1
Policy and War

The political horizon looks dark and lowering; but the
people, under Providence, will set all right.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1860

COLD AND DRIZZLE greeted President-elect Abraham Lincoln on the morning of February 11, 1861. The next day he would be fifty-two, one of the youngest men chosen to sit in the White House. Lincoln and his party of fifteen gathered for the eight o’clock train in the station’s waiting room. Somberness characterized the retinue, despite the crowd of nearly a thousand well-wishers. The party boarded the train’s single passenger car; the crowd lingered, enduring an icy downpour—waiting. Lincoln stood at the railing before an audience he referred to as “friends.” He thanked them, professed his inability to complete the task laid before him without the help of the Divine Being, and said goodbye. He would never see Springfield again.1 The same day, Jefferson Davis boarded a boat for Vicksburg, headed for Montgomery, Alabama, and his swearing in as the Confederacy’s provisional president.²

Lincoln knew he faced a hard row. War had been in the offing before his election, and his inauguration made it all but inevitable—not because of warmongering on his part, but because of Southern fears of his intentions. To many in the South, Lincoln’s election meant abolition and slave revolt. They saw the Republicans, not themselves, as the party of revolution. Lincoln often insisted he had no intention of upsetting the slave system, but to the radicals and hysterics his words meant nothing. There arose a convergence of fear, antagonism, and sectionalism.³

So Lincoln went to face the growing crisis. Many, including Winfield Scott, the general in chief of the Union army, feared it would worsen before Lincoln took his oath of office. On October 29, 1860, the general had warned President James Buchanan that Southern “rashness” could lead to attempts to seize one or more of the forts the U.S. government still held in the South; he recommended their reinforcement. Scott feared the worst but also believed that if for the next year the president followed a path “of firmness and moderation,” there was reason to hope that “the danger of secession may be made to pass away without one conflict of arms, one execution, or one act of violence.” He suggested that exports be unimpeded and “to avoid conflicts all duties on imports be collected outside of the cities, in forts or ships of war.”4 Here Scott provided the first strategy for countering Southern secession.

Strategic thinking is useless, though, if no one wants to hear it, and initially Buchanan and his administration showed disinterest in Scott’s suggestions.⁵ The vain, three-hundred-plus-pound septuagenarian may have lost much of his physical vigor (except at mealtime), but his mind remained sharp and active.⁶ When Scott’s comments were revealed to the press, they encouraged some Southern radicals to declare reconciliation dead.⁷

Buchanan, though, was not quick to do anything except vacillate. He first decided that reinforcement of the threatened outposts would be provocative, then changed his mind in early December 1860.⁸ The North made no preparations for war; Jefferson Davis saw this as proof that the Union did not expect a fight.⁹

General Scott certainly had no itch for one; he had seen his share of war, against the British during the War of 1812, against the Creeks and Seminoles, and, most famous, against Mexico. Nevertheless, he did believe the government had to act. With Buchanan’s permission, Scott decided that Major Robert Anderson and his command at Fort Sumter, one of the Union’s remaining outposts in the emerging Confederacy, should be resupplied. By January 5 the steamer Star of the West was on its way south, loaded with matériel and troops, only to be driven off on the ninth by fire from guns manned by Citadel cadets. Scott also moved to reinforce Fort Pickens, Florida.¹⁰ And he made sure a copy of the aforementioned October 29 memo to Buchanan reached Lincoln’s hands; the incoming executive was grateful.¹¹

As Buchanan dithered, pursuing his “after-me-the-deluge policy,” others sought to defuse the crisis.¹² Congressional committees formed to discuss the situation. Some of Lincoln’s supporters believed his party should participate. Lincoln did not disagree, but he set limits, forbidding any compromise on the extension of slavery. “If there be,” he said, “all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.” He was also unwilling to surrender principle to appease dissatisfied elements. “Stand firm,” Lincoln insisted. “The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.”¹³

Lincoln’s ideas on the proper military response began to jell during the period between his election and his inauguration. After receiving an account of a discussion with General Scott, Lincoln wrote on December 21, 1860, “According to my present view, if the forts shall be given up before the inauguration, the General must retake them afterwards.”¹⁴ This approach was only partially in line with Scott’s thinking. Scott could agree with Lincoln’s desire to hold the forts, particularly since such firmness had worked before when, at his suggestion, President Andrew Jackson had dispatched troops to Fort Moultrie and Charleston harbor to counter the Nullification Crisis of 1832. Retaining the forts had the added benefit of placing South Carolinians in the same position as had Jackson: the government was not making war on them, but if they acted, they would be making war on the United States.15 Lincoln though, had already moved beyond Scott’s thinking. On December 21, through a third party, the president passed to Scott word that “I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the case may require, at, and after the inauguration.”¹⁶ Retake is the key term. If need be, Lincoln would use force.

