20 News

Ill news hath wings, and with the wind doth go, Comfort’s a cripple, and comes ever slow.
—Michael Drayton

Early in the morning of December 12, the lank, sad-looking man trod across the grass between the Executive Mansion and the War Department, heading for one of his favorite haunts, the office of the U.S. Military Telegraph. There Abraham Lincoln often read aloud from Artemus Ward or some other humorist while waiting for the latest battlefield dispatches. Early news from Fredericksburg had been promising. On December 11 Sid Demming, chief Associated Press correspondent traveling with the Army of the Potomac, and J. G. Garland, a telegraph operator at Falmouth, had reported the shelling of the town, the successful crossing of the Rappahannock, and troops cheering Burnside. Their dispatches had gone directly to Anson Stager, superintendent of the military telegraph. Even a wire from General Sumner to his wife—“Fredericksburg is ours. All well.”—ended up in the pile of telegrams. Lincoln eagerly read the thin slips of paper, but details remained sketchy. The Federal forces had secured a foothold, and there had been some skirmishing. So far so good.¹

By the next morning, reports had arrived of fighting on the Federal left. An early afternoon dispatch noted intense artillery and musket fire. “Cannot tell from this point who has the best of the fight,” Garland added. Then at 2:50 P.M. a telegram from Stager brought the best news yet: word from Sumner’s headquarters that “our forces have taken the first redoubt.” An hour later a wounded New York colonel was quoted as saying, “We are getting the best of it.” Yet the noise of the battle remained so intense that Stager could barely hear his instrument tapping out the messages, and he did report large numbers of wounded coming off the field. “The Rebellion is now virtually at an end,” commented Lincoln, at least according to the New York Times.²

At 4:00 A.M. on December 14 Burnside wired the president that his troops held the “first ridge outside of the town” and “we hope to carry the crest today.” But despite rumors that the Army of the Potomac had “done well,” Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles remained skeptical: “There is something unsatisfactory or not entirely satisfactory in this intelligence.” What little information was available seemed ominously vague. “They [War Department officials] fear to admit disastrous truths. Adverse tidings are suppressed, with a deal of fuss and mystery, a shuffling over of papers and maps, and a far-reaching, vacant gaze at something undefined and indescribable.” Then word started arriving of heavy casualties, and in official Washington hopes for a Union victory began to fade. Tension mounted especially because panicky friends of the administration jabbered about the fate of the Union hanging on this latest battle.³

On the evening of December 14 Lincoln met with Herman Haupt, who was just returning from Fredericksburg, and with Halleck. In something of a panic the president may have asked the general in chief to order Burnside’s withdrawal from Fredericksburg, but predictably Halleck refused to assume responsibility. Haupt assured Lincoln that Burnside would likely bring the army back across the Rappahannock on his own. Later that evening reporter Henry Villard of the New York Tribune, who had slipped away from Falmouth hoping to scoop his rivals with news of the Fredericksburg disaster, called on Lincoln. The president impatiently pressed for details, and Villard finally blurted out the truth: this was the worst defeat ever suffered by the Army of the Potomac.⁴

For once the usually talkative president did not tell one of his droll stories, but for several days afterward he kept trying to come up with just the right anecdote to describe his plight. Subject to bouts of depression, Lincoln often used rustic humor to shake off his own dark thoughts, but after Fredericksburg, his yarns seemed more pathetic than funny. Maybe he was like the boy with a fierce dog by the tail, unable to hang on but afraid to let go, or like the old woman trying to sweep floodwaters from her cabin wondering whether her broom could outlast the storm. Many stuffy politicians, including cabinet members, could not appreciate such frontier tales and suspected that the president somehow misunderstood the gravity of the situation. Yet as Lincoln explained to Congressman Isaac Arnold of Illinois, “If I could not get momentary respite from the crushing burden I am constantly carrying, my heart would break.”⁵

