Resounding applause also greeted the resolution thanking soldiers and sailors, “who have periled their lives in defense of their country”; but the crowd’s greatest demonstration was reserved for the resolution endorsing Lincoln’s leadership. “The enthusiasm was terrific,” Brooks noted, “the convention breaking out into yells and cheers unbounded as soon as the beloved name of Lincoln was spoken.” The only discordant note was the passage of a radical plank aimed at conservative Montgomery Blair, calling for “a purge of any cabinet member” who failed to support the platform in full. “Harmony was restored” when the roll call nominating Lincoln was completed, at which point, the National Republican noted, “the audience rose en masse, and such an enthusiastic demonstration was scarcely ever paralleled. Men waved their hands and hats, and ladies, in the galleries, their kerchiefs,” while the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The next order of business was the nomination of a vice president. Though Thurlow Weed was not a delegate, his towering presence played a central role in the selection of Andrew Johnson. Always alive to the interests of his oldest friend, Seward, Weed at once understood that if New York’s Daniel Dickinson received the vice presidential nod, Seward might not retain his position as secretary of state. An unwritten rule dictated that two significant posts could not be allotted to a single state. Weed had initially supported Hamlin but soon saw that the growing sentiment for a War Democrat would result in the nomination of either Dickinson or Johnson. He placed the Weed-Seward machine behind the victorious Johnson.
The results of the convention were routed through the telegraph office at the War Department. It was “Stanton’s theory,” his secretary explained, that “everything concerned his own Department,” and he had centralized into his office “the whole telegraphic system of the United States.” Lincoln was present in the late afternoon when a clerk handed him a dispatch reporting Johnson’s nomination. Having not yet heard his own nomination confirmed, Lincoln was startled. “What! do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?” Is that not putting “the cart before the horse”? The embarrassed operator explained that the dispatch about the president’s nomination had come in several hours earlier, while Lincoln was at lunch, and had been sent directly to the White House. “It is all right,” replied Lincoln. “I shall probably find it on my return.”
The following day, a committee appointed by the delegates arrived at the White House to officially notify Lincoln of his nomination. In response to their laudatory statement, Lincoln said he did not assume that the convention had found him to be “the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.’” Later that night, when the Ohio delegation came to serenade him at the White House, he humbly directed their attention to the soldiers in the field. “What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant,” he said. “I propose that you help me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers for Gen. Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command.”
A visitor to the White House at this time told Lincoln that “nothing could defeat him but Grant’s capture of Richmond, to be followed by [the general’s] nomination at Chicago”—where the Democratic Convention was scheduled to take place later that summer. “Well,” said Lincoln, “I feel very much like the man who said he didn’t want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of.”
CHAPTER 24
“ATLANTA IS OURS”
UNION HOPES FOR imminent victory faded as the spring of 1864 gave way to summer. “Our troops have suffered much and accomplished but little,” Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on June 20. “The immense slaughter of our brave men chills and sickens us all.” Unable to dislodge Lee’s troops, who displayed what the White House secretary William Stoddard called an awe-inspiring “steady courage,” Grant settled in for a siege at Petersburg. Meanwhile, Sherman was encountering tough resistance as he moved slowly through Georgia.
Daily reports of the brutal battles in Virginia and Georgia provoked a particular dread in the Sewards, the Blairs, the Bates, and the Welleses, all of whom had loved ones at the front. For the Sewards, whose youngest son, William, nearly lost his life at Cold Harbor, there were many sleepless nights. “I cannot yet bring myself to the contemplation of your death or of your suffering as others have done,” Frances Seward told Will, though she considered that he was “fighting for a holy cause” in a “righteous” conflict, unlike the Mexican War, which she had vigorously opposed when her older son, Augustus, had been in the army.
Elizabeth Blair had become “so nervous” with her husband in the navy and her brother Frank moving toward Atlanta with Sherman that she “quake[d] all night with terror.” Even her normally cheerful father was perpetually “grave & anxious,” certain that if Frank were taken prisoner, the Confederates “would be as eager to kill him physically—as the Radicals are politically.” Bates feared for his twenty-one-year-old son, Coalter, who was with General Meade and the Army of the Potomac, and Welles was pained “beyond what I can describe” when his eighteen-year-old son, Thomas, departed “with boyish pride and enthusiasm” to join General Grant. “It was uncertain whether we should ever meet again,” he recorded in his diary, “and if we do he may be mutilated, and a ruined man.” His anxiety left Welles “sad, and unfit for any labor.” The painful apprehension within the administration mirrored the fears experienced in hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the country.
Lincoln knew the ravages of this most bloody war had touched every town and household of America. The time had come to revive the oppressed spirits of the people. In mid-June, he found the perfect forum for a public speech when he journeyed to the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, designed to benefit the Sanitary Commission. Thousands of citizens had come from the surrounding area to enjoy the collections of art, statuary, and flowers, the zoological garden, restaurants, raffles, and games that covered a two-mile concourse and were said to offer “miracles as many as Faust saw in his journey through the world of magic.”
