Orville Browning came to the White House to see Lincoln shortly before the meeting began. “I saw in a moment that he was in distress,” Browning recorded in his diary, “that more than usual trouble was pressing upon him.” When Lincoln asked, “What do these men want?,” Browning bluntly replied that they were “exceedingly violent towards the administration,” and that the resolution adopted “was the gentlest thing that could be done.” Furthermore, although Seward was “the especial object of their hostility,” they were “very bitter” toward the president as well. Lincoln admitted that he had been enormously upset since receiving word about the caucus proceedings. “I can hardly see a ray of hope,” he confided to Browning.
Concealing his distress, Lincoln greeted the Committee of Nine with his accustomed civility, affording them ample opportunity to speak their minds during a three-hour session. Jacob Collamer of Vermont opened the proceedings with a recitation of their primary contention that a president’s cabinet council should jointly endorse principles and policy, “that all important public measures and appointments should be the result of their combined wisdom and deliberation.” Since this was hardly the current state of affairs, the cabinet should be reconstructed to “secure to the country unity of purpose and action.” In the conversation that followed, the senators argued that the prosecution of the war had been left too long “in the hands of bitter and malignant Democrats,” like McClellan and Halleck, while the antislavery generals, like Frémont and Hunter, “had been disgraced.”
This grim arraignment was attributed to Seward’s domination of policy and his “lukewarmness in the conduct of the war.” While the Republican senators professed belief in the president’s honesty, Lincoln later said, “they seemed to think that when he had in him any good purposes, Mr. S[eward] contrived to suck them out of him unperceived.” Lincoln worked to defuse the anger and tension. He confessed that the movement against Seward “shocked and grieved him,” maintaining that while his cabinet had been at loggerheads on certain issues, “there had never been serious disagreements.” Rumors that Seward exercised some perfidious influence in opposition to the majority of the cabinet were simply not true. On the contrary, the cabinet had acted with great accord on most matters. Indeed, in his most trying days, “he had been sustained and consoled” by their “mutual and unselfish confidence and zeal.” As the conversation continued, Lincoln seemed to sense that the committee members were “earnest and sad—not malicious nor passionate.” He “expressed his satisfaction with the tone and temper” of the conversation, promised to examine the prepared paper with care, and left them with the feeling that he was “pleased with the interview.”
Aware that “he must work it out by himself” with no adviser to consult, Lincoln “thought deeply on the matter.” By morning, he had devised a plan of action. He sent notices to all of his cabinet members except Seward, requesting a special meeting at 10:30 a.m. When all were seated around the familiar oak table, Lincoln asked them to keep secret what he had to say. He informed them of Seward’s letter of resignation, told them about his meeting with the Committee of Nine, and read aloud the paper the committee members had presented to him. He reiterated the statements he had made to the committee, emphasizing how his compound cabinet had worked together “harmoniously, whatever had been their previous party feelings,” and that during the “overwhelming troubles of the country, which had borne heavily upon him,” he had counted on their loyalty and “good feeling.” He “could not afford to lose” any of them and declared that it would not be “possible for him to go on with a total abandonment of old friends.”
Knowing that, when personally confronted, the cabinet members would profess they had worked well together, Lincoln proposed a joint session later that evening with the cabinet and the Committee of Nine. Presumably, they would disabuse the senators of their notions of disunity and discord in the cabinet. Chase was panicked at the thought of the joint meeting, since tales of the malfunctioning cabinet had originated largely with his own statements to the senators. Chase argued vehemently against the joint meeting, but when everyone else agreed, he was forced to acquiesce.
On the evening of December 19, when the members of the Committee of Nine arrived at the White House, Lincoln began the unusual session by reading the resolutions of the senators and inviting a candid discussion of the issues raised. He acknowledged that cabinet meetings had not been as regular as he might have liked, given the terrible time pressures that faced his administration. Nonetheless, he believed that “most questions of importance had received a reasonable consideration,” and that “all had acquiesced in measures when once decided.” He went on to defend Seward against the committee’s charge that he had “improperly interfered” with decisions and had not been “earnest in the prosecution of the war.” He specifically cited Seward’s full concurrence in the Emancipation Proclamation.
The senators renewed their demand that “the whole Cabinet” must “consider and decide great questions,” with no one individual directing the “whole Executive action.” They noted with approval that John Quincy Adams adhered to the majority vote of his cabinet even when he disagreed with them. In like fashion, “they wanted united counsels, combined wisdom, and energetic action.”
Blair followed with a long argument that “sustained the President and dissented most decidedly from the idea of a plural Executive.” Though he “had differed much with Mr. Seward,” he nonetheless “believed him as earnest as any one in the war; thought it would be injurious to the public service to have him leave the Cabinet, and that the Senate had better not meddle with matters of that kind.” Bates expressed wholehearted agreement with Blair, as did Welles. As he contemplated the discussion, Welles wrote the next day, he realized that while he had likewise differed with Seward on numerous occasions, Seward’s faults were “venial.” Moreover, “no party or faction should be permitted to dictate to the President in regard to his Cabinet.”
