Hoping to raise her spirits, Chase arranged for Kate and Nettie to visit the McDowells’ country home, Buttermilk Farm, in upstate New York. The quiet routine of country life did not suit Kate, who craved distraction from her sorrows. Mrs. McDowell, observing that Kate’s “health and spirit” were suffering, kindly agreed to let her accompany friends to Saratoga in search of a more active social life. “Trust nothing I have said will alarm you,” she assured Chase upon Kate’s departure; but he, of course, could not help fretting over his beloved daughter.
Even more than Chase or Seward, Edwin Stanton was afflicted with troubles in the summer of ’62. “The first necessity of every community after a disaster, is a scapegoat,” the New York Times noted. “It is an immense relief to find some one upon whom can be fastened all the sins of a whole people, and who can then be sent into the wilderness, to be heard of no more.” In the secretary of war, disgruntled Northerners found their scapegoat. “Journals of all sorts,” the Times reported, “demand his instant removal.”
The drumbeat began with McClellan, who told anyone who would listen that Stanton was to blame for the Peninsula defeat. “So you want to know how I feel about Stanton, & what I think of him now?” he wrote Mary Ellen in July. “I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that…had he lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of the Apostles & that the magnificent treachery & rascality of E. M. Stanton would have caused Judas to have raised his arms in holy horror & unaffected wonder.” A week later, McClellan wrote that he had “the proof that the Secy reads all my private telegrams.” In fact, he took pleasure in the thought that “if he has read my private letters to you also his ears must have tingled somewhat.” Nor did his suspicions stop him from reiterating his loathing for the former friend whom he now considered “the most depraved hypocrite & villain.”
Democrats, unwilling to fault McClellan, were the loudest in their denunciations of Stanton. Spearheaded by the Blairs, conservatives charged that Stanton had abandoned both his Democratic heritage and his old friendship with McClellan. Two navy officers, speaking with Samuel Phillips Lee, Elizabeth Blair’s husband, claimed “there had been treachery at the bottom of our Richmond reverse,” spurred by “Stanton’s political opposition to McClellan.” Democrat John Astor could not refrain from cursing at the mere mention of Stanton’s name. “He for one believes,” Strong reported, “that Stanton willfully withheld reinforcements from McClellan lest he should make himself too important, politically, by a signal victory.” Sanitary Commission member Frederick Law Olmsted expressed similar emotions. “If we could help to hang Stanton by resigning and posting him as a liar, hypocrite and knave,” he wrote, “I think we should render the country a far greater service that we can in any other way.”
The New York Times promised not to engage in the “very fierce crusade” against Stanton, but begged the president, “if we are to have a new Secretary of War, to give us a Soldier—one who knows what war is and how it is to be carried on…. If Mr. Stanton is to be removed, the country will be reassured, and the public interest greatly promoted, by making Gen. McClellan his successor. Even those who cavil at his leadership in the field, do not question his mastery of the art of war.” As the weeks went by, and the pressure to replace him mounted, Stanton must have wondered how long Lincoln would continue to support him.
Beyond the distracting personal attacks, Stanton was tormented by the long lines of ambulances that rolled into the city each morning carrying the injured and the dead from the peninsula. All his life, Stanton had been unnerved in the presence of death. Now he was surrounded by it at every turn. Sometimes he took it upon himself to deliver the news to stricken families. Mary Ellet Cabell, whose father, Colonel Charles Ellet, was fatally wounded in Memphis, long recalled the moment when Stanton appeared at her family’s home in Georgetown to tell of Ellet’s heroism during the battle. “I have heard that this powerful War Minister was harsh and unfeeling; but I can never forget the tenderness of his manner” as he delivered the news with “tears to his eyes.”
