“Peace does not appear so distant as it did,” Lincoln concluded. “And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.”
Lincoln continued to refine his letter over the next ten days, stealing what time he could from his public duties. He finally sent it, accompanied with a personal note to Conkling: “You are one of the best public readers. I have but one suggestion. Read it very slowly.” An immense crowd was expected, drawn “from the farm and the workshop,” the local newspaper reported, “from the office and the counting-room,” to prove to the Copperheads that behind the soldiers already in the field were “hundreds of thousands more who are willing to offer their services whenever the country calls.”
Confident in his final composition, Lincoln anticipated a positive reception on September 3 when it would be read to the crowd and then given to newspapers for publication the following day. When he awoke on the morning of the mass meeting, however, he was furious to see a truncated version of his letter printed in the Washington Daily Chronicle. Lincoln immediately complained to the editor, John Forney. Don’t blame us, Forney explained to Lincoln, we got it from the Associated Press, and it’s in daily newspapers around the country. Provoked, Lincoln telegraphed Conkling in Springfield. “I am mortified this morning to find the letter to you, botched up, in the Eastern papers, telegraphed from Chicago. How did this happen?”
Hearing nothing that day from Conkling, Lincoln remained testy. When a petitioner tried to solicit his help in securing property for a Memphis woman whose husband was in the Confederate Army, the president uncharacteristically replied that he had “neither the means nor time” to consider the request and that “the impropriety of bringing such cases to me, is obvious to any one.”
The following morning, a message arrived from Conkling. Apparently, he had telegraphed the letter in advance, with “strict injunctions not to permit it to be published before the meeting or make any improper use of it.” He was “mortified” that someone had broken faith, but trusted that “no prejudicial results have been experienced as the whole Letter was published the next day.”
In fact, the publication of the entire letter received excellent reviews. “Disclaiming the arts of the diplomatist, the cunning of the politician, and the graces of rhetoric, he comes straight to the points he wants to discuss,” praised the New York Daily Tribune. “The most consummate rhetorician never used language more pat to the purpose,” the New York Times declared, “and still there is not a word in the letter not familiar to the plainest plowman.” While “felicity of speech” was usually linked to “high culture,” the Times continued, Lincoln, “in his own independent, and perhaps we might say very peculiar, way,” exhibits a “felicity of speech far surpassing” stylistic preference. He possesses a far more valuable “felicity of thought,” which “invariably gets at the needed truth of the time,” hitting “the very nail of all others which needs driving.” The Philadelphia Inquirer had regarded Lincoln’s unconventional habit of writing public letters with skepticism, but granted that his recent letters, including this one, “have dispelled the doubt. If he is as felicitous in the future, we hope he will continue to write.”
“His last letter is a great thing,” Hay told Nicolay a few days later. “Some hideously bad rhetoric—some indecorums that are infamous—yet the whole letter takes its solid place in history, as a great utterance of a great man. The whole Cabinet could not have tinkered up a letter which could have been compared with it. He can snake a sophism out of its hole, better than all the trained logicians of all schools.”
In its fulsome praise of the letter to Conkling, the New York Times also commended a long line of Lincoln’s writings, including his inaugural, the letters to McClellan made public by the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, and his published letters to Greeley and Corning, which revealed “the same fitness to the occasion, and the same effectiveness in its own direction.” Taken together, these remarkable documents had made Lincoln “the most popular man in the Republic. All the denunciations and all the arts of demagogues are perfectly powerless to wean the people from their faith in him.”
“I know the people want him,” Hay wrote to Nicolay, looking forward to the next election. “There is no mistaking that fact. But politicians are strong yet & he is not their ‘kind of a cat.’ I hope God wont see fit to scourge us for our sins by any one of the two or three most prominent candidates on the ground.”
