You will proceed forthwith and obtain, if possible, a conference for peace with Hon. Jefferson Davis, or any person by him authorized for that purpose.
You will address him in entirely respectful terms, at all events, and in any that may be indispensable to secure the conference.
At said conference you will propose, on behalf this government, that upon the restoration of the Union and the national authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful modes. If this be accepted hostilities to cease at once.
If it be not accepted, you will then request to be informed what terms, if any embracing the restoration of the Union, would be accepted. If any such be presented you in answer, you will forthwith report the same to this government, and await further instructions.
If the presentation of any terms embracing the restoration of the Union be declined, you will then request to be informed what terms of peace would be accepted; and on receiving any answer, report the same to this government, and await further instructions.
As Nicolay wrote in his private notebook, the President “and the stronger half of the Cabinet, Seward, Stanton, and Fessenden,” showed Raymond that they had thoroughly considered and discussed his proposals of a peace proffer. “He very readily concurred with them in the opinion that to follow his plan of sending a commission to Richmond would be worse than losing the Presidential contest—it would be ignominiously surrendering it in advance. Nevertheless the visit of himself and committee here did great good. They found the President and cabinet much better informed than themselves, and went home encouraged and cheered.” And into files to which Greeley and Bennet had no access went the unused, unsent peace proffer.
Returning to New York, Raymond threw amazement into the Republican anti-Lincoln ranks with his positive statements in the Times that peace negotiation stories had no bottom; “the President stands firm against every solicitation to postpone the draft”; and as to rumors of this and that about the Government, “You may rest assured ... its sole and undivided purpose is to prosecute the war until the rebellion is quelled.”
And perhaps it was the mercurial Bennett himself who in the Herald, the day after Raymond’s return, mocked and gabbed and jibed: “The Republican leaders may have their personal quarrels, or their shoddy quarrels, or their nigger quarrels with Old Abe; but he has the whiphand of them, and they will soon be bobbing back into the Republican fold, like sheep who have gone astray . . .
“Whatever they say now, we venture to predict that Wade and his tail; and Bryant and his tail; and Wendell Phillips and his tail; and Weed, Barney, Chase and their tails; and Winter Davis, Raymond, Opdyke and Forney who have no tails; will all make tracks for Old Abe’s plantation, and soon will be found crowing and blowing, and vowing and writing, and swearing and stumping the state on his side, declaring that he and he alone, is the hope of the nation, the bugaboo of Jeff Davis, the first of Conservatives, the best of Abolitionists, the purest of patriots, the most gullible of mankind, the easiest President to manage, and the person especially predestined and foreordained by Providence to carry on the war, free the niggers, and give all the faithful a fair share of the spoils. The spectacle will be ridiculous; but it is inevitable.”
John Eaton, with a pass signed by the President was authorized to “visit Gen. Grant at City Point, Va.” Grant held strictly to army matters in the talk of the two men that ran past midnight. Eaton was interested, but was trying to find some entering wedge on political affairs. Finally he mentioned to Grant a conversation on a railroad train with army men who had asked Eaton if he thought Grant could be induced to run as a citizen’s candidate for President. “The question is,” said Eaton to Grant, “not whether you wish to
run, but whether you could be compelled to run in answer to the demand of the people for a candidate who should save the Union.
Grant’s instant reply amazed Eaton. The General brought his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair, “They can’t do it! They can’t compel me to do it.” “Have you said this to the President?” “No, I have not thought it worth while to assure the President of my opinion. I consider it as important to the cause that he should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field.”
Eaton, back at Washington, entering Lincoln’s office heard the eager question, “Well, what did you find?” “You were right.” And the President “fairly glowed with satisfaction,” noted Eaton, as he heard Lincoln say, “I told you that they could not get him to run until he had closed out the rebellion.”
Grant resumed his noncommittal attitude toward Lincoln as a candidate for the Presidency. To the country Grant gave no sign that he was for or against Lincoln. Lincoln may have guessed that Grant had a fear of the Washington hotbed of intrigues and the political guile that had been a curse on the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln may have instigated the mission of Congressman Washburne to Grant asking him to publish a letter in favor of Lincoln’s election. If Washburne carried back to Lincoln what Grant had to say, Lincoln might have taken a healthy laugh for himself. Grant told Washburne that “for the President to answer all the charges the opposition would bring against him would be like setting a maiden to work to prove her chastity.”
Grant’s letter for publication dated at City Point, August 16, 1864, took no sides with any Republican or Democratic party faction, was neither pro- nor anti-Lincoln. And in its closing paragraph it endorsed by inference the President’s emancipation policy. The old Steve Douglas Democrat, Grant, was saying by implication that the slavery issue had progressed to where the complications were inexorable: there was nothing else to do but free the slaves and make a peace that kept the slaves free. Regarding the war and the draft he wished to give the impression that the Confederacy was becoming a hollow shell sucked of its vitality.
