vanity,
and his persistent will to do the best he could with the means
the government could give him was far removed from the younger
general's faultfinding and complaint. He was about four years
older than McClellan, having been born on April 27, 1822. On
offering his services to the War Department in 1861 he had
modestly written: "I feel myself competent to command
a regiment
if the President in his judgment should see fit to intrust
one to
me." For some reason this letter remained unanswered,
although
the Department, then and later, had need of trained and
experienced officers. Afterward the Governor of Illinois made
him
a colonel of one of the three years' volunteer regiments; and
from that time on he rose in rank, not as McClellan had done,
by
leaps and bounds, but slowly, earning every promotion. All
of his
service had been in the West, and he first came into general
notice by his persistent and repeated efforts to capture
Vicksburg, on whose fall the opening of the Mississippi River
depended. Five different plans he tried before he finally
succeeded, the last one appearing utterly foolhardy, and seeming
to go against every known rule of military science. In spite
of
this it was successful, the Union Army and Navy thereby gaining
control of the Mississippi River and cutting off forever from
the
Confederacy a great extent of rich country, from which, up
to
that time, it had been drawing men and supplies.
The North was greatly cheered by
these victories, and all eyes
were turned upon the successful commander. No one was more
thankful than Mr. Lincoln. He gave Grant quick promotion, and
crowned the official act with a most generous letter. "I
do not
remember that you and I ever met personally," he wrote. "I
write
this now as a grateful acknowledgement for the almost inestimable
service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further."
Then, summing up the plans that the General had tried, especially
the last one, he added: "I feared it was a mistake. I
now wish to
make the personal acknowledgement that you were right and I
was
wrong."
Other important battles won by Grant that same fall added
to his
growing fame, and by the beginning of 1864 he was singled out
as
the greatest Union commander. As a suitable reward for his
victories it was determined to make him Lieutenant-General.
This
Army rank had, before the Civil War, been bestowed on only
two
American soldiers--on General Washington, and on Scott, for
his
conquest of Mexico. In 1864 Congress passed and the President
signed an act to revive the grade, and Grant was called to
Washington to receive his commission. He and Mr. Lincoln met
for
the first time at a large public reception held at the Executive
Mansion on the evening of March 8. A movement and rumor in
the
crowd heralded his approach, and when at last the short, stocky,
determined soldier and the tall, care-worn, deep-eyed President
stood face to face the crowd, moved by a sudden impulse of
delicacy, drew back, and left them almost alone to exchange
a few
words. Later, when Grant appeared in the great East Room, the
enthusiasm called forth by his presence could no longer be
restrained, and cheer after cheer went up, while his admirers
pressed about him so closely that, hot and blushing with
embarrassment, he was forced at last to mount a sofa, and from
there shake hands with the eager people who thronged up to
him
from all sides.
The next day at one o'clock the President,
in the presence of the
cabinet and a few other officials, made a little speech, and
gave
him his commission. Grant replied with a few words, as modest
as
they were brief, and in conversation afterward asked what special
duty was required of him. The President answered that the people
wanted him to take Richmond, and asked if he could do it. Grant
said that he could if he had the soldiers, and the President
promised that these would be furnished him. Grant did not stay
in
Washington to enjoy the new honors of his high rank, but at
once
set about preparations for his task. It proved a hard one.
More
than a year passed before it was ended, and all the losses
in
battle of the three years that had gone before seemed small
in
comparison with the terrible numbers of killed and wounded
that
fell during these last months of the war. At first Grant had
a
fear that the President might wish to control his plans, but
this
was soon quieted; and his last lingering doubt on the subject
vanished when, as he was about to start on his final campaign,
Mr. Lincoln sent him a letter stating his satisfaction with
all
he had done, and assuring him that in the coming campaign he
neither knew, for desired to know, the details of his plans.
In
his reply Grant confessed the groundlessness of his fears,
and
added, "Should my success be less than I desire and expect,
the
least I can say is, the fault is not with you."
He made no complicated plan for the
problem before him, but proposed to solve it by plain, hard,
persistent fighting. "Lee's
Army will be your objective point," he instructed General
Meade.