BY THE MIDDLE of September 1863, all the members of Lincoln’s cabinet had returned from their summer sojourns. Seward came back invigorated by his trip through the lake region with the diplomatic corps. Bates was back from Missouri in time to celebrate his seventieth birthday, grateful that his long life had “been crowned with many blessings, and, comparatively few crosses.” He noted with pride that, as a public figure, he had achieved a reputation “for knowledge and probity, quite as good as I deserve.” Stanton, too, had enjoyed a much-needed vacation with his family in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Chase, in characteristic fashion, had allowed himself scant respite from work, leaving his daughters at the seashore and then peevishly awaiting their return. Welles was gratified to return from his ten-day visit to the Navy Yards, noting in his diary that all his colleagues seemed “glad to see me,—none more so than the President, who cordially and earnestly greeted me. I have been less absent than any other member and was therefore perhaps more missed.” Lincoln himself still enjoyed leisurely nights at the Soldiers’ Home and looked forward to Mary’s homecoming from the Green Mountains.
Grim news from Tennessee deflated the genial, relaxed mood of the president and his cabinet. After the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Lincoln and Stanton had hoped that General Rosecrans, with the Army of the Cumberland, could deliver the “finishing blow to the rebellion.” He was positioned to push the enemy from Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tennessee, with an eye to advancing on Georgia. However, after Rosecrans delivered “a great and bloodless victory at Chattanooga” as the enemy fled from the city before advancing troops, the Confederates regrouped and “unexpectedly appeared in force, on the south bank of [the] Chicamauga.” A furious battle commenced on Saturday, September 19. Within thirty-six hours, the telegrams from the field indicated a stunning Confederate victory. “Chicamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run,” Dana wired Stanton. Union casualties totaled sixteen thousand men. “We have met with a serious disaster,” Rosecrans acknowledged. “Enemy overwhelmed us, drove our right, pierced our center and scattered troops there.”
Lincoln told Welles that the dispatches reached him “at the Soldiers’ Home shortly after he got asleep, and so disturbed him that he had no more rest, but arose and came to the city and passed the remainder of the night awake and watchful.” At daybreak, the president wandered into Hay’s room, where, seated on the bed, he broke the news to his young aide. “Well, Rosecrans has been whipped, as I feared. I have feared it for several days. I believe I feel trouble in the air before it comes.”
Later that same day, perhaps hoping that the presence of his family might lift his spirits, Lincoln telegraphed Mary. “The air is so clear and cool, and apparently healthy, that I would be glad for you to come. Nothing very particular, but I would be glad [to] see you and Tad.” Mary responded immediately, saying she was “anxious to return home” and had already made plans to do so.
As further reports filtered in, the fallout of the battle proved “less unfavorable than was feared,” a relieved Chase noted. General George Thomas’s corps had held its ground, and the rebels had lost even more troops than the Federals. Chattanooga “still remains in our hands,” Charles Dana wired to Stanton and, with reinforcements of twenty to thirty thousand troops “can be held by this army for from fift
een to twenty days.” Without the additional troops, however, the outnumbered Federals would have to abandon Chattanooga or face another potentially disastrous battle. Everything hinged on whether this massive movement of troops would reach Tennessee in time. Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, Stanton came up with a bold idea that required the president’s approval.
Unwilling to waste the remainder of the night, Stanton dispatched messengers to bring Lincoln, Halleck, Seward, and Chase to a secret meeting in his office. Chase had just retired for the night when the courier rang his bell. “The Secretary of War desires that you will come to the Department immediately & has sent a carriage for you,” he announced. Chase “hastily rose & dressed,” terrified that the enemy had captured Rosecrans and his entire army. John Hay was sent to the Soldiers’ Home to summon Lincoln, who, like Chase, was already in bed. As Lincoln rose to dress, “he was considerably disturbed,” saying that “it was the first time Stanton had ever sent for him.” Guided by the light of the moon, Lincoln and Hay then rode back to the War Department.
