Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America

Abraham Lincoln and
Civil War America:
A Biography
WILLIAM E. GIENAPP
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND CIVIL WAR AMERICA

Abraham Lincoln at the time of the Gettysburg Address (Illinois State
Historical Library)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
and
CIVIL WAR AMERICA
A Biography
��
WILLIAM E. GIENAPP
2002
1
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Copyright � 2002 by William E. Gienapp
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gienapp, William E.
Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America : A biography /
by William E. Gienapp
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–19-515099–5 – ISBN 0–19-515100–3 (pbk.)
1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865. 2. Presidents—United States—
Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1861–1865.
4. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Military leadership. I. Title.
E457.G46 2001
973.7’092—dc21 [B] 2001050056
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Set in Monotype Dante
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Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For my sons,
William and Jonathan
I shall do nothing in malice.
What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.
a b r a h a m l i n c o l n , 1862
CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 A Son of the Frontier 1
2 Thwarted Ambition 25
3 Rise to Power 49
4 A People’s Contest 72
5 From Limited War to Revolution 99
6 Midstream 126
7 To Finish the Task 151
8 With Malice Toward None 177
Chronology of Abraham Lincoln 204
List of Abbreviations 209
Notes 211
Bibliographical Essay 228
Index 233
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PREFACE
“Lincoln never poured out his soul to any mortal creature at any-
time and on no subject,” his longtime law partner, William Herndon,
once declared. “He was the most secretive=reticent=shut-mouthed
man that ever existed.” Judge David Davis, who had known Lincoln
for many years from his practice on the judicial circuit and who served
as a close adviser in Illinois politics, agreed. Using almost the same
words, Davis confirmed that, “he was the most reticent=Secretive
man I Ever Saw=or Expect to See.” With considerable understate-
ment, Lincoln himself conceded in 1861, “I am rather inclined to
silence.”
Abraham Lincoln is a diYcult subject for a biographer. Born into
an undistinguished frontier family, he grew up in obscurity and left
almost no written record until he entered politics as a young man.
He said little about his family or youth, even to friends. Leonard
Swett, who had practiced law with Lincoln on the judicial circuit and
who was a longtime political associate, recalled that he “never heard
him speak of any relative, except as connected with his boy history.”
Indeed, Swett sheepishly acknowledged that he did not even know
Lincoln had had a step-brother. Our knowledge of his formative years
comes almost entirely from the series of interviews and recollections
that Herndon collected in the years after Lincoln’s death. Most of these
recollections were written down years after the events described, and
while invaluable they are diYcult to use as historical sources. Few of
these early acquaintances were as candid as George Spears, who, when
asked about Lincoln’s career as a shopkeeper in New Salem, admitted,
“At that time I had no idia of his ever being President therefore I did
not notice his course as close as I should of had.”
x Preface
The record of Lincoln’s public activities is fuller after he moved to
Springfield in 1837, but throughout his life he carefully guarded his
feelings and kept his personal aVairs out of the public gaze. Moreover,
as a politician Lincoln rarely revealed what he was thinking until he
had made up his mind, and in conversation often tested his ideas by
arguing against positions he supported. Visitors frequently mistook his
unpretentiousness for frankness, but as Republican Senator Lyman
Trumbull of Illinois noted, he “communicated no more of his own
thoughts and purposes than he thought would subserve the ends he
had in view.”
There are qualities of Lincoln’s character and personality that sim-
ply cannot be fully explained without resorting to some dubious psy-
chological theory. These include his burning ambition and desire to
improve himself; his fear of intimacy and extraordinary private reserve
(even his closest associates called him Lincoln, and his wife noted that
he had trouble expressing what he felt most deeply); his estrangement
from his father and family; his ability to draw other men to him while
not being drawn to them; and the way he served as a father figure
for a number of intensely admiring young men while he was a rather
ineVective father himself. In some ways, his personality seems para-
doxical, well captured by the juxtaposition of his hearty sense of hu-
mor and his deep-seated melancholy.
Lincoln himself had a limited view of the value of biography. Hern-
don recalled once handing his partner a biography that he was reading.
After briefly leafing through it, Lincoln impatiently tossed it on the
table with the comment, “It’s like all the others. Biographies as gen-
erally written are not only misleading, but false. . . . In most instances
they commemorate a lie, and cheat posterity out of the truth.” He
was especially critical of the tendency to praise a subject’s every act
and deny that he or she had made any mistakes.
I have not sought to deny that Lincoln made mistakes. Nor have
I evaluated him in terms of how well he measured up to the values
and ideals of our own times, for such a standard, though frequently
invoked by modern critics, is fundamentally ahistorical. I have at-
tempted to explain, however, why this man turned out to be such an
extraordinary war leader. In analyzing his presidential leadership, I
have woven together political and military developments, because
Preface xi
these two concerns absorbed the bulk of his time and thought in the
White House.
While the war presented an enormous military challenge to the
United States government, it also unleashed forces that transformed
the war into a social and political revolution. This revolution greatly
expanded presidential power, dramatically stretched the meaning of
the Constitution, and uprooted the two-hundred-year-old institution
of racial slavery. It is one of the ironies of history that someone as
conservative as Abraham Lincoln presided over the greatest revolution
in American history. At the same time, the Union developed a new
military strategy that incorporated economic and psychological di-
mensions and bore down on southern civilians with growing severity.
As such, this strategy pointed directly toward the twentieth-century
concept of total war.
As president, Lincoln had to manage both the political and military
dimensions of the conflict, and his record of leadership depended on
his ability to coordinate these two aspects of the war eVort. That he
never fully lost control over the revolution the war precipitated was
testimony to his great leadership ability; that he led the nation to
victory and succeeded in preserving the Union without destroying
democracy assured his lasting place in American history.
Yet success did not come to him easily or quickly. In his early
political career, the defeats and setbacks outweighed the victories and
achievements. When he was suddenly thrust into the forefront by his
election as president in 1860, he did not fully comprehend the nature
of the crisis he would soon confront, and he learned how to meet the
responsibilities of his new oYce only through trial and error. Through-
out the war years, his basic character shone through: his good will
and fundamental decency, his remarkable self-confidence encapsulated
in genuine humility (he never liked to refer to himself as president
and spoke of the oYce as “this place”), his immunity to the passions
and hatreds the war spawned, his extraordinary patience and gener-
osity of spirit. Even in the darkest days of the war, he never faltered
in his commitment to persevere until the Union was restored. The
personal and political qualities he brought to the challenge of waging
a civil war are the major focus of this book.
This study synthesizes modern scholarship about Lincoln with my
xii Preface
own ideas and interpretations of Lincoln and his age. My aim has been
to write a short biography that is up-to-date in its scholarship. The
notes at the back are limited to quotations in the text and have been
kept to a minimum. The bibliography lists the most important studies
I have drawn on in writing this book, but I have not attempted in
either the notes or bibliography to list every book and article that has
influenced my thinking about Lincoln and his times. The works listed
in the bibliography will direct the interested reader to other relevant
studies of Lincoln and the Civil War era.
When quoting from sources, I have followed several conventions to
enhance the text’s readability. I have sought to reproduce quotations ac-
curately and have generally omitted the word sic to denote spelling and
grammatical errors. In addition, I have replaced & with and, spelled out
abbreviations, and changed terminal dashes to periods. In a few places,
I have inserted a mark of punctuation, which is carefully indicated, to
clarify the meaning of a phrase or sentence, but for the most part I have
left punctuation unchanged. I have also omitted ellipses and silently
modified capitalization at the opening of quotations.
During the course of writing this book, I have incurred many ob-
ligations that I wish to acknowledge. The idea for this book crystal-
lized more than a decade ago in a conversation with Chris Rogers,
who immediately signed the project for the history list he edited. Since
then, both Chris and I have gone on to other positions, and the project
suVered several major delays and had a complicated history, but it
ended back on Chris’s desk when he recruited it for Oxford University
Press. I am grateful to Lyn Uhl for her generosity in making this
outcome possible. At Oxford, I would particularly like to thank Peter
Coveney and Joellyn Ausanka for adeptly guiding the book through
the editorial and production process.
I did much of the research for this book in the various libraries at
Harvard University. I am especially indebted to Nathaniel Bunker of
Widener Library, who purchased many items on microfilm that were
critical for my research. I would also like to thank the staVs at the
Houghton Library and the Government Documents Library at Har-
vard for their many courtesies. In addition, the Inter-Library Loan
oYce at Widener Library eYciently borrowed a number of items I
requested, for which I am very appreciative.
Preface xiii
A number of individuals have generously helped me over the years
with sources and matters of interpretation. I am grateful for the assis-
tance, suggestions, and critical commentary of Cullom Davis, David
Donald, Mark Neely, John Simon, Michael Vorenberg, and Frank Wil-
liams. The outside readers for Oxford University Press made a number
of helpful suggestions. In addition, I have benefited immensely from
the observations of undergraduates who have taken my seminar on
Lincoln at Harvard University.
Rodney Davis and Douglas Wilson, directors of the Lincoln Studies
Center at Knox College, patiently answered my inquiries about the
Herndon interviews concerning Lincoln’s early life. I met Tom
Schwartz, the Illinois state historian, two decades ago, and since then
he has been a constant source of advice and assistance. He helped me
sort through some of the complicated issues related to Lincoln’s years
in New Salem and Springfield. Michael Burlingame directed me to
many less well known Lincoln sources, searched his files for infor-
mation I needed, and patiently shared his ideas about Lincoln based
on his research for the multivolume biography he is now writing. At
a critical point James W. Davidson read the early chapters of the man-
uscript and oVered some sage advice concerning style and content.
During the years I have been working on this book, my two sons,
Bill and Jonathan, have grown from children to young adults. Their
interest in the project, and in history more generally, has been im-
mensely gratifying, and they provided countless hours of enjoyment
separate from this book. The dedication recognizes the irreplaceable
place they occupy in my life. My wife, Erica, oVered encouragement
without ever voicing concern about the time it took to complete the
manuscript. Once it was finished, she gave it a thorough and careful
reading and saved me from many errors and misstatements while
greatly improving its clarity and style. As always, she was an unfailing
source of support and encouragement.
To all of these individuals, I oVer my sincere thanks. The book is
much better for their eVorts. Whatever errors and misinterpretations
remain are because of my own stubbornness.
June 2001 William E. Gienapp

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND CIVIL WAR AMERICA
Chapter 1
A SON OF THE FRONTIER
Abraham Lincoln rarely talked about his childhood. This silence

stemmed from more than his well-developed sense of personal reserve,
for while he was proud of his achievements, he was also embarrassed
by his crude family background. In a brief autobiographical sketch he
penned in 1859, when he was beginning to attract attention as a pos-
sible presidential candidate, he spent only a couple of lines on his
parents, noted without elaboration that he did “farm work” as a youth,
ignored his childhood social experiences entirely, and devoted the
greatest attention=half a paragraph=to his limited education. “It is a
great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life,”
he told a campaign biographer in 1860. “It can all be condensed into
a single sentence . . . in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of
the poor.’ ”
�
Descended from pioneer stock, Abraham knew little of his ancestry.
The most vivid piece of family lore, which he had heard over and
over again from his father Thomas, was how his grandfather had been
killed by Indians while “laboring to open a farm” in the Kentucky
forest. As a result, Thomas, who was eight years old at the time, had
to make his own way in the world from an early age. He became “a
wandering laboring boy, and grew up litterally without education.” A
capable carpenter in and around Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Thomas
began to rise in the world and bought a farm, though he apparently
never lived on it. In 1806, he married Nancy Hanks, who was probably
illegitimate, and they set up housekeeping in Elizabethtown in a cabin
that he had built. A daughter, Sarah, was born the following year.
2 Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America
Thomas soon displayed a wanderlust, however, that would repeat-
edly uproot the family. Devoting only part of his time to carpentry
and cabinetmaking, he left Elizabethtown in 1808 and moved his fam-
ily to a farm he purchased along Nolin Creek. It was here, on February
12, 1809, that Abraham (named for his grandfather) was born in the
family’s rude, one-room log cabin. When Abraham was two, his family
moved to a more fertile farm on Knob Creek, which his father had
rented, and Abraham’s earliest memories were of this place. While
living here his mother gave birth to another son, who died in infancy.
A man of above average height and powerful build, with straight
black hair and leathery skin, Thomas worked hard but never seemed
able to get very far ahead. An acquaintance later described him as “a
tinker=a piddler=always doing but doing nothing great.” Apparently
he put limited stock in the value of education. Most likely he could
not read, and according to his illustrious son, he “never did more in
the way of writing than to bunglingly sign his own name.” Still, the
family’s position was clearly improving, and Thomas was able to pay
cash for the Knob Creek farm in 1815. He was also a respectable mem-
ber of his frontier community: He owned property, performed several
oYcial duties, appeared a number of times in the local records, and
enjoyed a reputation for scrupulous honesty and good morals. He was
also renowned for his ability as a storyteller, a talent that he passed
on to his son. Abraham remembered little of his mother, who has
largely been lost in historical obscurity. Neighbors agreed that she was
intelligent and deeply religious, and indeed, both she and Thomas
belonged to the Baptist Church.
The labor of children was economically crucial on a farm, but
when their duties allowed, Abraham and his sister attended local
“A.B.C. schools” on two occasions for “short periods.” His education
was quite rudimentary, however, and when the family left Kentucky,
Abraham, who was then seven, still could not write.
After a promising start, Thomas ran afoul of the maze of legal
tangles that enveloped Kentucky land titles in these years. Rival claim-
ants challenged the title to each of his farms, and lacking the resources
for a prolonged legal fight, he simply sold out at a loss and in Decem-
ber 1816 moved to Indiana, where the federal government had sur-
veyed the land. Indiana was a free state, and Thomas may also have
A Son of the Frontier 3
wanted to get away from the institution of slavery. Hardin County,
where the family had lived, had over a thousand slaves, who competed
directly with white farmers and workers such as himself. Moreover,
the Mount Separate Church, in which Thomas and Nancy were mem-
bers, had seceded from the regular Baptist Church because of the
latter’s acceptance of slavery. Absorbing his parents’ antislavery senti-
ments as he was growing up, Abraham later declared that he was
“naturally anti-slavery” and added that he could not remember a time
when he was not opposed to slavery.
The Lincolns settled on Little Pigeon Creek near Gentryville, in
Spencer County, a sparsely populated, heavily wooded area near the
Ohio River. After living several months in a crude shelter with one
side open to a constantly roaring fire, they moved their meager pos-
sessions into a log cabin that Thomas had hastily constructed.
Life in Indiana was much more primitive than in Kentucky. Abra-
ham remembered that it was “a wild region, with many bears and
other wild animals still in the woods,” and the family found conditions
diYcult. Perhaps Thomas had been beaten down by the loss of his
Kentucky lands; perhaps he preferred hunting and did not pay suf-
ficient attention to the diYcult task of establishing a new farm; or
perhaps his previously robust health declined. Whatever the reason,
though Thomas continued to work as a cabinetmaker in the winter
and at odd times, the family never entirely regained its earlier modest
prosperity.
Abraham’s life was that of a typical pioneer farm boy: doing chores,
such as hauling water and chopping wood, and helping in the fields.
The area was heavily wooded, and since he was remarkably strong
for his age, the tall youngster was soon set to work clearing land with
an axe. He later recalled that from then “till within his twentythird
year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful instrument=
less, of course, in plowing and harvesting seasons.” For all his strength
and prowess, however, he never enjoyed physical labor and once told
a neighbor who hired him that “his father taught him to work but
never learned him to love it.” Nor did he cherish any romantic nos-
talgia for pioneer life, which he remembered as one of backbreaking
labor and constant struggle with trees and grubs.
In 1817, after clearing and planting seventeen acres, Thomas Lincoln
made the first payment on his farm. The arrival that fall of Nancy’s
aunt and uncle, Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow, helped lessen the
family’s bleak isolation. Tagging along with them came eighteen-year-
old Dennis Hanks, Abraham’s easygoing, talkative cousin who, despite
the diVerence in their ages, became his boon companion while grow-
ing up.
With the family’s situation on the upswing, tragedy struck the little
group the following year, when first the Sparrows and then Nancy
Lincoln died from milk sickness (called “the puken” by pioneers),
caused by cows grazing on the poisonous white snakeroot. With no
minister available, family members held a brief service, and then Abra-
ham’s mother was buried near the cabin in a simple coYn Thomas
had made. Abraham never said much about this loss, but it must have
been a harsh blow to the nine-year-old boy and probably strengthened
the melancholy streak in his personality.
Following Nancy Lincoln’s death, living conditions at Pigeon Creek
plummeted. Now alone, Dennis Hanks moved into the Lincoln cabin
and shared the upstairs loft with Abe, as everyone called him, even
though he hated the name. Thomas and Dennis spent most of their
time hunting to provide food. Abraham’s sister, Sarah, who was only
twelve, did the cooking and tried to keep up the cabin, but she found
the physical and emotional burden too much, and she and her brother
became increasingly “wild=ragged and dirty.” Thomas recognized that
the family’s situation was deteriorating, so late in 1819 he went to
Kentucky and returned with a new wife, Sarah Bush Johnston, a
widow, and her three children. Stepping out of the wagon, she beheld
a ramshackle cabin without a suitable door or windows, a dirt floor,
and a half-finished roof. Immediately taking charge, she soaped and
scrubbed Abraham and Sarah, mended their clothes and dressed them
up to make them appear “more human,” instituted a new sense of
order, and put her husband to work fixing up the cabin. Her energy,
along with the furniture and household goods she brought with her,
greatly improved the family’s level of comfort.
A remarkable woman, Sarah Bush Lincoln exerted an enormous
influence on Abraham. Though uneducated, she encouraged his in-
terest in learning and loved and cared for him as if he were her own
child. “Abe was the best boy I Ever Saw or Ever Expect to see,” she
A Son of the Frontier
5
Lincoln’s father, Thomas, and his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, as they
appeared late in life. (Left: Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum,
Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, TN; right: Illinois State
Historical Library)
later declared, admitting that she liked him better than her own chil-
dren. As the memory of his mother faded, a deep bond of aVection
developed between Abraham and his stepmother, who he called
“Mama.” He later said that “she had been his best Friend in this world
and that no Son could love a Mother more than he loved her.”
�
Throughout his life, Abraham always keenly regretted the lack of
educational opportunities in his youth. Schools were few, terms were
short (two or three months in the winter), teachers were barely ed-
ucated themselves, and as he later noted, “if a straggler supposed to
understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was
looked upon as a wizzard.” Most likely in the winter of 1819–20, when
he was eleven years old, he attended a nearby “blab” school, in which
students recited their lessons out loud all at once. The school was
conducted by Andrew Crawford, whose most notable innovation was
that he tried to teach the students manners. With his stepmother’s
backing, Abraham resumed his education two years later when a new
school opened in the neighborhood. This school was more than four
miles from the Lincoln cabin, however, so he was able to attend only
sporadically. His last formal education came in 1824, when he was
fifteen years old and he attended one term at a school closer to his
home. A diligent student, he by now knew as much as his backwoods
teachers, one of his classmates recalled, so “he went to school no
more.” By his calculation, his formal schooling did not total more
than a year. “When I came of age,” he confessed, “I did not know
much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of
Three [proportions]; but that was all.”
Concerning his Indiana boyhood, he contended that “there was
absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.” Yet even at this
early age, he displayed a burning desire for knowledge and self-
improvement that set him apart from his surroundings. In his “Am-
bition,” one of his Indiana acquaintances acknowledged, he “soared
above us. . . .” His stepsister oVered similar testimony: “Abe was not
Energetic Except in one thing=he was active and persistant in learning
=read Everything he Could=Ciphered on boards=on the walls.” The
well-entrenched image of the studious young lad reading by firelight
is only a charming myth, for, like most farm boys, he went to bed
early because he had to rise at daybreak to do his chores. His step-
mother, though illiterate herself, valued knowledge and brought a few
books with her, which Abraham read and reread. He also borrowed
books from neighbors, often walking several miles to get a copy. Yet
printed material was understandably scarce on the frontier, and his
reading was predictably limited.
His reading included classic works such as Robinson Crusoe, The
Pilgrim’s Progress, and Aesop’s Fables, plus Parson Weems’s Life of Wash-
ington, which made a great impression on him and stimulated his
interest in the country’s founding; William Grimshaw’s History of the
United States; and William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution, which height-
ened his attraction to public speaking at the same time that it intro-
duced him to Shakespeare. The first law book he read was the Revised
Laws of Indiana, which he borrowed from an employer sometime in
his late teens. His later writings also establish that he carefully read
the family Bible, despite his lack of religious inclinations.
In these early years, he developed the habit, which followed him
through life, of reading slowly and carefully, pondering each point until
satisfied that he understood it. His stepmother remembered that he
had to “understand Every thing . . . Minutely and Exactly=: he would
then repeat it over to himself again and again=some times in one
form and then in another. . . .”
His father was less approving of Abraham’s constant reading and
noticeably favored his feckless stepson, John D. Johnston, in whom
he found a kindred spirit. “Thos Lincoln never showed by his actions
that he thought much of his son Abraham when a Boy,” one Hanks
family member noted, adding, “He treated him rather unkind than
otherwise.” Dennis Hanks admitted that Abraham’s father sometimes
“slash[ed] him for neglecting his work by reading.” Indeed, like his
father, neighbors considered him lazy because he preferred reading to
farm work and often took a book to read between tasks. What Hanks
termed Abraham’s “Stubborn” reading was, in part, an act of rebellion
against his father.
He stood apart from his environment in other ways as well. Al-
though his father and stepmother were members of the local Baptist
church, he was untouched by frontier revivalism and did not belong
to any church. In a culture where masculinity was measured by fight-
ing and drinking, he disapproved of violence and did not swear, drink,
or use tobacco. Unusually sensitive, he was known for his kindness
to animals, disliked fishing and hunting, and could not stand the sight
of blood. Shortly before he was eight years old, he shot a wild turkey
through a crack in the family cabin in Indiana. Deeply bothered by
this act, he noted that “he has never since pulled a trigger on any
larger game.” And in a world where early marriage was common, he
had little interest in girls. While they recognized his great kindness of
heart, his homely looks, ill-fitting clothes, and lack of manners and
social graces intensified his natural awkwardness in the presence of
females.
In all-male company he was much more gregarious and at ease.
Tall and sinewy, with large hands and exceptionally long arms, he was
not especially coordinated, but he was a fast runner and powerful
wrestler, feats which earned him a local reputation. He also attracted
attention through his ability to tell stories. He “naturally assumed the
leadership of the boys” and began to develop the skills that would be
important in his subsequent political career. “When he appeared in
Company the boys would gather and cluster around him to hear him
talk,” his playmate Nathaniel Grigsby stated. “He made fun and
cracked his jokes making all happy. . . .” He also enjoyed a reputation
for scrupulous honesty and truthfulness. “Men would Swear on his
Simple word,” insisted one Pigeon Creek pioneer.
As a teenager, he started giving speeches, using the elocution les-
sons he had studied as his guide. Taking a break from work that did
not interest him, he would get up on a stump or fence and address
his fellow workers, who would gather around and listen until his
angry father “would come and make him quit=[and] send him to
work.” Even his early, unpolished speeches were notable for their clar-
ity. “He argued much from Analogy and Explained things hard for us
to understand by stories=maxims=tales and figures,” one boyhood
associate recounted. “He would almost always point his lesson or idea
by some story that was plain and near as that we might instantly see
the force and bearing of what he said.”
Because he heartily disliked farm work, Abraham seized every op-
portunity to do something else: practicing his public speaking, regaling
visitors at the local country store with his stories, participating in
house raisings, competing in various athletic contests, observing ses-
sions of the county court, and attending political meetings. To con-
tribute to the family’s income, he also did all sorts of odd jobs, in-
cluding plowing and harvesting, daubing cabins, clearing land, splitting
rails and building fences, packing pork, and clerking in a local store.
As he ranged farther and farther from home, the tall, raw-boned lad=
by age seventeen he already stood six feet two inches=became a
familiar sight throughout the county. He never paid much attention
to his appearance and normally traveled about in a shabby flax shirt,
deerskin or linen britches that one schoolmate remembered stopped
“6 or more inches” above his socks, and a coonskin cap. He was
sixteen before he owned his first white shirt.
Newspapers provided another source of Abraham’s education. He
read all the papers he could get his hands on and became, in Dennis
Hanks’s words, “a kind of news boy.” Newspapers at this time were
intensely partisan, and they stimulated Abraham’s growing interest in
politics. Nathaniel Grigsby said that as teenagers they went to political
meetings and “heard questions discussed=talked Evry thing over and
over and in fact wore it out=We learned much in this way.” Abraham
also frequently hung out at the store in Gentryville, a small settlement
just down the road, where the local pundits incessantly discussed pub-
lic aVairs. Residents of more isolated backwoods areas were often sup-
porters of Andrew Jackson, but, like his father, Abraham became a
strong admirer of Henry Clay.