"Where Lee goes there you will go also." Nearly three
years
earlier the opposing armies had fought their first battle of
Bull
Run only a short distance north of where they now confronted
each
other. Campaign and battle between them had swayed to the north
and the south, but neither could claim any great gain of ground
or of advantage. The final struggle was before them. Grant
had
two to one in numbers; Lee the advantage in position, for he
knew
by heart every road, hill and forest in Virginia, had for his
friendly scout every white inhabitant, and could retire into
prepared fortifications. Perhaps the greatest element of his
strength lay in the conscious pride of his Army that for three
years it had steadily barred the way to Richmond. To offset
this
there now menaced it what had always been absent before--the
grim, unflinching will of the new Union commander, who had
rightly won for himself the name of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.
On the night of May 4, 1864, his
Army entered upon the campaign which, after many months,
was to end the war. It divided itself into two parts. For
the first six weeks there was almost constant swift marching
and hard fighting, a nearly equally matched contest of strategy
and battle between the two armies, the difference being that
Grant was always advancing, and Lee always retiring. Grant
had hoped to defeat Lee outside of his fortifications, and
early in the campaign had expressed his resolution "to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer";
but the losses were so appalling, 60,000 of his best troops
melting away in killed and wounded during the six weeks, that
this was seen to be impossible. Lee's Army was therefore driven
into its fortifications around the Confederate capital and
then
came the siege of Richmond, lasting more than nine months,
but
pushed forward all that time with relentless energy, in spite
of
Grant's heavy losses.
In the West, meanwhile, General William T. Sherman, Grant's
closest friend and brother officer, pursued a task of almost
equal importance, taking Atlanta, Georgia, which the Confederates
had turned into a city of foundries and workshops for the
manufacture and repair of guns; then, starting from Atlanta,
marching with his best troops three hundred miles to the sea,
laying the country waste as they went; after which, turning
northward, he led them through South and North Carolina to
bring
his Army in touch with Grant.
Against this background of fighting the life of the country
went
on. The end of the war was approaching, surely, but so slowly
that the people, hoping for it, and watching day by day, could
scarcely see it. They schooled themselves to a dogged endurance,
but there was no more enthusiasm. Many lost courage. Volunteering
almost ceased, and the government was obliged to begin drafting
men to make up the numbers of soldiers needed by Grant in his
campaign against Richmond.
The President had many things to dishearten him at this time,
many troublesome questions to settle. For instance, there were
new loyal State governments to provide in those parts of the
South which had again come under control of the Union armies--no
easy matter, where every man, woman and child harbored angry
feelings against the North, and no matter how just and forbearing
he might be, his plans were sure to be thwarted and bitterly
opposed at every step.
There were serious questions, too,
to be decided about negro soldiers, for the South had raised
a mighty outcry against the
Emancipation Proclamation, especially against the use of the
freed slaves as soldiers, vowing that white officers of negro
troops would be shown small mercy, if ever they were taken
prisoners. No act of such vengeance occurred, but in 1864 a
fort
manned by colored soldiers was captured by the Confederates,
and
almost the entire garrison was put to death. Must the order
that
the War Department had issued some time earlier, to offset
the
Confederate threats, now be put in force? The order said that
for
every negro prisoner killed by the Confederates a Confederate
prisoner in the hands of the Union armies would be taken out
and
shot. It fell upon Mr. Lincoln to decide. The idea seemed
unbearable to him, yet, on the other hand, could he afford
to let
the massacre go unavenged and thus encourage the South in the
belief that it could commit such barbarous acts and escape
unharmed? Two reasons finally decided him against putting the
order in force. One was that General Grant was about to start
on
his campaign against Richmond, and that it would be most unwise
to begin this by the tragic spectacle of a military punishment,
however merited. The other was his tender-hearted humanity.
He
could not, he said, take men out and kill them in cold blood
for
crimes committed by other men. If he could get hold of the
persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in
cold
blood, the case would be different; but he could not kill the
innocent for the guilty. Fortunately the offense was not
repeated, and no one had cause to criticize his clemency.
Numbers of good and influential men,
dismayed at the amount of
blood and treasure that the war had already cost, and
disheartened by the calls for still more soldiers that Grant's
campaign made necessary, began to clamor for peace--were ready
to
grant almost anything that the Confederates chose to ask. Rebel
agents were in Canada professing to be able to conclude a peace.