When the five men were assembled around the table, the austere Stanton said: “I have invited this meeting because I am thoroughly convinced that something must be done & done immediately.” He proceeded to outline an audacious proposal to remove twenty thousand men from General Meade’s Army of the Potomac to Nashville and Chattanooga under General Hooker’s command. The plan struck both Halleck and Lincoln as dangerous and impractical. Halleck protested that it would take at least forty days to reach Tennessee. The troops would arrive too late, and Meade would be left vulnerable on the Rappahannock. The president agreed. “Why,” he quipped, “you cant get one corps into Washington in the time you fix for reaching Nashville.” A humorous anecdote he employed to illustrate his point “greatly annoyed” Stanton, who remarked that “the danger was too imminent & the occasion [too] serious for jokes.” He said that “he had fully considered the question of practicability & should not have submitted his proposition had he not fully satisfied himself” as to its feasibility.
After further discussion, Chase suggested taking a break for the refreshments Stanton had prepared. “On returning,” Chase recalled, “Mr. Seward took up the subject & supported Mr. Stantons proposition with excellent arguments.” Chase believed that Seward’s support for the proposal was instrumental. Sensing his advantage, Stanton immediately sent an orderly to find Colonel D. C. McCallum, director of the Department of Military Railroads. Stanton had briefed McCallum earlier in the evening and directed him to prepare an estimate of the time necessary to transfer the troops by rail if all available trains were put at his disposal. When McCallum entered, Lincoln described the proposition and asked him to estimate how long it would take to achieve the goal. Without disclosing that he had received prior notice to consider the matter, McCallum asked for a moment to “make a few figures.” Seated at a desk with timetables spread before him, he worked for some time while the room remained silent. Finally, he stood up and said: “I can complete it in seven days.”
“Good!” Stanton exclaimed, turning contemptuously to Halleck. “I told you so! I knew it could be done! Forty days! Forty days indeed, when the life of the nation is at stake!” He then addressed McCallum: “Go ahead; begin now.” At this point, Lincoln interrupted. “I have not yet given my consent,” he reminded the secretary of war. “Colonel McCallum, are you sure about this?” Lincoln asked. “There must be no mistake.” When McCallum said he would “pledge [his] life to accomplish it inside of seven days,” Lincoln was satisfied. “Mr. Secretary, you are the captain. Give the necessary orders and I will approve them.”
Relentlessly, Stanton worked for more than forty-eight hours straight, commandeering trains for military use, telegraphing railroad managers along the route, determining the various gauges of the tracks. He acquired the provisions necessary for soldiers and horses to travel straight across the Alleghenies into East Tennessee without a stop to resupply.
The first train left Washington at 5 p.m. on September 25, with departures every hour until 23,000 men and 1,100 horses, 9 batteries, and hundreds of wagons, tents, and supplies arrived in Tennessee ready to join Rosecrans in defense of Chattanooga. Monitoring reports from every station along the way, Stanton refused to go home. When exhaustion overtook him, he would collapse on his couch for a few hours, a cologne-moistened handkerchief tied around his forehead. Only when it became clear that the movement would succeed within the promised seven days did he agree to leave his post. “It was an extraordinary feat of logistics,” James McPherson writes, “the longest and fastest movement of such a large body of troops before the twentieth century.”
The immediate peril was past, but Dana’s reports in the following weeks indicated that the rebels had cut off supply routes into Chattanooga and that the troops had lost confidence in Rosecrans. Lincoln and Stanton decided that the time had come for a change in command. Stanton telegraphed Grant to leave Cairo, Illinois, for Louisville, Kentucky, where he would “meet an officer of the War Department” and receive new instructions. When Grant reached Indianapolis, he discovered that the War Department officer was Stanton himself. This was the first meeting between the two men.
Stanton presented Grant with a choice between two orders. Both offered him command of a new “Military Division of the Mississippi” encompassing the Departments of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Tennessee. The first left the departmental commanders in place. Grant chose the second order, which replaced Rosecrans with Thomas. Stanton spent a day with Grant discussing the overall military situation before the general departed for Chattanooga. There, under his leadership, the Federals eventually drove the rebels from Tennessee after a stunning victory at Lookout Mountain.
