Part 24 (1/2)

”THE PRESIDENT TELLS ME that he now fears 'the fire in the rear'-meaning the Democracy, especially in the Northwest-more than our military chances.” So wrote Senator Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, German-born professor of law at Columbia College in New York on January 17, 1863. Antiwar protest surged in the winter and spring of 1863, nowhere more than in Lincoln's Midwest. Two years after the start of the war, ”Peace Democrats,” or ”Copperheads,” lashed out at the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, they said, would produce ”n.i.g.g.e.r equality.” Republicans coined the name ”Copperheads” in the summer of 1861 when an anonymous writer to the that he now fears 'the fire in the rear'-meaning the Democracy, especially in the Northwest-more than our military chances.” So wrote Senator Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, German-born professor of law at Columbia College in New York on January 17, 1863. Antiwar protest surged in the winter and spring of 1863, nowhere more than in Lincoln's Midwest. Two years after the start of the war, ”Peace Democrats,” or ”Copperheads,” lashed out at the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, they said, would produce ”n.i.g.g.e.r equality.” Republicans coined the name ”Copperheads” in the summer of 1861 when an anonymous writer to the Cincinnati Commercial Cincinnati Commercial likened the peace faction of the Democratic Party to the snake in Genesis 3:14: ”Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Copperheads were poisonous snakes, but like many labels that begin as terms of derision, the disparaged soon wore the term as a badge of honor. They cut the G.o.ddess of Liberty from the head of pennies-”Copperheads”-and wore them in the lapels of their coats. Their efforts were no small sideshow, as has often been suggested, but rather a relentless push by well-organized forces that gathered momentum in 1863. They sought to gain control of all states in the Midwest. Lincoln, knowing well the sentiments from which the Copperheads sprung, took the movement seriously. likened the peace faction of the Democratic Party to the snake in Genesis 3:14: ”Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.” Copperheads were poisonous snakes, but like many labels that begin as terms of derision, the disparaged soon wore the term as a badge of honor. They cut the G.o.ddess of Liberty from the head of pennies-”Copperheads”-and wore them in the lapels of their coats. Their efforts were no small sideshow, as has often been suggested, but rather a relentless push by well-organized forces that gathered momentum in 1863. They sought to gain control of all states in the Midwest. Lincoln, knowing well the sentiments from which the Copperheads sprung, took the movement seriously.

This cartoon from the February 28, 1863, issue of Harper's Weekly depicts three Copperheads advancing on Columbia, who bears a sword and a s.h.i.+eld inscribed ”Union.”

Lincoln's comment to Sumner was surely a response to a speech in Congress by Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio three days earlier. Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, the handsome son of a Presbyterian minister, the self-a.s.sured Vallandigham was first elected to the Ohio state legislature in 1845, just months after his twenty-fifth birthday. Elected to Congress in 1858, he became a vigorous states' rights advocate in the tradition of Andrew Jackson. Often caricatured as a wacko, Vallandigham, a conservative Democrat, was actually an effective spokesman for the interests of concerned citizens, especially farmers and immigrants, in the Midwest.

After Republicans had gerrymandered the forty-two-year-old Vallandigham out of a fourth term in Congress in the fall of 1862, he returned to Was.h.i.+ngton for the final session of the Thirty-seventh Congress determined to make his voice heard before he left office. He had campaigned on the slogan ”The Const.i.tution as it is, the Union as it was,” stressing that the ”arbitrary government” of Lincoln, with its record of unlawful arrests and the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, was changing the Union forever. Vallandigham believed the Confederacy could not be defeated, and that the nation should go forward as it had in the past, with a mixed political system that allowed for slavery. When he listened to the reading of Lincoln's annual message on December 1, 1862, the words that especially piqued him were, ”The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. ... As our case is new, we must think anew.”

