Never Call Retreat, page 8
Increased public unrest, in short, rested at least partly on an uneasy awareness that the price of victory was likely to be an illimitable commitment to the future, Mr. Lincoln's hope that he might carry a truce in the belly of the war was an expression of his own anxiety; for a war in which no truce was possible was bound to bring such a commitment, and neither he nor anyone else knew how that commitment would finally be met. But the immediate necessities of war were controlling. If the war was to be won at all it was necessary for him to assert firmer direction, first over his own administration and next over the nation's biggest army, the Army of the Potomac.
The two went together. War, as Prussian Clausewitz held and as Mr. Lincoln knew by instinct, is an extension of politics; and by 1863 the converse also was true—politics was an extension of war. The war itself was a brutal and fearfully definitive substitute for a political debate and a national election. To appoint a general—any general—was of necessity to play a political card, even though all that was actually wanted was a man who could beat the Rebels. To deal with elected persons or with the voters who had elected them was always to speak and act from a platform built by the armies. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, which would change American politics forever, had come into existence as a military expedient. War and politics walked together now, not merely hand in hand but in one body.4
Mr. Lincoln's effort to assert firmer control was complicated by a singular fact. Basic to the situation was a widespread feeling that it was necessary for someone to control Mr. Lincoln himself—that his presidency was a sort of vacuum that needed to be filled by a man or men more dedicated, earnest, and forceful than he was. Both radical Republicans and conservative Democrats had this idea. The conservatives, to be sure, had suffered a check when General McClellan ceased to command the Army of the Potomac, but the radicals were hard at work. They wanted total war and total emancipation, and they felt that this reluctant administration was not likely to give them either. The reason, as they saw it, was that Mr. Lincoln was too weak and that Secretary of State William H. Seward was too strong; now they proposed to force Seward out of the cabinet and manage the administration themselves, using Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase as their principal instrument. In the middle of December thirty-two Republican Senators caucused for two days, listened to denunciations of Seward, agreed that there should be a partial reconstruction of the cabinet, and named nine of their number to call on Mr. Lincoln and tell him what he ought to do.5
Several factors were at work, not least the profound discontent of Chase, who had been complaining that the President overrode his cabinet and reduced it to an administrative nullity. In a sense Chase was right. The President was not a good administrator. He did not try to make an operating mechanism out of his cabinet, and probably the idea never occurred to him. He listened to everybody and then did what he thought best, and even when he let his ministers see the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation he said that he had already made up his mind about it but that he would like to hear what they had to say. It was at least clear that the cabinet did not manage the administration, and the situation was not eased by Seward's total willingness to let people believe that he himself did.
The Senators felt that the President should be guided and directed by a "cabinet council." Inasmuch as they agreed that the Senate ought to control a President's cabinet selections, they were actually demanding top control for the legislative branch. They were attacking not merely the President but the presidency; they were offended, not by Mr. Lincoln's supposed weakness, but by the fact that if he became strong he could use his strength. When they sat down with him in the White House on the evening of December 19—nine Senators, seven of them staunch radicals—they were in effect notifying Mr. Lincoln that he must remake his cabinet so that the administration would be in complete harmony . . . with itself, and with them.
Mr. Lincoln had no intention of doing this. He had told a friend that all of the responsibilities of the administration "belong to that unhappy wretch called Abraham Lincoln," and as he tried to meet those responsibilities the last thing he needed or wanted was a contrived or enforced harmony. Precisely because he was leading a divided country he needed diverse counsels. He had his own grave doubts about the era that lay ahead, and so did most of his fellow citizens, and the true strength of his leadership had to arise from his ability to work out his doubts as he went along. Only so could he hope to carry all factions with him. To choose between Seward and Chase would be to commit himself to one faction or another before it was time—to entrust the fate of the nation to the men who had no doubts at all. He needed to keep both ministers, and yet it would be difficult. Learning about the Senate caucus, Mr. Seward had quietly submitted his resignation.
The December 19 meeting brought no result. The Senators voiced their complaint and demanded Seward's removal; Mr. Lincoln listened, said he would think it over, and invited the Senators to come back the next evening. They agreed, and the President arranged a small surprise. On this second meeting, as soon as the Senators had been greeted and seated, Mr. Lincoln asked them if he might not bring in the cabinet.
Somewhat struck, they agreed to this, whereupon Mr. Lincoln brought in everybody except Seward, and permitted Senators and ministers to regard each other briefly.
Then he began to talk. He outlined the history of his administration, taking up one issue after another and telling how each one had been handled. He remarked that nobody could expect all cabinet members to think alike on everything, and he confessed that the pressure of the times had kept him from having frequent or extended cabinet sessions. However, he added, once he had settled upon a policy, all of the ministers always agreed on it. The cabinet had not been overridden; if it had not directed the President, it had always at least gone along with him. Having said all of this, Mr. Lincoln turned to his cabinet and asked each man, one after another, whether he had not given a true statement of the case.