The course of the conversation had seriously compromised Chase’s position. He noted irritably, recalled Fessenden, that “he should not have come here had he known that he was to be arraigned before a committee of the Senate,” but he felt compelled to uphold Lincoln and his colleagues. Stating equivocally that he wished the cabinet had more fully considered every measure, Chase endorsed the president’s statement that there had been accord on most measures. He grudgingly admitted that “no member had opposed a measure after it had once been decided on.” As for the Emancipation Proclamation, Chase conceded that Seward had suggested amendments that substantially strengthened it. Neither Stanton nor Smith said a word.
After nearly five hours of open conversation, sensing he was making headway, Lincoln asked each of the senators if he still desired to see Seward resign his position. Though four, including Lyman Trumbull, reaffirmed their original position, the others had changed their minds. When the meeting adjourned at 1 a.m., the senators suspected that no change in the cabinet would be made.
The disappointed senators now turned their wrath upon Chase, whose duplicitous behavior infuriated them. When Collamer was asked how Chase could have presented such a different face when confronted in the meeting, the Vermont senator answered succinctly, “He lied.” Lincoln agreed that Chase had been disingenuous, but not on that night. On the contrary, after months of spreading false stories about Seward and the cabinet, Chase had finally been compelled to tell the truth! Lincoln’s political dexterity had enabled him to calm the crisis and expose the duplicity of his secretary of the treasury.
The next day, Welles paid an early call on the president. He said that he had “pondered the events” of the previous night and concluded that it would be a grievous mistake for Lincoln to accept Seward’s resignation. The senators’ presumption in their criticisms of Seward, “real or imaginary,” was “inappropriate and wrong.” In order to “maintain the rights and independence of the Executive,” Lincoln must reject the senator’s attempts to interfere with internal cabinet matters. We
lles hoped that Seward would not press Lincoln to accept his resignation. Delighted by these comments, Lincoln asked Welles to talk with Seward.
Welles went at once to Seward’s house, where he found Stanton conversing with the secretary of state. While Stanton had probably joined Chase in airing his frustrations, most particularly when McClellan was restored to command, he had come to see the necessity for solidarity. The cabinet, he said, was like a window. “Suppose you allowed it to be understood that passers-by might knock out one pane of glass—just one at a time—how long do you think any panes would be left in it?”
When Stanton departed, Welles told Seward that he had advised the president not to accept his resignation. This “greatly pleased” Seward, who had been distraught over the whole episode. In short order, another visitor knocked on Seward’s door and Monty Blair entered, also to object to the idea of Seward’s resignation. So Lincoln had brought the cabinet to rally around one of their own. Like family members who would fault one another within the confines of their own household while fiercely rejecting external criticism, the cabinet put aside its quarrel with Seward, based largely on jealousy over his intimacy with Lincoln, to resist the interference of outsiders.
Still, Lincoln’s troubles were not over. The news of Seward’s offer of resignation had produced widespread comment, particularly among radicals who hoped that his departure would signal a first step toward a reconstructed cabinet purged of conservative influences. To refuse Seward’s offer now that its tender was public knowledge would be interpreted as a slap against the radicals. The delicate balance Lincoln had struggled to maintain in his cabinet would be damaged.
Ironically, Salmon Chase unwittingly provided a perfect solution to Lincoln’s difficulty. When Welles returned to Lincoln’s office after speaking with Seward, he found Chase and Stanton waiting to see the president. Humiliated after the previous night, Chase had decided to hand in his own resignation. Word had already leaked out that he had been instrumental in the movement to remove Seward “for the purpose of obtaining and maintaining control in the cabinet.” Were he to remain after Seward’s departure, he told a friend, he would face the hostility of Seward’s many friends. Yet a public offer to join Seward in resigning would put the onus on Lincoln to request Chase’s continued service and “relieve him from imputations of Seward’s friends and clear his future course of difficulties.”
Discovering Chase, Stanton, and Welles in his office, Lincoln invited them all to sit with him before the fire. Chase said he “had been painfully affected by the meeting,” which had come as “a total surprise” to him. He informed the president he had written out his resignation. “Where is it?” Lincoln asked, “his eye lighting up for a moment.” When Chase said he had brought it with him, Lincoln leaped up, exclaiming, “Let me have it.” Stretching out to snatch it, Lincoln pulled the paper from Chase, who now seemed “reluctant” to let it go. With “an air of satisfaction spread over his countenance,” Lincoln said, “This…cuts the Gordian knot.” As he began reading the note, he added, “I can dispose of this subject now without difficulty.”
Chase gave Welles a “perplexed” look, suggesting he was not pleased that his colleague was a witness to this upsetting encounter. At this point, Stanton also offered to submit his resignation. “I don’t want yours,” Lincoln immediately replied. Then, indicating Chase’s letter, he added, “This…is all I want—this relieves me—my way is clear—the trouble is ended. I will detain neither of you longer.”