Increasingly, however, the nearby Ohio River, with its unique op-
portunities and experiences, beckoned him. When he was seventeen,
he worked on a river ferry near the town of Troy, earning thirty-seven
and a half cents a day for what he described as “the roughest work a
young man could be made to do.” One time, when he hastily rowed
two passengers and their trunks out to a waiting steamboat in a small
boat he had constructed, each man tossed the incredulous youth a
silver half-dollar after boarding. “I could scarcely credit that I, a poor
boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day,” he recalled many years
later. “The world seemed wider and fairer before me.”
Two years later, in 1828, he and another companion were hired by
a neighbor to take a load of produce by flatboat down the Ohio and
Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, where they sold the boat and cargo
and returned home on a steamboat. With its bustling river commerce,
polyglot population, French architecture, and urban amusements, New
Orleans was unlike anything the wide-eyed Indiana youth had ever
seen before. It was also Abraham’s first extended contact with the
institution of slavery, although his reactions to this aspect of the trip
are unknown. Since he was still a minor, he turned over to his father
the twenty-four dollars he earned from the trip. Enchanted by the
freedom and excitement of the river, he dreamed of becoming a steam-
boat pilot but was unable to find anyone who would take him on
since he was underage.
This unsuccessful eVort to get a river job was further evidence that
his ties to his family were steadily weakening. Earlier that year he
suVered another unsettling loss when his sister Sarah, one of the few
people he was close to, died in childbirth. His life was further dis-
rupted when Thomas Lincoln, hearing rumors of a new outbreak of
milk sickness, pulled up stakes in 1830 and moved the family west
again, this time to Illinois. When the group arrived at the new home-
stead, Abraham once again helped his father erect a primitive cabin,
clear and fence ten acres, and plant corn, then hired himself out to
split rails and do other odd jobs. But almost immediately his father
decided the area was unhealthy, so the next spring the family moved
once more, this time to Coles County.
Abraham was now of age, and instead of accompanying his family
he agreed to make another trip to New Orleans in the employ of
Denton OVutt, a local businessman whose grandiose plans outran his
business acumen. Together with his stepbrother, John Johnston, and
cousin John Hanks, Abraham journeyed to Springfield, where they
learned that OVutt characteristically had failed to obtain a boat. After
spending a month constructing a flatboat, they loaded it with OVutt’s
goods and started down the Sangamon River. When they reached
New Salem, however, their boat got hung up on the milldam across
the river, and they were unable to dislodge it. Finally, as OVutt and
the curious residents watched, Abraham freed the flooded boat by
drilling a hole in the bow, which protruded over the dam, to drain
out the water. Impressed by the gangly young man’s resourcefulness,
OVutt, who intended to open a store in the town, agreed to hire him
as a clerk when he got back from New Orleans. So upon his return
in the summer of 1831, after a parting visit with his parents, Abraham
set out for New Salem.
With his move to New Salem, Abraham left his father’s world
forever. Like his father, he was a product of the frontier, but they were
very diVerent in outlook and aspirations. During Abraham Lincoln’s
lifetime, the United States underwent a wrenching transformation
from a rural, semisubsistence economy to a new commercial, market-
oriented society. Thomas Lincoln, with his indiVerence to education,
erratic work habits, limited ambition, agrarian outlook, and leisurely
lifestyle, belonged to the premodern world. Rather than labor to pro-
duce a surplus for sale, the hallmark of an upwardly mobile farmer,
he “lived Easy=and contented,” a neighbor commented, since he “had
but few wants and . . . Supplied them Easily.” His ambitious, forward-
looking son, in contrast, was very much part of the new modern
world, with its emphasis on self-discipline, social mobility, and oppor-
tunity represented by commerce and industry. Abraham was anxious
to rise in the world, and his negative image of his father served as a
spur to drive him to greater intellectual and social distinction. By the
time he left home a deep estrangement had developed between him
and his father which would grow only stronger with time. Indeed, in
all of his writings, there is not a single positive reference to his father.
Although he rejected the rural life of his boyhood, he had been
inevitably shaped by it. He always spoke with a country twang and
mispronounced certain words=much to the dismay of more refined
listeners=and rustic references and images dotted his speeches and
writings. Like many rural residents, he had a strong sense of fatalism
and never could completely free himself from superstition. Abraham
Lincoln was not a common man, but he knew how to eVect a com-
mon touch, which his homespun stories reinforced, and throughout
his life he displayed a great talent for communicating with ordinary
citizens, from whose ranks he had risen.
Nevertheless, he had reached a turning point. When he left his
family and set out on his own, he did not know what he wanted to
do in the world. What he did know was that he wanted a diVerent=
and better=life than that of his father.
�
When Lincoln arrived in New Salem in July of 1831 carrying all
his worldly possessions under his arm, he described himself as “a piece
of floating driftwood” who had washed up on the town’s shores. He
did not lack for self-confidence=indeed, he had already developed a
deeply rooted sense of intellectual superiority=but as a “penniless”
and “friendless” stranger, he realized that whatever he achieved would
have to be through the dint of his own labor. As a clerk, he made
fifteen dollars a month and slept in the back room of OVutt’s store.
The new arrival’s crude, ill-fitting clothing, tousled hair, and un-
couth looks made him seem every inch the traditional country bump-
kin. When he came to New Salem he was, according to William
Butler, a subsequent friend, “as ruV a specimen of humanity as could
be found.” Parthena Hill, the wife of a storeowner in New Salem,
related that “he went about a good deal of the time without any hat.
. . . His yellow tow-linen pants he usually wore rolled up one leg and
down the other.” The town’s citizens quickly perceived, however, that
his outward image was deceiving. “His external apperance was not
prepossessing,” conceded James Duncan, an educated physician who
lived in New Salem, “but on cultivating an acquaintance with him,”
Duncan discovered that he possessed “intellegence far beyond the gen-
erality of youth of his age and opportunities.”
New Salem was a raw pioneer village of about a hundred people
located on a high bluV overlooking the Sangamon River. The com-
munity’s future rested on the hope that steamboats could ply the river,
thus connecting the village with the Mississippi valley. Its population
was in constant flux, and it never numbered more than a couple of
hundred inhabitants, most of whom, like Lincoln, were from the
South. At various times the town contained a mill, wool-carding ma-
chine, several stores and taverns, some craftsmen, and a school.
Frontier culture placed a premium on manhood, and Lincoln’s
great physical strength inevitably attracted admiration and attention.
His lean frame was all muscle, and he could lift incredible weights
and was an expert wrestler. As they did with all new arrivals, local
ruYans quickly tested Lincoln’s mettle when he wrestled Jack Arms-
trong, head of a group of rowdies known as the Clary’s Grove boys.
Witnesses’ recollections of this famous match diVer substantially, but
all agree that when it was over Lincoln had won the friendship and
admiration of Armstrong and his associates. Major consequences
sometimes arise from minor events, and their support would play an
important role in Lincoln’s early political career.
Lincoln’s modest demeanor, aVable manner, and rollicking sense of
humor gained him many friends, and village loafers regularly congre-
gated in the store to listen to his stories. “Geniel” and “fun loveing,”
he “was always the centre of the circle where ever he was” and “al-
ways had a story to tell.” Reflective of his social background, the
stories he regaled all-male audiences with were sometimes crude, al-
though they generally did not deal with sexual matters (Lincoln was
rather prudish where women were concerned).
One of the most famous of his stories from this period, which he
told with dramatic gestures, comical facial expressions, and exagger-
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ated body movements, concerned an Indiana Baptist preacher who
took as his text, “I am the Christ, whom I shall represent today.” As
the unfortunate minister began his sermon, a lizard ran up his leg.
Rather than pausing, he continued his remarks, all the while slapping
at his pants in a vain eVort to dislodge the reptile. Failing to remove
the intruder, the discomforted preacher unbuttoned his trousers and
with a kick tossed them oV, and as the lizard climbed higher, unfas-
tened his collar and threw oV his shirt. As the dazed congregation
looked on in disbelief, an old woman rose in the back and shouted,
“If you represent Christ then I’m done with the Bible.”
The unpretentious newcomer quickly became part of the com-
munity. Attuned to the communal work patterns of frontier society
by which neighbors helped one another, Lincoln readily participated
in activities such as raising houses, harvesting crops, and repairing the
milldam. His truthfulness and reputation for fair dealing invariably led
residents to select him to judge races and other contests. Lincoln’s
judgment “was final,” declared one inhabitant. “People relied implicitly
on his honesty, integrity, and impartiality.” While he was temperate=
he complained that alcohol left him “flabby and undone”=he was no
prig and did not either assume an air of moral superiority or seek to
impose his values on others. Declining to judge people harshly, he
made “great allowances for men’s foibles,” another associate asserted,
and his conciliatory approach and obliging manner earned him addi-
tional friends. Thanks to his sociability and fondness for visiting, he
soon “knew every man, woman and child for miles around.”
Anxious to improve himself and get ahead, he was acutely sensitive
to the deficiencies of his education, so in his spare time he embarked
on a program of self-education. Lincoln probably was already thinking
of trying his hand in politics or the law. In any event, he decided that
he needed to improve his knowledge of grammar if he was to make
something of himself. He somehow got hold of a book, probably
Kirkham’s Grammar, and “studied English grammar, imperfectly of
course, but so as to speak and write as well as he now does.” He also
studied mathematics, which had always held a particular appeal for
him because of its rigorous logic and precision. For assistance, he
occasionally turned to Mentor Graham, who ran the school in town,
and Jack Kelso, a village idler and proverbial cracker-barrel philosopher
who was constantly spouting Burns and Shakespeare, but Lincoln was
largely self-taught. As had been true in his boyhood, his preference
for reading over manual labor and his fondness for swapping stories
and telling jokes led some acquaintances to dismiss him as a loafer.
Before long, however, the ambitious clerk was drafting simple legal
documents for residents using a book of legal forms for guidance.
He also began to appear before Bowling Green, the local Justice
of the Peace who took a liking to the shabby-looking young man.
The corpulent Green often shook with laughter at Lincoln’s stories
and comments and initially allowed Lincoln to participate in court
proceedings more for entertainment than anything else, but he soon
recognized Lincoln’s unusual intellectual ability. Though his legal
knowledge was limited, Lincoln attended Green’s court a number of
times representing local citizens. Unlike most of Lincoln’s friends,
who scoVed at his ambition, Green encouraged him to continue
his studies. A fellow store clerk testified that Lincoln “Used to say
that he owed more to Mr Green for his advancement than any other
Man.”
Although small and unrefined, New Salem nevertheless oVered in-
tellectual outlets that far surpassed anything to which Lincoln had
previously been exposed. It had a post oYce, local court, and even a
debating society, and boasted at least six college graduates among its
residents. He quickly joined the debating club and also hooked up
with a group of free thinkers, whose views on religion were similar
to his and who introduced him to several famous books attacking
religion. In 1846, while a congressional candidate, he acknowledged
that during this period of his life “I was inclined to believe in what I
understand is called the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’=that is, that the hu-
man mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over
which the mind itself has no control,” and “sometimes (with one,
two, or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in
argument.” In these years he apparently wrote an essay, which has
not survived, denying that the Bible was divine revelation.
Even at this early age, Lincoln’s real interest was politics. For an
ambitious young man with oratorical skills, politics was a way to make
a name and rise in the world. “Encouraged,” as he put it, “by his great
popularity among his immediate neighbors,” Lincoln announced his
candidacy for the state legislature in March 1832, less than a year since
he had taken up residence in town. “Every man is said to have his
peculiar ambition,” he noted in a letter declaring his candidacy, but “I
can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly
esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their
esteem.” His platform was improved transportation facilities (internal
improvements), educational opportunity, and a law against excessive
interest rates.
His statement declaring his candidacy, while characteristically mod-
est, was shrewdly calculated to appeal to ordinary voters who, like
himself, had not been born to privilege. “I am young and unknown
to many of you,” he wrote. “I was born and have ever remained in
the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations
to recommend me.” Even after he had become a successful attorney,
allusion to his humble origins was a campaign pitch that he would
use over and over again in his political career. Promising to work
ceaselessly for the people if elected, he assured his readers that if he
was defeated, “I have been too familiar with disappointments to be
very much chagrined.”
This document advanced ideas that would remain central to Lin-
coln’s career and thought throughout his life, in particular, his em-
phasis on education as a means of social and personal betterment, his
belief that government should promote economic development, and
his desire to create a modern system of sound credit. He devoted
most of his letter announcing his candidacy to the importance of im-
proving the navigation of the Sangamon River for steamboats (he
ruled out the alternatives of a canal or railroad as too expensive). The
call for improved transportation reflected the outlook of upwardly
striving, commercially oriented people such as himself, who believed
commerce was an agent of civilization and who wanted a market-
driven society. Having grown up in the isolation of southern Indiana,
Lincoln understood the importance of cheap transportation if residents
were to increase their income and improve their standards of living
by participating in a wider market. He also knew how much farmers
and businessmen who wanted to pursue these economic opportunities
depended on credit, and thus he called for elimination of usury. And
like members of the more prosperous and respectable middle class, he
linked education not only to social mobility but also to “morality,
sobriety, enterprise and industry.” He did not discuss national politics
in his announcement, perhaps because his support for Henry Clay,
who was running for president against Andrew Jackson, was not a
popular position in the county.
Prior to the 1832 election, however, the Black Hawk War broke
out in the spring when a band of Saux and Fox Indians crossed the
Mississippi and reoccupied their old lands in Illinois. OVutt’s store had
failed in the meantime, and Lincoln, who was out of work, volun-
teered to serve in the militia. Backed by the Clary’s Grove boys, who
were in his company, he was elected captain. In an autobiographical
statement written in 1860, he claimed that no subsequent success “gave
him so much satisfaction.” During the three months he served, he did
no fighting=indeed, never even saw a hostile Indian=but the $124 he
earned was, to him, a substantial and desperately needed sum. Later,
while in Congress, he poked fun of his military career, but in fact he
was proud of his service, which strengthened his sense of leadership
and reinforced his political ambitions.
After he was mustered out in late July, Lincoln had only ten days
to stump the county. There was not a shred of pretension about him.
Having by now reached his full height of six feet four inches, he was
a sight for sore eyes, wearing a straw hat to protect his sorrowful,
sun-burned face, “a mixt Jeans Coat” with sleeves that were too short
for his lanky arms, and “Flax and Tow linnen” pants that ended well
above his rough shoes. His speeches were equally simple. “My politics
are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance,” he told one gath-
ering. Explaining that he favored a national bank, internal improve-
ments, and a protective tariV, he closed, “If elected I shall be thankful;
if not it will be all the same.” He was not well known outside his
own community, and with only a short time to campaign he finished
eighth, “the only time,” he later proudly noted, that he was “ever
beaten on a direct vote of the people.” It was a very credible showing
for a propertyless young man who had arrived in the county only a
year ago. He was particularly encouraged by his standing in New
Salem, where he received 277 out of 300 votes cast.
�
Nevertheless, he was once again unemployed and needed a live-
lihood. He recalled that he “thought of learning the black-smith trade
=thought of trying to study law=rather thought he could not succeed
at that without a better education.” Caught up in the boom mentality
of the town, he became a partner with William F. Berry in a local
store. Lacking any capital, they bought the goods of two local stores
on credit. Neither of these would-be entrepreneurs was well suited for
this business. Observers claimed that Berry drank up the profits and
more from the store’s whiskey barrel, and though Lincoln had already
earned the appellation “Honest Abe” while clerking for OVutt, he
spent more time joking with loafers who hung about the store than
in minding the firm’s business. Moreover, according to another store-
keeper, Lincoln felt awkward around women and “allways disliked to
wait on the Ladies” and “prefered trading with the Men and Boys as
he used to Say.” The partners, Lincoln later declared, “did nothing but
get deeper and deeper in debt,” and he finally sold out to Berry in
April 1833. The store eventually “winked out,” but Berry’s subsequent
death saddled Lincoln with the firm’s debts totaling more than a thou-
sand dollars, and it took him until the early 1840s to pay oV what he
termed his “national debt.”
He received a stroke of good fortune in 1833 when he was ap-
pointed postmaster of the village. This oYce provided him a small
salary for the next three years and also enabled him to become ac-
quainted with virtually all the residents of the area, a vital aid to his
political aspirations. Although postal regulations required people to
pick up their mail at the oYce, if he had some business in the country,
“he placed inside his hat all the letters belonging to people in the
neighborhood and distributed them along the way,” prompting resi-
dents to joke that “he carried the oYce around in his hat.” When
Lincoln received the appointment, one acquaintance reported that he
“never saw a man better pleased . . . because, as he said, he would
then have access to all the News papers=never yet being able to get
the half that he wanted before.” Since the mail arrived only twice a
week, his duties as postmaster were light, giving him plenty of free
time to read. But the salary was too small to support himself, so he
took a variety of odd jobs. OVered the chance to become an assistant
surveyor, he studied trigonometry and surveying and then “went at
it” in order to keep “soul and body together.” His horse, tools, and
possessions were eventually seized for debt, however, a result of his
ill-fated venture with William Berry, and only the assistance of his
friends, who bought his belongings at auction in March 1835 and then
returned them, allowed him to continue this work. Nothing he had
tried had met with much success, and with no long-term prospects
he seemed in danger of slipping permanently back into the ranks of
ordinary laborers.
In the face of these setbacks, Lincoln persevered in his program of
self-education. With more books and newspapers available than he
had access to in Indiana, he became more selective in his reading.
Even so, he “read a great deal, improving every opportunity, by day
and by night.” One New Salem resident remembered: “While clerking
for OVatt [sic] as Post Master or in the pursuit of any avocation, An
opportunity would oVer, he would apply himself to his studies, if it
was but five minutes time, would open his book, which he always
kept at hand, and study, close it recite to himself, then entertain com-
pany or wait on a Customer in the Store or post oYce apparently
without any interruption. When passing from business to boarding
house for meals, he could usually be seen with his book under his
arm, or open in his hand reading as he walked. . . .”
As the 1834 election neared, Lincoln again announced his candidacy
for the legislature. Dark-complexioned with coarse, unruly black hair,
he weighed only 180 pounds despite his great height. A local politician,
who met Lincoln at this time, oVered the following description: “His
eyes were a bluish brown, his face was long and very angular, when
at ease had nothing in his appearance that was marked or Striking,
but when enlivened in conversation or engaged in telling, or hearing
some mirth-inspiring Story, his countenance would brighten . . . up not
in a flash, but rapidly. . . . his eyes would Sparkle, all terminating in
an unrestrained Laugh in which every one present willing or unwilling
were compelled to take part.” His voice, while not entirely pleasant,
was quite eVective on the hustings. “He spooke [sic] in [a] . . . clear
Shrill monotone Style of Speaking, that enabled his audience, however
large, to hear distictly the lowest Sound of his voice.”
Although running as a Whig, Lincoln enjoyed bipartisan support
in New Salem, where he was immensely popular. Conspicuous among
his champions were the Clary’s Grove boys, Democrats to a man,
who came to political meetings prepared to do battle, literally, with
anyone who dared to criticize their townsman. In the era’s democratic
political culture, candidates had to be careful to avoid aristocratic pre-
tensions and mix with the common people. Plunging into a field
where thirty men were at work, Lincoln cut more grain than any of
them=and thereby won their votes.
In August, Lincoln polled the second highest number of votes in
the county and was elected. The oYce’s salary promised at least tem-
porary relief from his financial problems. John T. Stuart, a fellow Ken-
tuckian and the Whig leader in the county, was impressed with Lincoln
and encouraged him during the campaign to study law. Too poor to
study in a law oYce, Lincoln undertook a program of self-study with
some law books Stuart loaned him. He bought a copy of Blackstone’s
Commentaries, the standard text for lawyers, at a Springfield auction
and “went at it in good earnest.” After he took up the study of law,
Lincoln displayed a new intensity and single-minded determination in
his reading. His neighbors were both bewildered and amused at the
sight of the rangy young man, sprawled out in some spot pondering
a book, or reading late at night after business closed. “When he began
to study law,” one friend reported, “he would go day after day for
weeks and sit under an oak tree on [a] hill near [New] Salem, and
read=moved round [the] tree to keep in shade=was so absorbed that
people said he was crazy.”
Lincoln persisted in the face of constant scoYng by his companions.
“The first time I Ever Saw him with a law book in his hands he was
Sitting astraddle . . . [a] wood pile in New Salem,” Russell Godbey re-
called. Asked what he was doing, Lincoln replied, “Studying law,”
prompting Godbey to blurt out in amazement, “Great God Almighty.”
�
When it was time to take his seat in the legislature, he borrowed
$200 and used part of this sum to buy a new suit, the first decent
clothing he had ever owned. Then hopping aboard a stagecoach, the

twenty-three-year-old legislator traveled to Vandalia, the state capital,
to take up his duties.
Lincoln was one of fifty-five representatives. As a Whig, he was in
the minority, and as a newcomer, he was given only a minor com-
mittee assignment. The session, for which he received $258 in com-
pensation, was essentially a learning experience. But it did confirm
one thing in Lincoln’s mind: His commitment to being a lawyer was
strengthened, and when he returned to New Salem, he resumed his
legal self-study, while continuing to work as postmaster and surveyor.
With a new sense of direction in his life, he became less shy and
awkward around women (though never really at ease), and began to
pay particular attention to Ann Rutledge, the young daughter of a
New Salem tavernkeeper. Contemporaries, who were probably overly
favorable, described the twenty-two-year-old Ann as pretty, with blue
eyes and blond hair. Lincoln boarded at her father’s tavern from time
to time and got to know her quite well. Ann was engaged to John
McNeil, but this fact probably facilitated their developing friendship,
since Lincoln was always more at ease around unavailable women. In
the fall of 1833, McNeil confessed to Ann that his real name was
McNamar and explained that he had to go to New York to deal with
some family matters. McNamar’s story aroused suspicion among New
Salem residents, and as Lincoln knew from his position as postmaster,
he eventually ceased to write Ann.
With McNamar absent, Lincoln’s friendship with Ann blossomed
into romance. Their exact relationship is unclear, but it seems likely
that in 1835 they became conditionally engaged. Apparently, Ann
wanted to first gain a formal release from her engagement to Mc-
Namar; moreover, Lincoln felt that marriage would be imprudent
until he was admitted to the bar. Certainly when she suddenly died
in August 1835, probably of typhoid fever, Lincoln was overcome with
grief, and his erratic behavior was cause for concern among his friends.
Ann’s death produced the first significant references by associates to
Lincoln’s deep-seated melancholy, which verged on depression and
continued to plague him throughout his life. Whatever the immediate
emotional impact of Ann’s death, however, he eventually recovered,
and within a year was unsuccessfully courting another woman.
Lincoln had met Mary Owens in 1833 when she visited her sister
in New Salem. She came from a prosperous Kentucky family and was
educated, socially adept, and bright. When she returned in 1836, a year
after Ann died, he began a less than ardent courtship which eventually
led to an understanding that they might get married. Soon filled with
doubts, Lincoln tried to get Mary to take the responsibility for ending
the relationship and thereby preserve his sense of honor. When she
failed to act on his not-so-subtle hints, he finally oVered in 1837, in a
remarkably dispassionate letter, to marry her if it would “add to your
happiness.” To his surprise, she rejected this proposal. Many years
later, when recounting examples of Lincoln’s inattentiveness, she ex-
plained that he “was deficient in those little links which make up the
great chain of womans happiness. . . .” In a subsequent account lam-
pooning the aVair, Lincoln acknowledged, “My vanity was deeply
wounded by the reflection . . . that she whom I had taught myself to
believe no body else would have, had actually rejected me with all
my fancied greatness; and to cap the whole, I then, for the first time,
began to suspect that I was really a little in love with her.”
Lincoln was still recovering from Ann Rutledge’s death when a
special legislative session was held in the winter of 1835–36. Perhaps
for this reason, or perhaps because he was still learning the ways of
the legislature, he did not assume a prominent role in the session. In
the campaign in 1836, however, he emerged as a leading spokesman
for the Whig cause and was easily reelected to a second term, out-
polling all candidates in the county. As the new party system took
shape, party lines were beginning to be drawn more tightly, as evi-
denced by the failure of his friend Jack Armstrong, a Democrat, to
vote for him.
When the new legislature assembled in December 1836, Lincoln
was selected as the Whigs’ floor leader and, in another sign of his
growing stature, though a member of the minority party, was made
chairman of the finance committee. As the state’s population grew,
support to move the capital to a more central location increased, and
Lincoln played the most important role in getting Springfield selected
as the new capital. He also helped push through a bill to construct
an ambitious (and ultimately economically ruinous) statewide system
of internal improvements, and took the lead in defeating Democratic
eVorts to abolish the Illinois State Bank. During the debate over the
bank, he oVered his famous definition of politicians as “a set of men
who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who
. . . are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest
men.” To take some of the sting out of his remarks, he added, “I say
this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none
can regard it as personal.” In only his third year of service, he had
established himself as an important leader in the legislature.