True in substance: possibly stretched a little, here and there. On some points—notably the reinstatement of McClellan after the Second Battle of Bull Run—some cabinet members had been in most determined opposition, and had reluctantly accepted an accomplished fact only because there had been nothing else they could do. But in the main the account was close enough to accuracy, and the question provided infinite discomfort for Secretary Chase, who had provided most of the source material for the Senators' bill of particulars.
Dignified, able, dedicated, and always conscious of his own rectitude, Chase could not, in front of the President and his colleagues, brand himself a disloyal member of the official family by repeating here the complaints he had made elsewhere. He was hopelessly trapped between duplicity and integrity, and now he could only agree lamely that the President's account was correct, adding that he did think there might perhaps have been fuller discussion on some points. One after another the others confirmed the President's story. Stony-faced, the Senators listened.
Having polled his cabinet, the President then asked the Senators if they still thought that he ought to dismiss Secretary Seward.
The Senators had been both outmaneuvered and let down, the support they relied on most having failed them. In addition, it was all too clear by now that if the President dismissed his Secretary of State he would also dismiss his Secretary of the Treasury, which was not at all what anybody wanted. Only four Senators, at last, said that they still thought that Seward ought to go. The meeting ended. As people began to leave, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois—an old acquaintance who could speak bluntly—stopped by the President's side and said angrily: "Lincoln, somebody has lied like hell!" Mr. Lincoln replied: "Not tonight."6
It remained for the President to pick up the loose ends, and the next morning he picked up the only one that mattered. Secretary Chase came to see him, remarked that the evening's conference had given him much pain, and hesitantly produced, or began to produce, a letter, saying that he had written his resignation. This of course was a gesture: Chase did not want to leave the cabinet, but if he put a resignation on paper and then waved the paper about it might have good effect. But this was no morning for gestures by Chase. To his dismay, Mr. Lincoln promptly took the letter away from him, saying with undisguised elation that at last his problem was solved; after which he permitted Chase to go back to his office.
The next day the President let it be known that both Seward and Chase had submitted resignations, that neither resignation had been accepted, and that both men would remain in the cabinet. In the language of politics, a to-whom-it-may-concern: the President would continue to work with both conservatives and radicals, he had not yielded to the pressure of Seward nor to that of Chase, and he had not wilted under the heat applied by Senators. Regardless of what had been supposed previously, he and nobody else was running the administration.
It remained to be seen whether he could also control the Army of the Potomac.
As the new year began this army could hardly be said to be under anybody's control. General Burnside could not manage it effectively. This was partly because he lacked competence; far worse was the fact that some of his principal officers were grimly determined to make everyone in the army and out of it understand that he lacked it. The army's discipline, its morale, the very possibility of its future usefulness were beginning to collapse under pressure of resentments, enmities, personal shortcomings and thwarted ambitions even more sharply edged than the combination that had beset the cabinet. Mr. Lincoln began to see how things were going on December 21, when he got a singular letter signed by Major General William B. Franklin, commander of Burnside's Left Grand Division, and Major General William F. Smith, who led the VI Army Corps in that Grand Division.
Serenely going over their commanding officer's head, these two soldiers told the President that Burnside's present plan of campaign—an overland approach to Richmond, via Fredericksburg—was bound to fail: the line of supply would be too long and too exposed, and there were too many good positions south of Fredericksburg where the Confederates could post themselves strongly and repulse assaults. It would be better to take the army down to the James River, as McClellan had done. With an ample garrison retained to protect Washington and the Potomac River crossings, let 250,000 men be massed on both banks of the James, as close to Richmond as possible. Thus the Rebel army should be destroyed, and even if it escaped the capture of Richmond would be assured. The generals wrote that they submitted their views "with diffidence," but they felt it was their duty to present them as "suggestions to some other military mind in discussing plans for the future operations of our armies in the east."7
The letter was odd on two counts. To begin with it asked the impossible. Obviously, if the government could find the resources to put 250,000 men on the James, at the same time holding an adequate covering force in front of Washington, any general, even one with the most moderate capacities, could go on and take Richmond. As Mr. Lincoln was painfully aware, no such forces could be assembled. The other oddity lay in the fact that Franklin and Smith were the staunchest of McClellan men, fully representing the McClellan point of view-—which held that that professional soldier's campaign had been ruined because an amateur President insisted on reaching over the professional's shoulder to interfere with strategy. (After all, it was Mr. Lincoln who had held back Franklin's division, when McClellan wanted it in front of Yorktown in the spring of 1862.) Now they were urging the same amateur President to reach over the shoulder of another professional and interfere with strategy anew.
As professional soldiers they were taking a most unprofessional way of undercutting their commanding officer.