In this crisis, however, humor no longer helped much. Friends and visitors found Lincoln sadly subdued, not wallowing in self-pity perhaps, but expressing a sense of despair bordering on powerlessness. Interrupting one congressman’s litany of gloom, Lincoln cried out that more bad news would drive him “crazy.” He worried incessantly about the army and appeared terribly anxious. He mused about trading places with a soldier sleeping on the cold ground or even one killed in battle. In utter exasperation he told a friend, “If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.”⁶

By December 15, with news of the battle arriving with the first of the wounded, a deepening gloom spread over the capital. The word “defeat” began cropping up in correspondence and no doubt on street corners, along with second-guessing over Burnside’s tactics. News of the army’s safe withdrawal across the Rappahannock hardly lifted anyone’s spirits. This was worse than McClellan’s retreat from the Peninsula, concluded the Chicago Tribune’s Washington correspondent. A Mexican diplomat overheard people saying that southern independence now seemed assured.⁷

To forestall the spread of defeatism, the War Department clumsily attempted to prevent newspaper correspondents from telegraphing details of the battle, especially information about the staggering losses. Yet the war had revolutionized the use of the telegraph in reporting, and newspapers had roughly tripled the amount of space devoted to telegraphic dispatches. So maladroit attempts at official censorship were doomed to fail. The main result was delay and confusion in transmitting casualty lists. Even Republicans complained that these efforts only aroused public suspicion and made the defeat look worse.⁸

As usual the first accounts of the fighting had been breathlessly optimistic. “All Glorious on the Rappahannock,” “Terrific Bombardment Yesterday,” and “Fredericksburg in Ashes,” blared the Chicago Tribune on December 12. Across the North, Republican newspapers reported in much the same vein; a Rhode Island editor crowed that those who had despaired over earlier delays did not really know Burnside.⁹ News that the Army of the Potomac had captured Fredericksburg produced more favorable reports the next day.¹⁰ On the morning of December 14 prospects remained bright. The New York Times lauded Burnside for concentrating his forces to defeat the Rebels, though the day’s telegrams began hinting at a bloody defeat.¹¹

By December 15 more details were slipping through the War Department censors. Republican newspapers, however, remained at least publicly cheerful. Expectations of still more fighting and predictions that the campaign could prove decisive persisted. Sanguine editors concluded that the Saturday engagement had tested enemy strength; now Burnside knew where to hit Lee’s army. Yet ominously, a Boston editor sounded cautious perhaps without meaning to: “The news from our army at Fredericksburg contains nothing which should weaken hope or occasion despondency.” A few papers began talking of a “repulse,” but others found no reason for discouragement.¹²

The following day, front pages still carried dated accounts of Franklin’s apparent success on the Federal left and the impending attack that would finish the job. Even word of Burnside’s withdrawal from Fredericksburg hardly softened the bluff optimism. Rumors of an expedition under Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks sailing from New York to cooperate with the Army of the Potomac led to speculation that Burnside would soon renew the fight with reinforcements from another direction. He would yet triumph over Lee, a “slow man,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Only the timid would despair, declared a Connecticut editor, but bluster proved a thin disguise for desperation. “Don’t treat the affair at Fredericksburg as a disaster,” John W. Forney, a staunch Lincoln friend, frantically wired his managing editor in Philadelphia.¹³

Partisan demagogues, one Boston newspaper warned, could turn a temporary setback into an excuse for despair over the Union cause. But the demagogues hardly required assistance. Loud denials that the army was demoralized after withdrawing from Fredericksburg soon flooded the North. What had been lost aside from casualties? one prominent church publication asked, and then coldly added that the North had plenty more young men to send into the ranks. This cruel calculus—which was also offered by Lincoln around this time¹⁴—could still not paper over a defeat, and this same editor actually used the word “disaster” even as he maintained that the “heart of the nation does not waver.” The logic grew even more strained. Advances and retreats occurred in any war, and indeed Burnside’s withdrawal only proved his military prowess. Such a clever maneuver elicited comparisons to Napoleon and even the improbable assertion that Lee had been outfoxed. Renewed calls for an advance on Richmond and denial that the army would soon go into winter quarters signified more fear than hope.¹⁵