This legislative session also marked Lincoln’s first public endorse-
ment of antislavery principles. Earlier, with Lincoln voting in the mi-
nority, the legislature had approved a set of resolutions condemning
the abolitionist movement. Once the bills to relocate the state capital
and construct a system of internal improvements, on which he placed
first priority, had been approved, Lincoln and fellow Sangamon
County representative Dan Stone entered a protest in the House Jour-
nal. While agreeing that Congress had no power to interfere with
slavery in the states, they maintained that it could abolish the insti-
tution in the District of Columbia, but should do so only with the
consent of its residents. Their protest also aYrmed that “the institution
of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the
promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to
abate its evils.” While this statement fell far short of abolitionist ideals,
it was, nevertheless, a courageous public act. Antislavery sentiment
was weak in Illinois, and Lincoln had nothing to gain politically by
taking such a stand.
By now Lincoln’s ambitions had outgrown New Salem, and when
the legislature adjourned, he returned simply to collect his belongings.
The previous fall he had passed the bar exam with surprising ease and
on September 9, 1836, received his license to practice law. John Stuart,
a prominent attorney in Springfield as well as a fellow Whig legislator,
had oVered to take him on as a junior partner, and in any case New
Salem did not have enough legal business to support him. Moreover,
New Salem was now dying. The inability of steamboats to navigate
the Sangamon River had doomed the once-thriving village, and its
residents were now departing for more promising locales.
Unlike his years in Indiana, Lincoln always retained fond memories
of New Salem and its inhabitants, who “treated him with so much
generosity” during the six years he lived there. It was here that he
first entered into serious public discussion of issues and launched his
political career. It was here that he decided he wanted to be a lawyer
and began his study of the law. And it was here that he deepened his
understanding of the common people, which would be so crucial to
his political career, by mixing with them, sharing stories and playing
games, and helping them with their work. These experiences deepened
his appreciation of democracy as both a political and a social system,
and his self-confidence had steadily grown.
But greener pastures now beckoned. Having at last settled on a
career, he stuVed his meager possessions into two saddlebags, said
good-bye to his many friends, and then rode oV on a borrowed horse
to the new capital of Springfield. In marked contrast to his restless
father, who had repeatedly uprooted the family, this move was the
last one Lincoln would make until he went to Washington in 1861.
Chapter 2
THWARTED AMBITION
On April 15, 1837, at the age of twenty-eight, Lincoln arrived in

Springfield to try his “experiment as a lawyer.” Unable to aVord a bed
and bedding, he quickly accepted an oVer from Joshua Speed to share
a room and bed above Speed’s store. Taking his saddlebags to the
room, Lincoln soon returned and announced, “Well, Speed, I am
moved!” Speed, who was four years younger than Lincoln, also came
from Kentucky; in the four years they lived together, he became the
only truly intimate friend Lincoln ever had.
Springfield was basically a frontier community where hogs still ran
in the streets, but with 2000 inhabitants it was still a good sight larger
and more cultivated than New Salem, and the rustic Lincoln felt badly
out of place. “I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere
in my life,” he wrote a few weeks after his arrival. He soon found a
circle of friends among young, upwardly mobile professional men in
town, who regularly gathered at Speed’s store in the evening to discuss
politics and other matters. Lincoln was at ease in this male fraternity,
regaling its members with his stories, but he remained woefully un-
certain around women. “I have been spoken to by but one woman
since I’ve been here,” he reported, “and should not have been by her,
if she could have avoided it.”
�
When he relocated to the new capital, a local paper announced
that Lincoln would practice law with John T. Stuart. Stuart was a suc-
cessful attorney with a large practice, but he devoted most of his time to
politics and hence left much of the oYce work to the junior partner.
While Lincoln’s legal knowledge did not run deep, the practice of law in
the state did not require extensive training or vast knowledge. Most
cases involved basic legal points, and thus the ability to present a case
clearly and sway a jury was more critical. Average fees were small, so to
make a decent income he had to handle a large number of cases.
Since the court in Springfield met only a few weeks each year,
Lincoln, like many of his fellow lawyers, rode the circuit, traveling to
county seats to handle local cases, then moving on to the next county
court session. As Stuart’s partner, Lincoln practiced law throughout
the Eighth Circuit, an especially large district of fourteen counties that
covered over 10,000 square miles. Court sessions were held in each of
the county seats according to a specified order in both the spring and
the fall; attorneys traveling the circuit were on the road for ten weeks
or more twice a year. One of his partners estimated that in some years
Lincoln spent six months on the circuit. Travel was slow and arduous
even under the best conditions, accommodations uncomfortable with
two or three men sleeping in a single bed, and the food wretched.
Beyond the additional income and male camaraderie of his fellow
lawyers that Lincoln so delighted in, such legal work also oVered
decided political benefits. Court week produced a beehive of activity
in the town, as many farmers flocked to the county seat to watch the
proceedings. On the frontier the courthouse “supplied the place of
theatres, lecture and concert rooms, and other places of interest and
amusement,” one Illinois politician noted. “The leading lawyers and
judges were the star actors,” and when the county court session ended,
their performances were discussed “at every cabin-raising, bee or
horse-race, and at every log house and school in the county.” Thus
lawyers became well known outside their home county, which had
great political advantages. They also built personal alliances with other
lawyers, many of whom were politically active. And finally, in the fall
after court adjourned for the day, they often participated in political
debates and other campaign activities.
Lincoln’s career in the circuit courts heightened his political skills
at the same time it enhanced his public reputation. He met large
numbers of ordinary people, discovered which issues concerned them,
and sharpened his powers of political persuasion. Practicing on the
circuit oVered him an unrivaled opportunity to meet people and study
human nature.
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While his association with Stuart brought him instant recognition
in the profession, Lincoln did not learn much from his partner, who
was often absent or otherwise absorbed. After several years, he real-
ized that he had to increase his legal knowledge in order to rise in
the profession. Cases were becoming more complex, opposing lawyers
more skilled, and larger fees could be had in the federal courts and in
the state supreme court, which met in Springfield, but these cases
involved more complicated legal matters. By mutual agreement, Lin-
coln and Stuart dissolved their partnership in 1841, and Lincoln became
Stephen T. Logan’s partner.
Logan, who was ten years older than Lincoln, was a fellow Ken-
tuckian who dressed haphazardly and presented anything but an im-
pressive figure in court. He was blessed with neither good looks nor
a commanding voice and relied instead on hard work and thorough
preparation. Lincoln’s legal knowledge was “very small when I took
him in,” Logan subsequently observed. “I dont think he studied very
much. I think he learned his law more in the study of cases.” During
their partnership he impressed upon Lincoln the necessity of applying
himself to his profession, and for the first time Lincoln worked at
becoming a better lawyer. As his technical command of the law ex-
panded, his oratory and writing became less florid. “Don’t shoot too
high,” he advised one young attorney. “Aim lower and the common
people will understand you.”
As his experience and reputation grew, however, he became in-
creasingly dissatisfied with his secondary position in the firm. In 1844
the two men agreed to end their partnership, and in December of
that year Lincoln took on William Herndon, who had just received
his law license and was nine years younger, as his junior partner. The
two continued to practice together until Lincoln became president.
�
Dividing his time between politics and the law, Lincoln’s life now
fell into a predictable pattern. In years when there was a state election,
he devoted more attention to political matters, to the detriment of his
professional income. In alternate years he concentrated on the law to
restore his finances.
Thwarted Ambition 29
His main interest, however, was politics. Lincoln was a product of
the intensely partisan world of the mid-nineteenth century. In these
years parties were considered vital to the health of the Republic, mass
interest was extraordinarily high, and partisanship was pronounced at
all levels of government. Newspapers were openly partisan and reg-
ularly impaled the opposition, and party members reaYrmed their
loyalty at countless parades, barbecues, and party rallies.
This was the political world that Abraham Lincoln came of age in
and, more importantly, functioned in. Far from being alienated by this
political system, he adopted its premises, formed his identity in con-
junction with it, molded his outlook and behavior accordingly, and
measured his accomplishments according to its standards. He made
no apologies for being either a politician or a member of a political
party. Indeed, to Lincoln, as to most of his male contemporaries, noth-
ing seemed more natural than to be a political partisan. “The man
who is of neither party,” he contended, “is not=cannot be, of any
consequence” in society.
As was true for others of his generation, Lincoln’s party allegiance
was not lightly assumed or easily discarded. He was, he proudly re-
called, “always a whig in politics,” and like most voters, Lincoln placed
a high premium on party regularity and had a particular disdain for
political turncoats. George Forquer, a onetime Whig who received a
lucrative oYce after he switched to the Democratic party, was a par-
ticular object of Lincoln’s scorn. Forquer owned the finest house in
Springfield, on which he had erected a lightning rod. When Forquer
replied to a speech he delivered at a political meeting, Lincoln retorted,
“I desire to live=and I disire [sic] place and distinction as a politician
=but I would rather die now than like the gentleman live to see the
day that I would have to erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty
Conscience from an oVended God.”
Politics in this period was largely an all-male concern, in which
drinking and fighting were integral features, and in this environment
Lincoln’s courage and great physical strength were decided political
assets. Once when a fight broke out while he was speaking, he strode
into the crowd, grabbed one of the combatants by the neck and pants,
and allegedly tossed him “10 or 12 feet, Easily.” According to one
witness, Lincoln’s forceful intervention “made him many friends” that
day. On another occasion, when a hostile crowd tried to prevent his
friend Edward Baker from speaking at an 1839 meeting, Lincoln
mounted the platform, lifted a stone pitcher, and threatened to clobber
the first person who laid a hand on Baker.
Unlike some Whigs, Lincoln betrayed no doubts about the impor-
tance of party organization. He devoted great eVort to perfecting the
Whig organization for the 1840 campaign; and he promoted a similar
enterprise in 1843. To his fellow Illinois Whigs, he stressed that orga-
nization was a “necessity,” and whatever its abstract merits, adoption
of the convention system for making nominations was essential:
“While our opponents use it, it is madness in us not to defend our-
selves with it.” He wrote letters, gave speeches, promoted party pa-
pers, and supervised a thousand campaign details, all the while urging
the Whigs on to victory. “Our intention,” he proclaimed, “is to or-
ganize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the
polls. . . .” His plan envisioned nothing less than personal contact with
every Whig and undecided voter in the county.
The political culture of Lincoln’s America was also stridently dem-
ocratic. Whigs and Democrats alike extolled the wisdom of the com-
mon people, believed that government should be responsive to their
needs, and fiercely battled for popular favor.
From its inception, Lincoln’s partisanship grew out of his belief in
democracy. “I go for sharing the privileges of the government, who
assist in bearing its burthens,” he wrote in announcing his candidacy
for the legislature in 1836. “Consequently I go for admitting all whites
to the right of suVrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, (by no means
excluding females).” He also accepted the idea that representatives
should be guided by the will of their constituents rather than exercise
any independent judgment. While a member of Congress in 1848, he
asserted that “the primary, the cardinal, the one great living principle
of all Democratic representative government . . . [is] the principle, that
the representative is bound to carry out the known will of his
constituents.”
As he honed his speaking skills at countless mass rallies during these
years, he became a particularly eVective stump speaker. He laced his
speeches with humorous anecdotes, often drawn from his frontier
upbringing, to illustrate his points, a tactic that drew ordinary farmers
and workers to him. A participant in a huge rally the Whigs held in
Springfield in 1840 described Lincoln addressing a large crowd from a
wagon. “At times he discussed the questions of the time in a logical
way, but much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some
phase of his argument, though more often the telling of these stories
was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his opponents ridiculous.”
Even a Democratic reporter conceded that he was a good “public
debater” who displayed “much urbanity and suavity of manner.” He
also had a thick skin, which was essential in the rough-and-tumble
world of frontier democracy. He “always replies jacosely and in good
humor,” this reporter continued, “the evident marks of disapprobation
which greet many of his assertions, do not discompose him, and he
is therefore hard to foil.” Still, he had to struggle to control his temper
and keep his biting ridicule within bounds.
Like many other Whigs who had not started out with life’s advan-
tages, Lincoln resented the Democratic strategy, well adapted to this po-
litical culture, of labeling their opponents as aristocrats. At an 1840 meet-
ing, when Dick Taylor, a local Democratic leader who liked fine clothes,
began denouncing the aristocratic principles of the Whigs, Lincoln
pulled on his opponent’s vest, which popped open to reveal a ruZed
shirt, gold watch, and chain, to the immense laughter of the crowd.
Lincoln constantly invoked his hardscrabble early life to validate
his democratic principles. At this same meeting, he noted that while
Taylor “was riding in a fine carriage, wore his kid gloves and had a
gold headed cane, he was a poor boy hired on a flat boat at eight
dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches and they were of
buckskin. . . . If you call this aristocracy,” he concluded, “I plead guilty
to the charge.”
�
By the time he moved to Springfield, Lincoln was an important
party leader and, therefore, was invited to deliver an address in Jan-
uary 1838 to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield. In recent months
several mob actions had attracted widespread attention, and Lincoln
took as his theme reverence for the laws. Portraying uncontrolled
passion as now the enemy of the Republic, he argued that the proper
defense was to rely on “cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.” Lin-
coln’s speech reflected his own inner turmoil in these years, as he
struggled to impose self-control on his emotions, discipline his ambi-
tion, and improve himself intellectually and socially.
His famous “skinning” of Jesse Thomas illustrated Lincoln’s power
to hurt people when he lost self-control. When Thomas, who was a
local Democratic leader, poked fun of Lincoln in an 1840 campaign
speech, Lincoln strode to the stage and made an uncharacteristically
caustic reply in which he used his unrivaled ability at mimicry to
caricature Thomas’s speech, gesture, and walk. So piercing was his
ridicule that Thomas finally broke into tears. Those in the audience
remembered the incident for years, but Lincoln admitted that his con-
duct “filled him with the deepest chagrin,” and he subsequently apol-
ogized to Thomas.
In 1838 and again in 1840 Lincoln was elected to another term in
the legislature. As the Whigs’ floor leader, he focused his energies on
preserving the party’s economic program, particularly the statewide
internal improvements program and the State Bank at Springfield. A
depression that had begun in the summer of 1837 severely reduced
state revenues, and the internal improvements program under way
threatened to bankrupt the state. Ignoring fiscal reality, Lincoln fought
all eVorts to halt or scale down the extensive construction program.
His stance was further testimony to his belief that public transporta-
tion projects, by expanding opportunity, would increase the income of
workers and farmers. Lincoln fought equally hard to protect the State
Bank, which under the pressure of hard times had ceased redeeming
its notes (paper money) in specie (gold and silver), from Democratic
assaults. Despite Lincoln’s eVorts, including on one occasion jumping
out of a window in the legislative hall to prevent a quorum, the bank
eventually was forced to close.
But the problems of the State Bank ultimately got Lincoln into a
diVerent kind of trouble. In September 1842 he published an anonymous
letter in the Sangamo Journal skewering James Shields, the Democratic
state auditor, for his policies toward the State Bank’s badly depreciated
currency. After the volatile Shields learned that Lincoln had written the
letter, yet another anonymous letter lampooning him appeared. This
letter had been secretly written by two female acquaintances, Julia Jayne
and Mary Todd, but Lincoln gallantly assumed responsibility for both
letters in order to protect them. Seething with outrage, Shields chal-
lenged Lincoln to a duel. Lincoln oVered to apologize but was unwilling
to have his courage impugned or his reputation degraded. When the
hot-tempered Shields persisted in his challenge, Lincoln chose as weap-
ons cavalry broadswords, with the combatants to be separated by a
wooden plank. This arrangement would have put Shields at a serious
disadvantage, for there was no possibility that the auditor, who was
much shorter, could reach and injure his long-armed opponent. Friends
finally managed to settle the matter peacefully.
The aVair was a permanent embarrassment to Lincoln, and he
refused to ever discuss it. He was chagrined that he had broken the
law and allowed his emotions to override his reason, on which he
prided himself. But the incident taught him a valuable lesson by dem-
onstrating the stinging power of his satiric prose, and he learned to
soften it in the future. In addition, he was not so quick to judge his
adversaries’ motives or take oVense at what others said, and he began
to display the incredible patience and fundamental good will that
would characterize his later political career.
During his four terms in the legislature, Lincoln was guided by a
vision that was fundamentally economic. Envisioning a society in
which all had the right to improve their station in life, Lincoln argued
that it was the responsibility of government to promote economic
development, which, he believed, would enhance opportunity and re-
ward the ambitious. “The legitimate object of government,” he suc-
cinctly explained, “is to do for the people what needs to be done, but
which they can not, by individual eVort, do at all, or do so well, for
themselves.” As a sound Whig, he embraced Henry Clay’s American
System and advocated a protective tariV, a national bank and paper
currency, and a national program of internal improvements.
His Whiggery also reflected his identification with the moral per-
spective of the rising middle class, with its emphasis on hard work,
self-discipline, education, and social respectability. His fascination with
technology and inventions, which he believed would improve people’s
lives, underscored his modern outlook; he even patented a device to
lift steamboats over shoals. Upwardly mobile, forward looking, and
intensely ambitious, he found a congenial home in the Whig party.
�
When he first arrived in town, the uncouth Lincoln was excluded
from the social world of Springfield’s aristocracy. An acquaintance
from this period described him as “awkward, homely, and badly
dressed,” and added that “although he then had considerable ambition
to rise in the world, he had . . . done very little to improve his man-
ners, or appearance, or conversation.” These shortcomings notwith-
standing, his political prominence and growing stature in the legal
profession soon gained him entry into the town’s elite society, which
brought him into contact with young unmarried ladies of the upper
crust. Lincoln was as uncertain of himself in social matters as he was
self-assured in political and intellectual endeavors. While physically
attracted to women, he feared the intimacy of marriage and believed
he could never make a woman happy. Deeply conflicted, he was ill at
ease in social gatherings: He lacked finished manners, was ungraceful
in his movements, had no gift for small talk, and often sat in complete
silence in mixed company.
Among the young unmarried ladies he met at these aVairs was
Mary Todd, who was a member of a prosperous Lexington, Kentucky,
family. She had come to Springfield in 1839 to live with her sister, and
she and Lincoln began a diYcult courtship. Mary was bright and in-
telligent, had a keen interest in politics (as her involvement in the
Shields aVair demonstrated), and was very ambitious to gain public
recognition. A loyal Whig, she was obviously attracted to Lincoln’s
ambition and political importance (she once boasted that she intended
to marry a future president), but beyond that it is diYcult to say what
drew her to the young attorney. They were complete emotional, phys-
ical, and social opposites. Her short, plump stature contrasted sharply
with his tall, slender frame, and she was cultivated and polished,
having been raised in high society and attended exclusive schools.
Although she had a volcanic temper and was subject to hysterical
outbursts, she was a witty conversationalist who absolutely sparkled
in social gatherings, loved to flirt, and was one of the town’s belles.
Lincoln was attracted by her intelligence, her social grace, and her
cultured background. Mary’s older sister said that when the two were
sitting together, “Mary led the Conversation=Lincoln would listen
and gaze on her as if drawn by some Superior power, irresistably So:
he listened=never Scarcely Said a word.” Orville Browning, who
served in the legislature with Lincoln, was probably correct when he
maintained that Mary “did most of the courting” and earnestly set
out to catch him. Sometime late in 1840 they became engaged.
Almost as soon as he made this commitment, Lincoln began to
have second thoughts. He fell into a depression, uncertain of his true
feelings and worried that he was unsuited for marriage. When he
sought to break the engagement a few days later, Mary released him,
but fearing that he had behaved dishonorably, he failed to regain his
emotional balance. Soon he was too sick to leave his bed and was so
gloomy his friends feared he might commit suicide. Guilt-stricken, he
wrote to Stuart: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I
feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would
not be one cheerful face on the earth.”
Lincoln slowly recovered but did not resume his former place in
Springfield society. After more than a year, friends contrived to bring
Mary and him together again, and they resumed their courtship. Lin-
coln was pained by the belief that he had not acted honorably in
backing out of their original engagement, for prior to this incident he
considered his ability “to keep my resolves when they are made” to
be “the chief gem, of my character.” When he asked his old friend
Joshua Speed, who had recently moved to Kentucky and married, for
advice, Speed encouraged him to consider marriage again.
On November 4, 1842, with virtually no notice, Mary Todd and
Abraham Lincoln were married. He was thirty-three years old, and
she was ten years younger. While he had genuine feelings for her,
Lincoln’s decision apparently stemmed more from a sense of obliga-
tion=of keeping his commitment=than from any emotional senti-
ment. When asking James Matheny to be his best man, he remarked,
“I shall have to marry that girl.” As he blacked his boots for the
ceremony, a young boy asked the groom where he was going. “To
hell I reckon,” was Lincoln’s response. A few days later, he informed
a friend, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is [a]
matter of profound wonder.”
A woman of aristocratic tastes accustomed to having servants and
slaves wait on her, Mary made sacrifices so they could get ahead. The
These are the earliest known photographs of Abraham Lincoln and Mary
Todd Lincoln, probably made just after Lincoln was elected to Congress in
1846. (Library of Congress)
couple took lodgings at the Globe Tavern, hardly plush accommoda-

tions, and then rented a house after their first son, Robert Todd Lin-
coln, was born in August 1843. The following year, Lincoln bought a
house at the corner of Eighth and Jackson for $1500. It remained the
Lincolns’ home until they left for Washington in 1861. In 1846 a second
son, Eddie, arrived.
Mary Lincoln set out to upgrade her husband’s wardrobe and make
it more appropriate for a professional man. She struggled to lengthen
his pants, match his socks, and coordinate the colors of his outfits,
but met with only limited success. Lincoln remained indiVerent to his
appearance and seemed oblivious to style and color, causing her on
more than one occasion to blurt out in frustration, “Why don’t you
dress up and look like somebody?”
She also undertook to polish his manners. She lectured him about
letting servants answer the door, wearing his coat when receiving
callers, and not coming to dinner in his shirt-sleeves. Sometimes
shocked guests found Lincoln lying on the floor reading, with no
regard for Victorian decorum. She was furious when she overhead
him inelegantly tell visitors that he would “trot [the] women folks
out.” Lincoln irked her by failing to observe proper etiquette at the
dinner table, and Herndon reported that “she played merry war when
he persisted in using his knife in the butter rather instead of the special
silver-handled one.” A niece who lived with the Lincolns for a time
complained that, unlike her plebian husband, Mary Lincoln “loved to
put on Style.”
�
Though assured of reelection, Lincoln decided not to run in 1842
for another term in the legislature. He had come under mounting
attack, much of it personal, for his steadfast support of the state’s
internal improvements program, which had finally driven the state
into bankruptcy, and the prospect of being once again the leader of a
legislative minority held no particular charm for him. Indeed, with
the Whigs a hopeless minority in the state, there were few political
avenues open to him. The only attractive possibility was Congress,
but since the single seat the Whigs controlled in the state was the
Springfield district, competition for the nomination was keen. Unable
to win the nomination in 1843, Lincoln persuaded the convention to
endorse the principle of rotating the nomination among the leading
aspirants, which put him in line for the nomination in 1846.
In that year Lincoln finally won the Whig nomination for Congress
in the Seventh District. His Democratic opponent was Peter Cart-
wright, the famous Methodist preacher. The campaign was notable for
producing the most elaborate statement Lincoln ever oVered regarding
his religious views. When Cartwright accused his opponent of religious
infidelity, Lincoln printed a statement in the Lacon Illinois Gazette (Au-
gust 15, 1846) which acknowledged that he was not a member of any
church, but added, not entirely accurately, “I have never denied the
truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disre-
spect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in par-
ticular.” He concluded, “I do not think I could myself, be brought to
support a man for oYce, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and
scoVer at, religion.” Ironically, Cartwright, for all his skill as a revivalist,
was an inept campaigner, and Lincoln easily swept to victory. Befitting
his new prominence, he had his first photograph taken around this time
decked out in a carefully tailored suit and satin vest.
Under the era’s political calendar, Lincoln did not take his seat in
Congress for more than a year after he was elected. During the period
between his nomination in May 1846 and the opening of Congress in
December 1847, the political situation in the country dramatically
changed. President James K. Polk’s vigorous defense of the annexation
of Texas led to war with Mexico in the summer of 1846. Polk was a
committed expansionist, and his goal was to add the Mexican prov-
inces of New Mexico and California to the national domain. By the
time Lincoln arrived in Washington, the United States army had won
a series of decisive victories and the fighting was over, although a
peace treaty had not yet been negotiated.
The war, however, thrust the issue of slavery’s expansion into na-
tional politics. In August 1846, dissident northern congressmen had
introduced the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to prohibit slavery from
any territory acquired from Mexico. The proviso gained wide support
in the North, especially among Whigs, who were more strongly an-
tislavery and who believed that Polk had deliberately provoked a war
with Mexico in order to acquire additional slave territory. When Lin-
coln took his seat in Congress as the sole Whig representative from
Illinois, the slavery issue had assumed greater importance in national
politics than had previously been the case.