They were not the only ones. To the White House, two days before the end of the year, came two of their subordinates—Brigadier General John A. Newton, head of the 3rd Division in Smith's Corps, and Brigadier General John Cochrane, who led the 1st Brigade in Newton's division. (A former Republican Congressman, Cochrane was the only nonprofessional in the lot.) Having cleared the matter with Franklin and Smith, these two men told the President that Burnside planned a new movement and that the army was so thoroughly demoralized that the move could lead to nothing but disaster. Deeply disturbed, Mr. Lincoln, after they left, had an inconclusive talk with General Burnside—who unsuccessfully demanded that these talebearers be cashiered for their irregular conduct—and finally he sent a stiff note to General Halleck, giving that officer much the same assignment that Jefferson Davis gave to General Johnston: go down to the army, see what the situation really is, examine Burnside's plan and either tell the man to go ahead with it or forbid him to move at all. He closed the letter with the comment: "Your military skill is useless to me if you will not do this."
Halleck would not do it. Instead he offered to resign, and Mr. Lincoln's letter finally came to rest in the files with a notation in the President's hand: "Withdrawn, because considered harsh by General Halleck." Like Mr. Davis, Mr. Lincoln was finding that one of his principal armies was all but totally out of his reach. Without in the least intending to, his professional soldiers were confirming him in his belief that the President must take his responsibilities as commander-in-chief seriously and keep a firm hand on the military.8
Another malcontent was Major General Joseph Hooker— "Fighting Joe," hard, colorful, aggressive, chief of Burnside's Center Grand Division, a better combat soldier than those others but a man irrationally consumed by ambition. Hooker did not call at the White House. He simply talked— so loosely that the President's secretaries wrote him down as "the most indiscreet and outspoken of all." He was saying now that Burnside was incompetent, that President and administration were imbecile, and that "nothing would go right until they had a dictator, and the sooner the better." Hooker differed from the others in this: their basic complaint was that the army commander was not McClellan, and his was that the commander was not Joe Hooker. His words were heard in Washington, in the White House, and elsewhere . . . and meanwhile officers of lower rank were resigning "with insolent expressions against the government for its conduct of the war." Even those who did not resign had complaints. Among them was Brigadier General G. K. Warren, who led a good brigade in the V Corps and who wrote: "We must have McClellan back with unlimited and unfettered powers. His name is a tower of strength to everyone here; and the repose of winter is absolutely necessary. . . . The remedy must begin in Washington. No human intelligence can mend matters here till that is done."9
What could Burnside do? His army was being systematically and ruinously demoralized—not by its losses at Fredericksburg, but by the leaders who tried to capitalize on those losses. Before January ended Burnside learned that he could do nothing at all. On January 20 he led his army up the Rappahannock, planning to cross the river above Lee's left and strike the Confederate flank with irresistible force, and as military plans go his scheme was not bad. But by this time his army had become unusable.
The night before the move began an artillery officer at Franklin's headquarters found that Franklin's and Smith's staff officers were "talking outrageously," predicting failure, and he wrote: "Franklin has talked so much and so loudly to this effect ever since the present move was decided on that he has completely demoralized his whole command and so rendered failure doubly sure. His conduct is such that he certainly deserves to be broken. Smith and they say Hooker are almost as bad." (The trouble here was that Franklin and Hooker were leading the Grand Divisions which had the primary parts in this march.) The next day, when the march had begun, the same gunner wrote that "the disaffection produced by Franklin's and others' talk was very evident. The whole army seems to know what they have said, and their speeches condemning the move were in the mouths of everyone."
The next day, as a matter of fact, the high heavens intervened; there was a drenching rain, the roads turned to bottomless mud, and the army got irretrievably bogged down, unable to advance even if it had wanted to. Guns, horses, mules, and pontoons disappeared from view in the mire, the foot soldiers tried in vain to plod across open fields, and the same artillerist, visiting Franklin's headquarters, "found him, Smith and their staffs in quite a comfortable camp; doing nothing to help things on, but grumbling and talking in a manner to do all the harm possible." Major General George G. Meade, a sober regular with no ax to grind, wrote to his wife: "I am sorry to say there were many men, and among them generals high in command, who openly rejoiced at the storm and the obstacle it presented," and Franklin himself confessed that he considered the storm "almost a providential interference in our behalf." In any case, Burnside was defeated. He got his army back to camp, at last, and had to confess that the situation was beyond his control.10
He offered the President a choice: purge the officer corps of nine or ten troublemakers, starting with Franklin and Hooker, or accept Burnside's resignation and start over again with someone else. The President did not hesitate. The general purge was to be avoided, possibly because the army by now was too frail to survive a major operation, but there would be a new commander and certain other changes. On January 25 the War Department announced that Burnside had been relieved at his own request, that Sumner and Franklin were being sent to other duties . . . and that General Joseph Hooker had been appointed Burnside's successor.11
Along with his new appointment, General Hooker got a letter from Abraham Lincoln.
"I think," wrote Mr. Lincoln, "that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship. ... I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories."12
