When Chase told Senator Fessenden there was “a back-stairs influence” controlling the President, he knew Fessenden understood no one else was meant but Seward. That Seward with his cigars, cynicism, wit and nonsense, was the most companionable human being in the Cabinet had no bearing.
The Republican Senators in secret caucus December 15, 1862, discussed a letter written by Seward to Minister Adams six months before. Senator Sumner had taken the letter to Lincoln and asked if he had approved it. Lincoln said he had never seen the letter before. The newspapers got hold of this and raked Seward. The radicals claimed one more proof that Seward was a backstairs influence paralyzing the President’s best intentions. Seward’s offending letter had these words: “It seems as if the extreme advocates of African slavery and its most vehement opponents were acting in concert together to precipitate a servile war—the former by making the most desperate attempts to overthrow the Federal Union, the latter by demanding an edict of universal emancipation as a lawful and necessary, if not, as they say, the only legitimate way of saving the Union.”
Senator Fessenden’s memorandum of the secret caucus noted: “Silence ensued for a few moments, when Mr. Wilkinson [of Minnesota] said that in his opinion the country was ruined and the cause lost . . . The Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, exercised a controlling influence upon the mind of the President. He, Mr. Seward, had never believed in the war, and so long as he remained in the Cabinet nothing but defeat and disaster could be expected.” Ben Wade followed, “particularly censuring the Executive for placing our armies under the command of officers who did not believe in the policy of
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the government and had no sympathy with its purposes.” Senator Collamer found the difficulty in the fact that the President had no Cabinet in the true sense of the word. Fessenden said a duty was upon the Senate in the crisis at hand. It should, however, proceed cautiously and with unanimity or its action would alarm the country and weaken the hands of the Executive.
Browning noted in his diary that “old Ben Wade made a long speech in which he declared that the Senate should go in a body and demand of the President the removal or dismissal of Mr. Seward ... he would never be satisfied until there was a Republican at the head of our armies.”
The next day’s caucus appointed a committee of nine to wait upon the President “and urge upon him changes in conduct and in the Cabinet which shall give the administration unity and vigor.” The secret caucus was not yet over when Senator Preston King hurried to Seward’s house, found his old colleague sitting in the library, and remarked: “I did not stay for the last vote, but just slipped out to tell you, for I thought you ought to know. They were pledging each other to keep the proceedings secret, but I told them I was not going to be bound.”
Seward chewed a cigar and said, “They may do as they please about me, but they shall not put the President in a false position.” He called for pen and paper and wrote to the President: “Sir, I hereby resign the office of Secretary of State, and beg that my resignation be accepted immediately.” Five minutes later King put the note in the hands of Lincoln, who read it, looked up with surprise, and said, “What does this mean?” King told of the day’s events. Later in the evening Lincoln stepped over to Seward’s house, spoke his regrets to Seward, who remarked that it would be a relief to be free from official cares. “Ah, yes, Governor,” said Lincoln, “that will do very well for you, but I am like the starling in Sterne’s story, ‘I can’t get out.’”
Congressman Charles B. Sedgwick, a Syracuse, New York, lawyer wrote to his wife: “I went to the President’s with Thad. Stevens & Conklin to urge him to accept Seward’s resignation. With his usual adroitness & cunning Seward, soon as he had tendered his resignation, began to send in his friends to the President to frighten him into refusing to accept it & I wanted to do what I could to counteract it ... I fear the President needs strengthening . . . I think you had better not show this letter at present.”
Browning wrote of the next evening. “. . . the President . . . asked me if I was at the caucus yesterday. I told him I was and the day before also. Said he ‘What do these men want?’ I answered ‘1 hardly know Mr. President, but they are exceedingly violent towards the administration . . . ’Said he They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them . . . 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.’ I answered ‘Be firm and we will yet save the Country. Do not be driven from your post. You ought to have crushed the ultra, impracticable men last summer . . . ’He then said ‘Why will men believe a lie, an absurd lie, that could not impose upon a child, and cling to it and repeat it in defiance of all evidence to the contrary.’ I understood this to refer to the charges against Mr. Seward.”
The committee of Senators was to call on him at seven that night, Lincoln told Browning—and added, “Since I heard last night of the proceedings of the caucus I have been more distressed than by any event of my life.” The committee came that December night of ’62, Collamer, Wade, Grimes, Fessenden, Trumbull, Sumner, Harris, Pomeroy and Howard. “The President received us with his usual urbanity,” Fessenden noted, though Browning had seen Lincoln only a few minutes earlier wearing a troubled face and saying he was “more distressed” than by any event of his life.