Lincoln was slow to grasp the significance of this development. In
1845 he confessed, “I never was much interested in the Texas question.
I never could see much good to come of annexation; inasmuch, as
they were already a free republican people on our own model; on the
other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would
augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would
be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation.”
Nor did he express concern about adding a slave state to the Union.
Influenced by Whig opinion, however, Lincoln concluded that Polk
was responsible for the outbreak of hostilities with Mexico. Seeking
to embarrass the president, he introduced a series of resolutions in
December 1847 designed to demonstrate that the “spot” on which the
war began was not American soil. Three weeks later he gave his first
important speech, rehashing the standard Whig line about the war’s
origins. Democrats back home denounced “Spotty” Lincoln’s position,
but like most Whigs he was always careful to vote for military supply
bills while condemning Polk’s war policies.
Blaming Polk for the war was the conventional Whig view, but on
related questions Lincoln stood apart from the dominant opinion in
his party. For one thing, he “did not believe . . . that this war was
originated for the purpose of extending slave territory.” He thought it
was simply a political move by Polk to increase his popularity. More-
over, Lincoln was far less opposed to geographic expansion than many
eastern Whigs, and he recognized that taking some Mexican territory
was “a sort of necessity.” Believing the acquisition of territory inevi-
table, he hoped to limit it to Mexico’s northern provinces, and he
consistently voted to apply the Wilmot Proviso to this territory.
Nevertheless, Lincoln continued to view slavery as a “distracting
question” and focused his attention instead on traditional economic
issues. With the banking issue now dead, he considered internal im-
provements the most crucial matter confronting the country. He voted
with the Whig majority on the tariV and internal improvements, and
he delivered no less than three speeches urging federal assistance for
internal improvement projects in the states. He faithfully attended
sessions, worked hard on the committees to which he was assigned,
and answered most roll calls. Even so, as a newcomer, he made little
impression on experienced members.
Lincoln had a greater impact on President-making, an activity that
always dominated Congress in a national election year. He joined a
group of younger Whig members in promoting the candidacy of Za-
chary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War, who won the Whig nomi-
nation in June. Lincoln worked hard for the national ticket, including
making a campaign swing through New England, and was pleased
when Taylor was elected in November, though as expected he failed
to carry Illinois.
The second session of the Thirtieth Congress was unusually con-
tentious, as members struggled to deal with the status of slavery in
the region acquired from Mexico as a result of the 1848 peace treaty.
Lincoln said nothing in the charged debates but voted consistently to
establish free territorial governments in California and New Mexico.
While other northern Whigs were scurrying from the slavery issue
and seeking federal oYce, Lincoln boldly announced his intention to
introduce a bill to enact a program of gradual emancipation in the
District of Columbia, subject to the approval of its residents. When it
became clear that the bill would not pass, he decided not to present
it and contented himself with voting for another bill to abolish the
slave trade in the district, which was defeated.
Despite his early and strong support for Taylor, Lincoln had little
influence with the new administration. The most important federal
appointment Illinois received went to a candidate he opposed, and he
turned down an appointment as territorial governor of Oregon.
�
Lincoln was only forty years old when his congressional term
ended, and his political career seemingly had come to a dead end.
Democrats’ control of Illinois blocked any aspirations for state oYce,
and the rotation policy in his congressional district ruled out further
national service. His ambition for political distinction remained un-
quenched, but with no outlet available to fulfill that ambition, he
largely withdrew from public life and turned his attention to his legal
career. For the next five years, he “practiced law more assiduously
than ever before.” Along with an expanding legal practice, he also
commenced a program of personal self-improvement. These years
were a time of intellectual growth that laid the basis for his eventual
return to politics in 1854.
Lincoln’s political activities after 1849 were quite limited compared
with earlier years. He did not participate in local meetings to endorse
Henry Clay’s compromise package, which passed Congress in 1850.
Two years later he served as Whig national committeeman from Il-
linois, but deeming the party’s chances hopeless, his participation in
the election was half-hearted. He declined to run again for the legis-
lature and discouraged talk of nominating him for governor, which
would have entailed considerable time and expense with no likelihood
of victory.
While he continued to read newspapers, which were the major
source of political information at that time, he also resumed his earlier
program of self-study. Herndon indicated that in these years Lincoln
undertook to remedy what he perceived as “a certain lack of discipline
=a want of mental training and method.” Always intrigued by math-
ematics, he now studied Euclid’s geometry, and proudly noted that he
“nearly mastered” all six books.
He remained a fatalist, convinced that human beings were con-
trolled by some independent force, but his melancholy now became
a persistent part of his personality. “Melancholy dripped from him as
he walked,” Herndon declared, and he continued to seek relief
through humor, which he used, as Judge David Davis remarked, “to
whistle oV sadness.” Outwardly sociable, he remained a very private
individual, remote and reserved. Davis, who knew Lincoln well from
their days together on the circuit, bitingly observed that he had “no
Strong Emotional feelings for any person=Mankind or thing.” Ac-
quaintances, including longtime friends, did not assume any familiarity
with him, and even his best friends called him “Lincoln.” The nick-
name “Abe” was strictly for political purposes.
Firmly ensconced in respectable Springfield society, Lincoln’s sep-
aration from his own family became almost complete. He rarely vis-
ited his parents and did not keep up social relations with his relatives.
Although his political and legal travels sometimes brought him back
in contact with family members, they did not visit him in his Spring-
field home, and his father and stepmother never met Mary Lincoln
or their grandchildren. To make sure his father could support himself,
Lincoln bought his father’s farm and deeded it back to him for life,
but otherwise he did not extend himself financially to aid his parents.
In 1851 John Johnston, his stepbrother, wrote informing him that his
father was dying and wanted to see his son one last time. Lincoln’s es-
trangement from his father had not lessened with time, and he declined
to come. “Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether
it would not be more painful than pleasant,” he wrote, “but that if it
be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous [meeting] with many
loved ones gone before.” When Thomas passed away five days later,
in January 1851, Lincoln did not attend the funeral, and he took no steps
during his lifetime to mark his father’s grave. Dennis Hanks, who was
quite fond of Thomas Lincoln, wondered whether “Abe Loved his
farther Very well or Not,” and concluded, “I Dont think he Did.”
Dennis Hanks felt the sting of Lincoln’s conscious separation from
his relatives, noting that “when he was with us he Seemed to think a
great Deal of us but I thought Sum times it was hipocritical But I am
Not Shore.”
�
Lincoln, who continued to practice with William Herndon, was
by now a well-established lawyer earning a good income. Despite
temperamental diVerences=the impulsive Herndon was much more
pompous and windy=the two men worked well together. Each han-
dled his cases separately, although Lincoln generally conducted the
cases in federal court. After the state was divided into two federal
judicial districts, Lincoln began trying cases in Chicago as well as
Springfield. Unable to keep track of accounts, they simply divided the
fees equally. There was never any doubt, however, of their relative
position. To Lincoln, his associate was “Billy,” whereas Herndon al-
ways referred to his partner as “Mr. Lincoln.”
Their sparsely furnished oYce across the street from the capitol was
a chaotic mess of books, newspapers, and papers which were scattered
everywhere. Neither partner had any aptitude for organization. Lincoln
carried letters and memoranda on which he had jotted down ideas in
the lining of his hat, which Herndon designated “his desk and his
memorandum-book.” (Indeed, he once informed an attorney that the
purchase of a new hat accounted for his delay in answering a letter.) On
the desk was a bundle of papers, tied with a string, with the notation,
“When you can’t find it anywhere else, look in this.”
Often sprawled on the dingy couch, Lincoln drove his partner to
distraction with his habit of reading out loud. “When I read aloud,”
he explained, “two senses catch the idea: first, I see what I read; sec-
ond, I hear it, and therefore I can remember it better.” For his part,
Herndon was constantly frustrated in his attempts to broaden Lincoln
intellectually by interesting him in philosophical works and other
books, which his partner soon tossed aside out of boredom.
Springfield had grown considerably since Lincoln’s arrival; by 1850
it boasted a population of 4500, and that total would double in the
next decade. As a result, the town had more legal business, but despite
his prominence in the bar and his growing federal practice, Lincoln
continued to travel the Eighth Judicial Circuit in search of clients and
business. His extensive experience, many acquaintances, and reputa-
tion for scrupulous honesty, which he consciously cultivated, secured
him a large number of cases.
Lincoln liked life on the circuit. Now one of the senior attorneys,
he had a large circle of friends among his fellow lawyers, and because
of his indiVerence to food and physical surroundings, he endured cir-
cuit practice better than most of his colleagues. David Davis believed
that Lincoln was “as happy as he could be, when on this Circuit=and
happy no other place. This was his place of Enjoyment.” As his fellow
itinerants noted, whereas other lawyers on the circuit went home each
weekend, Lincoln remained on the road. Being left alone on the week-
ends in distant towns gave him the solitude he craved. When Lincoln
was on the circuit, Herndon managed the oYce in Springfield.
Before the advent of railroads, attorneys and judges usually traveled
together by horseback or occasionally in a buggy on the prairie roads
from one county to the next, sometimes stopping at a farmhouse for
dinner. When they reached the county seat, they slept together in a
local hotel or tavern, where at times lawyers, jurors, witnesses, and
prisoners all took their meals at the same table. At the end of the day,
Lincoln often entertained those lounging about the tavern with his
repertory of stories. According to Herndon, “As he neared the pith or
point of the joke or story every vestige of seriousness disappeared
from his face. His . . . eyes sparked; a smile seemed to gather up, cur-
tain like, the corners of his mouth;” and when he reached the punch
line, “no one’s laugh was heartier than his.”
In spite of his wife’s eVorts to outfit him properly, Lincoln contin-
ued to dress carelessly. “He probably had as little taste about dress and
attire as anybody that ever was born,” one colleague on the circuit
recounted. In chilly weather he wore “a short circular blue cloak,
which he got in Washington in 1849, and kept for ten years,” while
on warm days he put on a soiled linen duster. “His trousers were
always too short,” and his hat was “faded and had no nap.” He carried
under his arm a worn green umbrella, which lacked a nob and was
tied with a string, along with a battered striped carpet bag, in which
he stuVed his possessions.
His negligent appearance was deceiving, for veteran court watchers
recognized that despite gaps in his legal knowledge, Lincoln was one of
the best jury lawyers in the state. He knew how to present evidence
simply and logically, was unmatched in examining witnesses, spoke in a
way that the jury could understand, and used his famous sense of hu-
mor to great advantage. Moreover, his unpretentious manner and un-
fashionable attire were an asset in the unrefined world of county courts.
He also quickly grasped the key points of a case. Leonard Swett, a skilled
attorney who practiced with Lincoln on the circuit, explained that in a
trial Lincoln often beguiled opposing attorneys by yielding a number of
minor points while carefully retaining the one crucial for his case.
“What he was so blanly giving away was simply what he couldnt get
and Keep. By giving away 6 points and carrying the 7th he carried his
case and the whole case hanging on the 7th. . . .” From close observa-
tion Swett realized that “any man who took Lincoln for a simple
minded man would very soon wake [up] with his back in a ditch.”
Lincoln’s most famous criminal case occurred in 1858, when he
defended DuV Armstrong, who was accused of murder. DuV was the
son of Jack Armstrong, with whom Lincoln had the famous wrestling
match at New Salem and who had been a good friend and supporter
until his recent death. Taking the case without fee, Lincoln displayed
little zeal to discover what happened. Instead, he concentrated on
discrediting the testimony of the chief prosecution witness, who
claimed that he had clearly seen the accused hit the deceased, though
he was some 150 feet away and it was near midnight, because the
moon was full and bright. Producing an almanac, Lincoln established
that on the night in question, the moon had already set, skirting the
fact that even so there was ample light. In his summation Lincoln
uncharacteristically played on the jurors’ emotions, speaking of the
many kindnesses the family of the accused extended to him as a
young, poor boy. In tears, the jurors acquitted the defendant. One of
the reporters covering the trial declared afterward that Lincoln’s bril-
liant defense put him “at the head of the [legal] profession in this
state.”
Lincoln’s legal practice was shifting, however, in response to the
state’s economic growth. More and more he represented railroad cor-
porations in cases that oVered much larger fees. In one of his most
important cases, he successfully defended the Illinois Central Railroad
from having to pay county property taxes, for which he received the
largest fee ($5000) of his career. In another case that attracted wide
attention, he defended the right of a railroad to construct a bridge
across the Mississippi River, after a steamboat struck one of the pilings
and caught fire. In his presentation, Lincoln, who had always been an
advocate of internal improvements, argued for the necessity of bridges
to create an east–west transportation network that would foster eco-
nomic growth.
In addition to navigation and transportation, Lincoln had long been
interested in inventions and patents. He was hired in 1855 by the de-
fense to participate in a patent infringement case brought by Cyrus
McCormick, the inventor of the reaper, against one of his competitors,
John Manny. After Lincoln had been retained, however, Manny’s fa-
mous eastern attorneys proceeded to completely ignore him and re-
fused to let him participate in the case. One of them, Edwin Stanton,
who ironically would one day be Lincoln’s Secretary of War, sneer-
ingly referred to him as “that d——d long armed Ape.” Lincoln, who
went to Cincinnati for the trial, was shunted to the sidelines by the
other attorneys and allowed only to observe the proceedings. Al-
though he was by now accustomed to snide remarks prompted by his
ungainly physique and disheveled clothing, Lincoln nevertheless felt
that he had been “roughly handled.”
�
Away from home for three months or more every year, Lincoln
found his circuit practice a welcome break from his troubled domestic
situation, as his marriage was fraught with deep strains and tensions.
Neither Lincoln nor his wife was blameless. Lincoln was undemon-
strative and often self-absorbed, and spent long periods quietly reading
or thinking. He suVered repeated periods of melancholy that produced
intense mood swings, and he did not always give his wife the emo-
tional support and comfort she needed. As Mary Lincoln noted, her
husband “was not, a demonstrative man, when he felt most deeply,
he expressed, the least.” Accustomed to place and deference, Mary
liked to put on airs, and was irritated by her husband’s studied indif-
ference to social propriety.
She was sociable and gregarious, worried constantly about what
others thought of her, and demanded flattery. AZicted by throbbing
headaches, which may have been partly caused by allergies, and severe
monthly cramps, Mary was easily provoked and would explode in a
rage. Servants were never able to satisfy her and quickly came and
went, and she often clashed with neighbors, who also heard her
tongue-lash her husband. Moreover, with Lincoln away a good part
of the time, either campaigning or practicing on the judicial circuit,
she was left with the care of the children. She confessed to a friend
that if her husband were home more “She could love him better.”
When she erupted in a fury, a neighbor recalled that “Lincoln paid no
attention” or, if her anger was unusually fierce, “would pick up one
of his Children and walked oV,” leaving the house until the storm
blew over. His diYcult marriage sharpened his political skills by
strengthening his forbearance and teaching him ways to deal with
contentious personalities. Yet the two also shared moments of tender-
ness and aVection, and the ambitious Mary was intensely proud of
her husband’s accomplishments.
They suVered a deep loss when their son Eddie, who had always
been sickly, died in 1850. As if to replace him, Mary became pregnant
immediately, and William Wallace Lincoln was born at the end of the
year. So that he would have a playmate, they had a fourth son, Tho-
mas (nicknamed by his father Tad), born in 1853. The emerging ethos
of the middle class viewed family size as a reflection of moral self-
restraint and financial responsibility, and as the spacing of their chil-
drens’ births indicates, the Lincolns, like other middle-class couples,
practiced some form of birth control.
Eddie’s death brought about a complete change in Lincoln’s paren-
tal attitude. His own father had not provided him with an example
of paternal aVection, and because of his frequent absences and ab-
sorption in his career, Lincoln was not close to either of his first two
sons. Now he became an overindulgent parent, lavishing attention on
his younger children and, along with his wife, abandoning any eVort
to discipline or control them. Robert was smug and aloof, Tad had a
speech impediment and learning disability, and only Willie manifested
his father’s sense of humor, keen intelligence, and kindly disposition.
Herndon was particularly infuriated by Lincoln’s younger sons,
whom his partner often brought to the oYce on Sunday mornings
while Mary was at church. Herndon complained that they “soon gut-
ted the room=gutted the shelves of books=rifled the drawers and
riddled boxes=battered the points . . . of gold pens against the stove=
turned over the ink stands on the papers=scattered letters over the
oYce and danced over them.” While Herndon fumed, their father
either ignored their antics as he worked or simply laughed.
Lincoln’s time on the circuit, which continued until his election as
president, was made less diYcult by the construction of railroads in
the 1850s. Now he found it possible to return home on weekends and
still practice in the various county seats. His more frequent presence
at home was important, because Mary’s instability was becoming
more serious, and she was especially flighty when he was away. Her
mood swings=she could be vivacious and charming, or cross and
censorious=became more pronounced, and as one of Lincoln’s long-
time friends, Orville H. Browning, commented, she was always “either
in the garret or cellar.”
Lincoln’s law practice brought him a comfortable income, totaling
$2000 or more a year. Never a speculator, he handled his money
conservatively, yet in 1860 he was worth $17,000. With a larger family
and more money, the Lincolns remodeled their house in 1856 by add-
ing a second story. For the first time, they had suYcient room and,
equally important in Mary’s eyes, possessed a home more in keeping
with her husband’s prominence. It was done in the Greek Revival
style, and like many respectable couples, they now had separate bed-
rooms. In what would become a frequent problem in the White
House, Mary’s remodeling expenditures exceeded what her husband
believed was justified.
In the years after his return from Congress, Lincoln was a well-
respected member of his community. With a very successful legal
practice, a socially prominent wife, and a tasteful, comfortable home,
he had entered the ranks of social respectability. In an 1860 campaign
biography, William Dean Howells, the famous novelist, portrayed Lin-
coln during these years as “successful in his profession, happy in his
home, secure in the aVection of his neighbors.” He was suYciently
content and at ease with himself that “ambition could not tempt him.”
In reality, he was deeply frustrated and unhappy, which was man-
ifested by his growing moodiness. His thirst for distinction had not
slackened, and his driving ambition remained unfulfilled. Believing that
he had done nothing of lasting significance, he exclaimed to Herndon,
“How hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one’s country no
better than if one had never lived for it!”
His bouts of depression, while less acute than earlier in his life,
were nevertheless a recurring phenomenon. At the law oYce, Hern-
don often found him in “a sad terribly gloomy state.” Starting to write,
Lincoln would stop and “become abstracted,” staring out the window
and saying nothing for long periods of time. On some days, his partner
was so depressed that Herndon simply locked the oYce, drew the
shade, and left, leaving him to the solitude he desired. When Herndon
returned an hour or two later, the spell had passed, and he would
find Lincoln talking to a client or telling a joke.
On the circuit, he could be the center of merriment and mirth one
hour, and by himself the next, leaning his chair against the wall with
his hands clasped around his knees, “the very picture of dejection and
gloom.” Absorbed in his thoughts, he might “sit for hours at a time
defying the interruption of even his closest friends . . . for by his
moody silence and abstraction he had thrown about him a barrier so
dense and impenetrable no one dared to break through.” When they
got up in the morning, his colleagues often discovered him sitting by
himself, dejectedly staring into the fire, saying nothing, far away in
his thoughts, until the breakfast bell rang.
For Lincoln, the race of life appeared over. He had reached the
top rung of his profession in Illinois, and he had established himself
as a respectable member of his community. Fulfilling the quest that
he began as an adult, he had disciplined his emotions, honed his
knowledge, and fashioned a mature identity. But he was depressed and
unhappy, for his first love had always been politics, and the avenue of
political distinction remained closed to him. When the political situ-
ation in Illinois suddenly changed in 1854, however, his long-
smoldering ambition blazed forth again in a bright, searing flame.
Chapter 3
RISE TO POWER
Abraham Lincoln’s withdrawal from politics abruptly ceased in

1854. In a later autobiographical sketch, he acknowledged that “in 1854,
his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his
mind, when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused him as
he had never been before.” His return to the political hustings follow-
ing passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act launched him on the path
that would=amazingly=take him to the White House in just a few
years.
�
Originally introduced by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois,
the Kansas–Nebraska Act organized the region immediately west of
Iowa and Missouri. Under terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
slavery had been forever prohibited from this region of the Louisiana
Purchase, but in response to southern pressure the new bill repealed
this prohibition and substituted the doctrine of popular sovereignty,
by which the residents of a territory were to decide the status of
slavery. On May 30, President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas–
Nebraska Act into law.
As Douglas had correctly predicted, the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise raised “a hell of a storm.” Across the North, indignant
Whigs joined Democrats and Free Soilers in protesting Congress’s un-
expected action. Pondering Douglas’s motivations and the significance
of this legislation, Lincoln seemed more withdrawn than usual on the
circuit. Back home in Springfield, he began reading the congressional
debates on slavery, taking notes at the State Library for future use.
When Lincoln resumed his political career in 1854, he had changed
in important ways from when, as a young man, he had served in the
legislature. While the years had done nothing to slake his thirst for
public distinction, his moral passion now ran deeper as he shifted his
primary focus from economic issues to slavery. Moreover, his prose
was more crisp and lean, like the man himself. Gone were the partisan
hyperbole and extravagant flourishes of his earlier speeches. His power
as a public speaker now grew, aided by his moral commitment, his
hard logic, and his reputation for honest purpose. It was easy for
listeners, as it has been for historians, to lose sight of Lincoln’s parti-
sanship in these years and to speak of him as a statesman.
The popular protest against the Kansas–Nebraska Act precipitated
a movement to form a new antislavery, sectional Republican party
combining Whigs, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free Soilers. EVorts
to organize the Republican party, however, met with little success in
most northern states, including Illinois. In addition, the sudden emer-
gence of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know Nothing, or Ameri-
can, party greatly complicated matters in many northern states, as did
the growing strength of prohibition sentiment.
In the prevailing political confusion, Lincoln characteristically acted
with great caution. He still thought of himself as a Whig, and therefore
he declined to attend the 1854 Republican state convention and held
aloof from the new party. Urging cooperation among the groups op-
posed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he avoided any
discussion in his speeches of nativism, prohibition, or even economic
issues, all of which divided the anti-Nebraska forces. Instead, he fo-
cused exclusively on the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the slavery issue.
The strength of the anti-Nebraska movement, which threatened
the Democratic party’s dominance in the state, rekindled Lincoln’s
political ambition, and he threw himself into the 1854 contest with his
accustomed former vigor. His speeches attracted great attention in the
prevailing supercharged political atmosphere, and he soon began to
receive invitations to speak outside the congressional district. His
three-hour speech at Peoria in reply to Douglas was Lincoln’s first
great speech against slavery.
In this address, Lincoln developed several points that would domi-
nate his thinking on slavery during the rest of the decade. These points
were not original with him=they had been developed earlier by anti-
Rise to Power 51
slavery leaders such as Salmon P. Chase=but Lincoln presented them in
an unusually eVective manner. The true intent of the Kansas–Nebraska
Act, he contended, was to allow slavery to expand, and he dismissed as
“a lullaby” the idea that climate, soil, or anything but statutory prohibi-
tion would keep slavery out of Kansas. He placed great emphasis on the
idea that Douglas’s law overturned the policy of the Founding Fathers,
who, he maintained, had intended for slavery to gradually die out. “Let
no one be deceived. The spirit of seventy-six and the spirit of Nebraska,
are utter antagonisms; and the former is being rapidly displaced by the
latter.” In advancing this proposition, designed to link the anti-Nebraska
cause to the ideals of the Founders and make it seem conservative, Lin-
coln simplified the Founders’ record concerning slavery, which was
much more mixed than he suggested. It was at this point in his career
that the Declaration of Independence became a significant component
of Lincoln’s thought. Hailing it as the “first precept of our ancient faith,”
he henceforth designated it (rather than the Constitution) as the na-
tion’s founding charter.
He also oVered a powerful moral indictment of slavery, invoking
the Declaration of Independence for his authority: “There can be no
moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.”
While Lincoln had long thought slavery a moral evil, he had never
spoken so forthrightly on this issue before. In condemning Douglas’s
professed indiVerence to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln proclaimed:
“I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the
world=enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to
taunt us as hypocrites=causes the real friends of freedom to doubt
our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men
amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental prin-
ciples of civil liberty=criticising the Declaration of Independence, and
insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.” In-
voking the idea that the United States was to be an example to the
world, he charged that “our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in
the dust” by the presence of slavery in the Republic.
Lincoln was careful, however, to deny that he had any intention
of interfering with slavery in the southern states, acknowledging that
there was no power under the Constitution to do so. Instead, he
focused on stopping the spread of slavery into the western territories,
which would preserve opportunity for white workers and farmers.
Restricting slavery would lead to its eventual demise as the Fathers
intended, Lincoln insisted, though he ventured no explanation as to
how or when slavery would end. “If all earthly power were given
me,” he candidly confessed, “I should not know what to do, as to the
existing institution.”