The brave front inevitably cracked. Given the high expectations for the campaign, recognition of the reality was a galling, often agonizing exercise. Another Union offensive had failed, a fact that haunted moderate Republicans. The editor of the bellwether Springfield Daily Republican sharply questioned any “senseless palaver about strategy” to conceal the truth but still drew a distinction between temporary “indignation and discouragement” and genuine “alarm” for the nation’s future.¹⁶

Such mincing of words could hardly buttress public morale. In a dispatch composed on the evening of December 13, New York Times correspondent William Swinton reported that whatever anyone chose to call it, Fredericksburg had been a “defeat” and “a black day in the calendar of the Republic.” One Democratic editor observed that even if Burnside advanced again with reinforcements, he would occupy a less favorable position than McClellan had held in June. Given the inflated estimates of Rebel numbers (some 200,000, according to the New York Herald and other papers), Burnside’s tactics seemed even more foolhardy. Newspaper maps, which were often far from accurate, nevertheless showed the strength of the Confederate positions and bolstered such popular perceptions. Shocking descriptions of a battlefield strewn with dead and wounded only added to the gloom. Despondency spread rapidly, especially in cities where anxious crowds gathered around newspaper office bulletin boards.¹⁷

By December 17 even some Republican newspapers were calling the Fredericksburg affair a “disaster.” The Albany Evening Journal, edited by Seward ally Thurlow Weed, bemoaned the “butcheries in which the flower of our youth is sacrificed.” Newspapers muted criticism of Burnside, but Democrats pointedly ridiculed Republican efforts to minimize the catastrophe and began hinting that the real responsibility rested in Washington.¹⁸

Uncertain news had kept even political sophisticates on tenterhooks. In New York George Templeton Strong had eagerly scanned the first newspaper bulletins describing the crossing of Federal forces on December 11 but was not sure whether to interpret the sketchy information as evidence of a setback. Word that “one redoubt” had been taken by the Federals led Elizabeth Blair Lee in Silver Spring, Maryland, to speculate that perhaps this time a Union army had “outwitted” the Rebels, “a great comfort after frequent blunders.” Despite delays in receiving information, civilian opinion in the North likely mirrored Lincoln’s emotional roller coaster: early hopes, growing doubts, and then bitter disappointment. Although wary observers had steeled themselves for another disaster, for a while they, too, accepted the common newspaper fiction that Burnside had only been testing the enemy defenses.¹⁹

War-weary northern civilians had to reckon with another bloody repulse, though some readily declared—with how much assurance is unclear—that the results could have been much worse. Hopes persisted that Burnside might renew the attack, but word of another defeat spread rapidly across the northern states. Had the tide now turned in the Rebels’ favor? A few conservative Democrats and McClellan supporters actually crowed over the debacle; some reportedly smiled at the Republicans’ discomfiture. Yet many citizens simply appeared confused, unable to draw firm conclusions from fragmentary reports, and so went about their business. With the Christmas shopping season in full swing, people were spending money and enjoying amusements despite the tragedy along the Rappahannock. Newspapers allowed the home folks to participate vicariously in campaigns but also aroused deep anxieties and heightened the tensions of ordinary people waiting to hear about their friends and relatives. Thus word about Fredericksburg proved more disconcerting than informative.²⁰

Newspapers helped people maintain ties between home and camp, but many civilians also sought escapes from the seemingly relentless news. Telegraphy and photography brought the war home to people who might have preferred to avert their eyes and ears. False hopes, recurring alarms, and cycles of exaltation and despair all frayed nerves. Depending on one’s perspective, there was always either too much or never enough war news. For their part soldiers doubted that anyone at home really understood the realities of war, though some thought the Fredericksburg disaster might wake people up. Yet even as Burnside’s men inevitably wondered about how their families were reacting to the latest news, they also resented public impatience. A member of the 10th Pennsylvania Reserves wrote a scathing letter to his hometown newspaper sarcastically inquiring what the “On to Richmond, stay at home guards” thought about all the casualties. Men unwilling to shoulder even their fair burden of taxes kept screaming for generals to advance as if soldiers were mere machines that could be thrown into battle without considering the limits of human endurance or the terrible costs.²¹