As soon as they left, Lincoln wrote a letter to both Seward and Chase, acknowledging that he had received their resignations, but that “after most anxious consideration,” he had determined that the “public interest” required both men to remain in office. “I therefore have to request that you will resume the duties of your Departments respectively,” he concluded. Welles immediately fathomed Lincoln’s insistence on keeping the two rivals close despite their animosity: “Seward comforts him,—Chase he deems a necessity.” By retaining both men, Lincoln kept the balance in his cabinet. When Senator Ira Harris called on him shortly after he had received Chase’s resignation, Lincoln was in a buoyant mood. “Yes, Judge,” he said, employing a metaphor shaped by his rural childhood, “I can ride on now, I’ve got a pumpkin in each end of my bag!”
Seward responded to Lincoln with alacrity. “I have cheerfully resumed the functions of this Department in obedience to your command,” he replied. That afternoon, a relieved Fanny received a telegram from Fred instructing her and Jenny to “come as soon as possible” to Washington. Chase, meanwhile, had far more difficulty in determining how to respond. His first reaction was to draft a letter refusing Lincoln’s wish. “Will you allow me to say,” he wrote, “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 of both Gov. Seward and myself, you felt you could relieve yourself from trouble by declining to accept either and that the feeling was one of gratification.” He then went on to express the opinion that he and Seward could “both better serve you and the country, at this time, as private citizens, than in your cabinet.” When Chase received a note from Seward announcing his decision to resume his duties, however, he felt compelled to follow suit. While letting Lincoln know that his original desire to resign remained unchanged, Chase promised that he would do Lincoln’s bidding and return to the Treasury.
At the next cabinet meeting, Welles noted, “Seward was feeling very happy,” while “Chase was pale, and said he was ill, had been for weeks.” Seward magnanimously invited Chase to dine with his family on Christmas Eve. Having achieved what Nicolay termed “a triumph over those who attempted to drive him out,” Seward hoped that he and Chase could now make their peace. Though Chase declined the invitation, he sent a gracious note begging that his “unwilling absence” be excused, for he was “too really sick…to venture upon his hospitality.”
For Lincoln, the most serious governmental crisis of his presidency had ended in victory. He had treated the senators with dignity and respect and, in the process, had protected the integrity and autonomy of his cabinet. He had defended the executive against a legislative attempt to dictate who should constitute the president’s political family. He had saved his friend Seward from an unjust attack that was really directed at him, and, simultaneously, solidified his own position as master of both factions in his cabinet.
Mary Lincoln did not share her husband’s gratification in the outcome. She told Elizabeth Blair that “she regretted the making up of the family quarrel—that there was not a member of the Cabinet who did not stab her husband & the Country daily,” with the exception of Monty Blair. Her protective suspicions were reaffirmed during a visit to a Georgetown spiritualist on New Year’s Eve. Mrs. Laury’s revelations combined comforting communications from Willie with political commentary on affairs of the day. In particular, the spiritualist warned “that the cabinet were all the enemies of the President, working for themselves, and that they would have to be dismissed, and others called to his aid before he had success.”
Lincoln listened patiently to Mary’s concerns, but he knew that he had now balanced his team of rivals and consolidated his leadership. “I do not now see how it could have been done better,” he told Hay. “I am sure it was right. If I had yielded to that storm & dismissed Seward the thing would all have slumped over one way & 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 own hands & I put it through.”
The happy resolution of the crisis provided an upbeat ending to a very difficult year.
BATTLEFIELDS OF THE CIVIL WAR
CHAPTER 19
“FIRE IN THE REAR”
AS THE FIRST DAY of January 1863 approached, the public evinced a “general air of doubt” regarding the president’s intention to follow through on his September pledge to issue his Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day. “Will Lincoln’s backbone carry
him through?” a skeptical George Templeton Strong asked. “Nobody knows.”
The cynics were wrong. Despite repeated warnings that the issuance of the proclamation would have harmful consequences for the Union’s cause, Lincoln never considered retracting his pledge. As Frederick Douglass had perceived, once the president staked himself to a forward position, he did not give up ground. The final proclamation deviated from the preliminary document in one major respect. The document still proclaimed that “all persons held as slaves” within states and parts of states still in rebellion “are, and henceforward shall be free”; but Lincoln, for the first time, officially authorized the recruitment of blacks into the armed forces. Stanton and Chase had advocated this step for many months, yet Lincoln, knowing that it would provoke serious disaffection in his governing coalition, had hesitated. Now, as the public began to comprehend the massive manpower necessary to fight a prolonged war, he believed the timing was right.
The cabinet members suggested a few changes that Lincoln cheerfully adopted, most notably Chase’s proposal to conclude the legalistic document with a flourish, invoking “the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God…upon this act.”
On the morning he would deliver the historic proclamation, Lincoln rose early. He walked over to his office to make final revisions and sent the document by messenger to the State Department, where it was put into legal form. He then met with General Burnside, who had readied his army for “another expedition against the rebels along the Rappahannock,” only to be restrained by the president. Lincoln explained that several of Burnside’s division commanders had made forceful objections to the new plan. Troubled by the realization that he had lost the confidence of his officers, Burnside offered to resign. Lincoln managed to assuage the discord temporarily, but three weeks later, he would replace Burnside with “Fighting Joe” Hooker. A West Point graduate who had fought in the Mexican War, Hooker had served under McClellan in the Peninsula Campaign and at Antietam.