On January 14, 1863, as Vallandigham left his seat and moved to the center of the opposition benches to speak, congressmen laid aside their newspapers and put down their pens. He began by reproaching the Republicans, not the Southern fire-eaters, for the crisis that had erupted into war. He argued that despite the repudiation of Republicans in the fall elections, especially in the Midwest, Lincoln did not withdraw his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, which, he claimed, was a strategy to divert attention from the president's own failures.

Vallandigham asked: What was the result of twenty months of war? His answer: ”Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchers, these are your trophies.” Claiming to speak for the greater Midwest, he thundered, ”The people of the West demand peace, and they begin to suspect that New England [by which he meant abolitionism] is in the way.” Since the war had failed, it was time to give peace a chance. He proposed pulling Northern troops from the South and opening negotiations for an armistice. He concluded, ”Let time do his office-drying tears, dispelling sorrows, mellowing pa.s.sions, and making herb and gra.s.s and tree grow again upon the hundred battlefields of this terrible war.” Vallandigham, dubbed the apostle of peace, spoke for more than one hour while the packed gallery, including many uniformed soldiers, sat mesmerized.

Peace as well as War Democrats shared an apprehension about the quickly moving developments in the Midwest. John A. McClernand wrote the president on February 14, 1863, ”The Peace Party means, as I predicted long since, not only a separation from the New England States, but reunion of the Middle and Northwestern States with the revolted States.” Many War Democrats, initially supportive of the war, were becoming increasingly critical of Lincoln because of their disagreement with the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation and the continuing price of the war. McClernand put Lincoln on notice. ”Unless the war shall be brought to a close before the expiration of your Administration, or decisive victories gained, this scheme, in whole or a part, will find authoritative sanction.”

Clement L. Vallandigham, former Ohio congressman, became the symbol of the fire in the rear.” Lincoln did not underestimate the power the Copperhead, or Peace Democrat, movement had in the Midwest.

Back in Lincoln's Illinois, the bitter fruits of the Democratic victories in 1862 were ripened in the state legislative agenda of 1863. The legislature pa.s.sed resolutions criticizing the federal administration and calling for an armistice to end the war. A bill to stop the immigration of African-Americans was put on the docket for a vote. Finally, to stop further motions, Republican governor Richard Yates arbitrarily ended the session of the legislature, the first time this had ever happened in Illinois.

As winter gave way to spring, the Copperheads, incited by the March 3, 1863, pa.s.sage of the Conscription Act, the first federal military draft, which stipulated that every male citizen between the ages of twenty and forty-five would be obligated to serve for three years or until the end of the war, moved from words to deeds. Protesters swiftly denounced the draft as unconst.i.tutional. Recruiting officers were murdered. Young men were encouraged to desert. Violence sometimes erupted when Union army officers tried to round up deserters. African-Americans were attacked when Copperheads promoted the fear that the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation would produce an unwanted influx of blacks from South to North.

When Congress adjourned in March, Vallandigham returned home to a hero's welcome in Dayton, Ohio. In the same month, the new commander of the Department of the Ohio, General Ambrose Burnside, arrived at his headquarters at Cincinnati. Each man had recently endured failures; each man came to Ohio determined to make his mark.

Vallandigham, not one to sit on the sidelines, set about making speeches and announced his plans to run for governor. Burnside, incapable of understanding the disaffection in Ohio and not recognizing the partisan editorial viewpoint in Murat Halstead's attacks on Peace Democrats in the Cincinnati Commercial, Cincinnati Commercial, decided to stamp out tyranny by force. On April 13, 1863, Burnside issued General Order Number Thirty-eight, a military edict aimed at persons who ”uttered one word against the government of the United States.” Anyone guilty of ”acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country” could be liable to execution. Burnside a.s.sured Ohio Republicans that he had the power to decide what treason was and what the suitable punishment would be. decided to stamp out tyranny by force. On April 13, 1863, Burnside issued General Order Number Thirty-eight, a military edict aimed at persons who ”uttered one word against the government of the United States.” Anyone guilty of ”acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country” could be liable to execution. Burnside a.s.sured Ohio Republicans that he had the power to decide what treason was and what the suitable punishment would be.