Stanton’s own family was touched by death as well. In early July, his youngest son, James, entered the final stage of the smallpox precipitated by an inoculation six months earlier. The Stantons had planned to spend the Fourth of July holiday on a cruise with General Meigs and his family, but their child’s illness occupied Ellen Stanton night and day. On July 5, a messenger called on Stanton in the War Department to report that “the baby was dying.” He immediately began the three-mile drive to the country house where his family was staying for the summer. The child clung to life for several days, finally succumbing on July 10. For Stanton, who loved his children passionately, the death was devastating, particularly bitter in light of the overwhelming pressures at work that had kept him from his family for many weeks. Under the weight of public censure and private tragedy, his own health began to suffer.
WHILE HIS CABINET REELED in the aftermath of the Peninsula defeat, Lincoln was faced with the grim knowledge that the ultimate authority had been his alone. Nonetheless, as Whitman had observed following the debacle at Bull Run, Lincoln refused to surrender to the gloom of defeat: “He unflinchingly stemm’d it, and resolv’d to lift himself and the Union out of it.” While the battle was still ongoing, Lincoln had found time to write a letter to a young cadet at West Point, the son of Mary’s cousin Ann Todd Campbell. The boy was miserable at the academy and his mother was worried. “Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better—quite happy—if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education. I am older than you, have felt badly myself, and know, what I tell you is true. Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” The boy stayed at West Point, graduating in 1866.
Now, in the wake of the Peninsula battle, confronted with public discontent, diminishing loan subscriptions and renewed threats that Britain would recognize the Confederacy, Lincoln demonstrated that his own purpose remained fixed. He decided to call for a major expansion of the army. Two months earlier, Stanton, assuming that victory would soon be achieved, had made the colossal mistake of shutting down recruiting offices. To call for more troops now on the heels of defeat, Lincoln realized, might well create “a general panic.” But the troops were essential. Seward devised an excellent solution. He journeyed to New York, where a conference of Union governors was taking place. After consulting privately with the governors and securing their agreement, he drafted a circular that they would endorse asking the president to call for three hundred thousand additional troops. The president would be responding to a patriotic appeal rather than initiating a call on his own.
While Seward worked out the details from his suite at the Astor House, he was kept abreast of the military situation by telegrams from Lincoln. Fearing that their recruiting efforts might prove insufficient, Seward telegraphed Stanton for permission to promise each new recruit an advance of twenty-five dollars. The money “is of vital importance,” he wrote. “We fail without it.” Stanton hesitated at first. “The existing law does not authorize an advance,” he replied. But finally, trusting Seward’s judgment, he decided to make the allocation on his own responsibility.
That summer, Seward traveled throughout the North to help build up the Union Army. He set a precedent within his own department by entreating all those between eighteen and forty-five to volunteer, pledging that their positions would be waiting for them when they returned. A large percentage answered Seward’s call. In Auburn, the Sewards’ twenty-year-old-son, William Junior, was appointed secretary of the war committee responsible for raising a regiment in upstate New York. A half century later, William remembered “the Mass Meetings held in all the principal towns,” the fervent appeals for volunteers, the quickened response
once the government announced that unfilled quotas would by met by a draft. New recruits “filled the hotels and many private houses, occupied the upper floors of the business blocks, leaned against the fences, sat upon the curb stone,” he recalled. They came on foot and in horse-drawn wagons. “The spectacle was so novel and inspiring that our citizens gave them a perfect ovation as they passed, canons were fired—bells rung and flags displayed from almost every house on the line of march.”
Young William Seward had no intention of recruiting others without volunteering himself. His decision to enlist aroused trepidation in the Seward household, for William’s new wife, Jenny, was expecting their first child in September. Jenny assured her husband that she would “be able to pass through her troubles,” but she worried that his departure might jeopardize his mother’s fragile health. In fact, although Frances had been heartbroken years before when Gus, now an army paymaster in Washington, had joined the Mexican War, her passionate feelings against slavery now outweighed her maternal anxiety. “As it is obvious all men are needed I made no objection,” Frances told Fred.