One obstacle the antislavery movement had always confronted was
Northerners’ widespread hostility to blacks. For personal and strategic
reasons, Lincoln devoted little attention to the racial consequences of
emancipation. As an ambitious politician, he was sensitive to the
power of antiblack sentiment in Illinois and frankly conceded that
most whites, including himself, would not accept former slaves as
political and social equals. “Whether this feeling accords with justice
and sound judgment, is not the sole question. . . . A universal feeling,
whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded.” He took
refuge, politically and psychologically, in the policy of colonization, an
utterly unrealistic program to transport ex-slaves back to Africa. In-
stead of taking his usual hardheaded look at this scheme, he clung to
it as a way to avoid confronting the consequences of emancipation,
for which he had no solution.
The other major handicap the antislavery cause labored under in
northern society was the belief that the movement threatened the
Union. Lincoln addressed this issue more forthrightly. “Much as I hate
slavery,” he declared, “I would consent to the extension of it rather
than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any GREAT
evil, to avoid a GREATER one.” But he dismissed the possibility that
the South would secede over this issue and argued that restoration of
the Missouri Compromise would, on the contrary, restore sectional
concord. Yet he refrained from the harsh condemnation of Southerners
that many antislavery leaders indulged in. “I have no prejudice against
the Southern people,” he avowed. “They are just what we would be
in their situation. If slavery did not exist amongst them, they would
not introduce it. If it did exist amongst us, we should not instantly
give it up.” Lincoln’s tolerance and fair-mindedness, evident in pas-
sages like this one, gave the Peoria speech great power and helped
mask his partisan intentions.
Rise to Power 53
Lincoln later claimed that he had no more immediate purpose in
taking the stump than to help Richard Yates, the Whig congressman
from the Seventh Congressional District who was running for reelec-
tion. But the fact he agreed to run for the state legislature, which held
no attraction for him, belied this statement. The next legislature would
elect a U.S. Senator to succeed James Shields, Lincoln’s old dueling
adversary and a Nebraska Democrat. Lincoln’s greatest ambition had
always been to serve in the Senate, where his idol Henry Clay had
been such a distinguished member, and he now had his sights firmly
set on this goal as he maneuvered for political advantage in the swirl-
ing eddies of Illinois politics. At the same time that he bolstered his
standing in the Whig party, he carefully tried to avoid giving oVense
to other anti-Nebraska groups in the state, including immigrants,
Know Nothings, abolitionists, and dissident Democrats. When Repub-
licans placed his name on their state central committee without his
consent, he made no reply until after the election, for he could not
aVord either to alienate radical antislavery elements or to be identified
with their principles. Even then, he did not formally decline the ap-
pointment. “That man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and gath-
ered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a
very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln,” his law partner William Hern-
don commented. “He was always calculating, and always planning
ahead. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.”
The November election produced a political earthquake in Illinois
that toppled the long-invincible Democratic party. The anti-Nebraska
forces scored a stunning victory, electing five of nine congressmen and
gaining control of the new legislature. The opposition was deeply
divided among Whigs, Free Soilers, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and
Know Nothings, but if they were able to unite, the anti-Douglas forces
could elect the next senator. The Illinois constitution prohibited mem-
bers of the legislature from being elected senator, so Lincoln quickly
resigned from the legislative seat he had just won and began actively
soliciting support for senator with “his characteristic activity and
vigilance.”
When the balloting began in early February, Lincoln led all con-
tenders on the initial tally with forty-four votes, seven short of a
majority. Four anti-Nebraska Democrats, however, adamantly refused
to support him because he was a Whig. When it seemed that the
Douglas forces were on the verge of prevailing, Lincoln instructed his
die-hard supporters to switch to Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska
Democrat, who was elected. “I regret my defeat moderately,” Lincoln
wrote afterward as he tried to soothe the anger of his Whig supporters
over the outcome. Trumbull’s election was a severe defeat for the
Douglasites, and he could not “let the whole political result go to
ruin, on a point merely personal to myself.” Lincoln’s restrained re-
sponse to his defeat paid subsequent political dividends; several of the
anti-Nebraska Democrats who prevented his election became impor-
tant political supporters, and Trumbull soon pledged to support Lin-
coln against Douglas for the senate in 1858.
�
Following his usual custom, Lincoln focused on his legal pro-
fession in 1855 in order to “pick up my lost crumbs of last year.”
National politics remained muddled. The collapse of the northern
Whig party accelerated, as countless supporters abandoned it for either
the Republican party or, in greater numbers, the Know Nothings.
Indeed, in most northern states, including Illinois, the Know Nothings
were the strongest party opposed to the Democrats. Since Illinois did
not have a major statewide contest in 1855, Lincoln could hold back
and wait to see how these diverse elements sorted themselves out.
He was reluctant, however, to abandon the Whig party, with which
he had identified since its founding, and he recognized that although
the anti-Douglas forces were a majority in the state, the basic problem
was how to get old-line Whigs, Know Nothings, German immigrants,
anti-Nebraska Democrats, and political abolitionists to unite.
Adding fuel to the political fire was the deteriorating situation in
Kansas. Contrary to Douglas’s assurances that popular sovereignty
would peacefully resolve the slavery issue, Kansas was soon the scene
of chaos, fraud, and violence. Aided by the numerous illegal votes of
Missouri residents, proslavery forces controlled the territorial govern-
ment, which the Pierce administration legally recognized. Antislavery
forces, on the other hand, organized their own government and ap-
Rise to Power 55
plied for admission to the Union as a free state. Sporadic fighting soon
broke out between the two factions in the territory.
Lincoln’s mood darkened as he pondered the growing sectional
crisis. In response to a letter from his friend Joshua Speed complaining
about antislavery activity in Kansas, Lincoln made clear his political
uncertainty. “I think I am a whig,” he wrote, “but others say there
are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist,” even though “I now do
no more than oppose the extension of slavery.” Passing over the Re-
publican party in silence, he avowed his opposition to the Know Noth-
ings. “I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be?
How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor
of degrading classes of white people?” Bemoaning the country’s de-
generacy, he concluded: “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all
men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created
equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will
read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and
catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some
country where they make no pretense of loving liberty. . . .”
Publicly, however, Lincoln said nothing against the Know Nothings,
who were too powerful to antagonize, and many of whom were his
“old political and personal friends.” (Even his wife, tired of battling
Irish servants, supported them.) Lincoln’s unwillingness to speak out
against the Know Nothings at this time, despite his strong feelings,
would be a crucial factor in his successful bid for the Republican
nomination in 1860.
It was obvious that the Whig party was moribund, and with the
national Know Nothing organization increasingly split along sectional
lines over the slavery issue, Lincoln decided that the prospects for
uniting the various anti-Democratic factions in the state had improved.
Early in 1856, he cast his lot with the Republican party. On February
22, he attended a meeting of anti-Nebraska editors at Decatur to urge
the importance of moderation on the slavery issue in order to promote
unity. He warned the more advanced antislavery people that a radical
antislavery program would drive away potential supporters in the cen-
tral and southern parts of the state and cripple the movement. After
adopting a statement of principles crafted to appeal to a broad anti-
slavery coalition, those in attendance called for a state convention to
meet in Bloomington on May 29.
Lincoln went to Bloomington as a delegate to keep the Republican
movement on track. In the week before the convention assembled,
two shocking events electrified northern public opinion. On May 22,
a proslavery mob had raided the free state town of Lawrence, Kansas,
and terrorized the inhabitants. The next day, Preston Brooks, a South
Carolina congressman, attacked Republican Senator Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber and beat the antislavery leader
unconscious with his cane. With popular emotions running high, lead-
ers worried that antislavery radicals would stampede the convention,
but in the end the delegates adopted a moderate platform that focused
on the issue of slavery’s expansion and nominated a state ticket rep-
resenting all the factions in the Republican coalition. The climax of
the convention was a powerful speech Lincoln delivered to the cheer-
ing assembly in which he urged unity and maintained that “the Union
must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the
integrity of its territorial parts.”
Two weeks later the Republicans’ first national nominating con-
vention assembled in Philadelphia. The delegates nominated John C.
Frémont, the famous western explorer, for president. At the last min-
ute, the Illinois delegation mounted an unsuccessful drive to nominate
Lincoln for vice-president, and despite his lack of a national reputation,
he received a very respectable 110 votes on the first ballot.
Illinois was one of the battleground states in the election. Northern
Illinois, where antislavery sentiment was strongest, was certain to go
for Frémont, while the southern part of the state, largely settled by
Southerners, was equally certain for James Buchanan, the Democratic
candidate. Lincoln concentrated his eVorts in the central counties,
which would decide the election, working feverishly to keep conser-
vative Whigs from voting for former president Millard Fillmore on
the American ticket. He delivered over fifty speeches in what observ-
ers agreed was the most exciting election yet in the state’s history.
In the end, Buchanan carried Illinois and also the nation. Never-
theless, Illinois Republicans were optimistic about the future. Not only
had the Republican state ticket triumphed, but, combined, Frémont
and Fillmore’s vote exceeded that for Buchanan by a comfortable mar-
Rise to Power 57
gin. Equally important, the Republicans had displaced the dying Know
Nothing movement, which had ridden the crest of victory just two
years earlier, as the major opposition party to the Democrats. Finally,
the 1856 election established Lincoln as one of the major leaders of
the Republican party in Illinois, and he received a number of invita-
tions, most of which he declined, to speak in neighboring states.
�
James Buchanan assumed the presidency determined to dampen
sectional tensions and check the growth of the Republican party. His
program of sectional conciliation got oV to a rocky start, however,
when the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision on March 6,
1857, two days after his inauguration. In this decision, the Court ma-
jority, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, ruled that blacks could not
be citizens of the United States and that Congress had no power to
prohibit slavery in a territory. The decision was a direct blow at the
Republican party, whose most important principle (and the only one
all party members could agree upon) was that Congress should pro-
hibit slavery from all the territories.
The only important political speech Lincoln delivered in 1857 dealt
with the Dred Scott decision. Speaking in Springfield on June 26, Lin-
coln deprecated any resistance to the Court’s ruling but vowed that
Republicans would work to get the decision reversed. Lincoln elabo-
rated on his view that the Declaration of Independence had erected
equality as the nation’s guiding principle. By proclaiming the ideal of
human equality, the Founders had “meant to set up a standard maxim
for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all;
constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never
perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly
spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness
and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”
In criticizing the Court’s ruling, Lincoln homed in on Taney’s as-
sertion that blacks were not included in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence’s promise of equality. In what had by now become a standard
theme in his writings and speeches, Lincoln protested that in order to
protect slavery, the once revered Declaration “is assailed, and sneered
at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could
rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.” Lincoln
argued that the Declaration’s authors “did not intend to declare all
men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in
color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity,” but they
“did consider all men created equal=equal in ‘certain inalienable
rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”
At the same time, Lincoln tried to tarnish Douglas, who had de-
livered a speech two weeks earlier defending the Court, by lumping
Taney and Douglas together in a desire to make slavery a permanent
institution. Armed with the Court’s decision, Democratic leaders were
riveting ever more tightly the shackles that bound the oppressed slave.
“All the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him . . . ,” he
observed. “They have him in his prison house; they have searched his
person, and left no prying instrument with him. One after another
they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him, and now they have
him, as it were, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which can
never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key; the keys in
the hands of a hundred diVerent men, and they scattered to a hundred
diVerent and distant places; and they stand musing as to what inven-
tion, in all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to
make the impossiblity of his escape more complete than it is.” In
making this charge, Lincoln ignored the ways in which the Dred Scott
decision also undercut Douglas’s doctrine of popular sovereignty. The
kernels of Lincoln’s emerging belief in a Democratic conspiracy to
spread slavery were clearly visible in this address.
Lincoln devoted most of his attention in 1857 to his legal profession,
but he was already looking ahead to 1858, when Douglas’s seat in the
Senate would be up for grabs. He had had his eye on this contest
since his narrow defeat for the senate in 1855, and he began planning
for the race as early as 1857. As he traveled the judicial circuit that
fall, Lincoln ceaselessly promoted his senatorial ambitions.
In devising his campaign plans, Lincoln had not anticipated the
personal rupture between Douglas and Buchanan over the Kansas
issue. In the summer of 1857, a constitutional convention, which met
in the town of Lecompton, Kansas, drafted a proposed state consti-
tution that recognized the legality of slavery. Because proslavery lead-
Rise to Power 59
ers feared that voters would reject the constitution, they refused to
submit it for popular ratification. Instead, voters could decide only
whether they wanted to authorize the importation of new slaves into
the state. With free state men boycotting what they considered to be
a rigged election, the Lecompton constitution easily won approval, as
did a separate provision allowing the importation of additional slaves.
OVended by this procedure, Buchanan’s territorial governor warned
that the Lecompton constitution represented the wishes of only a
small minority of the residents of Kansas. Nevertheless, the president,
ignoring the gathering storm clouds, urged Congress to admit Kansas
under the Lecompton constitution as a slave state.
This action was too much for Douglas, who argued that the Le-
compton constitution made a mockery of the Democratic principle of
popular sovereignty. Believing that the very survival of the Democratic
party in the free states was at stake, Douglas broke with the admin-
istration and southern Democrats and opposed the Lecompton con-
stitution. After the House and Senate deadlocked, Congress, through
indirect means, sent the constitution back to Kansas for a new vote,
and in August 1858 the territory’s electors overwhelmingly rejected
the Lecompton constitution.
Douglas’s dramatic break with Buchanan put Illinois Republicans
in a diYcult position. The senator’s opposition to the Lecompton bill
undercut the Republicans’ traditional accusation that Douglas and
northern Democrats favored the expansion of slavery, and that popular
sovereignty was merely a device to accomplish this end. Moreover, a
number of eastern Republicans, led by Horace Greeley, the editor of
the vastly influential New York Tribune, urged Illinois Republicans to
support Douglas’s reelection to the Senate.
Such advice deeply angered Lincoln and other Illinois Republicans,
many of whom had spent years battling the haughty Douglas and
who sensed that at long last they had a good chance to defeat their
hated adversary. In a calculated repudiation of the advice of eastern
Republicans, the delegates to the state Republican convention in
Springfield in June unanimously passed a resolution declaring that
“Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of
Illinois for the United States Senate, as the successor of Stephen A.
Douglas.” At this time senators were elected by state legislatures, not
by the voters, and it was highly unusual for a party to designate a
senatorial candidate in advance. The action of the state convention
unambiguously narrowed the choice to Lincoln or Douglas. It had an
added significance, for without Lincoln’s nomination his famous de-
bates with Douglas would never have occurred.
That evening, in a stiflingly hot legislative chamber, Lincoln deliv-
ered an address to the delegates that laid out the main themes of his
upcoming senatorial campaign. He had carefully drafted the speech
over a period of several weeks, jotting down ideas as they occurred
to him. His advisers thought it too radical, but Lincoln, who always
relied on his own political judgment, decided not to change it.
The speech’s title derived from the Biblical quotation, “A house
divided against itself cannot stand,” which Lincoln recited at the be-
ginning of his remarks. He had first used the Biblical image of a house
divided in 1843, and had returned to it several times in 1856 and 1857,
but he now gave this idea full scope and development. “I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free,” the
Republican nominee proclaimed. “I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved=I do not expect the house to fall=but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in
course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till
it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new=North
as well as South.”
And then, in a sentence that historians usually ignore but which in
fact was the transition to the body of his speech, he asked, “Have we
no tendency to the latter condition?” Although the phrases “house di-
vided” and “ultimate extinction” attracted the most attention in the
press, the thrust of Lincoln’s argument was that a conspiracy existed
among Democratic leaders to make slavery a national institution.
Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision, along
with Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Stephen A. Douglas, were
all involved in this plot. Another Dred Scott decision was coming,
Lincoln warned, that would decree no state could prohibit slavery,
and then slavery would be a national institution. “Welcome or un-
welcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon
Rise to Power 61
us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and
overthrown.” Douglas’s contribution to the plan, Lincoln explained,
was to mold northern public opinion “to not care whether slavery is
voted down or voted up.” He prophesied: “We shall lie down pleasantly
dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their
State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme
Court has made Illinois a slave State.”
Lincoln’s allegation of a plan to spread slavery contained more
substance than historians have acknowledged, but his insistence that
Douglas was implicated in this plot was partisan propaganda. By this
time Douglas was under harsh attack in the South for his opposition
to the Lecompton constitution, and he was engaged in a bitter per-
sonal feud with Buchanan. Lincoln, however, believed Douglas’s mo-
tives in repealing the Missouri Compromise were selfish, and he re-
sented Douglas’s “assumption of superiority on account of his elevated
position,” his scorn for his opponents, and his unscrupulousness as
evidenced by his persistent resort to race baiting. But he also envied
Douglas and the Little Giant’s great political success. Reviewing their
long acquaintance and respective careers, he noted, “With me, the race
of ambition has been a failure=a flat failure; with him it has been one
of splendid success.”
To sharpen the diVerences between himself and Douglas, Lincoln
focused on the moral issue of slavery. Beginning with his first public
statement on slavery in 1837, Lincoln had always opposed the insti-
tution on moral grounds, but Douglas’s opposition to the Lecompton
constitution forced Lincoln to emphasize the moral issue in order to
discredit his opponent’s credentials as an antislavery leader.
Douglas knew he faced the greatest challenge of his political career.
“I shall have my hands full,” the combative senator said when in-
formed of Lincoln’s nomination. “He is the strong man of his party=
full of wit, facts, dates, and the best stump-speaker, with his droll ways
and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I
beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”
No sooner had he returned to Illinois than Douglas took the of-
fensive and charged that Lincoln’s House Divided speech was a radical
document that advocated “a war of the North against the South.” He
also laid heavy emphasis on the race issue, which had long been the
Democrats’ trump card in Illinois politics, and insisted that Lincoln,
with his talk about the extinction of slavery, was preaching racial
equality. “This government of ours is founded on the white basis,” he
aYrmed in Chicago. “It was made by the white man, for the benefit
of the white man, to be administered by white men.” Finally, he re-
peated his view that popular sovereignty was based on the American
principle of democracy, the right of the people to govern themselves.
Hoping to attract the largest audience possible, Lincoln hit upon
the strategy of following Douglas around the state, delivering a speech
after the senator had spoken. This tactic clearly irritated Douglas, and
Democratic papers charged that it was the only way Lincoln could
assemble a crowd. When Lincoln responded by challenging Douglas
to debate him, Douglas hesitated, since his presence would assure
Lincoln a large audience, and since, as the more famous leader, he
had little to gain and much to lose in any confrontation. Lincoln had
envisioned the two men campaigning together, but in the end Douglas
agreed to only seven debates, one in each of the remaining congres-
sional districts where they had not already spoken together, in order
to get Lincoln to stop following him all over the state. Under the
agreed-upon rules, the opening speaker would have one hour, the
second man an hour and a half, and then the first speaker would have
thirty minutes for rebuttal.
The underdog Lincoln threw himself into the canvass, traveling
4,350 miles and delivering sixty-three major speeches, only to be out-
done by Douglas, who made 130 speeches of various lengths and trav-
eled over a thousand miles farther. As the two candidates criss-crossed
the state, their respective traveling accommodations bespoke their
relative reputations. Douglas and his vivacious wife rode in a private
railroad car, accompanied by a number of supporters and an ever-
present corps of reporters. No such retinue followed Lincoln, who
traveled as a regular passenger, often alone, with only a bag containing
a change of clothing. This mode of travel reinforced Lincoln’s carefully
cultivated image as a humble, self-made man, as did his decision to
keep his aristocratic wife out of sight. His plain, well-worn clothing
fostered this image as well. Taken aback by Lincoln’s rumpled ap-
pearance, a member of the audience at Freeport reported that he wore
an “old high stovepipe hat with a coarse looking coat with sleeves far
Rise to Power 63
too short, and baggy looking trousers that were so short that they
showed his rough boots.”
The Lincoln–Douglas debates occupy an honored place in Ameri-
can political folklore. Arriving by foot, on horseback and in wagons,
or on special trains, thousands of ordinary citizens gathered to hear
the debates. All the usual campaign pageantry was evident: blaring
brass bands, flags and banners, glee clubs, processions honoring the
two candidates, fireworks, and thundering cannons. Countless report-
ers were present, and each party hired a stenographer to take down
what Lincoln and Douglas said so that party newspapers could publish
their exchanges. The contest received unusual attention outside the
state, for as the New York Times observed, Illinois in 1858 was “the
most interesting political battle-ground in the Union.”
The two men were blessed with keen intellects and tenacious mem-
ories, but in many ways they were a study in contrasts. Unlike the
tall, angular Lincoln, who moved and spoke deliberately, Douglas was
short (five feet four inches), stocky, and bursting with energy. He was
also the better extemporaneous speaker and had the more graceful
platform manner. A natty dresser with a white hat to set oV his care-
fully tailored dark coat and contrasting pants, he played to the audi-
ence, “clenching his fists,” shaking his black mane, “stamping his feet,”
and defiantly scowling at his opponents, all the while booming out
points in his rich baritone voice.
Uncertain what to do with his oversized hands, Lincoln never
seemed entirely at ease on the platform. One newspaperman wrote
that “he used singularly awkward, almost absurd, up-and-down and
sidewise movements of his body to give emphasis to his arguments.”
To make an important point, he had the odd habit of bending his
knees and then springing upward when he reached the concluding
phrase. His high-pitched voice, for all its great carrying power,
sounded harsh and unpleasant, but as he continued speaking, Lincoln
became more and more eVective, carrying his listeners along by his
earnestness, plain style, clear logic, and occasional jokes. After a hes-
itant performance in the first debate at Ottawa, he hit his stride during
the second debate at Freeport, in which he was much more aggressive.
Like modern candidates, both Douglas and Lincoln had a standard
speech which they delivered with variations throughout the campaign.
Stephen A. Douglas (left) and Abraham Lincoln as they appeared about

the time of their joint debates in 1858. Despite quite diVerent speaking
styles, both were formidable debaters. (Left: The National Portrait Gallery,
Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY; right: Library of Congress)
While Lincoln’s speeches varied more than Douglas’s, he often read

long passages from his earlier addresses. As a result, the debates
quickly became repetitious and at times extremely tedious, with the
two candidates often merely rehashing points that they had made in
speeches opening their campaigns. Douglas stressed the radicalism of
the House Divided doctrine, labeled Lincoln an abolitionist, constantly
brought up the race issue, and defended popular sovereignty as a
democratic principle. Lincoln charged Douglas with seeking to extend
slavery, denounced slavery as a moral evil, and tried as much as pos-
sible to dodge the race question.
Lincoln spent most of the campaign on the defensive on the issues
of abolitionism and race. Antiblack feeling was strong in Illinois (in
1848 a provision of the new state constitution to exclude free blacks
from entering the state won approval by a 4 to 1 margin). Fully im-
bibing this racial animosity, Douglas repeatedly sought to tarnish Lin-
Rise to Power 65
coln and the Republicans with a belief in black equality. Lincoln tried
to ignore the issue, since he could hardly outbid Douglas for racist
support, but finally in exasperation he outlined his views on race at
the Charleston debate. “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of
bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white
and black races,” the Republican candidate began, “=that I am not
nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes,
nor of qualifying them to hold oYce, nor to intermarry with white
people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical dif-
ference between the white and black races which I believe will for-
ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and po-
litical equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do
remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior,
and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior
position assigned to the white race.” While he would change his mind
on some of these issues by the end of his life, this statement was the
most extensive one Abraham Lincoln ever made concerning his views
on race and equality.
That being said, Lincoln nevertheless insisted that “there is no rea-
son in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights
enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, lib-
erty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled
to these as the white man.” Linking this point to his belief in oppor-
tunity as one of the defining principles of the Republic, he concluded,
“In the right to eat the bread . . . which his own hand earns, he is my
equal . . . and the equal of every living man.”
As the campaign continued, Lincoln devoted more and more at-
tention to the moral issue of slavery. In the final debate at Alton, in
the southern part of the state, Lincoln aYrmed, “The real issue in this
controversy=the one pressing upon every mind=is the sentiment on
the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a
wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong. The
sentiment that contemplates the institution of slavery in this country
as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican party. . . . They look
upon it as being a moral, social and political wrong.” He was careful
to disassociate himself from abolitionism, insisting that Republicans
had no intention of interfering with slavery in the states, which he
argued would violate the Constitution, and he refused to specify pre-
cisely either how or when ultimate extinction would be achieved.
Republicans believed that Lincoln had acquitted himself quite well
in the debates. In the end, however, it was not enough. Although
legislative candidates pledged to Lincoln outpolled those who favored
Douglas, both the apportionment of the legislature, in which the rap-
idly growing, heavily Republican northern counties were underrepre-
sented, and the holdovers in the Senate favored the Democrats. When
the new legislature convened, Douglas was reelected by a vote of 54
to 46.