At seven o’clock on the morning of June 16, Lincoln, Mary, and Tad left for Philadelphia by train. Word of their journey had spread. At every depot along the way, cheering crowds gathered for a glimpse of the first family. Arriving before noon, they were escorted in an open carriage up Broad Street to Chestnut Street and the Continental Hotel. The streets were “lined with citizens” and the windows “crowded with ladies waving their handkerchiefs.” The unbounded ardor and spontaneous applause was such, one reporter noted, “as has not been heard for many a day in Philadelphia.” Lincoln declined to speak at the hotel or at the fairgrounds that afternoon, preferring to wait until the dinner that evening. Perhaps he knew that his remarks, which he had carefully drafted, would be recorded more accurately in that setting.
“War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible,” he began. “It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented…. It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the ‘heavens are hung in black.’” Nonetheless, he reminded his listeners, “We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time.” The force of his words and the unshakable determination they embodied instantly uplifted and emboldened his audience.
A few days later, in order to stem his own “intense anxiety” about the stalemate in Virginia, Lincoln decided to visit Grant at his headquarters at City Point. Welles strongly disapproved of the decision. “He can do no good,” he predicted. “It can hardly be otherwise than to do harm, even if no accident befalls him. Better for him and the country that he should remain at his post here.” The navy secretary f
ailed to understand the importance of these trips to Lincoln, who needed the contact with the troops to lift his own spirits so that he, in turn, could better buoy the spirits of those around him.
Accompanied by Tad and Assistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, Lincoln left the Washington Navy Yard aboard the river steamer Baltimore in the early evening of June 20. The journey to City Point, which was about 180 miles farther south by water than Aquia Creek, took more than sixteen hours. Horace Porter, Grant’s aide-de-camp, recalled that when the steamer arrived at the wharf, Lincoln “came down from the upper deck…and reaching out his long, angular arm, he wrung General Grant’s hand vigorously, and held it in his for some time,” as he expressed great appreciation for all that Grant had been through since they last met in Washington. Introduced to the members of Grant’s staff, the president “had for each one a cordial greeting and a pleasant word. There was a kindliness in his tone and a hearty manner of expression which went far to captivate all who met him.”
Over a “plain and substantial” lunch, typical of “the hero of Vicksburg,” noted the Herald correspondent, Lincoln conversed entertainingly and delivered “three capital jokes” that provoked hilarity. When the meal was finished, Grant suggested a ride to the front ten miles away. Porter noted that Lincoln made an odd appearance on his horse as his “trousers gradually worked up above his ankles, and gave him the appearance of a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes.” The sight “bordered upon the grotesque,” but the troops he passed along the way “were so lost in admiration of the man that the humorous aspect did not seem to strike them…cheers broke forth from all the commands, and enthusiastic shouts and even words of familiar greeting met him on all sides.”
Reaching the front, the president took “a long and lingering look” at the sights of Petersburg, where Lee’s armies were gathered behind formidable earthworks. On the return trip, they passed a brigade of black soldiers, who rushed forward to greet the president, “screaming, yelling, shouting: ‘Hurrah for the Liberator; Hurrah for the President.’” Their “spontaneous outburst” moved Lincoln to tears, “and his voice was so broken by emotion” that he could hardly reply.
That evening, Porter recalled, as Lincoln sat for hours with General Grant and his staff, “we had an opportunity of appreciating his charm as a talker, and hearing some of the stories for which he had become celebrated.” The young aide-de-camp observed what so many others had seen before, that Lincoln “did not tell a story merely for the sake of the anecdote, but to point a moral or clench a fact.” Seated on “a low camp-chair,” with his long legs wrapped around each other “as if in an effort to get them out of the way,” he used his arms to accompany his words and “joined heartily with the listeners in the laugh which followed.” Discussion of a new form of gunpowder prompted a story of two competing powder merchants in Springfield. The sight of a newly patented artillery trace led to the recitation of a line from a poem: “Sorrow had fled, but left her traces there.” Reference to the electoral college brought forth the quaint observation that “the Electoral College is the only one where they choose their own masters.” When the convivial evening came to a close, the president walked with Porter to his tent, taking a peek inside, “from curiosity, doubtless, to see how the officers were quartered,” before returning to his stateroom on the Baltimore.
The next morning, “in excellent spirits,” Lincoln steamed up the James River with Grant to visit General Butler and Admiral Samuel Phillips Lee, Elizabeth Blair’s husband. Talking with Butler about Grant, he observed that “When Grant once gets possession of a place, he holds on to it as if he had inherited it.” After lunch, it was time to return to Washington. On taking leave, General Grant took Lincoln aside, assuring him with a rousing pledge that the president would repeat and cite in the weeks ahead: “You will never hear of me farther from Richmond than now, till I have taken it. I am just as sure of going into Richmond as I am of any future event. It may take a long summer day, but I will go in.”