Vallandigham saw immediately that Burnside's overreaching offered an opportunity to test the limits of dissent. He became determined to bait Burnside. The commander of the Department of the Ohio proved more than willing to take that bait.

On May 1, 1863, with Vallandigham scheduled to speak at a Democratic rally in Mount Vernon, Ohio, Burnside dispatched two staff members to observe and take notes. A friend of Vallandigham tipped him off to Burnside's intentions. Vallandigham began his speech by pointing to the American flags, with their thirty-four stars, that surrounded the speakers' stands. He told the crowd the flag with all the states would still be united if it were not for Republican treachery. Looking right at one of Burnside's note-taking agents, he said that his right to speak came from a doc.u.ment-the Const.i.tution-that was higher than General Order Number Thirty-eight, which he derided as ”a bane usurpation of arbitrary power.” ”Valiant Val” concluded by saying that the remedy for all ”the evils” was the ballot box, by which they could throw ”King Lincoln” from his throne.

Burnside heard the applause for Vallandigham in Cincinnati and decided to act. He dispatched Captain Charles G. Hutton and a posse of sixty-seven men to Dayton. They arrived at 323 First Street at 2 a.m. When Vallandigham refused to come out of his house, Hutton's men attacked the front door with bars and axes.

Union troops transported Vallandigham to Burnside's headquarters in Cincinnati, where a military court tried him. While in custody, Vallandigham wrote an address, ”To the Democracy of Ohio,” which was smuggled out of his confinement and published in newspapers across the country. ”I am here in a military bastile for no other offense than my political opinions.” Vallandigham, denied a writ of habeas corpus, was sentenced to confinement in a military prison for the rest of the war.

The two main players in this Ohio melodrama appeared, at first glance, to be Vallandigham and Burnside, but the national audience understood that the lead actor was President Lincoln. All eyes watched to see what action he would take.

Lincoln recognized that both actors, Vallandigham and Burnside, had overplayed their roles. He brought the issue to a cabinet meeting on May 19, 1863, where Welles noted that the arrest was ”an error on the part of Burnside.” Burnside learned of the cabinet's deliberations and telegraphed Lincoln that he understood his actions were ”a source of Embarra.s.sment,” and offered to resign his command. Lincoln replied the same day that ”being done, all were for seeing you through with it.”

Lincoln's generous letter still did not answer the question of what to do. The president did not want to make Vallandigham a martyr, which would happen if he served in a military prison to the end of the war, but he also did not want to publicly reprimand Burnside. The president came up with his own resolution: Release Vallandigham, remove him from the Midwest, where he was becoming a folk hero, and banish him to the Confederacy. Burnside transferred Vallandigham as a prisoner to William Rosecrans's Army of the c.u.mberland at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. On the morning of May 25, 1863, an Alabama cavalry officer on the Shelbyville Turnpike was surely surprised to be met by Union officers under a flag of truce presenting Clement L. Vallandigham.

BY THE MIDDLE OF APRIL, Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac were finally ready to move. Fighting Joe's army of 133,868 outnumbered Lee's army of 60,892 by more than two to one. On April 12, 1863, Hooker sent Daniel b.u.t.terfield, his chief of staff, to the White House to deliver to Lincoln his battle plan, complete with maps. Lincoln wanted to be included. Hooker, on the other hand, was terribly afraid that no one could keep a secret, so that he did not inform his senior commanders of his final plans until the last moment. On April 13, he told his infantry commanders to have their men ready in two days with eight days' rations and 140 rounds of ammunition. On April 14, George Stoneman, with more than 10,000 cavalry, was ready to make the first strike, intending to cross the Rappahannock, move around Lee's left flank, and head for Culpeper Courthouse and Gordonsville, tearing up the railroads and communication lines along the way, with the goal of cutting off Lee's supply line southeast to Richmond. Fighting Joe Hooker's orders were ”fight, fight, fight.”

