Gideon Welles saw clearly enough what they were after, and put what he saw in his diary. “In getting up this law, it was as much an object of Mr. Henry Winter Davis and some others to pull down the Administration as to reconstruct the Union. I think they had the former more directly in view than the latter.” Lincoln thought so, too, and was determined to keep it from happening, if he could only find a way to do so without bringing on the bitterest kind of fight inside his party.
The fact was, he had already found what he perceived might be the beginning of a way when he set the bill aside to go on signing others. Zachariah Chandler, who had asked him whether he intended to endorse it and had then been told that it was “too important to be swallowed in that way,” warned him sternly, in reference to the pending election: “If it is vetoed, it will damage us fearfully in the Northwest. The important point is the one prohibiting slavery in the reconstructed states.” “That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act.” “It is no more than you have done yourself.” “I conceive that I may, in an emergency, do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress,” Lincoln replied, and Chandler stalked out, deeply chagrined.
His chagrin, and that of his fellow radicals, was converted to pure rage the following week — July 8; Early was crossing South Mountain to descend on Frederick — when Lincoln, having declined either to sign or to veto the bill, issued a public proclamation defending his action (or nonaction) on grounds that, while he was “fully satisfied” with some portions of the bill, he was “unprepared” to give his approval of certain others. “What an infamous proclamation!” Thaddeus Stevens protested. “The idea of pocketing a bill and then issuing a proclamation as to how far he will conform to it!”
By means of the “pocket veto,” as the maneuver came to be called, Lincoln managed to avoid, at least for a season, being removed from all connection with setting the guidelines for Reconstruction; but he had not managed to avoid a fight. Indeed, according to proponents of the bill now lodged in limbo, he had precipitated one. Convinced, as one of them declared, that his proposed course was “timid and almost pro-slavery,” they took up the challenge of his proclamation, which they defined as “a grave Executive usurpation,” and responded in more than kind, early the following month in the New York Tribune, with what became known as the Wade-Davis Manifesto. Seeking “to check the encroachments of the Executive on the authority of Congress, and to require it to confine itself to its proper sphere,” bluff Ben Wade and vehement Henry Davis charged that “a more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people has never been perpetrated,” and they warned that Lincoln “must understand that our support is of a cause and not of a man,” especially not of a man who would connive to procure electoral votes at the cost of his country’s welfare.
All this the manifesto set forth, along with much else of a highly personal nature from the pens of these Republican leaders, just three months before the presidential election. Lincoln declined to read or discuss it, not wanting to be provoked any worse than he was already, but he remarked in this connection: “To be wounded in the house of one’s friends is perhaps the most grievous affliction that can befall a man.”
Horace Greeley, editor of the paper in which the radical manifesto made its appearance, had been involved for the past month in an affair that added to Lincoln’s difficulties in presenting himself as a man of war who longed for peace. Hearing privately in early July that Confederate emissaries were waiting on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls with full authority to arrange an armistice, Greeley referred the matter to the President and urged in a long, high-strung letter that he seize the opportunity this presented to end the fighting. “Confederates everywhere [are] for peace. So much is beyond doubt,” he declared. “And therefore I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace — shudders at the prospect of fresh conscription, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood.” Placed thus in the position of having to investigate this reported gleam of sunlight (which he suspected would prove to be moonshine) Lincoln was prompt with an answer. “If you can find any person anywhere professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and the abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you.” The editor, aware of the risk of ridicule, had not counted on being personally involved. He responded with a protest that the rebel agents “would decline to exhibit their credentials to me, much more to open their budget and give me their best terms.” Lincoln replied: “I was not expecting you to send me a letter, but to bring me a man, or men.” He also told Greeley, in a message carried by John Hay, who was to accompany him on the mission, “I not only intend a sincere effort for peace, but I intend that you shall be a personal witness that it is made.”
Being thus coerced, Greeley went with Hay to Niagara, where he discovered, amid the thunder and through the mist, what Lincoln had suspected from the start: that the “emissaries” not only had no authority to negotiate, either with him or with anyone else, but seemed to be in Canada for the purpose of influencing, by the rejection of their empty overtures, the upcoming elections in the North. He retreated hastily, though not in time to prevent a rash of Copperhead rumors that the President, through him, had scorned to entertain decent proposals for ending the bloodshed. Lincoln wanted to offset the effect of this by publishing his and Greeley’s correspondence, omitting of course the editor’s references to “our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country,” as well as his gloomy prediction of a Democratic victory in November. Greeley said no; he would consent to no suppression; either print their exchange in full or not at all. Obliged thereby to let the matter drop, Lincoln explained to his cabinet that it was better to withhold the letters, and abide the damaging propaganda, than “to subject the country to the consequences of their discouraging and injurious parts.”