“I am glad I made the . . . race,” Lincoln declared afterward. “It
gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which
I could have had in no other way.” Still, the outcome was a bitter
disappointment. Twice now he had come close to attaining his dream
of serving in the Senate, and he could not help thinking that his
political career was over. The antislavery cause would continue, he
wrote a friend, but he expected to “sink out of view.”
�
The 1858 senatorial contest was the turning point in Abraham
Lincoln’s political career. He had solidified his hold on the Illinois
Republican party by his vigorous canvass. He had skillfully staked out
a moderate position designed to hold the divergent Republican coali-
tion together. He had held his own against the most popular and
charismatic Democratic leader in the country. And for the first time
in his career, he had attracted national attention.
Lincoln’s immediate problem, however, was to restore his finances.
When Republican party chairman Norman Judd asked for a contri-
bution to pay oV the party’s campaign debt, he replied, “I have been
on expences so long without earning any thing that I am absolutely
without money now for even household purposes.” He lost no time
in again turning his attention to his law practice.
Nonetheless, there were already signs of the impression Lincoln
had made in his recent campaign. Urging him to toss his hat into the
presidential ring, Jesse Fell, a political friend, solicited an autobiograph-
Rise to Power 67
ical sketch for use in promoting his candidacy. Lincoln demurred.
When a Rock Island editor indicated he wanted to endorse him, he
replied, “I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Pres-
idency.” Some of this newspaper talk was merely intended to make
him the favorite son of Illinois, or to push him for the second spot
on the national ticket, but Lincoln, who was not given to flights of
fancy, adopted a sober view. More prominent party leaders, such as
Senator William Henry Seward of New York and Governor Salmon
P. Chase of Ohio, were seeking the Republican nomination, and Lin-
coln, who had been out of oYce for a decade and who had just been
defeated for senator, realistically did not see how he could challenge
them.
Bolstered by his newly won reputation, he carried on a wide cor-
respondence with party leaders in other states, urging unity in the
upcoming national contest. Moreover, he received a number of invi-
tations in 1859 from Republicans to speak in other states. He declined
most, but he did speak in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, and Kansas.
The presidential talk continued in spite of Lincoln’s attempts to
brush it aside. His friends argued that he was a more available can-
didate than any of the front-runners, and Lincoln, though not con-
vinced, decided to keep his options open. He sent Fell the sketch that
he had requested the previous year, and authorized the Illinois dele-
gation to give him a complementary vote at the national convention.
He also took steps to publish his recent debates with Douglas. In
February 1860, the Chicago Tribune, the most important Republican
paper in the West, endorsed Lincoln for president.
That same month, Lincoln traveled to New York to deliver an
address at the Cooper Union. He worked especially hard on this
speech, which would introduce him to Republicans in the East, where
he was not well known. He spent hours in the State Library, poring
over the records of the Constitutional convention and the early Con-
gresses to determine the Founders’ policy on slavery. The time he
invested in preparing his remarks provides clear evidence that he was
seriously considering making a bid for the Republican nomination. He
even spent $100 on a new black suit, trying (without complete success)
to look more respectable.
A snowstorm failed to deter those who were curious to see this
western Republican, and they packed the hall on the evening of Feb-
ruary 27. His unkempt appearance and Kentucky drawl were greater
handicaps before an eastern audience than they were back home, and
as was usually the case, his high-pitched voice bothered listeners until
he got warmed up. Carefully reading his address, Lincoln skillfully
used the occasion to enhance his reputation as a sound, conservative
leader, not given to wild-eyed causes and inflammatory rhetoric.
In his speech he portrayed the Republican party as a conservative
organization that sought to restore the policies of the Founders by
restricting the spread of slavery. He once again stressed the moral issue
of slavery, contending that Southerners’ belief that slavery was right,
and Republicans’ belief that it was wrong, constituted “the precise fact
upon which depends the whole controversy.” Urging Republicans not
to be intimidated by southern threats of disunion, he called on them
to stand by the old policy of restricting slavery from the territories
and limiting it to the states. “Let us have faith that right makes might,”
he aYrmed in closing, “and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to
do our duty as we understand it.” The overflow crowd burst into
applause, and the anti-Seward press of the city, led by the New York
Tribune, was lavish in its praise. He followed up this exhilarating suc-
cess with a series of speeches in New England. By the time Lincoln
returned home, he had decided to mount a serious eVort to win the
Republican presidential nomination.
“The taste is in my mouth a little,” he confessed to Trumbull at
the end of April in reference to the presidential nomination. The Re-
publican state convention in May endorsed him and bound the state’s
delegation to vote for him at the upcoming national convention. On
the first day of the proceedings, Lincoln’s cousin John Hanks entered
carrying two rails that he claimed were from a batch that Lincoln and
he had split in 1830, when Lincoln first came to Illinois. Thus was
born the symbol of “The Railsplitter,” which emphasized Lincoln’s
humble beginnings.
The Republican convention assembled in Chicago in May. Directing
the Lincoln forces was David Davis, who had known Lincoln for years
from his service as Judge of the Eighth Circuit. He was assisted by a
number of prominent Illinois Republicans, many of whom were ac-
Rise to Power 69
quaintances from his circuit court days, and all of whom had been
key advisers in his 1858 senatorial campaign. Often hostile to each
other, they were united only by their personal loyalty to Lincoln. It
was always one of Lincoln’s great political talents that he could get
men of diverse viewpoints to work together in a common cause and
usually also keep them personally loyal to him. Establishing their head-
quarters in the Tremont House, members of this inner circle mixed
with various delegations, soliciting support for Lincoln.
Lincoln had earlier outlined his basic convention strategy. “I sup-
pose I am not the first choice of a very great many,” he observed.
“Our policy, then, is to give no oVence to others=leave them in a
mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first
[choice].” Accordingly, Lincoln’s managers sought to prevent Senator
William Henry Seward of New York, who was the front-runner, from
winning the nomination on the first ballot, while seeking commit-
ments from supporters of other candidates to go for Lincoln as their
second choice. They argued that because of his radical antislavery
reputation, Seward could not be elected, whereas Lincoln, as a mod-
erate from a crucial battleground state, was the strongest candidate
the Republicans could run. Strengthening Lincoln’s chances was the
fact that he was the one possible nominee who was acceptable to all
factions of the party, particularly former Know Nothings and German
immigrants, who hated one another. The night before the balloting,
aided by unauthorized patronage pledges his managers made, Lincoln
picked up vital support in the delegations from Indiana, Pennsylvania,
and New Jersey, all closely contested states where the Republicans
faced a hard fight in November.
As expected, Seward led on the first ballot with 1731⁄2 votes, but
Lincoln surprised experienced observers by finishing second with 102
votes. On the second ballot, as more anti-Seward votes swung to
Lincoln, he pulled nearly even with the New Yorker. The choice was
now narrowed to Seward or Lincoln, and on the third ballot most of
the remaining anti-Seward votes went to Lincoln, and he was nomi-
nated. His selection was purely a triumph of availability. In making
this choice, the delegates simply concluded that he had the best chance
of winning; they gave little thought to Lincoln’s character or qualifi-
cations for oYce. Like the candidate, the Republican platform was
also moderate and emphasized opposition to the expansion of slavery
rather than its existence in the southern states.
Republicans’ prospects received a further boost when Democrats
could not agree on a presidential candidate. In the end, the northern
wing of the party nominated Douglas, while southern Democrats se-
lected Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Also in the
race was Senator John Bell of Tennessee, who had been nominated
by the new Constitutional Union party, a national conservative
organization.
With their opponents divided, Republicans seemed destined to win
in November, so they opted to conduct a campaign that featured
pageantry and hoopla and focused on the candidate rather than the
issues. Republican campaign literature drew heavily on the symbols
of “Honest Abe” and “The Railsplitter,” emphasizing Lincoln’s moral
character and his undistinguished origins, in order to portray him as
a symbol of democracy. Confident of victory, Republicans generally
avoided any serious discussion of the issues confronting the country.
Outwardly Lincoln took no part in the campaign. “By the lessons
of the past, and the united voice of all discreet friends,” he advised,
“I am neither [to] write or speak a word for the public. . . .” He re-
mained in Springfield and did not electioneer, occupying his time re-
ceiving visitors in the governor’s room on the second floor of the
capitol. His good friend Orville H. Browning reported that “Lincoln
bears his honors meekly. As soon as other company had retired after
I went in he fell into his old habit of telling amusing stories, and we
had a free and easy talk of an hour or two.” Privately, Lincoln kept a
close watch on political developments and corresponded with Repub-
lican leaders in other states, urging, in particular, careful attention to
the “dry, and irksome labor” required for “thorough organization,”
but Herndon sensed that his partner was “bored badly.” Lincoln’s un-
changed demeanor contrasted sharply with that of his wife; one critical
Springfield minister was of the opinion that since her husband’s nom-
ination, she “ought to be sent to the cooper’s and well secured against
bursting by iron hoops.”
In October, as the campaign neared its climax, Lincoln received a
letter from eleven-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York. His
Rise to Power 71
young admirer informed him that he would look “a good deal better”
with a beard. Besides, “all the ladies like whiskers” and thus would
get “their husband’s to vote for you.” Even with all that was on his
mind, Lincoln took the time to reply that he worried people would
consider it “a piece of silly aVect[at]ion” if he now let his whiskers
grow. Shortly after the election, however, he began to grow a beard.
Republican victories in the October state elections in key northern
states made Lincoln’s election a foregone conclusion and rendered the
balloting in November anticlimatic. Sweeping the northern states ex-
cept for New Jersey, which he divided with Douglas, Lincoln won an
easy victory in the Electoral College, with 180 electoral votes, 27 more
than were necessary to win. He ran almost 900,000 votes ahead of
Douglas, his nearest competitor, in the popular tally; virtually all of
Lincoln’s votes were cast in the free states. Yet he won less than 40
percent of the ballots cast, making him a minority president. Because
he had absolute majorities in all but three of the states he carried,
however, even if the votes for Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas had
been combined on a single candidate, Lincoln would still have been
elected, though with a reduced margin in the Electoral College.
Lincoln spent most of election day in his campaign oYce in the
capitol, but in the afternoon, during a temporary lull, he walked over
to the polls amidst enthusiastic cheers and voted. Later that evening,
as the results began to clatter in over the telegraph, he went down to
the oYce of the Illinois State Journal to study the returns. When word
finally arrived after midnight that the Republican ticket had carried
New York, his victory was assured. As he walked home to tell his
wife the news, jubilant Republicans back at the courthouse square
were singing one of the most popular songs of the just concluded
campaign, “Ain’t you glad you joined the Republicans?”
Chapter 4
A PEOPLE’S CONTEST
While immensely gratified by his victory, Abraham Lincoln

couldn’t help wishing that he had been elected senator instead. “The
Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of
roses,” he had accurately observed a decade earlier. “No human being
can fill that station and escape censure.” He was especially conscious
that his lack of administrative experience was a handicap. The morn-
ing after his election, he allegedly joked to reporters in Springfield,
“Well, boys, your troubles are over now, but mine have just com-
menced.” In reality, he had no conception of the magnitude of the
crisis he would soon confront as president.
�
Lincoln was only fifty-one years old when he was elected, one of
the youngest presidents up to that time and the first to be born in a
western state. Following his election, Lincoln continued to greet vis-
itors in the governor’s room at the state capitol (when the legislature
convened in January, he rented an oYce in a nearby building). The
number of callers greatly increased, however, as did the volume of
mail, which soon overwhelmed his secretary, John Nicolay. Nicolay
therefore recruited John Hay, a socially ambitious law student in
Springfield, to help. These two young men would serve as Lincoln’s
secretaries throughout his presidency.
During the recently concluded campaign, Republicans had dis-
missed southern threats of secession, but as soon as Lincoln’s election
was certain, the South Carolina legislature summoned a popular con-
vention to consider this move. In the next weeks, a number of other
southern states did likewise. Yet Lincoln, convinced that a majority of
A People’s Contest
73
In this 1863 photograph, Lincoln is flanked by his two private secretaries,

John Nicolay (seated) and John Hay (standing). They were unabashed ad-
mirers and defenders of the president. (The Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne,
IN # 0–76)
white Southerners were Unionists, was slow to grasp the depth of this
crisis and viewed the threat to break up the Union as merely a south-
ern “trick” to extort concessions from the North.
As it became clear that the secession movement was far more
serious than Northerners had previously acknowledged, Lincoln came
under heavy pressure to say something to conciliate Southerners and
defuse the crisis. But Lincoln, who would not assume oYce for four
months, lacked any power to deal with the situation. Moreover, he
believed such a statement would do no good, since his views=which
southern editors and politicians had consistently distorted=were al-
ready on the record. “I could say nothing which I have not already
said, and which is in print and accessible to the public,” he replied to
one correspondent. In private, he was somewhat more forthcoming,
but he told a southern Unionist that he could not act “as if I repented
for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize
and beg forgiveness.” When reporters or visitors sought his opinion
on secession, he often resorted to his familiar practice of telling a
funny story to avoid saying anything meaningful.
On December 20, South Carolina became the first southern state
to secede. The remaining states of the Deep South followed suit, and
in early February, 1861, they established the Confederate States of
America and elected JeVerson Davis the Confederacy’s first president.
In the Upper South and the border states, however, secession was
defeated=at least for the time being.
When Congress assembled at the beginning of December, a num-
ber of compromise proposals were introduced to resolve the crisis.
From the start, Lincoln took a hard line on secession and compromise,
and privately he threw all of his influence behind the eVort to defeat
compromise. He was particularly inflexible on the issue of extending
slavery. “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending
slavery,” he wrote Senator Lyman Trumbull almost as soon as Con-
gress convened. “If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must
be done again. . . . The tug has to come, and better now, than any
time hereafter.” In the end, Congress could agree on almost nothing.
Only a proposed unamendable amendment protecting slavery in the
southern states won approval, and the outbreak of war a few weeks
later ended any chance it would be ratified.
In the first weeks of the secession crisis, Lincoln embraced the
strategy of doing nothing provocative in order to give southern Un-
ionists time to regain control of the seceded states and bring them
back into the Union. This strategy was based on the idea, which Lin-
coln clung to even after he adopted a more vigorous approach, that
only a minority of southern whites supported secession. Once the
A People’s Contest 75
seceded states seized federal property, however, Lincoln began to think
that perhaps some limited show of force might be required to put
down secession.
Come what may, he was adamant about preserving the Union. “No
state can, in any way lawfully, get out of the Union, without the
consent of the others,” he insisted in response to the developing se-
cession movement. Built on the Declaration of Independence, which
formed the bedrock of his political ideals, the Union symbolized the
American example of self-government in the world. “The central idea
pervading this struggle,” he would repeatedly aYrm over the next
four years, “is the necessity . . . of proving that popular government is
not an absurdity. . . . If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability
of the people to govern themselves.”
Most of Lincoln’s time in Springfield as president-elect was spent
dealing with oYce-seekers and forming his cabinet. Like other politi-
cians, Lincoln considered patronage the cement of parties, and as a
minority president, he was particularly sensitive to the need to main-
tain party unity. The deepest divisions in the Republican ranks were
between former Whigs and ex-Democrats, who jealously eyed each
other, and between radical antislavery proponents and moderates and
conservatives, who advocated widely divergent approaches to the
problem of slavery. Lincoln’s skill in holding the Republican party
together would be a major factor in his success as president.
He quickly decided to oVer the secretary of stateship to William
Henry Seward, the foremost Republican leader in Congress. A former
Whig, Seward, who was short and disheveled with a sharp nose and
tousled hair, was determined to keep his enemies, especially ex-
Democrats, out of the cabinet in order to assure his dominance over
the inexperienced Lincoln. Lincoln, however, recognized that he had
to include former Democrats in his oYcial family. Once Seward had
accepted, Lincoln oVered the post of the secretary of treasury to Gov-
ernor Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, who, like Seward, had sought the
1860 Republican presidential nomination. The most prominent
Democratic-Republican in the country, the tall and dignified Chase was
a radical on the slavery question. InsuVerably self-righteous and in-
ordinately ambitious, he would become increasingly jealous of his cab-
inet rival, Seward.
Other cabinet members included Edward Bates of Missouri (attor-
ney general) and Gideon Welles of Connecticut (secretary of the navy).
The reserved, plodding Bates was a former Whig, whereas the waspish
Welles was an ex-Democrat, yet both were extremely conservative.
For Secretary of the Interior, he named Caleb Smith of Indiana, a
party wheelhorse who lacked much stature. Realizing the necessity of
including a Southerner in the cabinet, Lincoln finally selected Mont-
gomery Blair of Maryland, a member of a famous political family
known for its ferocious combativeness, as Postmaster General.
Lincoln’s greatest dilemma was what to do with Senator Simon
Cameron of Pennsylvania, a skilled political operator with an unsavory
reputation for corruption. A former Democrat, Cameron sought con-
trol of the treasury department as a reward for his support of Lincoln
at the Chicago convention, but in the end Lincoln named the Penn-
sylvania leader, whose beguiling, unpretentious nature masked his in-
grained deviousness, secretary of war. Of all his cabinet selections,
Cameron proved to be the poorest; indeed, Lincoln’s placement of
Cameron in such a key position was good evidence that he did not
anticipate a war.
While the cabinet was carefully balanced between Whigs and Dem-
ocrats, its most striking feature was that it contained all of Lincoln’s
main rivals for the 1860 Republican nomination: Seward, Chase, Bates,
and Cameron. Lincoln’s decision to include these men in his cabinet
reflected his great self-confidence, as well as the fact that he intended
to be the leader of his administration, a lesson several members would
absorb only with diYculty. Yet these selections also meant that the
cabinet would not be a harmonious body, nor its members particularly
loyal to him.
On his last full day in Springfield, Lincoln went to his old law of-
fice to see his partner, William Herndon. In a cheerful mood, he spent
some time reminiscing about their years together. Finally gathering
some books and papers to take with him, he told Herndon to leave
the sign “Lincoln and Herndon” hanging outside. “Give our clients to
understand that the election of a President makes no change . . . ,” he
said as he left. “If I live I’m coming back some time, and then we’ll
go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.”
The next day, February 11, he boarded the special train that was to
take him to the nation’s capital. Standing at the rear of the car in a
light drizzle, Lincoln said a few parting words to his fellow towns-
people. “No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of
sadness at this parting,” he began with visible emotion. “To this place,
and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived
a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man.
. . . I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return,
with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washing-
ton. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended
him, I cannot succeed. . . . Trusting in Him, . . . let us confidently hope
that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in
your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an aVectionate fare-
well.” Then the train pulled out of the station.
�
Lincoln’s jour ney to Washington, which followed a circuitous
route so that more people could see the president-elect, took almost
two weeks. In each community, crowds gathered to greet him, and at
many stops he made a few brief remarks. These impromptu utterances
were the first public evidence of Lincoln’s thoughts concerning the
secession crisis. Although he denied any purpose to coerce the seceded
states, he also indicated that he would not accept disunion, and that
he intended to enforce the laws and protect federal property. In a
speech to the New Jersey legislature, he aYrmed his devotion to
peace, but added that “it may be necessary to put the foot down
firmly.”
When he reached Philadelphia, Lincoln received warnings of a plot
to assassinate him in Baltimore as he drove across the city to change
trains. Uncertain that these reports were authentic, Lincoln finally
decided to “run no risk where no risk was necessary” and agreed to
leave for Washington on the night train. He arrived in the capital
unannounced at six in the morning, wearing an overcoat, muZer, and
a soft wool hat. When critics circulated the story that he had entered
the city in disguise, he was subjected to unmerciful ridicule, and even
supporters were troubled by his sneaking into Washington. This em-
barrassing incident hardly enhanced his prestige.
His prestige was further damaged by his less-than-presidential de-
meanor. Critics sneered at his unattractive features, his physical awk-
wardness, his lack of social graces, and his aYnity for telling stories.
Even William Howard Russell, the war correspondent for the London
Times, who immediately discerned Lincoln’s inner strength of char-
acter, nevertheless could not resist recording that no one would “take
him to be . . . a ‘gentleman.’ ”
Staying at Willard’s Hotel, Lincoln spent the next ten days until
his inauguration formalizing plans for his administration. He had writ-
ten his inaugural address in Springfield, and he now showed it to
Seward and several others, including Orville H. Browning, a longtime
Illinois colleague. They suggested several changes designed to tone
down the language and make the speech more conciliatory, most of
which he adopted.
March 4, inauguration day, was overcast, but by noon, when out-
going President James Buchanan arrived in a carriage to take Lincoln
to the ceremonies, the sun had broken through. As the two men
traveled to the Capitol, its new dome still under construction, heavy
security precautions were apparent. Dressed in a new black suit, Lin-
coln delivered his inaugural address in a clear voice audible throughout
the crowd. He then took the oath of oYce administered by Chief
Justice Roger Taney, whom Lincoln had assailed for the Dred Scott
decision.
In his inaugural address, Lincoln sought to reassure white South-
erners. Quoting from his earlier speeches, he reaYrmed that he had
no intention of interfering with slavery in the southern states, and
added that he had no power to do so under the Constitution. He
pledged to enforce the fugitive slave law, and he endorsed the pro-
posed constitutional amendment protecting slavery in the states that
had just passed Congress. But having made these points, Lincoln pro-
nounced secession “the essence of anarchy” and insisted that under
the Constitution no state had the right to secede from the Union. He
also proclaimed that he intended to “hold, occupy, and possess” federal
property in the South, and to collect the tariV duties at southern ports.
In a democracy, the will of the majority must prevail, and thus there
could be no appeal from the ballot box. “In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil
war,” he continued. “The government will not assail you. You can
have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.”
Adopting Seward’s suggestion that he close with “words of aVec-
tion,” he added a final, eloquent paragraph appealing to Southerners:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of aVection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and
patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad
land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
�
In outlining his policy to deal with secession, Lincoln assumed that
he would have time to work out some solution to the problem of
federal forts in the Deep South, only four of which still remained in
federal hands. The most critical situation existed at Fort Sumter, in
Charleston harbor, which was occupied by a small federal garrison
under the command of Major Robert Anderson. On his first day in
oYce, however, Lincoln learned that Anderson had just sent a letter
indicating that he was nearly out of food. Anderson estimated that he
could hold out for at most six weeks, after which he would have no
alternative but to surrender.
By now the American flag flying over Fort Sumter had become a
symbol of the North’s=and Lincoln’s=claim that the Union remained
unbroken. Uncertain of his options, Lincoln consulted General Winfield
Scott, the army’s commander, who concurred with Anderson’s assess-
ment that it was impossible to reinforce the fort. The cabinet convened
on March 9, and again on the 15th, to discuss the situation. At the second
meeting, only Montgomery Blair unambiguously favored holding Fort
Sumter. Seward, in particular, urged that it be abandoned.
But Lincoln, who was under growing popular pressure to take
action, could not bring himself to abandon the fort, a move which,
he later contended, “would be our national destruction consum-
mated.” Instead, he sought other ways to deal with the crisis. He
ordered that troops be landed at Fort Pickens, oV Pensacola harbor,
Florida, in a display of federal determination (only later did he learn
that this order and a subsequent one were not carried out). When
Gustavus V. Fox, a former naval oYcer and brother-in-law of Blair,
proposed trying to resupply Anderson using a small fleet, Lincoln
withheld judgment and sent Fox to Charleston to survey the situation.
Despite the importance of the situation in the South, Lincoln could
not give it his full attention during this period. Most of his time was
taken up with organizing his administration and dealing with the
horde of oYce-seekers who flocked to Washington seeking federal
jobs. To the reporter Henry Villard, Lincoln groaned, “It was bad
enough in Springfield, but it was child’s play compared with this tussle
here. I hardly have a chance to eat or sleep. I am fair game for every-
body of that hungry lot.”
In a new oYce and surrounded by advisors he barely knew, he was
feeling his way, trying to learn the art of executive leadership. Only
with time would he grow into the oYce and display firm leadership.
He later explained to a friend that when he entered the presidency,
“he was entirely ignorant not only of the duties, but of the manner
of doing the business” of the oYce. Temperamentally cautious, he was
slow to make up his mind, and thus outwardly seemed to be doing
nothing to deal with the crisis. Even supporters began to wonder out
loud if the administration had a policy.
Fox returned to Washington convinced that his plan would work.
The time had come for a decision, and, after a sleepless night, Lincoln
assembled the cabinet on March 29 to consider the situation at Fort
Sumter. This time, all the members except Seward recommended try-
ing Fox’s plan to resupply the fort. Later that day, Lincoln ordered
Fox to assemble a fleet in New York City and be ready to sail no later
than April 6.
Seward was now desperate, for he had already promised Confed-
erate diplomatic emissaries through intermediaries that Fort Sumter
would be abandoned. In reaction, he sent the president a truly re-
markable letter dated April 1. In this letter, the secretary of state rec-
ommended that the United States provoke a war with either Spain or
France or both. The seceded states, Seward blithely predicted, would
quickly return to the Union so they could share the war’s spoils. Or
if this gambit did not work, he recommended surrendering Fort Sum-
ter and making a stand at Fort Pickens instead. Finally, Seward ob-
served that the administration needed a leader, and if the president
wished, he was willing to assume this burden.