Mr. Lincoln, wishing to convince these northern "Peace
men" of
the groundlessness of their claim, and of the injustice of
their
charges that the government was continuing the war unnecessarily,
sent Horace Greeley, the foremost among them, to Canada, to
talk
with the selfstyled ambassadors of Jefferson Davis. Nothing
came
of it, of course, except abuse of Mr. Lincoln for sending such
a
messenger, and a lively quarrel between Greeley and the rebel
agents as to who was responsible for the misunderstandings
that
arose.
The summer and autumn of 1864 were
likewise filled with the bitterness and high excitement of
a presidential campaign; for,
according to law, Mr. Lincoln's successor had to be elected
on
the "Tuesday after the first Monday" of November
in that year.
The great mass of Republicans wished Mr. Lincoln to be reelected.
The Democrats had long ago fixed upon General McClellan, with
his
grievances against the President, as their future candidate.
It
is not unusual for Presidents to discover would-be rivals in
their own cabinets. Considering the strong men who formed Mr.
Lincoln's cabinet, and the fact that four years earlier more
than
one of them had active hopes of being chosen in his stead,
it is
remarkable that there was so little of this.
The one who developed the most serious
desire to succeed him was
Salmon P. Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury. Devoted with
all
his powers to the cause of the Union, Mr. Chase was yet strangely
at fault in his judgment of men. He regarded himself as the
friend of Mr. Lincoln, but nevertheless held so poor an opinion
of the President's mind and character, compared with his own,
that he could not believe people blind enough to prefer the
President to himself. He imagined that he did not want the
office, and was anxious only for the public good; yet he listened
eagerly to the critics of the President who flattered his hopes,
and found time in spite of his great labors to write letters
to
all parts of the country, which, although protesting that he
did
not want the honor, showed his entire willingness to accept
it.
Mr. Lincoln was well aware of this. Indeed, it was impossible
not
to know about it, though he refused to hear the matter discussed
or to read any letters concerning it. He had his own opinion
of
the taste displayed by Mr. Chase, but chose to take no notice
of
his actions. "I have determined," he said, "to
shut my eyes, so
far as possible, to everything of the sort. Mr. Chase makes
a
good Secretary, and I shall keep him where he is. If he becomes
President, all right. I hope we may never have a worse man,
and
he not only kept him where he was, but went on appointing Chase's
friends to office.
There was also some talk of making
General Grant the Republican candidate for President, and
an attempt was even made to trap Mr.
Lincoln into taking part in a meeting where this was to be
done.
Mr. Lincoln refused to attend, and instead wrote a letter of
such
hearty and generous approval of Grant and his Army that the
meeting naturally fell into the hands of Mr. Lincoln's friends.
General Grant, never at that time or any other, gave the least
encouragement to the efforts which were made to array him against
the President. Mr. Lincoln, on his part, received all warnings
to
beware of Grant in the most serene manner, saying tranquilly, "If
he takes Richmond, let him have it." It was not so with
General
Fremont. At a poorly attended meeting held in Cleveland he
was
actually nominated by a handful of people calling themselves
the
"Radical Democracy," and taking the matter seriously,
accepted,
although, three months later, having found no response from
the
public, he withdrew from the contest.
After all, these various attempts
to discredit the name of Abraham Lincoln caused hardly a
ripple on the great current of
public opinion, and death alone could have prevented his choice
by the Republican national convention. He took no measures
to
help on his own candidacy. With strangers he would not talk
about
the probability of his reelection; but with friends he made
no
secret of his readiness to continue the work he was engaged
in if
such should be the general wish. "A second term would
be a great
honor and a great labor; which together, perhaps, I would not
decline," he wrote to one of them. He discouraged officeholders,
either civil or military, who showed any special zeal in his
behalf. To General Schurz, who wrote asking permission to take
an
active part in the campaign for his reelection, he answered: "I
perceive no objection to your making a political speech when
you
are where one is to be made; but quite surely, speaking in
the
North and fighting in the South at the same time are not
possible, nor could I be justified to detail any officer to
the
political campaign . . . and then return him to the Army ."
He himself made no long speeches during the summer, and in
his
short addresses, at Sanitary Fairs, in answer to visiting
delegations, and on similar occasions where custom and courtesy
obliged him to say a few words, he kept his quiet ease and
self-command, speaking heartily and to the point, yet avoiding
all the pitfalls that beset the candidate who talks.
When the Republican national convention came together in
Baltimore on June 7, 1864, it had very little to do, for its
delegates were bound by rigid instructions to vote for Abraham
Lincoln.