Simultaneously, in the opposite direction — down in Richmond itself — another peace feeler was in progress, put forth by Federal emissaries who had no more official sanction than their Confederate counterparts in Canada. Still, Lincoln had better hopes for this one, not so much because he believed that it would end the conflict, but rather, as he remarked, because he felt that it would “show the country I didn’t fight shy of Greeley’s Niagara business without a reason.” What he wanted was for the northern public to become acquainted with Jefferson Davis’s terms for an armistice, which he was sure would prove unacceptable to many voters who had been lured, in the absence of specifics, by the siren song of orators claiming that peace could be his for the asking, practically without rebel strings. Moreover, he got what he wanted, and he got it expressed in words as strong and specific as any he himself might have chosen for his purpose.
Colonel James F. Jaquess, a Methodist minister who had raised and led a regiment of Illinois volunteers, had become so increasingly shocked by the sight of fellow Christians killing each other wholesale — especially at Chickamauga, where he lost more than two hundred of his officers and men — that he obtained an extended leave of absence to see what he could do, on his own, to prepare the groundwork for negotiations. He had no success until he was joined in the effort by J. R. Gilmore, who enjoyed important Washington connections. A New York businessman, Gilmore had traveled widely in the South before the war, writing of his experiences under the pen name Edmund Kirke, and he managed to secure Lincoln’s approval of an unofficial visit to Richmond by Jaquess and himself, under a flag of truce, for the purpose of talking with southern leaders about the possibility of arriving at terms that might lead to a formal armistice. On Saturday, July 16, the two men were conducted past one of Ben Butler’s outposts and were met between the lines by Judge Robert Ould, head of the Confederate commission for prisoner exchange. By nightfall they were lodged in the Spotswood Hotel, in the heart of the rebel capital, Jaquess wearing a long linen duster over his blue uniform.
Next morning, amid the pealing of church bells, they conferred with Judah Benjamin, who promised to arrange a meeting for them that evening, here in his State Department office, with the President himself. They returned at the appointed time, and there — as Gilmore later described the encounter — at the table, alongside the plump and smiling Benjamin, “sat a spare, thin-featured man with iron-gray hair and beard, and a clear, gray eye full of life and vigor.” Jefferson Davis rose and extended his hand. “I am glad to see you, gentlemen,” he said. “You are very welcome to Richmond.”
Although he neither mentioned the fact nor showed the strain it cost him, he had not been able to receive them earlier this Sunday because of the lengthy cabinet meeting that had resulted in the dismissal telegram Joe Johnston was reading now, on the outskirts of Atlanta. “His face was emaciated, and much wrinkled,” Gilmore observed from across the table, “but his features were good, especially his eyes, though one of them bore a scar, apparently made by some sharp instrument. He wore a suit of grayish brown, evidently of foreign manufacture.… His manners were simple, easy and quite fascinating, and he threw an indescribable charm into his voice.”
Jaquess opened the interview by saying that he had sought it in the hope that Davis, wanting peace as much as he did, might suggest some way to stop the fighting. “In a very simple way,” the Mississippian replied. “Withdraw your armies from our territory, and peace will come of itself.” When the colonel remarked that Lincoln’s recent Proclamation of Amnesty perhaps afforded a basis for proceeding, Davis cut him short. “Amnesty, Sir, applies to criminals. We have commited no crime.” Gilmore suggested that both sides lay down their arms, then let the issue be decided by a popular referendum. But Davis, thinking no doubt of the North’s more than twenty millions and the South’s less than ten, was having no part of that either. “That the majority shall decide it, you mean. We seceded to rid ourselves of the rule of the majority, and this would subject us to it again.” It seemed to Gilmore that the dispute narrowed down to “Union or Disunion,” and the Confederate President agreed, though he added that he preferred the terms “Independence or Subjugation.” Despairing of semantics and the profitless exchange of opposite views that had brought on the war in the first place, the New Yorker made an appeal on personal grounds. “Can you, Mr Davis, as a Christian man, leave untried any means that may lead to peace?” Davis shook his head. “No, I cannot,” he replied. “I desire peace as much as you do; I deplore bloodshed as much as you do.” He spoke with fervor, but seemed to choose his words with care. “I tried in all my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. And now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize his musket and fight his battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self-government.… We are fighting for Independence — and that, or extermination, we will have.”
Additional matters were discussed or mentioned, including the military situation, which Davis saw as favorable to the South, and slavery, which he maintained was never “an essential element” in the contest, “only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination.” But always the talk came back to that one prerequisite. Whether it was called Self-Government or Disunion, all future discussion between the two parties would have to proceed from that beginning if there was to be any hope of ending the carnage they both deplored. The Confederate leader made this clear as he rose to see his visitors to the door, shook their hands, and spoke his final words. “Say to Mr Lincoln, from me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our Independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other.”