Collamer rose and read his carefully prepared paper. Its main points were that the war for the Union must go on; the President should employ the combined wisdom and deliberation of his Cabinet members, who in turn should be unwaveringly for the war; it was unwise and unsafe to commit military operations to anyone not a cordial believer and supporter of the war as patriotic and just, rendered necessary by “a causeless and atrocious rebellion.”
Ben Wade stood up to say the war had been left in the hands of men who had no sympathy with it or with the cause. Grimes and Howard rose to say confidence in Seward was gone. Fessenden began with saying the Senate believed in the patriotism and integrity of the President, disclaiming any wish to dictate to him as to his Cabinet. He dwelt on the public belief that the Secretary of State was not in accord with a majority of the Cabinet. Again, in the conduct of the war almost every officer known as an antislavery man had been disgraced. The Democrats were using General McClellan for party purposes.
Sumner rose to say that Seward in official correspondence had made statements offensively disrespectful to Congress, and had written dispatches the President could not have seen or assented to. The President replied that it was Seward’s habit to read the dispatches to him before they were sent, but they were not usually submitted to a Cabinet meeting. He did not recollect the letter to which Sumner referred.
“Some three hours were spent in conversation with the President,” Fessenden noted, “but no definite action was discussed. The President said he would carefully examine and consider the paper submitted, expressed his satisfaction with the tone and temper of the committee, and we left him in
apparently cheerful spirits, and so far as we could judge, pleased with the interview.”
The actions against Seward had now taken three days. Tuesday and Wednesday the Republican Senators had caucused. Thursday their committee had organized and had gone to Lincoln for their evening interview. Lincoln called a Cabinet meeting for half-past ten Friday morning, December 19. All the members came except Seward.
Welles wrote in his diary, “The President says the evening was spent in a pretty free and animated conversation. No opposition was manifested towards any other member of the Cabinet than Mr. Seward . . . Him they charged, if not with infidelity, with indifference, with want of earnestness in the War . . . with too great ascendency and control of the President.”
One of Lincoln’s secretaries noted his telling the Cabinet of the Senate committee members: “While they seemed to believe in my honesty, they also appeared to think that when I had in me any good purpose or intention Seward contrived to suck it out of me unperceived.” The President wished the Cabinet to know that he had told the committee he was shocked and grieved at “this movement.”
After various remarks from Cabinet members, the President requested that the Cabinet should, with him, meet the committee of Senators. “This,” noted Welles, “did not receive the approval of Mr. Chase, who said he had no knowledge whatever of the movement, or the resignation, until since he had entered the room.” The President named half-past seven that evening for the interview.
Rumors were spreading that Seward had resigned. “On Thursday morning,” wrote Fessenden, “I received information from a sure quarter that this rumor was well founded, but the fact was not generally known. The President, my informant stated, was much troubled about it.” Wrote Browning, “. . . in the course of the afternoon I met him [the President] between the White House and the War Department, and remarked to him that I had heard that Mr. Seward had resigned, and asked him if it was so. He replied that he did not want that talked about at present, as he was trying to keep things along. This was all that passed. He can’t 'keep them along.’ The cabinet will go to pieces.” Visitors at his house saw Seward packing up books and papers preparing to go home to Auburn, New York.
When the committee of Senators came to the White House that Friday night they did not know that Lincoln had arranged for them to meet the Cabinet, to sit face to face in a three-cornered session. The President told them he had invited the Cabinet, with the exception of Seward, to meet the committee for a free and friendly conversation in which all, including the
President, should be on equal terms. He wished to know if the committee had any objection to talking over matters with the Cabinet. “Having had no opportunity for consultation, the committee had no objection,” noted Fessenden.
The President opened by admitting that Cabinet meetings had not been very regular, excusing that fact for want of time. He believed most questions of importance had received reasonable consideration, was not aware of any divisions or want of unity. Decisions, so far as he knew, had general support after they were made. Seward, he believed, had been earnest in prosecution of the war, had not improperly interfered, had generally read to him the official correspondence, had sometimes consulted with Mr. Chase. The President then called on members of the Cabinet to say whether there had been any want of unity or of sufficient consultation.