* * *

Although public pressure in the Confederate camp had a different tenor—especially after Fredericksburg—like Lincoln, Jefferson Davis was feeling the political heat, especially because of the deteriorating situation in the western theater. On December 10 the Confederate president had left Richmond for Chattanooga to visit the faction-riven Army of Tennessee. During his stay with Braxton Bragg’s troops at Murfreesboro, Davis consulted with several generals about strategic and command problems. Back in Chattanooga on December 14, he received a War Department telegram about fighting at Fredericksburg. Anxious for news, he considered returning to Richmond immediately, but soon word of Lee’s great victory arrived. Varina Davis later passed along rumors that Burnside had made a fire-breathing speech to his generals right before the battle and that these same officers had later refused to renew the attacks.²²

Burnside’s crossing of the Rappahannock on December 11 had actually heartened folks in Richmond, where Lee’s own confidence shaped official attitudes and spilled into the streets. Even with the rumble of artillery in the distance, people seemed most worried that the Yankees would avoid a decisive contest. Soon reports of spirited fighting and brave counterattacks counterbalanced the sad news about the deaths of generals Cobb and Gregg. The sight of people strolling in their finery and “speculators” going about their brisk trade offered Kate Mason Rowland a “short oblivion” from worrying about the soldiers. On Sunday morning, December 14, despite fears of renewed fighting, people went to church as usual, and the capital appeared calm.²³

With permission from the War Department, newspaper reporters had gone to Fredericksburg, and even with paper shortages and shrinking dailies placing war news at a premium, dispatches running a column and more began appearing a couple of days after the battle. Soon the Richmond papers were crowing about how the outnumbered Army of Northern Virginia had easily repulsed the enemy. Most accounts adopted a dashing, fearless tone and were short on detail and long on praise for Confederate valor. No one bothered to mention the anxious moments on the Confederate right, though most readers cared little for tactical fine points anyway. What folks longed for was good news, but because of telegraph problems, reports of Lee’s victory traveled slowly beyond Virginia.²⁴

For many civilians, anxiety and prayers for deliverance quickly gave way to thanks for another victory, for which Lee, Jackson, and God Almighty received lavish praise. North Carolina plantation mistress Catherine Edmondston believed that Lee had allowed the Federals to cross the Rappahannock so he could “cut them off in detail.” Word of casualties (including false reports of J. E. B. Stuart killed and A. P. Hill taken prisoner) naturally tempered the rejoicing. “How I wish the war would end,” a sixteen-year-old Florida girl wrote after reports of another battle in Virginia. “It throws a cloud over everything.” Like many northern civilians, southerners had learned not to credit vague accounts of great victories and so eagerly sought detailed confirmation, though news of success brought its own improbable rumors. Had Burnside been killed? Was McClellan back in command? Was the Army of the Potomac in a state of mutiny? Civilians welcomed accounts of their enemies’ despair, including word that the Yankees no longer found Lincoln’s jokes very funny.²⁵

* * *

Still reeling from the news of Burnside’s defeat, Lincoln faced a political firestorm in Washington. A Peace Democrat’s call for the president’s impeachment was easily dismissed, but Republican confidence in the administration, already shaky after recent election losses, was eroding fast. Panic-stricken Ohio congressman William Parker Cutler decided that “God alone can take care of us.” But even the Almighty recently seemed to favor Rebels and Democrats. Angry radicals began calling for a cabinet shake-up as soon as the first bad news from Fredericksburg reached the capital. Nervous moderates acknowledged the political fallout from the battle, and even Seward’s friends pressed for changes. “The President and cabinet stink awfully in the nostrils of the American people,” one conservative New Englander groused.²⁶