While the call was out for fresh reserves, Lincoln decided to make a personal visit to bolster the morale of the weary troops who had fought the hard battles on the Peninsula. Accompanied by Assistant Secretary of War Peter Watson and Congressman Frank Blair, he left Washington aboard the Ariel early on the morning of July 8, 1862, beginning the twelve-hour journey to McClellan’s new headquarters at Harrison’s Landing on the James River. “The day had been intensely hot,” an army correspondent noted, the temperature climbing to over 100 degrees. Even soldiers who lay in the shade of the trees found small respite from the “almost overpowering” heat. By 6 p.m., however, when General McClellan and his staff met the president at Harrison’s Landing, the setting sun had yielded to a pleasant, moonlit evening.
News of the president’s arrival spread quickly through the camp. Soldiers in the vicinity let out great cheers whenever they glimpsed him “sitting and smiling serenely on the after deck of the vessel.” Lincoln’s calm visage, however, masked his deep anxiety about McClellan and the progress of the war.
Equally troubled, the defeated McClellan had spent the hours before Lincoln’s arrival drafting what he termed a “strong frank letter” delineating changes necessary to win the war. “If he acts upon it the country will be saved,” he told his wife. McClellan handed the letter to Lincoln, who read it as the two sat together on the deck. Known to history as the “Harrison’s Landing” letter, the document imperiously outlined for the president what the policy and aims of the war should be. “The time has come when the government must determine upon a civil and military policy,” McClellan brazenly began, warning that without a clear-cut policy defining the nature of the war, “our cause will be lost.” Somewhat resembling in attitude Seward’s April 1 memo of fifteen months earlier, the presumptuous memo was even more astonishing in tone, as it came from a military officer.
“It should not be at all a war upon population,” McClellan proclaimed, and all efforts must be made to protect “private property and unarmed persons.” In effect, slave property must be respected, for if a radical approach to slavery were adopted, the “present armies” would “rapidly disintegrate.” To carry out this conservative policy, the president would need “a Commander-in-Chief of the Army—one who possesses your confidence.” While he did not specifically request that position for himself, McClellan made it clear that he was more than willing to retake the central command.
To McClellan’s disappointment and disgust, Lincoln “made no comments upon [the letter], merely saying, when he had finished it, that he was obliged to me for it.” Clearly, the president did not remain silent because he failed to grasp the political significance of the general’s propositions. In the days that followed, his actions would manifest his rejection of the general’s political advice. For the moment, however, Lincoln had come to see and support the troops, not to debate policy with his general.
For three hours, the president reviewed one division after another, riding slowly along the long lines of cheering soldiers. He was relieved to find the army in such high spirits after the bloody weeklong battle, which had decimated their ranks, leaving 1,734 dead and 8,066 wounded. “Mr. Lincoln rode at the right of Gen. McClellan,” an army correspondent reported, “holding with one hand the reins which checked a spirited horse, and with the other a large-sized stove-pipe hat” that he repeatedly tipped to acknowledge the cheers of the troops. His attempts to coordinate the reins and doff his tall hat were not entirely successful. His legs almost became “entangled with those of the horse he rode…while his arms were apparently liable to similar mishap.” One soldier admitted in a letter home that he had to lower his cap over his face “to cover a smile that overmastered” him at the “ludicrous sight.” Still, he added, the troops loved Lincoln. “His benignant smile as he passed on was a real reflection of his honest, kindly heart; but deeper, under the surface of that marked and not all uncomely face, were the unmistakable signs of care and anxiety…. In fact, his popularity in the army is and has been universal.”
As Lincoln approached each division, the “successive booming of salutes made known his progress,” until finally, “his tall figure, like Saul of old,” came into view, provoking wild applause. The tonic of the president’s unexpected visit to the enervated regiments was instantaneous. As Lincoln reviewed the “thinned ranks of some of the divisions” and came upon regimental colors “torn almost to shreds by the balls of the enemy,” the Times noted, he “more than once exhibited much emotion,” affording the fatigued soldiers “the assurance of the nation’s hearty sympathy with their struggle.”