Secretary Chase now protested earnestly, a little hotly, that he certainly would not have come to the meeting if he had known he was going to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate. He went on to say that questions of importance had generally been considered by the Cabinet, though perhaps not as fully as might be desired, that there had been no want of unity in the Cabinet but a general acquiescence on public measures; no member opposed a measure once decided on.
Fessenden was listening; Chase was not now saying in the three-cornered conference what he had been saying in private chats with Senators nor what he had been writing in letters. So Fessenden rose to repeat what he had two nights before told the President, that the Senators came with a desire to offer friendly advice and not to dictate to the President. Collamer said united counsels were needed. Grimes said again he had lost confidence in Seward. Sumner dragged out Seward’s foreign correspondence again. Trumbull pointed to the President’s own admissions that important questions were decided without full consideration. Bates cited the Constitution to show that the President need not consult his Cabinet unless he pleased. More talk followed. The hours were passing. “The President made several speeches in the course of the evening,” wrote Fessenden, “and related several anecdotes, most of which I had heard before.”
After hours of threshing over the issues and getting better acquainted, the President asked the Senators to give him their opinions as to whether Seward ought to leave the Cabinet. Collamer said he did not know how his constituents felt and he would not go beyond the paper he had handed the President. Grimes, Trumbull, Sumner, said Seward should go. Harris said No, that Seward’s removal would be a calamity to the Republican party of New York. Pomeroy said he had once studied law in Seward’s office but his
confidence in Seward was gone. Howard said he had not spoken during the evening and would not. Chase suggested, “The members of the Cabinet had better withdraw.” They did so. It was midnight. Senators Collamer and Harris took their hats and also went away. Fessenden then noted this conversation:
FESSENDEN: You have asked my opinion about Seward’s removal. There is a current rumor that Mr. Seward has already resigned. If so, our opinions are of no consequence on that point.
THE PRESIDENT: I thought I told you last evening that Mr. Seward had tendered his resignation. I have it in my pocket, but have not yet made it public or accepted it.
FESSENDEN: Then, sir, the question seems to be whether Mr. Seward shall be requested to withdraw his resignation.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
The Senators left the White House. One of them, Trumbull, turned before going out, walked rapidly back to the President, and told him rather hotly that the Secretary of the Treasury had talked in a different tone the last time they had spoken. Fessenden wrote in his memorandum as to this Friday evening conversation: “It struck me that Mr. Chase seemed to have very much modified his opinions, often previously expressed to me, as to Mr. Seward’s influence on the mind of the President and the want of unity in the Cabinet.”
Browning asked Senator Collamer how Secretary Chase could venture to tell the committee that the Cabinet got along fairly well when he had been saying the opposite to the Senators privately. “He lied,” answered Collamer.
It was one o’clock Saturday morning. The session had lasted five and a half hours. “It was observed by the Senators,” wrote Fessenden, “that the President did not appear to be in so good spirits as when we left him on the preceding evening, and the opinion was expressed that he would make no change in his Cabinet. He said he had reason to fear a general smash-up’ if Mr. Seward was removed.”
Lincoln and Welles agreed next morning that while Seward’s resignation should not be accepted by the President, neither should Seward get up on his dignity and press for immediate acceptance. Welles said he would go over and see Seward. Lincoln “earnestly” desired him to do so. Lincoln had a messenger sent to notify Chase that the President wished to see him.
Seward was pleased at Welles’ report of his interview with the President. He said that “if the President and country required of him any duty in this emergency he did not feel at liberty to refuse it . . .” Back at the White House, Welles met Chase and Stanton in the President’s office. Welles told them he was decidedly against accepting Seward’s resignation. Neither would give a direct answer. The President came in, asked Welles if he “had seen the man.”
Welles said Yes and the man was agreed. The President turned to Chase. “I sent for you, for this matter is giving me great trouble.”
Chase said he had been painfully affected by the meeting last evening, which was a total surprise to him. Then after some vague remarks he told the President he had written his resignation as Secretary of the Treasury. “Where is it?” asked Lincoln, his eyes lighting up. “I brought it with me,” said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket. “I wrote it this morning.” “Let me have it, said the President, reaching his long arm and fingers toward Chase, who held on to the paper and seemed to have something further to say before giving up the document. But the President was eager, did not notice Chase, took the letter, broke the seal and read it.
“This,” said Lincoln, holding up the letter toward Welles with a triumphal laugh, “cuts the Gordian knot.” His face of worry had changed to satisfaction. “I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty,” he added as he turned on his chair. “I see my way clear.”