Reports that Lincoln seldom consulted most of the cabinet had circulated for months. Both Seward and the president had approached the emancipation question gingerly, a particularly sore point with antislavery zealots. Salmon P. Chase’s unbridled presidential ambitions and indiscreet conversation only enhanced the appearance of an administration divided and adrift. “Common sense, if not common honesty, has fled from the Cabinet,” Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine had lamented shortly after Congress reconvened in early December.²⁷

All the while Seward’s political stock was plummeting. Charges that his influence was wrecking the Republican Party, rumors that he and Weed favored a compromise with the Rebels, and alarm at a resurgent Democracy energized administration critics. It seemed deliciously ironic that a man passed over in 1860 because of an undeserved reputation for radicalism had now become the radical Republicans’ bête noire without having won the trust of party conservatives. No wonder the affable and kindly Seward was starting to look all of his sixty-one years. At the end of November a member of the sharp-eyed Adams clan had described him as “pale, old, and care-worn.” Fredericksburg would add a few more wrinkles to his face and give his enemies fresh political ammunition.²⁸

On the afternoon of December 16 a caucus of Republican senators gathered in a Capitol reception room to discuss the latest military debacle. Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois considered Fredericksburg a political disaster. Minnesota senator Morton S. Wilkinson pointedly blamed Seward’s malign influence for recent reverses, while Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio accused Lincoln of appointing commanders who did not support the government’s policies. It was even suggested that somehow Seward had prevented the Banks expedition from cooperating with Burnside. A no-confidence motion directed against the secretary of state never came to a vote, but no one rose to his defense. Even though the caucus adjourned without taking action, its tone spelled trouble for the president.²⁹

Secretary of State William H. Seward (Library of Congress)

After learning of the caucus from Senator Preston King of New York, Seward penned a resignation letter, perhaps a bit hastily in light of the senators’ hesitation to move forthrightly against him. They were similarly indecisive when they reconvened the next day to discuss various options, including a general resolution calling for a reconstruction of the cabinet. John Sherman of Ohio tartly suggested that the real difficulty lay with the president. Some senators may have argued for Lincoln stepping down, but Trumbull defended his honesty and patriotism. Finally, at Sumner’s suggestion, a milder resolution vaguely calling for “changes” in the cabinet was adopted, and a committee of nine was appointed to call on the president.³⁰

On the afternoon of December 18 Senator Orville Hickman Browning of Illinois, a conservative Republican and longtime confidant, stopped at the Executive Mansion. “They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them,” Lincoln snapped. In the grip of one of his fatalistic moods, he finally remarked, “We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope.” For three hours that evening the senators harangued the president, mostly on Seward’s shortcomings but also on the failings of Democratic generals, with a few bitter comments about the fall elections thrown in for good measure. Lincoln mostly listened, occasionally objected, but promised to consider the senators’ resolutions.³¹

At 7:30 the next morning Lincoln and the cabinet (minus Seward) met with the senators (minus Wade). Lincoln led the delegation into his office and informed them that he had invited the cabinet for a “free and friendly conversation with the committee.” Chase sheepishly conceded that the cabinet had been consulted on important questions, perhaps not as fully as might be desirable, but that there had been unity in administration councils. Fessenden suggested that the president seek the cabinet’s advice but “might act on his own judgment.” The atmosphere grew tense, and at Chase’s urging, the cabinet members retired. Fessenden then pressed Lincoln to accept Seward’s resignation, but the president refused even to ask for the senators’ advice on the matter. The four-hour session finally broke up after midnight.³² The senators’ attempt to dictate to the president had clearly failed, and ironically, the Fredericksburg affair—the original spark for the crisis—had disappeared from the discussion.