Returning to the steamer, Lincoln conferred again with McClellan. Making no mention of McClellan’s letter, which remained in his pocket, he set sail for Washington the next morning. “On the way up the Potomac,” the New York Herald reported, “the boat was aground for several hours on the Kettle Shoals, and the whole party, including the President, availed themselves of the opportunity to take a bath and swim in the river.”
The visit invigorated the spirits of all who accompanied Lincoln. Frank Blair’s sister Elizabeth noted that “Frank was as heart sick as man could be when he went off to the Army but he & the President came back greatly cheered.” Despite Lincoln’s enthusiasm for the mettle of the soldiers, however, his opinion of General McClellan had not improved. Less than forty-eight hours after his return, he summoned General Henry Halleck to Washington to assume the post of general in chief that McClellan had hoped would be his. Halleck’s victories in the West, largely due to Grant, had made him a logical choice for the post. Known as “Old Brains,” he had written several books on military strategy that were widely respected.
Even before McClellan heard the news, he suspected an unwelcome turn of events. “I do not know what paltry trick the administration will play next,” he wrote his wife on the day after Lincoln’s visit. “I did not like the Presdt’s manner—it seemed that of a man about to do something of which he was much ashamed. A few days will however show, & I do not much care what the result will be. I feel that I have already done enough to prove in history that I am a General.”
Although Halleck’s appointment met with widespread approval, the clamor for further changes was undiminished. Radicals called for McClellan’s dismissal, while conservatives continued their assault on Stanton. The arguments on both sides were heated. In a hotel lobby, Senator Chandler of Michigan called McClellan a “liar and coward,” provoking a friend of McClellan’s to angrily counter: “It is you who are the liar and the coward.” The charges against Stanton were equally caustic, portraying him as brusque, domineering, and unbearably unpleasant to work with. Nonetheless, Lincoln was determined, as Browning advised, to “make up his mind calmly [and] deliberately,” to “adhere firmly to his own opinions, and neither to be bullied or cajoled out of them.”
In fact, not once during the vicious public onslaught against the secretary
of war did Lincoln’s support for Stanton waver. During the hours he had spent each day awaiting battlefront news in the telegraph office, Lincoln had taken his own measure of his high-strung, passionate secretary of war. He concluded that Stanton’s vigorous, hard-driving style was precisely what was needed at this critical juncture. As one War Department employee said of Stanton, “much of his seeming harshness to and neglect of individuals” could be explained by the “concentration and intensity of his mind on the single object of crushing the rebellion.”
And, as always, the president refused to let a subordinate take the blame for his own decisions. He insisted to Browning “that all that Stanton had done in regard to the army had been authorized by him the President.” Three weeks later, Lincoln publicly defended the beleaguered Stanton before an immense Union meeting on the Capitol steps. All the government departments had closed down at one o’clock so that everyone could attend. Commissioner French believed he had “never seen more persons assembled in front of the Capitol except at an inauguration, which it very much resembled.” Lincoln sat on the flag-draped platform with the members of his cabinet, including Chase, Blair, and Bates, as “the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon, and music from the Marine Band” heralded the speakers. After a speech by Treasury Registrar Lucius Chittenden, Lincoln turned to Chase, who sat beside him. “‘Well! Hadn’t I better say a few words and get rid of myself?’ Hardly waiting for an answer, he advanced at once to the stand.”
“I believe there is no precedent for my appearing before you on this occasion,” he affably began, “but it is also true that there is no precedent for your being here yourselves.” Reminding his audience that he was reluctant to speak unless he might “produce some good by it,” Lincoln declared that something needed to be said, and it was “not likely to be better said by some one else,” for it was “a matter in which we have heard some other persons blamed for what I did myself.” Addressing the charge that Stanton had withheld troops from McClellan, he explained that every possible soldier available had been sent to the general. “The Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none to give.” As the applause began to mount, he continued, “I believe he is a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of War.”