On the morning of June 23, John Hay reported that Lincoln returned to the White House “sunburnt and fagged but still refreshed and cheered. He found the army in fine health good position and good spirits.” The next day, at the regular Friday cabinet meeting, the skeptical Welles conceded that the trip to the front had “done him good, physically, and strengthened him mentally in confidence in the General and army.” And of signal importance, Lincoln could now better project his own renewed hope to the anxious public, lauding Grant’s “extraordinary qualities as a commander” to one reporter, and speaking to another “of the condition of army matters in the very highest terms of confidence.”
Acutely aware of his own emotional needs, Lincoln had chosen exactly the right time to review the troops, for his conversations with Grant and his interactions with the soldiers sustained and inspired him during the troubling days ahead. “Having hope,” writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, “means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks.” Hope is “more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right”; it is “believing you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals.” More clearly than his colleagues, Lincoln understood that numerous setbacks were inevitable before the war could be brought to a close. Yet in the end, he firmly believed the North would prevail. “We are today further ahead than I thought one year and a half ago we should be,” he told Noah Brooks that June, “and yet there are plenty of people who believe that the war is about to be substantially closed. As God is my judge I shall be satisfied if we are over with the fight in Virginia within a year.”
BY THE LAST WEEK of June, the forbearance Lincoln had long shown toward his ambitious secretary of the treasury was finally exhausted. The dramatic upheaval in the cabinet began when John Cisco, assistant treasurer of New York, announced his resignation. Cisco had held the prestigious post through three different administrations and was well respected by all factions. Lincoln was anxious that his replacement satisfy both wings of New York’s Republican Party. For several months, the president had been bombarded by complaints from friends in New York, including Thurlow Weed and Senator Edwin Morgan, that Chase was filling all the customs house positions with his own partisans—former Democrats who were now radical Republicans supporting Chase’s own presidential hopes.
Sensitive to Weed’s concerns, Lincoln told Chase to consult with Senator Morgan and ensure that his selection was satisfactory to all sides. Chase discussed the matter with the powerful New York senator but then proceeded, over Morgan’s strong objection, to send Lincoln a formal nomination for Maunsell Field. A Democratic journalist with ties to New York society, Field was serving as third assistant secretary of the treasury, a post Chase had designed especially to compensate Field for the access he had provided Chase to the inner circles of New York literary and social life. The appointment was stunning, recalled the treasury registrar, Lucius Chittenden, for Field “had no financial or political standing, and his natural abilities were of a literary rather than an executive character.”
Undeterred, Chase apparently assumed that his own services were so indispensable that Lincoln would sanction a controversial nominee rather than risk a messy squabble when the financial health of the nation was at stake. Chase awoke the morning after sending the Field nomination to the White House and cheerfully undertook his daily reading of the Bible, which on that summer morning included a letter St. Paul sent to the Ephesians imploring them to “Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.” When he reached the department, however, he found a disturbing note from the president on his desk. “I can not, without much embarrassment, make this appointment,” Lincoln informed him, “principally because of Senator Morgan’s very firm opposition to it.” It would “really oblige” him, he said, if Chase and Senator Morgan could agree on another nominee.
Sti
ll confident that he could change the president’s mind, Chase wrote an immediate request for a personal interview. When Lincoln did not respond, Chase decided to resolve the difficulty on his own. He telegraphed Cisco in New York and pleaded with him to withdraw his resignation and stay on for another three months. Before obtaining Cisco’s answer, he received Lincoln’s reply to his interview request. “The difficulty,” wrote Lincoln, “does not, in the main part, lie within the range of a conversation between you and me.” Lincoln went on to explain the criticism he had faced in the previous months over treasury appointments in New York, and noted that to disregard Morgan’s judgment in this instance might trigger “open revolt.”
Cisco’s agreement to stay on should have ended the matter; but Chase, peeved at Lincoln’s refusal to meet in person and bent on reestablishing his authority over his own appointments, could not rest. He decided to chasten the president with what was essentially his fourth letter of resignation, certain it would again be rejected. He began his letter by enclosing Cisco’s telegram withdrawing his resignation, which, he acknowledged, “relieves the present difficulty.” But then he went on: “I cannot help feeling that my position here is not altogether agreeable to you; and it is certainly too full of embarrassment and difficulty and painful responsibility to allow in me the least desire to retain it. I think it my duty therefore to enclose to you my resignation.”
Lincoln was seated at his desk in his office, he later recalled, when a messenger handed him a letter from the Treasury Department. “I opened it, recognized Chase’s handwriting, read the first sentence, and inferred from its tenor that this matter was in the way of satisfactory adjustment. I was truly glad of this, and, laying the envelope with its inclosure down upon the desk, went on talking. People were coming and going all the time till three o’clock, and I forgot all about Chase’s letter. At that hour it occurred to me that I would go down stairs and get a bit of lunch. My wife happened to be away, and they had failed to call me at the usual time [Mary was in Massachusetts for Robert’s graduation from Harvard]. While I was sitting alone at table my thoughts reverted to Chase’s letter, and I determined to answer it just as soon as I should go up stairs again.