Lincoln must have had a fitful night’s sleep; right after breakfast the next morning he sent Secretary of the Navy Welles to talk Seward into withdrawing his resignation. Already Washington buzzed with rumors that the entire cabinet would quit. Still embarrassed, Chase dramatically announced that he had prepared a letter of resignation, but before he could capitalize on this theatrical gesture, Lincoln reached out a long arm to grab the document. “This cuts the Gordian knot,” he exulted; “I see my way clear.” An offer by Stanton to resign was brusquely refused, and an obviously discomfited Chase departed. With these resignations in hand, Lincoln felt free to keep both men in the cabinet and defy the Republican senators.³³ Yet this “resolution” of the crisis—with Lincoln appearing as a political mastermind—hardly ended cabinet divisions or silenced the chorus of criticism in the wake of the Fredericksburg disaster.

Lincoln likely took little comfort in his supposed triumph over the Republican senators. Even the haughty, condescending Sumner had come to “profoundly pity” the president during this agonizing period, but less self-important observers also commented on how bad Lincoln looked. The shock of Fredericksburg and the cabinet imbroglio left the administration reeling. Confusion and alarm if not demoralization spread beyond the capital. One New York editor pointed out the obvious: cabinet changes meant little at this juncture; what the country most needed were heavy blows struck at the rebellion.³⁴

* * *

Unfortunately for the administration, no good news came from abroad either. The possibility of European intervention remained alive. Even though the British cabinet had recently rejected a French mediation proposal, U.S. diplomats nervously awaited the latest war news. In London a report that Burnside had taken Fredericksburg momentarily raised hopes, but by Christmas Day, news of the Army of the Potomac’s defeat had dashed them and dampened holiday spirits. Henry Adams feared “another Antietam, only worse” and began “screwing [his] courage up to face the list of killed and wounded.” His father, Minister Charles Francis Adams Sr., wrote of a “profitless war,” predicted that Burnside was finished, and suspected that both sides had perhaps worn themselves out fighting.³⁵

Extensive reporting and editorial comment by the conservative Times of London presented an especially gloomy picture of U.S. affairs. “Another tremendous disaster has fallen on Federal arms,” the Times commented on December 29. “So great has been the carnage, so complete and undeniable the defeat, that the North appears stunned by the blow.” The Confederacy looked to be on the verge of winning independence. Even in England rumors swirled: McClellan would soon regain command; massive desertions might weaken Federal armies; Lincoln might well retreat on emancipation. Karl Marx raged over Union failures and even lent credence to the canard that Burnside had been forced by the press into attacking Lee. Word of the cabinet crisis confirmed that despair had engulfed the northern states. A New York correspondent for the Times described the soldiers’ demoralization: “Slaughtered in vain at Fredericksburg with as much method as if they had been swine at Cincinnati, they ask one another why they should risk another such contest, without hope of achieving anything by it.” Another reporter called December 13 a “memorable day to the historian of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic.”³⁶

Similarly gloomy reports and urgent requests for the latest information came from Brussels, Rome, and St. Petersburg. Northern diplomats acknowledged their fears but clung to their hopes.³⁷ The news from Fredericksburg dealt another blow to the Union cause, though it hardly created a ground-swell for European intervention. Proposals for mediation, while not entirely dead, had reached their political apogee and were steadily losing support, especially in Great Britain.

Ironically, given how closely the British had recently come to intervention, Confederates now doubted that the Europeans would act. Bitter disappointments, including the failure of the so-called cotton famine to force the politicians’ hand, had greatly frustrated southern diplomats. Even news of the “glorious victory at Fredericksburg,” propagandist Henry Hotze admitted, hardly affected the fainthearted British cabinet. According to an agent of North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, the English government “is too well pleased to see both North & South exhausted to stop the strife.” No loyal Confederate should expect anything from Europeans; only more Fredericksburgs would advance the southern cause. The Confederates appeared to be winning their independence on the battlefield, Minister James Mason believed, but neither Palmerston nor other cautious British politicians yet favored diplomatic recognition.³⁸