Stanton was sitting with Chase, facing the fireplace. Stanton rose to say: “Mr. President, I informed you day before yesterday that I was ready to tender you my resignation. I wish you, sir, to consider my resignation at this time in your possession.” “You may go to your Department,” said Lincoln. “I don’t want yours. This,” holding out Chase’s letter, “is all I want; this relieves me; my way is clear; the trouble is ended. I will detain neither of you longer.” All three left the room, and Lincoln was alone.
When Senator Harris called soon after, Lincoln was beaming and cheerful. “Yes, Judge, I can ride on now, I’ve got a pumpkin in each end of my bag.” (When farmers rode horseback to market two pumpkins in the bag thrown over the horse made a balanced load.) As the anecdote reached Senator Fessenden, the President had said: “Now I have the biggest half of the hog. I shall accept neither resignation.”
The President sent polite notes to Seward and Chase that he could not let them quit and must ask them to take up again their duties. Seward replied that he had “cheerfully resumed” his functions. Chase held off. “I will sleep on it.” Something rankled in Chase’s bosom. He was afraid Lincoln had a sinister cunning that had outguessed and outwitted him. His pride was hurt. He wrote to the President: “Will you allow me to say that something you said or looked, when I handed you my resignation this morning, made on my mind the impression that having received the resignations both of Governor Seward and myself, you felt that you could relieve yourself from trouble by declining to accept either, and that this feeling was one of gratification?” However, after a Sunday of deep thinking Chase decided he would go back to his old place.
The Republican Senators caucused Monday, December 22, and heard the report of their committee, whose duty was over. Browning, however, felt called on to go to the President that night and suggest a new Cabinet be formed. The President said he believed he would rather try to get along with the Cabinet he had than try a new one.
Lincoln said later: “If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward the thing would all have slumped over one way, and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase gave in his resignation I saw that the game was in my hands, and I put it through.”
Fessenden ended a letter to his family: “Yet such is the anomalous character of the President that no one can tell what a day may bring forth. ” Uneven, irregular, rather baffling, so Fessenden found the President; he could not read what was coming next from Lincoln, and it troubled him. Fessenden had clean hands and a rare sense of justice in politics, owning himself with a decency, with a spotless record. Yet the evils of gossip, greed, jealousy and personal ambition, amid furious and rushing events, had created various unfavorable impressions of the President. Fessenden had his and wrote to John Murray Forbes, who wanted to see Fessenden in the Cabinet: “No friend of mine should ever wish to see me there,” for in the Cabinet no man could honestly be himself because of the interference of the President, and “You cannot change the President’s character or conduct, unfortunately; he remained long enough at Springfield, surrounded by toadies and office-seekers, to persuade himself that he was specially chosen by the Almighty for this crisis, and well chosen. This conceit has never yet been beaten out of him . .
Forbes began his letter: “I must differ from you about the President. He has been in the hands of a vacillating, undecided man like Seward!”
Seward and Chase had a daily grasp of special and shifting situations. In diplomatic matters the President often told callers, “You’ll have to see Seward about that,” or on a financial detail, “That is for Chase to say—you go over and see him.” Chase sat daily in conference on money, cash available, credit balances, the war cost of $2,000,000 a day. Chase was reporting in December ’62 that the Government would have to borrow $600,000,000 the next year. By a single act of Congress that year, wherein the views of Chase were met, the “greenbacks” came, paper money to the amount of $150,000,000. Gold was hoarded, sent into hiding by paper money. The same act of Congress authorized a $500,000,000 bond issue, the Government to sell to the people, investors, banks, that amount of its promises to pay. Lincoln did not pretend grasp of it; long ago he had said he had “no money sense.”
Armies of men marching in mud and sleeping on frozen ground, fighting bloody pitched battles, waited for back pay. Joseph Medill wrote: “Money cannot be supplied much longer to a beaten, demoralized and homesick army. Sometimes I think that nothing is left now but to fight for a boundary.” Enigmas of cash and credit, of how paper money chases coin into hiding places, of bond issues to coax money out of hiding places and strongboxes, of the wish for money worth the same next week as this week—under these both Lincoln and Chase writhed.
The future was in bigger debt figures. Spaulding in the House said that $1,000,000,000 at least must be borrowed in the next 18 months. Expenses of the Government reached $2,500,000 a day, Sundays included. Government income from customs tariff, taxes and elsewhere was not over $600,000 a day, which left $1,900,000 to be pried loose from the banks and from the people by manipulation of bonds, notes, appeals to patriotic duty.