Though he directed preparation for a firm response if one should prove necessary, Lincoln also sought to reassure his potential foes. He had no intention of attacking slavery upon taking office and told Alexander H. Stephens, the future Confederate vice president, “The South would be in no more danger in this respect, than it was in the days of Washington.” But Lincoln had no illusions about the big sticking point. “I suppose, however, this does not meet the case,” he wrote Stephens. “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”¹⁷

As 1860 swept to its end, a New York journalist asked the president-elect how he would deal with secession. Lincoln said, “I think we should hold the forts, or retake them, as the case may be, and collect the revenue.”¹⁸ Clearly, Lincoln’s mind was made up on the North’s initial strategic response, and just as clearly, he followed Scott’s lead, at least in part.

With the new year the crisis intensified. Several compromise proposals were floated, but to Lincoln there was nothing about which the government should or could compromise. And he feared bending too far. “What is our present condition?” he wrote in response to a complex agreement suggested by a group of congressmen from the border states. “We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass, till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union. They now have the Constitution, under which we have lived over seventy years, and acts of Congress of their own framing,with no prospect of their being changed; and they can never have a more shallow pretext for breaking up the government, or extorting a compromise, than now. There is, in my judgment, but one compromise which would really settle the slavery question, and that would be a prohibition against acquiring any more territory.”19

When Lincoln left Springfield for Washington he was clear in his own mind about how to deal with the crisis. A reading of his correspondence in this period does not reveal any use of the term secession, and he refused to debate the issue of the right of the South to secede, hanging his political hat on the president’s constitutional duty to defend the rights, property, and possessions of the U.S. government. But Lincoln possessed no illusions about what faced him, remarking in his rain-drenched farewell address at Springfield that “I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington.”²⁰ One cannot accuse him of hyperbole.

LINCOLN SAID IN A SPEECH made in Philadelphia during his trip to Washington that he did not want “war and bloodshed.”²¹ Many in the North had similar hopes, in spite of the growing tension and the departure of the seven “Cotton States” by Lincoln’s inauguration in March. They hoped the Union could be saved without violence and that these ungrateful children would find survival away from the nest impossible. The new secretary of state, Henry Seward, urged moderation, despite a previously more radical bent, and even made promises to former senators who had gone south that troops would soon be withdrawn from Fort Sumter. He did not let his lack of authority on such matters hinder his action.²²

Seward believed that war could be averted and the South convinced to stay. He found in General Scott a temporary ally for a political strategy of conciliation. Scott also sought a cautious, moderate approach to the burgeoning crisis. At Seward’s urging, Scott composed a letter to Lincoln detailing four options available to the new administration. It went out on March 3, the day before Lincoln’s inauguration. Seward gave Lincoln the letter “and made sure that his colleagues, both in and out of government, were made aware of the general’s written support” of the secretary of state’s view.²³

Scott offered up four choices. The first was to abandon former party designations for a new one, “Union party,” and to “adopt the conciliatory measures proposed by [Senator John] Crittenden or the peace convention.” Scott insisted this would not only prevent any further secession but also result in the return of some or all of the absconders. Barring this or some other act of conciliation, Scott predicted, the secession of the remaining slave states would occur within sixty days. Second, Scott suggested the government collect the importation duties outside the ports it no longer controlled, “or close such ports by act of Congress and blockade them.” His third option: war. To Scott this meant a war of conquest that, even if ably led, would take two or three years and require 300,000 men, “estimating a third for garrisons, and the loss of yet a greater number by skirmishes, sieges, battle and Southern fevers.” He predicted this path would produce enormous losses in Southern life and property for which the North would gain nothing but $250 million in debt and fifteen ruined states that it would have to hold down for “generations” with large numbers of troops. His final option was to “say to the seceded States, Wayward Sisters, depart in peace!”24