Whatever sadness he felt on hearing this evidence that the war was unlikely to end through negotiation, Lincoln perceived that the closing message, along with much that preceded it, would serve quite well to further his other purpose, which was to demonstrate his adversary’s intransigence in the face of an earnest search for peace. He asked Gilmore, who had stopped by Washington on his return journey from Richmond, what he proposed to do with the transcript he had made of the interview. “Put a beginning and an end to it, Sir, on my way home,” the New Yorker said, “and hand it to the Tribune.” Lincoln demurred. He had had enough of Horace Greeley for a while. “Can’t you get it into the Atlantic Monthly? It would have less of a partisan look there.” Gilmore was sure he could; but first, by way of counteracting what Lincoln called “Greeley’s Niagara business,” it was decided to release a shorter version in the Boston Evening Transcript the following week, while the full Atlantic text was being set in type and proofed for review by Lincoln. “Don’t let it appear till I return the proof,” he cautioned. “Some day all this will come out, but just now we must use discretion.” The Transcript piece appeared July 22, followed a month later by the one in the Atlantic, from which the President had deleted a few hundred words mainly having to do with terms he had found acceptable off the record. Both received much attention, especially the longer version. Indeed, so widely was it reprinted, at home and abroad, that another distinguished contributor — Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose son had lately cursed Lincoln off the parapet at Fort Stevens — soon told Gilmore that it had attracted more readers than any magazine article ever written.
Meantime (as always) Lincoln had kept busy with other problems, military as well as political. Often they overlapped, as in the case of facing up to the need for replacing the troops whose fall or discharge left gaps in the ranks of the two main armies: especially Meade’s, which had a lower reënlistment quotient and had been further reduced, moreover, by detachments northward to shield Washington from attack by Early, still hovering nearby. On Sunday, July 17, while Jaquess and Gilmore talked in Richmond with Jefferson Davis — who had just put a message on the wire to Atlanta that presaged a step-up in the fighting there — Lincoln telegraphed Grant: “In your dispatch of yesterday to General Sherman I find the following, to wit: ‘I shall make a desperate effort to get a position here which will hold the enemy without the necessity of so many men.’ Pressed as we are by lapse of time, I am glad to hear you say this; and yet I do hope you may find a way that the effort shall not be desperate in the sense of a great loss of life.” He sent this by way of preparation for a proclamation, issued next day, calling for 500,000 volunteers and ordering a draft to take place immediately after September 5 for any unfilled quotas.
This must surely be the last before November, he was saying, although there were already those who believed, despite the recent removal of the $300 exemption clause, that the results would not suffice even for the present. “We are not now receiving one half as many [troops] as we are discharging,” Halleck complained to Grant the following day. “Volunteering has virtually ceased, and I do not anticipate much from the President’s new call, which has the disadvantage of again postponing the draft for fifty days. Unless our government and people will come square up to the adoption of an efficient and thorough draft, we cannot supply the waste of our army.”
Coming square up was easily said, but it left out factors that could not be ignored, including the reaction to this latest call for volunteers, which was seen as a velvet glove encasing the iron hand of a new draft. “Only half a million more! Oh that is nothing,” one angry Wisconsin editor fumed, and followed through by saying: “Continue this Administration in power and we can all go to war, Canada, or to hell before 1868.”
Now that the year moved into the dog days, with the fall elections looming just beyond, there was need for caution, if not in the military, then certainly in the political arena. Yet even caution might not serve, so portentous were the signs that a defeat was in the making. Frémont was something of a joke as an opponent, though not as a siphon for drawing off the Radical votes that would be needed if Lincoln was to prevail against the Democrats, who were scheduled to convene in Chicago in late August to adopt a platform and select a candidate for November. The platform would be strong f
or peace, and the candidate, it was believed, would be George McClellan: a formidable combination, one that might well snare both the anti-war and the soldier vote, not to mention the votes of the disaffected, likely to go to almost any rival of the present national leader. Indeed, the prospect so thoroughly alarmed a number of members of the Republican hierarchy that a secret call went out for a convention to meet in Cincinnati in September “to consider the state of the nation and to concentrate the Union strength on some one candidate who commands the confidence of the country, even by a new nomination if necessary.”
For the present this was circulated privately, with the intention of bringing it out in the open when the time was ripe. In point of fact, however, the time seemed ripe enough already, to judge by the immediate response. Dissatisfaction with Lincoln had grown by now to include even close friends: Orville Browning, for example, who confessed he had long suspected that his fellow Illinoisan could not measure up to the task required. “I thought he might get through, as many a boy has got through college, without disgrace; but I fear he is a failure.” Others agreeing were the eminent lawyer David Dudley Field, whose brother Lincoln had recently appointed to the Supreme Court, and Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House. Chase expressed interest in the supersession, of course, and Ben Butler lent encouragement from down on Bermuda Hundred. Henry Davis was vehemently for it, but Wade and Sumner remained aloof for the time being, the former because he preferred to wait till after the Democratic convention, the latter because he thought it would make less trouble for the party if they gave Lincoln a chance to withdraw voluntarily. Many prominent editors favored the maneuver, including Parke Godwin of the New York Evening Post and Whitelaw Reid of the Cincinnati Gazette. But the most vociferous of them all was Horace Greeley, whose expression was cherubic but whose spirit had lately been strained beyond forbearance. “Mr Lincoln is already beaten,” he declared. “He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from overthrow.”