Lincoln met more with Seward than with Chase. His advice to Chase on how to raise money for the war was not needed by Chase; it was a special field, with no history of money ever having been written and no unquestionable handbook of finance supplied for such amateurs as Lincoln. His advice to Seward on problems of state was more needed. They were affairs seething and warm in human relationships. Here, working with Seward, Lincoln more often knew precisely what he was doing.
Seward informed him of how the Spanish, British and French governments were joining hands to collect money due from Mexico; so they gave diplomatic explanations. They announced they were not seeking new territory; they asked the United States to join their scheme. Slowly Seward and Lincoln had seen it become reasonably clear that Emperor Napoleon III of France was planning to beat the armies of Mexico, overthrow their republican government, and set up a royal throne, whereon would sit the Archduke Maximilian of Austria.
Throughout many conversations Seward made clear the view of the President that he did not question the right of the three European powers to join hands and seek redress of their grievances, even to war in Mexico, also that the President felt satisfaction in the assurance given by the powers that they would not seek to impair the right of the Mexican people to choose and freely to constitute the form of their government.
Intervention in America was a leading topic of diplomatic conversations in Europe. Leaders in England and France who favored recognition of the Confederacy found Russia a hindrance. Late in ’62 a personal letter from President Lincoln was transmitted to the Russian Foreign Minister, Gorchakov, at St. Petersburg, by Acting American Minister Bayard Taylor.
Their conversation was published by order of Congress, though Lincoln’s letter to Gorchakov was not made known.
“Russia alone has stood by you from the first, and will continue to stand by you,” said Gorchakov. “Proposals will be made to Russia to join in some plan of interference. She will refuse any invitation of the kind. You may rely upon it, she will not change.” From none of the Great Powers of Europe had the United States been able to win so positive a declaration. In this decision Russia was aligning herself against England and France, who had fought her so recently in the war in the Crimea. Also Russia had no such textile industries as England and France, suffering from cotton famine.
Across Europe ran two extremes of opinion, with many moderate views intermingled. The liberal John Bright of England favored a united country in America, sent a letter to the Chamber of Commerce of New York. Bright wished it known that “there is no other country in which men have been so free and so prosperous as in yours, and that there is no other political constitution now in existence, in the preservation of which the human race is so deeply interested.” The conservative London Dispatch phrased its view: “The real motives of the civil war are the continuance of the power of the North to tax the industry of the South, and the consolidation of a huge confederation to sweep every other power from the American continent, to enter into the politics of Europe with a Republican propaganda, and to bully the world.”
An international world opinion favoring the North was Seward’s steady objective. Often he brought to Lincoln’s desk designs and schemes for approval on matters of broad policy. The President and his State Minister spent more and more time together, grew in respect and affection. “The President is the best of us,” Seward had written to his wife. Often on Sunday mornings they had long talks, came nearer being cronies than any other two of the Cabinet.
Congress passed an act making West Virginia a state, seceding her from Virginia. Blair, Bates and Welles were against the act. Seward, Chase, Stanton, favored it, recommended that the President sign the bill. He did so, urging in a written opinion that her brave and good men regarded her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death. They had been true to the Union through severe trials. “We have so acted as to justify their hopes; and we can not fully retain their confidence, and co-operation if we seem to break faith with them.”
Then Lincoln presented the quixotic phase of the matter. “The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent,” he wrote. “But a measure made expedient by a war, is no precedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of
West-Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the constitution, and secession in favor of the constitution.” He did not like to do it but with a wry face he signed the bill.
From month to month Lincoln had met with Seward, Welles, the Cabinet and eminent attorneys in international law on the subject of mails captured on blockade-runners and the question whether such mails should be opened and used as evidence or be forwarded without opening. Welles contended the mails should be held and opened by the prize courr which disposed of the captured ships and cargoes. Seward, however, had issued a circular of instructions to the State Department that captured mails should be given up, that in effect the State Department yielded any rights to examine and break the seals of mailbags and parcels.
“By special direction of the President, unusual courtesy and concession were made to neutrals,” wrote Welles in a long letter to Seward at a time when the British Minister set up the claim that naval officers in the seizure of mails on the ship Peterhojf had violated U.S. Government instructions. The final action in the Peterhojf c ase came when the mails were given up by a U.S. district attorney who had applied to the prize court under direction of the Secretary of State, approved by the President. Seward, wrote Welles, having in a weak moment conceded an incontestable national right, “sought to extricate himself, not by retracing his steps, but by involving the President . .