“I state to all citizens who visit me that all we want now to insure an early restoration of the Union is determined unity of sentiment in the North. The Rebels have now in their ranks their last man . . . They have robbed the cradle and the grave equally to get their present force. Besides what they lose in frequent skirmishes and battles, they are now losing from desertions and other causes at least one regiment per day . . . Their only hope now is a divided North, and this might give them reinforcements from Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland and Missouri, while it would weaken us . . . they are exceedingly anxious to hold out until after the Presidential election; for they have many hopes upon its result.”
This letter Stanton withheld for later publication, probably after conference with Lincoln, as though written appeals could be of little use in that dark August.
Editor Sam Bowles of the Springfield Republican had to write in a letter: “Do you notice that the Anti-Slavery Standard and the Liberator, representatives of the old Abolitionists, are both earnest for Lincoln? Yet a new crop of radicals have sprung up, who are resisting the President and making mischief. Chase is going around, peddling his griefs in private ears, and sowing dissatisfaction about Lincoln. Chase amid his other doings had opened a correspondence with August Belmont, chairman of the Democratic national committee, letting Belmont know that if the Democratic party at its Chicago convention would insert a platform plank declaring for the abolition of slavery, he, Chase, would then be willing to run as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency.
Lincoln knew that no words, explanations, persuasions, letters, speeches, could save his cause. Only bayonets triumphant and red-dripping with Confederate defeat could bring anything like magic or potency to anything he might have to say. While decisive events waited he would manage a course as best he could, saying: “The pilots on our western rivers steer from point to point, as they call it—setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see. And that is all I propose to do in the great problems that are set before us.”
A summer for sure it had been of steering from point to point, from Sherman’s drive toward Atlanta and Grant’s lunges at Richmond to the arrival of Early at the gates of Washington and the sinking of the Alabama and the capture of Mobile; from the smooth unanimous nomination of Lincoln at Baltimore to the clawing scorn of the Wade-Davis Manifesto; from the peace missions of Greeley at Niagara and Jaquess-Gilmore at Richmond to the secret Republican party manipulations hoping to replace Lincoln at the head of the ticket; from draft legislation authorizing conscripts to buy substitutes to the attempt to detach 50,000 men from Grant’s army to enforce the draft in Northern cities, oath- bound secret societies threatening to take over the Government at Washington and one committee of Republican party leaders begging the President not to make his call for a draft of a half-million men until after the November election. He had given reply: “What is the Presidency worth to me if I have no country?”
Midsummer, Lincoln had told a Boston journal man: “I have faith in the people. They will not consent to disunion. The danger is, in their being misled. Let them know the truth and the country is safe.” He looked haggard and careworn to the correspondent, who said, “You are wearing yourself out with work.” “I can’t work less. But it isn’t that. Work never troubled me. Things look badly, and I can’t avoid anxiety ... I feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over, my work will be done.”
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
William Bross one August day found Lincoln cordial but rather melancholy.” A brother of Bross had fallen at the head of his regiment in fighting before Petersburg and Bross was on his way to recover the body. Deep-chested, heavily full-bearded with bristling hairs, flashing-eyed, one of the owners and editors of the Chicago Tribune , Bross was the Union party candidate for lieutenant governor of Illinois. Lincoln asked Bross anxiously for news from the West. Gloom hung over the West and the entire country, Bross believed. Lincoln agreed that neither of them could shut their eyes to the condition, Bross saying that the people expected a more vigorous prosecution of the war; more troops and appliances would be forthcoming from the people, if called for. And Bross felt assured that Lincoln spoke his “inmost sentiments” in a brief and graphic commentary which Lincoln plainly wished Bross to carry back to the Union men of Illinois: “I will tell you what the people want. They want and must have, success. But whether that come or not, I shall stay right here and do my duty. Here I shall be. And they may come and hang me on that tree [pointing out of the window], but, God helping me, I shall never desert my post.’
In the progress of the war Lincoln had constantly drawn closer to the churches. He replied to one delegation in May ’64: “It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospital, and more prayers to heaven than any. God bless the Methodist Church. Bless all the churches.” And replying to a Baptist delegation later in the same day: “I have had great cause of gratitude for the support so unanimously given by all Christian denominations of the country.”
Late in the summer of ’64 came a committee of colored people from Baltimore, their spokesman in an elaborate address presenting Lincoln with a richly wrought Bible. He could only now say as so often before, “It has always been a sentiment with me that all mankind should be free ... To you I return my most sincere thanks for the very elegant copy of the great Book of God which you present.”
Writing to the Quaker woman Eliza R Gurney, Lincoln dwelt on the searching’s of conscience that might divide a man in time of war: “I am much indebted to the good Christian people of the country for their constant prayers and consolations; and to no one of them, more than to yourself. The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best lights He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.”
CHAPTER XXXIII