• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •

THE MIDDLE WAR YEARS

In the fall of 1862, the President made a visit to the Army of the Potomac. He wanted to see this army and to talk personally with its general. McClellan had won at Antietam with a terrible cost in men, but he was not following up this advantage. Perhaps the general was better fitted for organizing than for fighting. Alas! A war is not won by soldiers sitting in a well-run camp.

Lincoln made his inspection on horseback. He was an easy rider and rode more gracefully than he walked. He had the conference with McClellan, who was determined to follow his own plans.

President Lincoln and General McClellan.

“Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?” Lincoln asked him. But McClellan had excuses for postponing battle.

So, after he returned to Washington, the President gave McClellan other work and appointed Major General Burnside in charge of the Army of the Potomac. Now, he hoped, he would get action.

But Burnside disappointed his chief. After one battle Lincoln replaced him with “Fighting Joe” Hooker, and in the spring of ’63 went again to visit the army.

This time Mrs. Lincoln and Tad went with the President. Mrs. Lincoln was not well, and Lincoln thought this trip would divert her. Tad loved it, and the men liked him. They gave him a horse, and an orderly rode with him. At the official review Tad galloped alongside the cavalry, his gray cloak flying, his eyes sparkling.

After the review the President visited with men in the hospital tents. He strolled from cot to cot, taking time to talk with each man.

“Did you hear what’s said about the review,” a whisper followed the tall visitor. “The President touched his hat to the officers, correctly, but he took it clear off to the men!”

“There’s a man for me!” men said, and they cheered him when he left for headquarters.

This visit encouraged the President. Mighty guns, great cavalry troops, thousands of trained men should bring the war to an end soon. But Hooker was overconfident, Lincoln thought. The Commander in Chief was still uneasy about his general.

Other important matters were on his mind, too. He sponsored many changes that were for the country’s welfare—changes that people engrossed in war hardly noticed or credited to him.

He proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day of national Thanksgiving, and through the Treasury Department, he had the words, “In God We Trust,” put on coins. These words were first used on a two-cent piece and then on many coins. (The first time the phrase was used on a penny was the “Lincoln Penny” of 1909.)

Perhaps Lincoln remembered the confusion in postage rates back in New Salem when he signed the order for a uniform rate of postage in the United States. In July, 1863, free delivery of mail in forty-nine cities was begun. During the war years the first post-office cars were used on railroads and the first railway labor union was organized.

The Civil War was the first “railroad war” and army men were astonished to find they could not use all the roads. Each different railroad company had its own width of track, and cars could not be switched from one road to the other. Early railroad builders had adopted George Stephenson’s English gauge, with the tracks four feet and eight and a half inches apart. Newer roads chose other widths, independent of each other, four feet to five feet wide.

When the Union Pacific Railroad was charted in 1862, the company asked Mr. Lincoln to choose a point where the line should begin in Nebraska (he picked Omaha) and to select a gauge. In the midst of war duties he took time to study gauges and decided on the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch width. Other railroads noticing that he gave the gauge so much attention, adopted the width he selected; and so, for the first time, cars and engines could be switched from road to road and transcontinental travel became possible.

The opening up of the West turned people’s thinking to agriculture and a Department of Agriculture was started in Lincoln’s second year of office.

Foreign affairs were not neglected either. The President recognized the governments of Haiti and Liberia and developed the friendship with Russia which made it possible for the United States to buy Alaska five years later.

He took time to write a tactful letter to the King of Siam. The King had sent gifts of elephants’ tusks and pictures of himself and his daughter and had offered to send pairs of elephants for setting up herds in the United States. The intent was appreciated and Lincoln’s refusal must surely be the most diplomatic “No!” ever written. These are, in part, his words:

“I appreciate most highly your Majesty’s tender of good offices. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land as well as on the water has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce… .”

Inventors of war weapons heard that the President would receive and study new ideas; so many came to the White House. Some of their ideas and claims were ridiculous. But the President had kindly ways of managing them.

One man came away chuckling. “You should hear the riddle the President told me,” he remarked to a friend.

“ ‘Suppose I call a sheep’s tail a leg,’ he said to me; ‘then how many legs has a sheep?’

“ ‘Five,’ I said.

“ ‘Not so,’ the President corrected. ‘A sheep has four legs. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.’ You have to really show that man—telling isn’t enough.”

Time spent with inventors got results. Lincoln approved experimental use of several kinds of weapons. Use of balloons for observation was begun in the summer of 1861. He ordered three “ironclads” after he saw the plans for Ericsson’s Monitor, a new type of ship with an iron-covered hull.

There were other “firsts” too. The first draft law was passed, the first Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded, and for the first time soldiers on duty away from home were allowed to vote. Both military police and army medical care were started.

The President must have rejoiced when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was repealed and when new laws opening free homestead lands and setting up a national banking system settled business problems that were debated in his youth.

And all the time Lincoln continued his search for competent generals. The South had a brilliant leader in the West Point–trained General Robert E. Lee; had the North no one his equal? Daily the President had to hear bitter criticism of his conduct of the war—all the harder to bear because he was earnestly trying to win in the shortest possible time. Lincoln well knew that until the war was won he could not announce his cherished plans for strengthening the Union. In his despair he sometimes wondered whether the form of government undertaken in the United States was a noble dream for which the world was not yet ready.