As the battle was about to begin, Lincoln was filled with anxiety. He spent long hours at the telegraph office in the War Department. On April 14, 1863, he telegraphed Hooker, ”Would like to have a letter from you as soon as convenient.” Lincoln became increasingly frustrated with the incomplete information he was receiving.

General Stoneman, so impressive in parading his cavalry before Lincoln on April 6, 1863, now moved unexplainably slowly. Before he could cross the Rappahannock, the rains came. At 11 p.m. Hooker wrote to Lincoln, but was not clear about the progress of his cavalry. Hooker did not like to send the president bad news.

On the morning of April 15, 1863, Hooker telegraphed Lincoln, a.s.suring him that Stoneman would cross the Rappahannock, and ”if he should meet with no unusual delay, he will strike the Aquia and Richmond Rail Road on the night of the second day.”

Lincoln was not a.s.sured. He replied that Hooker's last letters gave him ”considerable uneasiness.” Lincoln, by now a veteran commander in chief, understood a great deal about tactics and terrain. He wrote, ”He has now been out three days without hindrance from the enemy, and yet he is not twenty five miles from where he started.” The president was not fooled. ”To reach his point, he still has sixty to go; another river, the Rapidan, to cross, and will be hindered by the enemy.” Lincoln concluded, ”I greatly fear it is another failure already.” He closed, ”Write me often. I am very anxious.”

Weather was always the wild card. The best military plans, long before scientific methods of weather prediction, could be derailed by the sudden appearance of rain that could continue for who knew how long.

Because the Civil War shone a bright light on the inability to predict the weather, many weather ”experts” began appearing in Was.h.i.+ngton. On the morning of April 25, 1863, Lincoln was visited by Francis L. Capen, who described himself as ”A Certified Practical Meteorologist & Expert in Computing the Changes in Weather.” He wanted Lincoln to recommend him for a job. Three days later, Lincoln wrote to the War Department. ”It seems to me Mr. Capen knows nothing about the weather, in advance. He told me three days ago it would not rain till the 30th of April or 1st of May. It is raining now & has been for ten hours. I can not spare any more time to Mr. Capen.”

The weather forced Hooker to modify his strategy. Still concerned about secrecy, he sent a message to Lincoln on April 27, 1863, saying, ”I fully appreciate the anxiety weighing upon your mind, and hasten to relieve you from so much of it as lies in my power.” Hooker told Lincoln he intended to feint a crossing at Fredericksburg, while sending his main force thirty miles north to confront Lee's forces. His ultimate goal was to trap a retreating Lee between two wings of his infantry and Stoneman's cavalry. He would keep more than twenty thousand troops in reserve, able to move to the most urgent battle line.

Lincoln, receiving little communication, remained fretful. At 3:30 p.m. on the same day, he telegraphed Hooker one sentence: ”How does it look now?” Hooker replied at 5 p.m. ”I am not sufficiently advanced to give an opinion. We are busy. Will tell you all as soon as I can, and have it satisfactory.”

Hooker's grand plan began with promise. On April 29, 1863, two infantry corps crossed the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg while five infantry corps marched upriver, crossed the Rappahannock, and moved eastward toward Fredericksburg and Robert E. Lee.

Lee was initially unsure about how to respond to the larger Union forces. He decided to adopt a risky strategy of dividing his outnumbered army and then dividing it again. He audaciously sent Stonewall Jackson to block Hooker's left flank. Because Stoneman's cavalry was in his rear, Jeb Stuart's Confederate cavalry ”owned” the s.p.a.ces between the dueling armies, which Lee now used for reconnaissance between his different units.