He was chosen on the first ballot, every State voting for
him
except Missouri, whose representatives had been instructed
to
vote for Grant. Missouri at once changed its vote, and the
secretary of the convention read the grand total of 506 for
Lincoln, his announcement being greeted by a storm of cheers
that
lasted several minutes.
It was not so easy to choose a Vice-President. Mr. Lincoln
had
been besieged by many people to make known his wishes in the
matter, but had persistently refused. He rightly felt that
it
would be presumptuous in him to dictate who should be his
companion on the ticket, and, in case of his death, his successor
in office. This was for the delegates to the convention to
decide, for they represented the voters of the country. He
had no
more right to dictate who should be selected than the Emperor
of
China would have had. It is probable that Vice-President Hamlin
would have been renominated, if it had not been for the general
feeling both in and out of the convention that, under all the
circumstances, it would be wiser to select some man who had
been
a Democrat, and had yet upheld the war. The choice fell upon
Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who was not only a Democrat, but
had
been appointed by Mr. Lincoln military governor of Tennessee
in
1862.
The Democrats at first meant to have
the national convention of
their party meet on the fourth of July; but after Fremont had
been nominated at Cleveland and Lincoln at Baltimore, they
postponed it to a later date, hoping that something in the
chapter of accidents might happen to their advantage. At first
it
appeared as if this might be the case. The outlook for the
Republicans was far from satisfactory. The terrible fighting
and
great losses of Grant's Army in Virginia had profoundly shocked
and depressed the country. The campaign of General Sherman,
who
was then in Georgia, showed as yet no promise of the brilliant
results it afterward attained. General Early's sudden raid
into
Maryland, when he appeared so unexpectedly before Washington
and
threatened the city, had been the cause of much exasperation;
and
Mr. Chase, made bitter by his failure to receive the coveted
nomination for President, had resigned from the cabinet. This
seemed, to certain leading Republicans, to point to a breaking
up
of the government. The "Peace" men were clamoring
loudly for an
end of the war; and the Democrats, not having yet formally
chosen
a candidate, were free to devote all their leisure to attacks
upon the administration.
Mr. Lincoln realized fully the tremendous
issues at stake. He
looked worn and weary. To a friend who urged him to go away
for a
fortnight's rest, he replied, "I cannot fly from my thoughts.
My
solicitude for this great country follows me wherever I go.
I do
not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not
free
from these infirmities, but I cannot but feel that the weal
or
woe of this great nation will be decided in November. There
is no
program offered by any wing of the Democratic party but that
must
result in the permanent destruction of the Union."
The political situation grew still
darker. Toward the end of
August the general gloom enveloped even the President himself.
Then what he did was most original and characteristic. Feeling
that the campaign was going against him, he made up his mind
deliberately the course he ought to pursue, and laid down for
himself the action demanded by his strong sense of duty. He
wrote
on August 23 the following memorandum: "This morning,
as for some
days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration
will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate
with the President-elect as to save the Union between the
election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his
election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it
afterward."
He folded and pasted the sheet of paper in such a way that
its
contents could not be seen, and as the cabinet came together
handed it to each member successively, asking him to write
his
name across the back of it. In this peculiar fashion he pledged
himself and his administration to accept loyally the verdict
of
the people if it should be against them, and to do their utmost
to save the Union in the brief remainder of his term of office.
He gave no hint to any member of his cabinet of the nature
of the
paper thus signed until after his reelection.
The Democratic convention finally came together in Chicago
on
August 29. It declared the war a failure, and that efforts
ought
to be made at once to bring it to a close, and nominated General
McClellan for President McClellan's only chance of success
lay in
his war record. His position as a candidate on a platform of
dishonorable peace would have been no less desperate than
ridiculous. In his letter accepting the nomination, therefore,
he
calmly ignored the platform, and renewed his assurances of
devotion to the Union, the Constitution, and the flag of his
country. But the stars in their courses fought against him.
Even
before the Democratic convention met, the tide of battle had
turned. The darkest hour of the war had passed, and dawn was
at
hand, and amid the thanksgivings of a grateful people, and
the
joyful salute of great guns, the real presidential campaign
began. The country awoke to the true meaning of the Democratic
platform; General Sherman's successes in the South excited
the
enthusiasm of the people; and when at last the Unionists, rousing
from their midsummer languor, began to show their faith in
the
Republican candidate, the hopelessness of all efforts to
undermine him became evident.
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