Rebel diplomats and Hotze’s propaganda sheet tried to exploit Yankee losses to prompt official recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign and independent nation. But diplomacy had entered an odd phase. On one hand, leading Confederates doubted they would receive any help from England and France but, on the other hand, decided that their fledgling nation needed no such assistance. Only two days before the battle of Fredericksburg, in dispatches to Mason in London and John Slidell in Paris, Secretary of State Judah Benjamin had seemed most concerned about ending southern dependence on northern shipping and establishing direct trade with Europe. By mid-January Benjamin had decided that any large European loan to the Confederacy would have to await the end of the war. What with recent battlefield successes and the fading hopes for European mediation, planning for peace seemed more profitable to Benjamin. He even worried about stipulations against the African slave trade in future commercial agreements.³⁹

Slidell, however, still held out hope for the French. The mercurial Napoleon III nursed imperial designs in Mexico and needed southern cotton. He certainly did not lack incentives for another diplomatic move, given the recent Democratic victories in the northern elections, the controversy over McClellan’s removal, the Fredericksburg disaster, and especially the suffering in the French textile industry. On January 9 the French ministry sent a note to Washington suggesting direct negotiations between the two sides without the formality of an armistice. Seward rebuffed this watered-down mediation scheme, and the British expressed no interest in pushing the idea.⁴⁰

Southerners reacted confidently to what might have been considered bad news. J. E. B. Stuart, who had earlier admitted having “strong hopes of France,” still believed that southern independence must ultimately depend on divine aid and “our own strong armies.” Other Confederates had considered the French more sincere than the British in their approach to the American conflict, and some believed that Napoleon III had virtually recognized southern independence. Edmund Ruffin had predicted that the French would intervene unilaterally to stop the war in America. Rumors of new French and British moves surfaced again in the wake of Fredericksburg.⁴¹ Yet even as the French prepared their January mediation offer, Confederate soldiers and editors decided it did not much matter. “We would be better off to fight the battles out ourselves,” a Virginia artillery officer decided. Only a victorious war could bring lasting peace. The latest diplomatic rumors met with understandable skepticism from southerners who had heard promising news before, only to have their hopes dashed. With little expectation of help from abroad, the keynote became self-reliance. The triumph at Fredericksburg confirmed faith in southern arms and proved the wisdom of abandoning the chimera of European intervention.⁴² There was no need to cower before the potentates of Europe—unreliable friends at best—when General Lee and his men could defeat the Yankee hosts so handily.

The same news and speculation that had spread from the battlefield across the North and to European capitals also rebounded back to the camps. Soldiers eagerly read newspapers for the “latest intelligence” from Washington. Reports of political commotion back home, including the cabinet crisis and the latest diplomatic rumors, also affected army morale. Soldiers dreaded change, especially the unknown, and signs of political disturbances made them uneasy. “The troubles at Washington,” a Twelfth Corps general feared, “are casting a greater gloom over the country than the affairs of the army.” Rumors circulated that Lincoln himself might soon be out and a military dictator appointed in his place.⁴³

Confederates paid equally close attention to affairs in Washington and welcomed reports of division in the North and Yankees devouring their own. Snippets from the northern press made for pleasant reading in winter camps. Accounts of the cabinet crisis became yet more evidence that the attempted subjugation of the southern people was bound to fail and that the war would soon be over. Speculations aside, one point was clear to most Confederates: Lee’s victory at Fredericksburg had created a political crisis among their enemies.⁴⁴