On May 1, 1863, a bright and breezy morning, Hooker's seventy thousand troops encountered Lee's twenty-five thousand troops along the Orange Turnpike and Orange Plank Road just east of the hamlet of Chancellorsville, little more than a brick farmhouse occupied by the ten members of the Chancellor family. Suddenly, for reasons never fully explained, Hooker stopped, wavered, and ordered his troops to fall back and take up defensive positions around Chancellorsville.

Hooker lost the initiative. He later suggested that he intended to fight a defensive war and let the enemy attack him. Attack they did. On May 2, 1863, Jackson smashed the Union right flank.

In the late morning of May 3, 1863, just as a careworn Hooker leaned forward to receive a report, a twelve-pound shot fired by Confederate artillery hit a pillar on the south side of the Chancellor house veranda, splitting it in two. One of the beams struck Hooker on his head and side. For some time-a debate would ensue about how much time-the commander of the Army of the Potomac was out of action. By the middle of the day, the center of Hooker's line was pushed back.

Lincoln, pacing back and forth from the White House to the War Department, telegraphed b.u.t.terfield: ”Where is General Hooker? Where is Sedgwick? Where is Stoneman?”

On May 4, 1863, the left side of Hooker's forces was forced back across the river. Early in the afternoon, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles met Lincoln at the War Department. The president told him ”he had a feverish anxiety to get some facts.” At 3:10 p.m. Lincoln telegraphed Hooker, ”We have news here that the enemy has reoccupied heights above Fredericksburg. Is that so?” Hooker replied, ”I am informed that is so, but attach no importance to it.” Hooker was by now in almost total denial of what was happening.

On May 6, 1863, Hooker ordered the remaining troops to recross to the north side of the Rappahannock in a heavy rainstorm. The battle was lost. At Chancellorsville, the Union army had had all the advantages on its side-numbers of troops, horses, guns, supplies, telegraph wires, even balloons. The Union had far superior numbers, but once again, even after Lincoln had given him the strongest mandate, Hooker did not put into battle all of his men-he held out his reserves. The Union suffered a terrible loss at Chancellorsville-more than seventeen thousand casualties. Lee won perhaps his greatest victory, but it came at a huge cost: thirteen thousand Confederate casualties, a higher percentage of casualties than the Union forces.

When Lincoln received word at 3 p.m. that Hooker's troops were retreating across the Rappahannock River, he was overcome. Noah Brooks, who was with the president, said his complexion, usually ”sallow,” turned ”ashen in hue.” The correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union Sacramento Daily Union said he had never seen the president ”so broken, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. ... Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, 'My G.o.d! my G.o.d! What will the country say! What will the country say!' ” said he had never seen the president ”so broken, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. ... Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, 'My G.o.d! my G.o.d! What will the country say! What will the country say!' ”

Frenchman Thomas Le Mere, who worked for Mathew Brady, told Lincoln there was ”considerable call” for a full-length photograph of the president. Lincoln stood for it at Brady's Was.h.i.+ngton studio on April 17, 1863.

23.

You Say You Will Not Fight to Free Negroes May 1863September 1863 PEACE DOES NOT APPEAR SO DISTANT AS IT DID. I HOPE IT WILL COME SOON, AND COME TO STAY; AND SO COME AS TO BE WORTH THE KEEPING IN ALL FUTURE TIME.

ABRAHAM LINCOLNSpeech to the Springfield rally, September 3, 1863 -URING HIS FIRST TWO YEARS AS PRESIDENT, LINCOLN TURNED DOWN all invitations to speak outside Was.h.i.+ngton. He believed he could not spare the time away; as he expanded his role as commander in chief, he wanted to stay close to the White House and the War Department in order to communicate with his generals and monitor the ebb and flow of military battles. all invitations to speak outside Was.h.i.+ngton. He believed he could not spare the time away; as he expanded his role as commander in chief, he wanted to stay close to the White House and the War Department in order to communicate with his generals and monitor the ebb and flow of military battles.