In his memoirs, Grant credits Stanton for playing an important role in saving Chattanooga. The unprecedented troop movement prevented a retreat that, Grant acknowledged, “would have been a terrible disaster.” Chase, too, lauded Stanton. “The country does not know how much it owes Edwin M. Stanton for that nights work.”
It was this indomitable drive that Lincoln had sought when he put aside any resentment at the humiliation Stanton had inflicted years earlier in Cincinnati. The bluntness and single-minded intensity behind Stanton’s brusque dismissal of Lincoln at that first acquaintance were the qualities the president valued in his secretary of war—whom he would affectionately call his “Mars.”
Those who observed the improbable pair in the little room adjoining the telegraph office noted the “esteem and affection” that characterized their relationship. “It was an interesting and a pleasant sight,” clerk Charles Benjamin recalled, “that of Mr. Lincoln seated with one long leg crossed upon the other, his head a little peaked and his face lit up by the animation of talking or listening, while Mr. Stanton would stand sidewise to him, with one hand resting lightly on the high back of the chair in the brief intervals of that everlasting occupation of wiping his spectacles.” Should Lincoln rise from the writing desk that Stanton arranged for him, “the picturesqueness of the scene” would give way to laughter, for “the striking differences in height and girth at once suggested the two gendarmes in the French comic opera.”
“No two men were ever more utterly and irreconcilably unlike,” Stanton’s private secretary, A. E. Johnson, observed. “The secretiveness which Lincoln wholly lacked, Stanton had in marked degree; the charity which Stanton could not feel, coursed from every pore in Lincoln. Lincoln was for giving a wayward subordinate seventy times seven chances to repair his errors; Stanton was for either forcing him to obey or cutting off his head without more ado. Lincoln was as calm and unruffled as the summer sea in moments of the gravest peril; Stanton would lash himself into a fury over the same condition of things. Stanton would take hardships with a groan; Lincoln would find a funny story to fit them. Stanton was all dignity and sternness, Lincoln all simplicity and good nature…yet no two men ever did or could work better in harness. They supplemented each other’s nature, and they fully recognized the fac
t that they were a necessity to each other.”
Johnson believed that “in dealing with the public, Lincoln’s heart was greater than his head, while Stanton’s head was greater than his heart.” The antithetical styles are typified in the story of a congressman who had received Lincoln’s authorization for the War Department’s aid in a project. When Stanton refused to honor the order, the disappointed petitioner returned to Lincoln, telling him that Stanton had not only countermanded the order but had called the president a damned fool for issuing it. “Did Stanton say I was a d——d fool?” Lincoln asked. “He did, sir,” the congressman replied, “and repeated it.” Smiling, the president remarked: “If Stanton said I was a d——d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him.”
As Stanton came to know and understand Lincoln, his initial disdain turned to admiration. When George Harding, his old partner in the Reaper trial, assumed that Stanton was the author of the “remarkable passages” in one of Lincoln’s messages, Stanton set him straight. “Lincoln wrote it—every word of it; and he is capable of more than that, Harding, no men were ever so deceived as we at Cincinnati.”
“Few war ministers have had such real personal affection and respect for their king or president as Mr. Stanton had for Mr. Lincoln,” a contemporary observed. Both had suffered great personal losses, and both were haunted all their days by thoughts of mortality and death. When Stanton was eighteen, a cholera epidemic had spread through the Midwest. Victims were buried as quickly as possible in an effort to contain the plague. Learning that a young friend had been buried within hours of falling ill, Stanton panicked, fearing that “she had been buried alive while in a faint.” He raced to the grave, where, with the help of a medical student friend, he exhumed her body to determine if she was truly dead. Contact with the body led to his own infection and near death from cholera. When his beloved wife, Mary, died ten years later, he insisted on including her wedding ring, valuable pieces of her jewelry, and some of his correspondence in her casket. He spent hours at her gravesite, and when he could not be there, he sent an employee to stand guard.