Lincoln made no comment upon the letter, but its wide circulation caused a stir, as well as unfounded speculation because of its last line, which some read as Scott recommending letting the South secede. But Scott was merely presenting options, not advice, to the incoming president.²⁵ The letter’s contents were also quickly relayed to Southern leaders.²⁶

The first option was where Scott’s heart lay. He and Seward were among those of Lincoln’s inner circle who believed that Union restraint would give latent Unionism in the South time to bloom and reassert itself.²⁷ Seward wrote, “The policy [strategy] of the time has seemed to me to consist in conciliation, which should deny to disunionists any new provocation or apparent offense, while it would enable the Unionists in the slave States to maintain with truth and with effect that the alarms and apprehensions put forth by the disunionists are groundless and false.”²⁸ Lincoln himself also adhered to this view, at least in the beginning.²⁹

Scott, as noted earlier, certainly did not want a war; he held that it would be bloody and inflict untold suffering upon his native state of Virginia.³⁰ Scott believed in the power of dormant Southern Unionism. But he also thought that if the North invaded the South, the struggle would be no farther along a year after the invasion than when it began.³¹

Smoothing over the broken places guided the thinking of both Scott and Seward. Kentucky senator John J. Crittenden offered as a compromise “an unamendable amendment to the Constitution” allowing slavery below the latitude 36°30?. The measure died quickly from lack of support but was still before the Kentucky legislature when Scott composed his letter. This certainly aligned with Seward’s strategy of “concessive delay,” meaning to put off taking any action against secession. It also fit with Scott’s and Seward’s belief in the existence of deep wells of Southern Unionism. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter finally shifted Seward from this stump.³²

Lincoln saw neither the first proposal in Scott’s letter nor the fourth— letting the “Wayward Sisters” “depart in peace”—as options. Nor was simply collecting the government’s import duties outside the ports themselves, as proposed in point two. This same point’s second section, which suggested blockade, however, revealed part of the strategy Lincoln eventually adopted for suppressing the rebellion. Nonetheless, the only sure way to bring the Union’s “Wayward Sisters” back to the path of righteousness was to pursue the rough road of point three: conquer the South. Lincoln soon chose this, not because he wanted to, but because the South forced his hand. Scott’s estimation of the men and money necessary to do the job—staggering at the time—would prove wildly optimistic; the Union dead eventually numbered more than the 300,000 troops Scott had projected as necessary. His prediction of devastation certainly came true. Indeed, devastating the South became one of the paths by which the North won the war.33

When Lincoln stepped up to the podium on March 4, 1861, to deliver his inaugural address, he had already firmly settled in his mind his actions with regard to secession. He also made every effort to assuage Southern fears of the arrival of his Republican administration. He had no intention of assaulting “their property, their peace, and personal security.” “There is no necessity for it,” Lincoln avowed. “I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no bloodshed unless it be forced upon the Government. The Government will not use force unless force is used against it.” He also quoted his own previous speeches wherein he promised to leave slavery undisturbed and stated that he had no legal proviso for touching it. Moreover, he cited his party’s political platform, which endorsed the right of states to manage their own affairs and on which his election had been fought, and denounced “the lawless invasion by armed force of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.” One must note here the caveat “lawless”; this would not have passed unobserved by any mind as sharp as Lincoln’s.³⁴

Lincoln also insisted upon the perpetuity of the Union, noting, “It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.” The Union could not be destroyed “except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.” No state could voluntarily depart the house to which it had joined itself, and any violent acts “against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.”³⁵ Lincoln believed it his duty to protect the Union and see its laws enforced, and assured his listeners that the Union “will constitutionally defend, and maintain itself.” He also committed himself to a peaceful solution, promising he would hold the posts belonging to the government but take no forceful action “beyond what may be necessary for these objects.”36

Lincoln closed by giving the South the choice between peace and war: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.”³⁷

THE FIGURES IN THE ENORMOUS CROWD stood in mud up to their ankles, Richmond’s heavy rains pounding them. It was February 22, 1862, and they were awaiting the arrival of their president. A little after noon, Jefferson Davis descended from his carriage onto a covered platform, Vice President Alexander Stephens and other Confederate notables in his train. He and Stephens had just been inaugurated, officially taking up posts held informally for slightly more than a year, and Davis had come to deliver his speech to the Confederate Congress. One witness observed that the Confederacy’s government was birthed in a storm.³⁸ It would die in one as well.