At night the President walked the floor of the silent White House. The misery of thousands was his own grief, for since Willie’s death he knew what it was to see a tall son die. Perhaps Willie would be alive today if his father had stayed in Springfield! The tenderhearted “Abe” Lincoln who could not shoot wild turkeys must now send thousands of fine men to battle. It seemed sometimes that he could not endure to stand by and see soldiers court-martialed and shot for sleeping at post of duty when they were exhausted—yet he knew discipline was necessary. At times the President seemed overwhelmed by the misery of civil war.

Often his pacing ended on his knees, begging God for help and guidance. God seemed nearer, somehow, since Willie was gone. Willie’s lonely father prayed to find God’s way and for the strength to follow it. And so long nights passed and each day the problems of war mounted.

War news was usually about movements in the East. People talked about “taking Richmond” and “defending Washington.” Few noticed what the Navy was doing on the Mississippi River or complained to the President that no general had taken that Gibraltar of the river, the fort at Vicksburg, Mississippi. As for Ulysses S. Grant, a West Point graduate, people hardly noticed when he re-entered the army and was sent to serve in the midwest. But Grant was not seeking fame for himself. He was busy planning how to take Vicksburg. It would not easily be won.

In the spring of 1863, after an uncomfortable, disappointing winter of effort that ended in failure, Grant made a bold plan. With his men he crossed the river from the west and camped south of Vicksburg. At the same time the United States Navy ran the gauntlet of river forts to join him. There, in June, Grant boldly besieged the city. His plans were so well laid and carried out that on July 4th Vicksburg surrendered and on the 9th a Federal steamboat traveled from St. Louis to New Orleans without interference.

But news of this success was slow in reaching the East because a messenger had to take it 600 twisting miles by steamboat to Cairo before it could be put on the wires!

During the weeks when Grant was quietly maneuvering near Vicksburg, General Hooker of the Army of the Potomac suffered a bitter defeat at Chancellorsville. Lee’s Confederate army, hoping now to gain a quick victory, moved north—perhaps to raid the rich Shenandoah Valley, perhaps to attack Washington. Hooker cut across to defend the capital. Spies from both armies were cut off and neither knew, at that critical end of June, just where the opposing army was located.

In this crisis, Hooker was refused more troops and resigned his command. The President, smarting under criticism of Hooker’s recent defeat, ordered George Meade, an officer on Hooker’s staff, to take his place.

Meade was a good army man, safe rather than brilliant, but he had never planned a battle. Sixty regiments of his army had left for home, their enlistment time ended. In their place, he had thousands of new, untrained recruits. Lee’s army was thought to be near, but Meade, in desperation, wondered where?

Four days after Meade got his orders, a few of his men literally stumbled onto Lee’s army and a major battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, began. The fierce fighting lasted three days; the slaughter was shocking. On the evening of July 4th, Lee gathered what little was left of his army and slipped away. He knew that hope for victory that summer was ended. Efforts to make peace with a recognition of the Confederacy would be futile.

Meade and the remnant of his army were too exhausted to realize at once that they had won a great victory.

These two major victories, coming actually on the same day, effectively turned the tide of war. Nearly two years were to pass before the war ended, but after July 4, 1863, there was little question as to which army would ultimately win.

Weeks after that fateful July day, someone suggested that the government buy land at Gettysburg for a national cemetery. Popular sentiment approved. An October day was set for the dedication and the greatest living orator, Honorable Edward Everett, was asked to make the address. He replied that he needed time to prepare his speech; so the date was changed to November.

No one suggested that the President speak. The committee wanted an orator who could do justice to this solemn occasion. As an afterthought someone asked Mr. Lincoln to say a few words. “Just say something to set apart formally these grounds to their sacred use,” the President was told.

Abraham Lincoln accepted and began turning over in his mind what he should say. It must be short—was this the time and place to speak his thoughts about government and the Union? He began to set on paper words to express his exact meaning.

Late in the evening of November 17th, William Slade, the steward at the White House, came to the President’s study to see if anything was needed before he went off duty. The steward was a free black man from Virginia. His business was buying food used in the White House, catering for parties, and such work. The President liked him and trusted him; Slade had become Mr. Lincoln’s confidential messenger, a kind of valet and personal friend. Lincoln valued Slade as Mrs. Lincoln cherished the friendship of Mrs. Keckley. Now he wanted Slade’s help.

“Listen to this, William,” Mr. Lincoln said. “See how you think it sounds.” He read aloud the talk he had written for the dedication.

“I like it, Mr. President,” Slade said. “It’s good.”

Reassured Lincoln went to bed.

The next day the President and a large party went from Washington to Gettysburg by special train. In his pocket he had the paper he had read to William Slade. On the train he took it out to make a slight change. Men nearby saw him writing and thought that he had carelessly left writing his speech until this last minute.

On the 19th the parade formed and marched to the cemetery. Notables sat on a wooden platform and grew bored during the long, long prayer and Everett’s two-hour address. When the President was introduced he seemed just one speaker too many.

He stepped forward, his kindly eyes on the cold, weary people. His words were spoken in slow, clear tones, easy to follow:

“Four score 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 the 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 dedicated here to the great task remaining before us—that from those 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 those 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.”

The echo of his last word faded. There was little applause. As he turned to his seat Lincoln felt that his speech had failed to express his ideals to the people. The crowd broke up and hurried home.

When people read the speech in the newspapers the next day they thrilled with Lincoln’s noble conception of the purpose of the war. They gained a truer understanding of his high hope for the Union. But it was for later generations to realize that the Gettysburg Address was a literary masterpiece. The world had found in it inspiration to strive for the ideal of government Abraham Lincoln had so eloquently expressed.