That Lincoln was able to reply to this letter without oVending the
secretary or losing his support was testimony to his extraordinary tact.
Passing over in silence Seward’s fantastic scheme for a foreign war, he
noted that his policy did not diVer much from Seward’s, except that
he did not propose to surrender Fort Sumter. In addition, Lincoln
agreed that leadership was necessary and that as president, “I must do
it.” This exchange marked the end of Seward’s pretensions to be the
premier of the Lincoln administration, and before long Seward was
writing to his wife, “Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The
President is the best of us.” Indeed, after a rocky beginning, Seward
would become Lincoln’s closest adviser in the cabinet.
By now Lincoln was physically exhausted. Feeling the weight of
responsibility, he commented that “all the troubles and anxieties of his
life had not equalled those” he had confronted since assuming the
presidency. He dispatched a messenger to South Carolina on April 6
to inform the governor that a relief expedition was being sent to Fort
Sumter, and if it was not resisted only provisions would be landed.
Seeking an alternative to war, Lincoln, in eVect, was oVering the Con-
federate authorities a continuation of the existing stalemate in Charles-
ton harbor. But he had little hope now that war could be averted.
After a fumbling start, and in spite of internal divisions in his admin-
istration, Lincoln had maneuvered the situation so that if war ensued,
the Confederates would have to fire the first shot. On April 9, Fox’s
fleet departed from New York.
Quickly informed of Lincoln’s action by South Carolina’s governor,
JeVerson Davis and the Confederate cabinet decided to demand the
immediate surrender of Fort Sumter. When Anderson refused, Con-
federate batteries opened fire at 4:30 in the morning on April 12. Fox’s
fleet, which arrived after the battle had started, could only watch
helplessly oV shore. After thirty-six hours of bombardment, Anderson
finally surrendered. The Civil War had begun.
�
Following the surrender of Fort Sumter, the administration
lurched into action. The next day, April 15, Lincoln issued a procla-
mation for 75,000 troops to put down “combinations” in the seceded
states “too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial
proceedings.” In the same proclamation, he also called a special session
of Congress, to assemble on July 4, 1861.
The popular response to Lincoln’s call for troops was over-
whelming. Northerners, like Southerners, were relieved that the stale-
mate, which had gone on now almost six months, was finally over,
and they hailed the decision for war without comprehending its con-
sequences. Indeed, the War Department was inundated with volun-
teers and, unable to equip them all, had to turn thousands away. In
this heady atmosphere, both sides expected the war would last only
a few months at most.
But Lincoln’s decision to use force also galvanized white Southern-
ers. The next day Virginia, the largest and most heavily populated
southern state, seceded. In the next few weeks, the remaining states
of the Upper South=North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas=fol-
lowed suit, enlarging the Confederacy to eleven states. And in a de-
cision of far-reaching significance, Robert E. Lee declined Lincoln’s
oVer to command the Union army and soon became a Confederate
general. In all, approximately one third of the army’s oYcers resigned
to serve the Confederacy.
When the war began, Washington was virtually unprotected. Only
a handful of troops guarded the capital, rumors of disloyalty among
government oYcials were rampant, and countless residents of the city
sported secessionist badges. “DisaVection lurked, if it did not openly
avow itself, in every department, and in every bureau, in every regi-
ment and in every ship of war, in the postoYce and in the custom
house,” claimed Seward. Lincoln’s first priority was to protect the
capital from a Confederate attack by rushing troops to Washington.
On April 19 members of the Sixth Massachusetts, on their way to
Washington, were attacked by a pro-Confederate mob in Baltimore.
At this point, the Governor of Maryland requested that no more
troops be sent across Maryland soil. “I must have troops,” Lincoln
tersely replied to a delegation from the state. “Our men are not moles,
and can’t dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can’t fly through
the air. There is no way but to march across, and that they must do.”
With rail traYc through Baltimore temporarily halted after the au-
thorities burned the railroad bridges, the War Department devised an
alternate route via Annapolis, and after a tense week suYcient troops
had finally arrived to secure the capital.
Backed by his cabinet, Lincoln moved decisively to deal with the
crisis he now confronted. On April 19 and 27 he instituted a blockade
of the southern coast from Virginia to Texas. Without any clear con-
stitutional authority, he increased the size of both the regular army
and the navy, as well as called for 40,000 three-year volunteers. He
instructed the navy to purchase ships, spent money without congres-
sional authorization, and delegated private citizens to oversee defen-
sive preparations in various communities.
But his most controversial action was a proclamation issued on
April 27 suspending the writ of habeas corpus along the railroad line
from Philadelphia to Washington (on July 2 he extended it to New
York City). This decision, in eVect, authorized army commanders to
arrest and hold without trial civilians suspected of disloyalty. Chief
Justice Taney, sitting on the circuit court, argued that only Congress
could suspend the writ and ruled Lincoln’s action illegal. Convinced
that the suspension of the writ was necessary to preserve Union con-
trol of the crucial state of Maryland, Lincoln ignored Taney’s ruling.
“Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself
go to pieces,” he pointedly asked, “lest that one be violated?”
In taking these steps, many of which clearly exceeded his consti-
tutional authority, Lincoln cited the gravity of the situation and the
fact that Congress was not in session. But Lincoln also understood
that once Congress assembled, it would have no choice but to ratify
his actions. “These measures,” he subsequently informed Congress,
“whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon, under what ap-
peared to be a popular demand, and a public necessity; trusting, then
as now, that Congress would readily ratify them.” Indeed, he had
delayed the date for the special session as long as possible in order to
give himself a free hand to deal with the emergency without con-
gressional interference. The hardheaded Seward believed that these
actions taken at the beginning of the conflict, which, he bluntly noted,
could have “brought them all to the scaVold,” were the most crucial
ones of Lincoln’s entire presidency. Certainly Lincoln’s vigorous re-
sponse during the opening days of the conflict was the first sign that
he would assume extraordinary powers in waging this war.
Lincoln faced the added diYculty of fighting a war that was not
really a war. Denying that secession was legal, Lincoln held that the
southern states had never left the Union and that the Confederate
government had no legal existence. The war was, in his view, an
“insurrection” or a “rebellion.” Feeling his way in an uncertain situ-
ation, he argued that it was his duty, as commander-in-chief, to put
down these illegal “insurrectionary combinations” and restore national
authority over the southern states. Lincoln’s proclamation of a block-
ade was the closest the government came to issuing a declaration of
war.
Whatever the Union’s theory of the conflict, the United States
government in practice conducted it as a war. Southern soldiers and
sailors were treated as prisoners-of-war, not as criminals and pirates.
Moreover, Lincoln’s proclamation of a blockade was tantamount to
recognizing the Confederacy as a belligerent, since a nation legally
cannot blockade itself. In the many documents he wrote as president,
however, Lincoln was always careful to avoid anything that implied
the Confederacy was a legitimate government.
In his message to Congress in July, Lincoln explained the nature of
the struggle the country now confronted. “This is essentially a Peo-
ple’s contest,” he declared. “On the side of the Union, it is a struggle
for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government,
whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men=to lift arti-
ficial weights from all shoulders=to clear the paths of laudable pursuit
for all=to aVord all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race
of life.” Putting the conflict in a worldwide context, he saw the war
as part of the struggle to save democracy, not just in this country, but
for future generations in other parts of the globe. “It presents to the
whole family of man, the question, whether . . . a democracy . . . can,
or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic
foes.”
Struck by the power of Lincoln’s language, George W. Curtis, the
editor of Harper’s Weekly, considered the message “wonderfully acute,
simple, sagacious, and of antique honesty!” He apologetically added:
“I can forgive the jokes and the big hands, and the inability to make
bows. Some of us who doubted were wrong.”
�
Lincoln’s most pressing problem when the war began was to
keep the border slave states in the Union. Support for secession posed
no threat in Delaware, but in the other border states=Maryland, Ken-
tucky, and Missouri=substantial Confederate sentiment existed. Al-
though slavery was weak in each of these states, the institution was
strongly supported by public opinion, rendering the political situation
quite delicate. Lincoln demonstrated enormous political skill in dealing
with the border states.
Lincoln was determined to hold Maryland in the Union at all costs,
since the secession of that state would make retention of Washington
impossible. As soon as suYcient troops had arrived to protect the
capital, Lincoln moved forcefully to suppress disunion sentiment in
Maryland. The army seized the railroads in the state, arrested prom-
inent disunionists, and fortified Federal hill overlooking Baltimore.
Bolstered by these actions, Unionists won control of the state’s con-
gressional delegation in a special election in June, and in the fall carried
the state election as well, ending any possibility Maryland would
secede.
Kentucky and Missouri, on the other hand, were too large and too
far away simply to be militarily occupied. Each state had a pro-
Confederate governor who refused to provide any troops for the
Union war eVort. Moreover, the Kentucky state legislature endorsed
the governor’s proclamation of neutrality. Ignoring this provocation,
Lincoln refused to allow his generals to invade the state in order to
allow Union sentiment to develop. Lincoln’s hands-oV policy paid im-
mediate dividends in Kentucky’s special congressional election, when
Unionists won all but one seat. Lincoln’s policy proved less successful
in Missouri, where fighting soon broke out between civilians loyal to
the two governments. With greater resources, the Union was able to
commit more troops to Missouri and maintain control of the reor-
ganized state government, though civil disorder continued to plague
the state throughout the war.
While Lincoln was struggling to keep Kentucky and Missouri in
the Union, northern public opinion clamored for a decisive military
movement against the Confederacy. The influential New York Tribune
emblazoned its masthead with “On to Richmond!” soon after the war
began, while its rival, the New York Times, demanded swift action
against rebels: “By no government in the wide world other than this
of ours,” it snorted, “is treason treated so kindly or rebellion sprinkled
with so much rosewater.” Lincoln knew very little about military
strategy, but he understood that in a democracy, military decisions had
to take public opinion into account. For this reason, he rejected Gen-
eral Winfield Scott’s “anaconda plan” designed to strangle the Con-
federacy into submission by encircling it on land and blockading its
coast. Lincoln realized that even if successful, this strategy would take
too long, and that northern public opinion would never sustain a
prolonged war.
As president, Lincoln was the focal point of the demand for action.
Predicting a short war, Harper’s Weekly bluntly announced that “if this
war be not brought to a speedy close, and the supremacy of the
Government forcibly asserted throughout the country, it will be the
fault of ABRAHAM LINCOLN.” Sensitive to this pressure, and believ-
ing that further delay would deflate northern morale, Lincoln ordered
General Irvin McDowell to attack the Confederate forces at Manassas,
Virginia, some twenty-five miles from Washington. When McDowell
protested that his troops needed more training, he was told, “You are
green, it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike.”
On July 21, 1861, the Union army clashed with Confederate forces
along the stream Bull Run in the war’s first significant battle. Union
troops did well in the early fighting, but late in the afternoon their
line broke and what began as a disorderly retreat quickly degenerated
into panic and chaos. Learning of the disaster when he returned from
his customary drive, Lincoln stayed up all night listening to reports
and calmly analyzing the situation.
A sobered North now recognized that the struggle would take
more time and require many more troops. The Chicago Tribune, which
had earlier predicted a short war, declared, “If this is to be a war of
years instead of months, so let it be.” A new determination was ap-
parent, both in the administration and in public opinion. “The fat is
all in the fire now,” Nicolay commented after the defeat at Bull Run.
“The preparations for the war will be continued with increased vigor
by the Government.” The very next day, Lincoln signed a bill au-
thorizing half a million three-year volunteers, and a few days later he
approved another 500,000 enlistments.
�
More than anyone else, Lincoln bore responsibility for having
pushed the army into battle. Rather than faltering, however, he buck-
led down to deal with the task in front of him. The luckless McDowell
had come within an ace of winning, but the defeat had so thoroughly
discredited him in the public mind that on July 22, Lincoln summoned
General George McClellan, who had won several minor victories in
western Virginia, to take charge of the army at Washington. He also
drew up a memorandum on military policy that evidenced a growing
understanding of military matters. Long-term volunteers were needed,
he noted, and they had to be drilled and trained. Lincoln also proposed
tightening the blockade and, when ready, launching a three-pronged
oVensive in Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and down the Mississippi
River. Already Lincoln grasped the critical importance of the western
theater in the war.
Chastened by the defeat, Lincoln checked out several books on war
from the Library of Congress and began studying military strategy.
William Russell, who seriously underestimated Lincoln’s military abil-
ity, disdainfully reported that the “poor President” was “trying with
all his might to understand strategy, naval warfare, big guns, the move-
ments of troops, military maps, reconnaissances, occupations, interior
and exterior lines, and all the technical details” of war. “He runs from
one house to another, armed with plans, papers, reports, recommen-
dations, sometimes good humoured, never angry, occasionally de-
jected, and always a little fussy.” Time would demonstrate that Lincoln
had a natural aptitude for strategic thinking.
With his hopes for a quick war ended, Lincoln, on the advice of
Scott and other military leaders, adopted the strategy of a limited war.
This strategy, which envisioned respecting the rights of southern ci-
vilians, was based on the belief that a majority of southern whites
were basically loyal, a view Lincoln clung to throughout the first year
of the conflict. In his message to Congress on July 4, he asserted: “It
may well be questioned whether there is, to-day, a majority of the
legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in
favor of disunion.” In his initial call for troops, Lincoln pledged that
“the utmost care will be observed . . . to avoid any devastation, any
destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of
peaceful citizens in any part of the country.” In waging a restrained
war, the government sought only to suppress the insurrection and
thereby induce southern whites to reaYrm their loyalty to the Union.
The situation in the border states, however, particularly Kentucky
and Missouri, remained precarious. Fearful that the Union defeat at
Bull Run might tip the balance in these states in favor of the Confed-
eracy, Congress in late July passed a resolution offered by John J.
Crittenden declaring that the war was being waged solely to save the
Union and not to destroy slavery. Lincoln heartily endorsed this res-
olution, which was intended to reassure the residents of the border
states.
In his message to Congress in July, Lincoln repeated his inaugural
pledge that he did not intend to interfere with slavery in the South.
Earlier, however, when Union General Benjamin F. Butler in late May
designated runaway slaves in Virginia as contraband of war and re-
fused to return them to their disloyal masters, Lincoln let the policy
stand. In the absence of any Union military advances, antislavery sen-
timent continued to build, and Congress soon sanctioned Butler’s ap-
proach. On August 6 it passed the First Confiscation Act, which pro-
vided that slaves used by the Confederacy for military purposes could
be confiscated and freed. Despite strong opposition from Democrats
and border state congressmen, Lincoln signed the bill. It was his first
concession to the radical antislavery members of his party.
Shortly thereafter, the actions of another one of his generals seri-
ously jeopardized the cause of the Union in the border states. The
Union military commander in Missouri was John C. Frémont, the
Republican presidential candidate in 1856. Unable to control the state’s
civilian population, Frémont, acting on his own authority, issued a
proclamation on August 30 imposing martial law and emancipating
the slaves of disloyal residents.
News of Frémont’s emancipation edict elated antislavery radicals
but horrified border state Unionists, who admonished Lincoln that it
would have a disastrous eVect on public opinion in these states. “There
is not a day to lose in disavowing emancipation or Kentucky is gone
over the mill dam,” one wire from Kentucky Unionists warned. “I
think to lose Kentucky is nearly . . . to lose the whole game,” Lincoln
told a Republican senator during this crisis. “Kentucky gone, we can
not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and
the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent
to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol.” Un-
willing to allow his generals to determine policy, and aware of the
great stakes involved, Lincoln instructed Frémont to revoke his proc-
lamation, and when the general refused, the president did so on his
own authority.
A howl of protest greeted Lincoln’s action throughout the North.
Even some conservatives, like his old friend Orville H. Browning,
criticized the president’s action. But one of the qualities that made
Lincoln a successful president was that he could not be pressured into
adopting a policy that he believed mistaken. Frémont’s action was
“purely political, and not within the range of military law, or necessity,”
he patiently explained, and to allow a commander to institute eman-
cipation, contrary to the laws of Congress, was “itself the surrender
of the government.” Shortly thereafter, he removed Frémont from
command in Missouri.
By this point, Unionist sentiment was in the ascendancy in all the
border states, including Kentucky. When the Confederate army, try-
ing to get the jump on Union forces, invaded Kentucky in September,
the Union-controlled legislature requested the assistance of the federal
government. This was the opening Lincoln had been waiting for, and
he sent Union troops pouring into the state. Abandoning its pro-
claimed neutrality, Kentucky had cast its lot with the Union. The
Union army soon drove Confederate forces out of Missouri as
well, rendering that state safe for the Union as well. By early 1862,
thanks to Lincoln’s skillful leadership, the four original border states,
along with the new border state of West Virginia, which was created
during the war, were in the Union to stay. The decision of the border
states for the Union was the first major turning point of the Civil
War.
Lincoln faced another crisis, this time in foreign aVairs, when at
the end of the year a U.S. navy ship, commanded by Captain Charles
Wilkes, stopped the British steamer Trent in the Atlantic on November
8 and seized James M. Mason and John Slidell, two Confederate dip-
lomats who were on their way to Europe. Northern papers hailed
Wilkes’s action, but the British government, which had earlier declared
its neutrality, protested the American action as a violation of neutral
rights. In the ensuing diplomatic crisis, Lincoln, who normally did not
involve himself with foreign aVairs, moderated Seward’s language and,
following a cabinet discussion on December 25, concluded that the
envoys had to be released. “One war at a time,” he counseled his
secretary of state.
�
Nevertheless, political observers still questioned Lincoln’s leader-
ship ability. The government seemed overwhelmed by the problem of
raising such a large army, and Lincoln was too unsystematic to be an
eVective administrator. The result, Chase complained, was that “ev-
erything goes in confused disorder.” Lincoln’s secretaries, John Nicolay
and John Hay, tried to bring some sort of system to Lincoln’s activities,
but they soon gave up in despair. He filed letters in a haphazard
fashion in marked pigeonholes in his desk, and sometimes wandered
the corridor greeting people. After observing Lincoln at work, a long-
time acquaintance noted, “He adopted no hours for business, but did
business at all hours, rising early in the morning, and retiring late at
night, making appointments at very early, and very late hours.”
His secretaries screened the incoming correspondence and passed
only the most important letters to the president. Hay later estimated
that he saw only one in fifty that arrived. Hay also prepared answers
to routine correspondence, which Lincoln signed. When Lincoln first
assumed oYce, he attempted to look over the morning papers, but
he soon found he did not have time to do this, so his secretaries began
preparing a daily digest of the press. Before long, he ceased to look
at even this summary and paid little attention to newspaper articles,
saying, “I know more about that than any of them.” From his oYce
next door, Nicolay controlled access to the president and tried to head
oV as many visitors as possible. Privately Nicolay and Hay referred to
Lincoln, whom they idolized, as “the Tycoon,” after the Emperor of
Japan.
OYcial and unoYcial callers took up a good part of Lincoln’s time;
indeed, he was so pestered by oYce-seekers that he remarked to an
old friend from Illinois that he “was Surprised any body would want
the oYce.” Nicolay and Hay eventually tried to limit the hours he
received visitors, only to complain that Lincoln proceeded to “break
through every Regulation as fast as it was made.” Cabinet members
and congressmen had priority, yet a large number of ordinary citizens
managed to gain entry. His secretaries perceived the strain these in-
terviews exerted, which left him almost exhausted by their conclusion.
The stream of visitors was unending: congressmen requesting fa-
vors, self-serving politicians seeking oYce, mothers pleading for clem-
ency for their soldier sons, wives seeking an army promotion for their
husbands, inventors promoting some new weapon, critics demanding
a change in policy, and citizens just wanting to meet the president.
He quickly learned how to say no without giving oVense, and he
often drew upon his large fund of stories to divert a caller whose
request could not be honored. Supporters urged him to devote less
time to petitioners, but Lincoln responded that “they dont want much
and dont get but Little, and I must see them.” He disapproved of
“anything that kept the people themselves away from him,” and used
meetings with ordinary citizens, which he termed his “public-opinion
baths,” to gauge the public pulse. His accessibility enhanced his pop-
ularity with the people, who aVectionately called him Father Abraham.
By the time Congress adjourned in August, Lincoln had largely
developed his style of presidential leadership. On matters that he be-
lieved were the responsibility of Congress, such as economic legisla-
tion, he played only a limited role. He was also relatively passive on
matters distant from his interest, such as the conduct of foreign rela-
tions, which he largely left up to Seward. But on questions of war
policy, which he considered his responsibility, he was much more
forceful and did not hesitate to assume new executive powers even
when they were not sanctioned by the law. On these problems, he
sometimes sought Congressional approval afterward, but he generally
made his own decisions and did not work with Congress, as his han-
dling of the border states illustrates. As a result, his most important
decisions were often made when Congress was not in session. Only
on military matters, where he initially deferred to his generals, would
Lincoln’s leadership significantly change from the pattern of these
early months.
Slow and deliberate, Lincoln carefully thought through problems,
weighing alternatives in his mind, before reaching a decision. Nicolay
reported that “he would sometimes sit for an hour in complete silence,
his eyes almost shut,” pondering some question. Even in the early
months of the war, his leadership demonstrated the combination of
resolute ends and flexible means that would be the hallmark of his
presidency. Determined to control his own administration, he was self-
confident without being arrogant and had the unusual ability to del-
egate authority without surrendering it. His personal involvement var-
ied depending on the situation, but cabinet members soon learned, as
the Sumter crisis demonstrated, that he reserved the final decision to
himself.
While Lincoln wrestled with his position as war leader, his wife,
Mary, devoted her energies to redecorating the White House. Con-
gress had appropriated $20,000, to be spent over the next four years,
to repair the building and buy new furnishings. Indulging in lavish
shopping sprees in New York and Philadelphia, Mary overspent the
entire four-year appropriation in the summer of 1861. Desperate to
hide her expenditures from her husband, she padded expense accounts
and clashed repeatedly with Nicolay and Hay over control of White
House funds.
When Lincoln learned of her extravagant spending, he was furious.
The White House was “better than any house they had ever lived in,”
and he vowed that he would never ask Congress to pay “for flub dubs
for that damned old house.” Unlike his self-centered wife, he was sen-
sitive to appearances in the midst of war. “It would stink in the land,”
he fumed, “to have it said that an appropriation of $20,000 for fur-
nishing the house had been overrun by the President when the poor
This photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln, taken late in 1861 by Mathew
Brady, is one of the few formal portraits of her as first lady. (National
Archives)
freezing soldiers could not have blankets.” In the end, Congress ap-
propriated additional funds and the scandal was hushed up, but this
was not the last time his wife would cause him embarrassment.
His children, on the other hand, oVered welcome diversion from
the daily pressures of the job. Robert was a student at Harvard and
rarely with the family, but Willie and Tad were always around and
full of fun and mischief. With great glee they manipulated the exec-
utive mansion’s bell system, which was used to signal servants, and
sent the staV scurrying in all directions; Tad especially was prone to
interrupt meetings and receptions. Taking a break from his mountain
This wartime photograph, one of the most famous from his presidency,
shows Lincoln with his youngest son, Tad. While Lincoln seems to be
reading to his son, they are actually looking at a photograph album.
(National Archives)
of work, Lincoln would tussle with his sons and their playmates, carry
them around on his shoulders, or entertain them with stories. Ac-
cording to one teenage visitor, the motto of the Lincoln White House
in these early months was, “Let the children have a good time.”
�
Lincoln’s political and diplomatic successes, however, were over-
shadowed by the army’s inactivity. He desperately needed decisive
military action in order to reinvigorate northern morale, forestall Eu-
ropean recognition of the Confederacy, and sustain northern volun-
teering. His hopes rested on the broad shoulders of thirty-four-year-
old George McClellan, a West Point graduate who had been a railroad
executive when the war began. Of average height, with auburn hair
and a large mustache, McClellan was strong and muscular, with an
erect figure, and was an excellent horseman. He looked like a general
and radiated confidence. After visiting him, Henry W. Bellows of the
U.S. Sanitary Commission declared, “There is an indefinable air of
success about him. . . .”
McClellan possessed considerable organizational skills and was a
dynamo of energy. Upon arriving in Washington, he immediately took
charge of reorganizing and training the Army of the Potomac, the
Union’s main army. The troops displayed great aVection for their com-
mander, whom they dubbed “Little Mac,” and he also impressed po-
litical leaders, including Lincoln, who normally was not easily hum-
bugged. “I find myself in a new and strange position here,” the Union
commander was soon writing to his wife. “President, Cabinet, General
Scott and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I
seem to have become the power of the land.”
Such acclaim merely pumped up higher McClellan’s already colos-
sal ego. Envisioning himself as the savior of the country, he boasted
to his wife that he could become a dictator if he wished (modestly,
he declined). To senators and other leaders, he promised that he would
“crush the rebels in one campaign.” McClellan’s bravado and arro-
gance, however, masked a deep-seated insecurity. A brilliant parade
ground general, he loved the pomp of the military and the adulation
of his troops. But he had an overriding fear of failure, and therefore
formulated no plans to launch a military oVensive or use the massive
forces under his control. As the favorable fall weather ebbed away,
McClellan was content to merely drill his troops.