Davis’s address was shockingly honest, brazen even, and he held forth on Confederate strategy in a manner that must have appeared both an enunciation of the obvious and a blow to the guts of the congenitally optimistic and jingoistic figures dominating the Southern hierarchy. Since his last address to the body, Davis admitted, “events have demonstrated that the Government had attempted more than it had power to successfully achieve,” and that “hence, in the effort to protect by our arms the whole of the territory of the Confederate States, Sea-board and inland, we have been so exposed as recently to encounter serious disasters.”³⁹

Davis succinctly described the strategy the Confederates implemented at the beginning of the Civil War and the basic problem with it. The South had chosen a cordon strategy, or cordon defense, meaning they tried to protect everything. This is understandable. The Confederacy needed to retain all the territory of the seceding states as grounds for recruitment and sources of supply for its armies. Just as important, demonstrating sovereignty over a clearly defined realm could help the cause of foreign recognition.⁴⁰ Failing to protect everything was unacceptable politically. The seceding states screamed states’ rights but still expected the central government to protect the new nation’s borders.⁴¹ The Confederates also wanted to retain everything. They had no desire to surrender even one unplowed field to the North.

The Confederacy, or at least some of its leaders, had imperial ambitions as well. Jefferson Davis certainly stood among these. In an earlier time he had “dreamed of a new slaveholding republic that should expand into Mexico, Yucatan, and Cuba,” a vision blocked by the Compromise of 1850, which halted the tide of Southern nationalism by, among other things, allowing the new territories created from land taken from Mexico to decide for themselves the fate of slavery within their borders. The compromise’s tenets cut the feet out from under rabid secessionists such as Davis, at least for a while.42 He didn’t abandon his expansionist dream over the following decade. In a February 1861 speech he marked out two areas for Southern expansion: the West Indies and the northern reaches of Mexico.⁴³ In March 1861, he noted what was in his view the general Southern desire for Cuba, uniting this with the mistaken assumption that the North wanted Canada, projecting onto his opponents a version of his own imperial aims.⁴⁴ The next year, in further evidence of the South’s ambitions, the Confederate Congress authorized the creation of a Southern version of the Union’s Arizona Territory and then launched an ultimately failed offensive to win it.⁴⁵ Other Confederates believed there could be no clear victory over the North until Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri rested comfortably in the Southern fold.⁴⁶

Confederate ambitions flew beyond just the territorial, though territory certainly provided one of the primary objects for which the South drew its sword. In some respects, Confederate leaders saw themselves as revolutionaries. In his 1861 inaugural speech, stressing the South’s right to secede, Davis insisted that “it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution.” But the playing of the French revolutionary anthem “La Marseillaise” after the speech, as well as many subsequent statements and actions, shows that Davis did not quite understand Southern feelings, or perhaps even his own, and certainly did not comprehend that they were indeed attempting revolution.⁴⁷

In this same 1861 speech, Davis also insisted that the South was “anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all nations” and that, being “an agricultural people[,] … our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit.”⁴⁸ Later, in an April message to Congress in Richmond, in which he echoed in some measure the Declaration of Independence, he presented a clear and high-minded-sounding accounting (if not a complete one) of the Confederacy’s wants, declaring that the South desired “peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be left alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, this we must, resist to the direst extremes.”49

How, then, does one reconcile the contradictions between the objectives of territorial expansion, revolt against the Federal government, and the “we only want peace” rhetoric of the Confederate commander in chief ? The simple answer is that one cannot, and the Confederates themselves never bothered to do so. And from here grows one of the great problems with the Confederacy’s political objectives: they were inherently contradictory. The Confederacy wanted “to be left alone,” yet at the same time it wanted huge swaths of territory belonging to a number of other powers, particularly the Union. Moreover, Southerners wanted to foment revolution against the U.S. government, but they did not view themselves as revolutionaries. Sometimes night shone as day to the political leaders of the Confederacy.

In spite of these contradictions, the Confederates possessed a clear view of their primary political objective—independence—and pursued it zealously. But what they did not quite agree upon was what independence meantlasts.