He broke his silence in 1863 in response to a deafening volley of criticism. The contest for public opinion escalated in May as rallies were organized in Detroit, Indianapolis, New York, and other Northern cities to protest Lincoln's handling of the arrest and trial of Vallandigham. Copperheads led the way, but conservative Democrats, who did not approve of the actions of the Ohio congressman, saw this episode as an opportunity to attack an administration weakened by defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. On May 19, 1863, Erastus Corning, wealthy iron manufacturer, railroad owner, and conservative Democratic politician, forwarded to Lincoln the ”Albany Resolves,” ten resolutions from a boisterous public meeting in Albany, New York, on May 16. The resolutions called upon the president to ”be true to the Const.i.tution” and ”maintain the rights of States and the liberties of the citizen.”

Lincoln could easily have been defensive at the tone of the protests but as a political leader, he realized they presented an opportunity for him to make his case, not simply to a local group of New York Democrats, but to a national audience. He replied to Corning on May 28, 1863, that he intended to ”make a respectful response.”

By the early summer of 1863, Lincoln began to take considerable care in drafting his ”public letters.” Although he worked hard in the last days of May on his response to Erastus Corning, he told Congressman James F. Wilson of Iowa that when he started to write the letter, ”I had it nearly all in there,” pointing to the drawer in his desk, ”but it was in disconnected thoughts, which I had jotted down from time to time on separate sc.r.a.ps of paper.” Lincoln was referring to the notes to himself he had been writing for decades. He told Wilson it was by this method that ”I saved my best thoughts on the subject.” He added, ”Such things often come in a kind of intuitive way more clearly than if one were to sit down and deliberately reason them out.”

A measure of Lincoln's seriousness was that he took the unusual step of bringing his letter to a cabinet meeting on June 5, 1863. Lincoln read it in its entirety, which, at more than 3,800 words, would have taken at least twenty-five minutes. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles wrote in his diary, ”It has vigor and ability and with some corrections will be a strong paper.” One week later, on June 12, Lincoln mailed the letter to Corning, sending it at the same time to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, New York Tribune, which published it on June 15. which published it on June 15.

Lincoln began his letter not with confrontation but with commendation. He lauded those who met in Albany for ”doing their part to maintain our common government and country.” He described their intention as ”eminently patriotic.” He sought to stand with them in their commitment to the Union. ”My own purpose is the same.” Lincoln sounded like he was back in Illinois putting the arguments of the opposing lawyer in their own words. He emphasized their common purpose at the very moment when his opponents were seeking to incite division. He lowered his voice even as his opponents were raising theirs. He finally joined the fray when he said, ”The meeting and myself have a common object, and can have no difference, except in the means or measures for effecting that object.”

The ”except” was the transition to the purpose of the letter. The ”means” became the occasion for Lincoln's disquisition on the meaning and proper interpretation of the Const.i.tution. The supplicants ”a.s.sert and argue, that certain military arrests and proceedings following them for which I am ultimately responsible, are unconst.i.tutional. I think they are not.”

Lincoln, in this public letter, did not allow his opponents to set the agenda. Although he had addressed the question of civil liberties in his message to Congress in July 1861, Lincoln now used Corning's complaints to put the issue into a much larger context. He started with what he declared were the real origins of the war. ”The insurgents had been preparing for it more than thirty years, while the government had taken no steps to resist them.” The South, he argued, had set out on ”an unrestricted effort to destroy Union, const.i.tution, and law,” whereas the government was ”restrained by the same const.i.tution and law, from arresting their progress.”

Once the war started, everyone, including the South, knew that there must be detentions to thwart the actions of ”a most efficient corps of spies, informers, suppliers, and aiders and abettors.” They fully understood, Lincoln said, that habeas corpus would be suspended, and then his opponents would set up a ”clamor” of protests. Lincoln's only apology, ironically, was that ”thoroughly imbued with a reverence for the guaranteed rights of individuals, I was slow to adopt strong measures.”