Welles noted of Sumner’s meeting with the President: . . He [the
President] was confident we should have war with England if we presumed to open their mail bags, or break their seals or locks. They would not submit to it, and we were in no condition to plunge into a foreign war on a subject of so little importance ... Of this idea of a war with England, Sumner could not dispossess him by argument, or by showing its absurdity. Whether it was real or affected ignorance, Sumner was not satisfied.”
The President kept pressing his Navy Secretary and was “extremely anxious” to get at any specific cases of captured mail that had been searched. “I told him,” noted Welles, “I remembered no specific mention.” Perhaps rhe Federal district attorneys might have information. “The President said he would frame a letter to the district attorneys, and in the afternoon he brought in a form to be sent to the attorneys in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.”
Then other affairs arose and in their stride swept away the Cabinet disputes over whether Lincoln and Seward were yielding a legal right to Great Britain and if so, who was the loser by it.
Up on the border line of the wilderness settlements of the pioneers in Minnesota, five white people were murdered by Sioux red men. Federal Government agents had predicted the clash for many years because of seizures of Indian lands by white men, because of slow payment of promised funds to Indian tribes, and the trickery of white traders against individual Indians. Little Crow led the Sioux along the Minnesota River valley; they burned houses, violated women, slaughtered 490 whites, including women and children.
General Pope led his horsemen in pursuit, defeated Little Crow in battle. A military court put the Indians on trial, and partly in obedience to demands for revenge that swept the whole Northwest, the court sentenced 303 to be hanged.
Lincoln studied the record of the trial, and delayed. One by one, in his own handwriting, Lincoln listed those he would hang, 38 of them. The others, he wrote, would be held till further orders, “taking care that they neither escape, nor are subjected to any unlawful violence.” On December 26, at Mankato, Minnesota, the 38 were hanged.
The President had insisted the trial record should “indicate the more guilty and influential of the culprits.” In a message to Congress he pointed out that it was not definitely known who had fomented the Minnesota outbreak. “Suspicions, which may be unjust, need not to be stated.” The President had learned, however, that Federal handling of Indians was not what it should be. He suggested a remodeling of the system and policy of treating Indians.
Lincoln took time to write a long letter to Miss Fanny McCullough at Bloomington, Illinois, beginning: “It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common.” He was an older man telling her that time would teach her, the years would help. “In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it.” She could not realize it now, but sometime she would be happy again. “The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.”
Many times Lincoln had met and talked with her father, a Black Hawk War veteran, a Republican party man, circuit clerk and then sheriff of McLean County—a man who with one eye of no use and his left arm gone had at 51 helped organize the 4th Illinois Cavalry, commanding it in battles under Grant till far down in Mississippi he fell bullet-riddled, having shouted his last command.
Fanny McCullough could remember when she was a little girl and Lincoln used to hold her and her sister Nanny on his knees, telling their father, “These girls are not too old to be kissed.”
On New Year’s Eve, 1862, telegrams to the War Department reported one of the bloodiest battles of the war opening at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, along Stone’s River, the Union army of Rosecrans fighting the Confederates under Bragg. The Confederates drove the right wing of the Union army back two miles, and Bragg sent a telegram of victory to Richmond on New Year’s Eve: “God has given us a happy New Year.” Lincoln went to bed that night with news of men marching in rain, sleeping on wet ground, fighting through mud, the South having made the gains of the day. Two days more of maneuvering and grappling went on between 41,000 under Rosecrans and 34,000 under Bragg. They fought in the rain and fog of raw winter days of short twilights. On the second day willing horses and cursing drivers couldn’t get cannon moved over the soaked and slippery ground. One out of four men on the field was shot down, killed, wounded or taken prisoner; the Union army lost 12,906, the Confederates 11,739. Bragg retreated south.
And this huggermugger of smoke and steel, flame and blood, in Tennessee meant to the President far off in the White House one episode. The Union men of Tennessee would have easier going. The manpower of the South was cut down by so many figures. The war would never be ended by any one event, any single battle; the war might go on 20 or 30 years, ran the warning of Lincoln, Sherman and others.
Lincoln telegraphed Rosecrans: “God bless you, and all with you! Please tender to all, and accept for yourself, the Nation’s gratitude for yours, and their, skill, endurance, and dauntless courage.”
CHAPTER XIII