The New York gold market provided the most sensitive barometer of the impact of the battle and the effect of the political tremors in Washington. With news that Burnside had crossed the Rappahannock, gold prices had briefly fallen, but by December 16 they had crept up again as the first discouraging accounts from Fredericksburg reached New York. Greenbacks steadily lost value for the rest of December and the first two months of 1863, while gold prices rose from the low 130s to the high 150s. According to the newspapers the Fredericksburg debacle had forced up gold prices because people assumed that the Treasury would likely print more greenbacks. Foreign investors, having lost faith in the Union’s chances for survival, were also reportedly buying gold. Experts disagreed about whether the combination of Fredericksburg and the cabinet crisis had spooked the markets, but increasing gold prices reflected sagging public confidence. A Baltimore editor forthrightly blamed the administration’s timid military policies for speculation and gold hoarding. After Fredericksburg the value of government bonds dropped even more precipitously than the value of the greenbacks.⁴⁵

Sophisticated Confederates followed the New York financial markets, and so rising gold prices buoyed southern hopes. One War Department official heard that Confederate bonds were selling briskly in New York. Regardless of wishful thinking about a northern economic collapse, the Confederacy suffered from much steeper inflation; consumer prices in the United States had increased only modestly. However, because workers’ wages held steady throughout 1862, even small price hikes eroded incomes and pinched family budgets. As usual, perceptions mattered a great deal, and labor unrest in the cities grew. The macroeconomic picture, however dimly perceived, while not exactly stormy did evince some dark clouds on the horizon. Ballooning Federal expenditures and the burgeoning Union debt became rough indexes of Rebel resistance. Because revenues raised by taxes and bond sales were not keeping up with spending, by the end of 1862 Chase and his Treasury colleagues faced tough choices.⁴⁶

Although clearly secondary to both the military crisis and the Seward affair in attracting public attention, Chase’s financial policies had come under fire. The rapidly expanding money supply naturally touched raw nerves among Democrats, who were habitually given to fears about the conspiratorial manipulation of paper currency and stocks. Editors consistently criticized the administration for supposedly flooding the country with worthless greenbacks.⁴⁷ Yet Chase, with typical immodesty, believed that the New York money men had faith in his policies, and he felt a special obligation to bankers, especially Jay Cooke, and other investors who had promoted and purchased government bonds. In turn, the support of such powerful interests had undoubtedly helped him remain in the cabinet. The treasury secretary favored a uniform system of currency issued by national banks, and even in the midst of the post-Fredericksburg gloom and the cabinet crisis, he was lining up support in Congress and among Republican newspaper editors. But the creation of a national banking system in March 1863 would mean little if the recent string of military reverses continued.⁴⁸

In the era of the telegraph, financial information was so readily transmitted that much of the North was being integrated into a national market, a development that seemed remarkable in hindsight. At the time, military news mattered most to people. The first dispatches from a battlefield could be completely misleading, though fairly reliable reports about Fredericksburg had reached northern newspaper readers within days. Farmers, housewives, grocers, bankers, congressmen, and the president—everybody—could read about the latest disaster for Union arms. The news traveled a bit slower in the Confederacy, but everyone there was just as eager for the latest word. Politicians and investors had precipitated the northern cabinet crisis and the surge in gold prices on the basis of fragmentary reports from the battlefield. Daily dispatches produced a glut of news that, whether trustworthy or not, fostered a sense of constant crisis and sped up the pace and intensity of life at home and in camp.

Modern war, as Clausewitz observed, mobilized the resources of a whole people, and these included thoughts and emotions.⁴⁹ Energy and enthusiasm replaced deliberation; vigor substituted for reflection. Even the literary world got caught up in this whirl. Stunned by word of the carnage along the Rappahannock, Herman Melville hastily scrawled a few lines of verse “for the slain at Fredericksburg,” though the evocation of “patriot ghosts” ascending had such a slapdash quality that he did not bother to publish them in Battle-Pieces after the war. Lesser scribblers added stanzas of maudlin newspaper poetry that were quickly forgotten. Their images of artillery fire, light, and death expressed the immediate dismay and anger but offered nothing of lasting value. Ephemeral Victorian sentimentalism did not make much of an impression on an anxious northern public. It was a truly pressing, nonliterary question posed by poet and editor William Cullen Bryant that haunted Yankee minds: “How long is such intolerable and wicked blundering to continue?”⁵⁰