The army’s failure to take the field caused Republican leaders to
become increasingly critical of McClellan’s generalship. That McClel-
lan was a Democrat unconcerned about slavery only heightened the
suspicion of radical Republicans in Congress that he did not really
want to destroy the rebellion. Having prematurely pushed the army
into battle at Bull Run, Lincoln promised McClellan that he would
not be hurried and would have his “own way,” but even as the pres-
ident resisted mounting pressure from Republicans in Congress, he
tried to impress upon his obtuse commander that the popular demand
for action was “a reality and should be taken into the account.” With
Confederate outposts within sight of Washington, Senator Zachariah
Chandler of Michigan, a prominent radical, stormed that if McClellan
did not fight before winter ended campaigning, he “was in favor of
sending for JeV Davis at once.”
McClellan tried to deflect this criticism by blaming Scott, who was
seventy-five years old and well past his prime, for thwarting his plans
and demanded his removal. Finally, on November 1, Lincoln accepted
Scott’s resignation and placed McClellan in charge of all Union armies.
When the president expressed concern about the magnitude of the
responsibilities McClellan now faced, the general confidently replied,
“I can do it all.”
In reality, McClellan did nothing. The call for a forward movement
was no longer limited to radicals. His former congressional defenders
became openly hostile, and McClellan’s support in the cabinet declined
as well. Speaking of the growing exasperation with McClellan, General
James B. Fry, the army’s Provost Marshal, recalled that by the fall of
1861 “the oVensive was demanded from all quarters, and in all ways.”
Yet McClellan refused to move. He took no action to eliminate Con-
federate batteries from the lower Potomac, and when he dispatched
an ineptly planned demonstration to Ball’s BluV in late October, it
produced another Union military debacle.
McClellan responded to this growing criticism by sneering at the
political leaders in Washington, headed by the president, whom he
dismissed as “the original gorrilla” and “nothing more than a well
meaning baboon.” Despite the time and attention Lincoln patiently
expended on him, the patrician McClellan never developed the
slightest understanding of the relationship between democracy and the
war eVort. He ignored politicians, whom he considered guilty of “ve-
nality and bad faith”; paid no heed to public opinion, which he deemed
irrelevant; and believed he stood above the government, which he
was convinced would fail if it thwarted his wishes since he was indis-
pensable. These attitudes did not bode well for the future, even had
McClellan displayed greater military ability.
A remarkable incident in mid-November revealed McClellan’s con-
descending attitude and also Lincoln’s enormous strength of character.
Lincoln called at McClellan’s house in Washington one evening, ac-
companied by Seward and John Hay, his private secretary. McClellan
was out when they arrived, and upon his return went to bed without
seeing the president, who was waiting in the parlor. As they walked
back to the White House, Hay commented on McClellan’s insolence,
but Lincoln quietly responded that it was “better at this time not to
be making points of etiquette and personal dignity.” One of Lincoln’s
strengths as a war leader was that he always kept his focus on the
larger questions, rather than becoming embroiled in personal disputes.
“I will hold McClellan’s horse, if he will only bring us success,” he
remarked on another occasion. Hay noted, however, that Lincoln
ceased calling on the general and began summoning him to come to
the White House. Lincoln was beginning to grow into the job.
Still, the time and attention Lincoln lavished on McClellan back-
fired. In deferring to McClellan’s judgment, accepting his excuses, and
protecting him from congressional critics, Lincoln intended to instill
some military vigor in his commander. Instead, by placing McClellan
on the same level with him, Lincoln merely stoked the general’s vanity
and fostered his contemptuous attitude toward the president.
As the end of 1861 approached, McClellan became ill with typhoid
and took to his bed. What plans, if any, he had to prosecute the war
once winter ended, nobody knew. When Congress convened in De-
cember, frustration over McClellan’s inactivity led to the establishment
of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to press Lincoln
and Union generals for a more vigorous military eVort. Republicans
on the committee, led by Senators Benjamin F. Wade and Zachariah
Chandler, both antislavery radicals, were especially hostile to McClel-
lan. Lincoln parried the committee members’ criticism, but he was
privately discouraged. The war was going poorly, the Republican party
was increasingly divided, northern morale was steadily declining,
northern banks had suspended specie payments, and the federal trea-
sury was empty. In a meeting in early January with Montgomery
Meigs, the Quartermaster General, Lincoln fretted: “General, what
shall I do? The people are impatient; Chase has no money and he tells
me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever.
The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?”
Meanwhile, the president urged his main western generals, Don
Carlos Buell and Henry Halleck, to coordinate their movements. Feel-
ing free to ignore the president, both generals reported that they were
not ready to advance. “It is exceedingly discouraging,” Lincoln la-
mented. “As everywhere else, nothing can be done.” To Buell, he
tersely observed, “Delay is ruining us.”
With his spirits at low ebb as the new year opened, Lincoln con-
templated the possibility that the cause of the Union could actually
fail. After talking to him while on a visit to the Navy Yard on January
2, the commander, John Dahlgren, recorded in his diary, “For the first
time I heard the President speak of the bare possibility of our being
two nations.”
Chapter 5
FROM LIMITED WAR TO

REVOLUTION
Wars often take on a momentum of their own that defeats the

purposes of leaders. Throughout 1861, Lincoln had struggled to keep
the war against the Confederacy within clearly defined bounds. As
part of this limited war strategy, he resisted demands from radicals to
make emancipation a Union war aim. “In considering the policy to
be adopted for suppressing the insurrection,” he explained in his an-
nual message in December, “I have been anxious and careful that the
inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent
and remorseless revolutionary struggle.” But with northern impa-
tience growing, this strategy had to end the war quickly if it was to
retain popular support. Thus the Union’s 1862 military oVensive would
be the acid test of the concept of a limited war.
�
Strategy in wartime is two-fold. It combines national strategy
(war aims and a nation’s political goals) with military strategy (the use
of armed forces to achieve these goals). In a democracy, military strat-
egy cannot be separated from politics or public opinion, since the
support of the home front is both crucial and, ultimately, voluntary.
It is the responsibility of the president to keep these two strategies=
national and military=in harmony so that they reinforce one another.
Initially, the Union planned to conduct a limited war that would
not fundamentally reshape southern society. Proponents of this strat-
egy, led by Generals George McClellan and Don Carlos Buell, who
were both proslavery Democrats, argued plausibly that a harsh, vin-
dictive war would inflame southern resistance and make reunion dif-
ficult if not impossible. Maintaining that “the precise issue for which
we are fighting . . . is the preservation of the Union and the restoration
of the full authority of the General Government over all portions of
our territory,” McClellan instructed Buell in Kentucky, “We shall most
readily suppress this rebellion and restore the authority of the Gov-
ernment by religiously respecting the Constitutional rights of all,” in-
cluding slaveholders. Thus both generals prohibited their troops from
foraging for food, which they believed hurt discipline, placed guards
over southern civilians’ property, and forbade any interference with
slavery.
They also clung to the idea of a war of maneuver to occupy south-
ern territory. “The object is not to fight great battles, and storm
impregnable fortifications,” Buell forthrightly explained, “but by dem-
onstrations and maneuvering to prevent the enemy from concentrat-
ing his scattered forces.” Blind to the nature of this war, they separated
politics from military considerations and believed that the war should
be humanely conducted by professionals according to a set of scientific
rules without regard to public opinion. In their eyes, war was a gi-
gantic chess game.
This concept of war ran counter to the views of many Union
oYcers and men, a number of whom favored a more punitive ap-
proach, but the real test was military success. The burden of dem-
onstrating that the Confederacy could be defeated by this strategy fell
most heavily on its primary proponent, George McClellan.
In a meeting with congressmen in early January, Lincoln indicated
that since he was not a military man, “it was his duty to defer to
General McClellan.” Actually, he was losing patience with his sluggish
commander, and at a meeting with McClellan’s division commanders,
he stressed that “if something was not done soon,” support for the
war would cease, and if McClellan did not intend to use the army “he
would like to borrow it.” Rousing himself from his sickbed, McClellan
attended a subsequent conference but petulantly refused to divulge his
plans for a spring oVensive. The president professed himself satisfied,
but in fact this meeting produced a fundamental change in Lincoln’s
attitude. Finally convinced, as he told Gustavus Fox, that he had no
choice but to “take these army matters into his own hands,” he from
then on gave more forceful direction to the military eVort.
From Limited War to Revolution 101
At the same time, Lincoln also took steps to energize the War
Department. Secretary of War Simon Cameron, who Lincoln had re-
luctantly appointed and who proved lax and ineYcient, came under
censure even from fellow Republicans for corruption and fraud in
administering war contracts. In unusually harsh language, Lincoln pri-
vately complained that Cameron was “selfish and openly discourte-
ous,” “obnoxious to the Country,” and “incapable of either organizing
details or conceiving and advising general plans.”
In mid-January 1862, Lincoln forced Cameron to resign and re-
placed him with Edwin Stanton, a Democrat. Stanton had snubbed
Lincoln when they were cocounsels in the McCormick reaper case,
but Lincoln was always able to overlook personal slights. Heavyset,
with short legs and thick glasses, Stanton possessed keen intellectual
power and an unbending will, was incredibly hardworking and scru-
pulously honest, and exhibited enormous energy and great eYciency.
As secretary he quickly imposed a sense of order on the Union war
eVort.
Although Stanton could be curt and harsh, Lincoln had a special
talent for dealing with diYcult individuals, and he soon developed a
good working relationship with his unpleasant cabinet minister. He
often used the secretary’s gruV personality to shield himself from un-
wanted demands, disingenuously claiming that he dare not brook his
irascible war secretary. Yet when he wanted something done, Lincoln
did not hesitate to overrule Stanton.
Frustrated by his generals’ unending excuses, Lincoln finally issued
General War Order Number One on January 27, 1862, an utterly im-
practical directive which ordered all Union armies to advance on or
before February 22. Lincoln had already arrived at one of the most
fundamental strategic insights of the war when he disclosed to Senator
Orville Browning that his plan was to “threaten all their positions at
the same time with superior force, and if they weakened one to
strengthen another seize and hold the one weakened.” Lincoln with-
drew his order after McClellan finally revealed his plan to take his
army by sea to Virginia’s coast and operate against Richmond from
the east.
Lincoln, however, preferred a more direct advance against the Con-
federate army at Manassas and worried that McClellan’s plan would
Principal Engagements of
the American Civil War
1861–1865 Springfield
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leave Washington vulnerable to a Confederate attack. He should have
insisted that his plan be adopted instead, but he was still not com-
pletely sure of himself on military matters. In the end, he reluctantly
acquiesced but stipulated that an adequate force remain to protect
Washington. He also restricted McClellan’s command to the Army of
the Potomac, and his failure to name a new commanding general
indicated that he intended to exercise overall control himself, in con-
sultation with Stanton and generals in Washington.
In the meantime, a diVerent kind of general finally provided the
president with some cheering news. In early February, Ulysses S.
Grant, aided by a flotilla of gunboats, captured Forts Henry and Do-
nelson in Tennessee, along with 14,000 prisoners. The taciturn Grant
was a physically unremarkable man of medium height, with brown
hair and a close-cropped beard, and only his piercing gray eyes gave
any hint of his inner determination. Unlike most Union generals, how-
ever, he moved quickly and aggressively. Nashville fell to Union forces,
the first Confederate state capital to be captured, followed by the
major river port of Memphis. Northern papers, desperate for favorable
military news, made Grant an instant hero.
More heartening news followed. Union forces were victorious at
Pea Ridge, Arkansas (March 6–8), securing Missouri from a Confed-
erate threat, and an amphibious operation captured Roanoke Island
oV North Carolina. “The cause of the Union now marches on in every
section of the country,” trumpeted the New York Tribune. “It now re-
quires no very far-reaching prophet to predict the end of this struggle.”
With the Union war eVort finally underway, however, Lincoln’s
son Willie came down with typhoid. Both parents spent long hours
at his bedside, but on February 20, the eleven-year-old boy died. Qui-
etly entering John Nicolay’s oYce, the president blurted out, “My boy
is gone=he is actually gone!” and burst into tears. Overcome with
grief and hysteria, Mary Lincoln remained in mourning for months
and ended all but the most crucial social activities at the White House
for the next two years. Mentally unstable herself, she could provide
no solace for her harried husband. With momentous events now in
the oYng, he did not have the luxury of withdrawing into his private
grief.
�
When Congress assembled in December 1861, the radicals kept
up a constant clamor on the issue of slavery. It was clear that public
opinion in the North was shifting. When John Crittenden of Kentucky
reintroduced his resolution declaring that the war was being waged
solely to save the Union, a resolution that had passed almost unani-
mously a few months earlier, it was defeated. Republicans voted over-
whelmingly against it, clear evidence that sentiment within Lincoln’s
party was hardening against slavery.
As a result, Lincoln was increasingly criticized by both radicals and
moderates in his party. Calling for a vigorous war against the Confed-
eracy, radicals advocated emancipation and confiscation of rebels’
property as part of the war eVort. Moderates, on the other hand,
shrank from such a revolutionary step as emancipation. One attitude
the two groups shared in common, however, was a growing lack of
faith in Lincoln and what they considered his weak and indecisive
leadership. In addition, neither group accepted Lincoln’s view that war
policy was solely a presidential responsibility.
In the early stages of the war, Lincoln had let stand General Ben-
jamin F. Butler’s refusal to return runaway slaves to disloyal masters.
Butler’s designation of these slaves as “contraband” neatly sidestepped
a diYcult legal problem, but the question of what to do with these
runaways persisted. In his annual message, Lincoln coupled state
emancipation with colonization of blacks outside the country as the
way to deal with the problem of slavery. He followed up this state-
ment in March 1862 with a special message calling for the federal
government to provide funds to any state that adopted a program of
gradual, compensated emancipation. “The general government,” he
aYrmed, “sets up no claim of a right, by federal authority, to interfere
with slavery within state limits. . . .” A congressional resolution pledg-
ing financial aid won easy approval.
Still, Lincoln resisted the pressure to make emancipation a Union
war aim. In the absence of presidential action, the Thirty-seventh Con-
gress passed a series of laws designed to chip away at the institution.
These laws forbade the army from returning runaway slaves (even to
loyal owners), abolished slavery in all the territories (in violation of
the Dred Scott decision), and enacted a program of compensated
emancipation in the District of Columbia.
Lincoln, however, believed that emancipation should occur under
state auspices, since the federal government had no power over slav-
ery. He was also convinced that if the border states adopted emanci-
pation, their action would shorten the war. Therefore, he summoned
the representatives of the border states to a meeting at the White
House, during which he urged them to adopt a program of gradual,
compensated emancipation. Fearful of any kind of emancipation, they
demurred.
Shortly thereafter, another Union general precipitated a crisis over
slavery. David Hunter, who was nominally in command of Georgia,
South Carolina, and Florida, issued a proclamation freeing the slaves
in his Department. Radicals hailed Hunter’s action, but Lincoln swiftly
quashed it by revoking the general’s order. For the first time, however,
Lincoln publicly suggested that emancipation might be a legitimate
war power if it was “a necessity indispensable to the maintainance of
the government,” but that was a decision, he said, that “I reserve to
myself.”
Lincoln battled Congress on emancipation and war policy because
he believed these concerns were his responsibility as commander-in-
chief. Yet on other matters, he adhered to the Whig view that Con-
gress should shape legislation. He took little interest in a series of far-
reaching laws that Congress passed in this session to develop the West,
fund the war, and organize the economy, and which he signed without
a murmur.
�
The war took a dramatic turn in April, as Grant continued his of-
fensive southward and McClellan finally put the Army of the Potomac
in motion. While waiting for reinforcements at Shiloh, Tennessee,
Grant’s army was surprised on April 6 by Confederate forces. In fero-
cious fighting over a two-day period, Union troops finally managed to
reclaim the ground they had lost the first day, and the Confederates fi-
nally withdrew. The Union’s victory, however, came at a horrendous
cost, with nearly 25,000 combined casualties. Public opinion was unpre-
pared for such severe losses, and Grant came under heavy criticism. Lin-
coln, however, stood by the shabbily dressed, cigar-champing general. “I
can’t spare this man,” he told one critic. “He fights.”
The Union advance in the West continued. Northern forces even-
tually captured Corinth, Mississippi, a vital rail juncture, and New
Orleans, the Confederacy’s largest city and port, fell as well. Union
gunboats now controlled the upper and lower Mississippi River.
The navy meanwhile transported McClellan’s enormous army to
the Virginia coast. Northern papers proclaimed that McClellan’s long-
awaited campaign would end the war, and the War Department op-
timistically closed recruiting oYces. All of McClellan’s shortcomings
as a general, however, became immediately apparent. Wildly over-
estimating the size of the opposing forces, he moved with extreme
caution and soon lost the initiative. As he inched his way up the
peninsula, the Union commander sent a flurry of telegrams to the
War Department protesting that he was greatly outnumbered (he ac-
tually had a decisive advantage in manpower) and advancing a litany
of excuses.
Stanton, who had previously championed McClellan, was increas-
ingly hostile and now urged that he be removed, but Lincoln, em-
ploying his considerable skills in human management, attempted to
make the general useful. In a forthright manner, Lincoln tried to im-
press upon McClellan that public opinion, which demanded aggressive
action, could not be ignored. “And, once more let me tell you, it is
indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help
this.” Promising to support the army as fully as possible, the president
closed with the blunt warning, “But you must act.”
Lincoln soon demonstrated that compared with McClellan he was
a superior commander as well as strategist. Coming down to Fortress
Monroe, in Virginia, to inquire into the army’s failure to advance,
Lincoln learned that McClellan had done nothing to neutralize the
powerful Confederate ironclad, the Virginia (Merrimack), docked at
Norfolk across the bay. Visibly angry, Lincoln personally took charge
of planning an expedition that captured the city two days later. Re-
treating Confederates blew up the Virginia, ending the threat it posed
to the Union navy.
On May 31, with McClellan’s forces within five miles of Richmond,
the Confederate army under the command of Joseph Johnston sud-
denly attacked at Fair Oaks. The battle was inconclusive, but Johnston
was wounded in the fighting and was replaced by Robert E. Lee, a
far more daring and dangerous adversary. As soon as he had organized
and refitted the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee attacked McClellan
at Mechanicsville (June 25). For the next seven days Lee hammered
McClellan’s lines. McClellan skillfully parried Lee’s blows and inflicted
fearful losses on the attackers, but he was badly shaken by the fighting
and steadily retreated to the James River. In his usual whiney fashion,
the frazzled McClellan blamed others for his failure. In an insolent
telegram, he lashed out at Stanton and Lincoln, accusing them of
failing to sustain the army. “If I save this Army now I tell you plainly
that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington=
you have done your best to sacrifice this Army.” The shocked military
telegraph supervisor deleted these lines before delivering the message.
Measured against the high expectations when the peninsula cam-
paign began, McClellan’s retreat stunned Northerners, who considered
the outcome a major defeat. When he called on the president at the
White House, his old friend Orville Browning was alarmed at how
“weary, care-worn and troubled” he appeared. But Lincoln was as
resolute as ever. He assured Seward that “I expect to maintain this
contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term
expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me.” Though he feared
“a general panic” might ensue, he called for 300,000 more volunteers.
After visiting McClellan at Harrison’s Landing in early July, Lincoln
was uncertain what to do about the Army of the Potomac. Feeling
he needed an experienced military advisor, he summoned Henry Hal-
leck, a paunchy man with a large head and bulging eyes, from the
West and named him commanding general. Halleck was known as
“Old Brains,” but he was in reality an unimaginative plodder who was
at home only behind a desk. His surly manner and harsh comments
oVended virtually every one, and Lincoln once said he was Halleck’s
friend because no one else was. After conferring with Halleck, Lincoln
ordered the peninsula campaign abandoned. The failure of the Union’s
oVensive, which meant the war would continue indefinitely, left Lin-
coln “as nearly inconsolable as I could be and live.”
�
At Harrison’s Landing, McClellan handed Lincoln a letter dis-
cussing war policy. Urging that the war be conducted on “the highest
principles” of civilization, McClellan opposed a war of “subjugation.”
He argued that the Union should respect the rights of southern civil-
ians, protect their property, and disavow any interference with slavery.
“A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly
disintegrate our present Armies,” he warned. McClellan continued to
cling to the idea that the war was a struggle between armies rather
than peoples.
Lincoln, however, had about decided that this strategy would never
defeat the Confederacy. Observing that the war could not be fought
“with elder-stalk squirts, charged with rose water,” he informed a
Democratic critic, “this government cannot much longer play a game
in which it stakes all, and its enemies stake nothing.” By now Lincoln
had run out of patience with southern Unionists, who “will do nothing
for the government” while “demanding that the government shall not
strike its open enemies, lest they be struck by accident!” He also re-
alized that McClellan’s idea of fighting a war of maneuver to capture
territory was fatally flawed. The Union had to wage an oVensive war
to win, and he increasingly thought the South would have to be con-
quered to destroy popular resistance.
Believing that a change in leadership as well as strategy was needed,
Lincoln brought John Pope from the western theater to take com-
mand of a new army being assembled near Washington and gave him
a free hand to wage war. The vain but pugnacious Pope was an an-
tislavery Republican who now implemented a more stringent form of
warfare. Pope ordered his troops to live oV the countryside by widely
foraging, authorized the seizure of private property without compen-
sation, threatened to expel from his lines civilians who refused to take
a loyalty oath, and sanctioned the execution of captured guerrillas.
Southerners charged that this type of war was uncivilized, but Lincoln
for the most part endorsed Pope’s orders, as did northern public opin-
ion, which had lost faith in the policy of conciliation and applauded
the idea of a more vigorous war.
Lincoln advocated a harder war in the West as well. Halleck in-
structed Grant to “take up all active [rebel] sympathizers, and either
hold them as prisoners or put them beyond our lines. Handle that
class without gloves, and take their property for public use. As soon
as the corn gets fit for forage get all the supplies you can from the
rebels in Mississippi. It is time that they should begin to feel the
presence of war. . . .”
In the wake of the Union’s military setbacks in the summer of
1862, attitudes in Congress began to shift. Declaring that the war had
to be fought on “diVerent principles,” William Pitt Fessenden, a lead-
ing Republican moderate, called for an end to “white kid-glove war-
fare.” On July 17, Congress approved the Second Confiscation Act,
which provided that any slave owned by a disloyal master who came
into Union custody would be emancipated. Unlike the First Confis-
cation Act, this act did not specify whether a slave had been used for
military purposes=the critical test was the owner’s political loyalty=
which meant that women and children would also now come under
congressionally sponsored emancipation. Lincoln objected to the idea
that Congress could interfere with slavery in any state and considered
vetoing the bill, but in the end he reluctantly signed it and then pro-
ceeded to ignore it.
Instead, Lincoln preferred inducing the border states to adopt grad-
ual emancipation as the first step to ending slavery. On July 12 he
summoned border-state leaders to a second conference at the White
House. He urged them to take advantage of Congress’s oVer of finan-
cial aid, pointing out that the pressure on him to attack slavery was
increasing. “The incidents of war can not be avoided,” he emphasized,
and if they did not act now “the institution in your states will be
extinguished by mere friction and abrasion . . . and you will have noth-
ing valuable in lieu of it.” Failing to heed Lincoln’s blunt warning, the
representatives once again turned a deaf ear and voted 20 to 8 to
reject his plan.
Following the failure of this meeting, Lincoln believed that it was
time to change his policy on slavery. He “had about come to the
conclusion that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued” and
was thinking of issuing a proclamation freeing at least some of the
slaves. He explicitly linked emancipation to the idea of a hard war:
“We wanted the army to strike more vigorous blows,” he told his
advisers. “The Administration must set the army an example, and
strike at the heart of the rebellion.”
Several considerations were involved in this decision. For one
thing, he was increasingly convinced that emancipation was both a
legitimate war power and, as he phrased it, “a military necessity, ab-
solutely essential to the preservation of the Union.” He also believed
that if emancipation became a Union war aim, it would be more
diYcult for England or other European nations to recognize the Con-
federacy. And finally, he was convinced that the border slave states
would remain in the Union even if he took this step. “Things had
gone on from bad to worse,” he later explained, “until I felt that we
had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had
been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must
change our tactics, or lose the game.”
Lincoln informed two of his cabinet members, William Seward and
Gideon Welles, of his decision on July 13, the day after his second
appeal to the border state representatives. A week later, he circulated
a draft of his proclamation at a cabinet meeting. He prefaced this
action with the statement that he “had not called them together to
ask their advice,” since he had already “resolved upon this step,” but
that he welcomed any suggestions they might have. In the ensuing
discussion, Seward urged the president to withhold the document until
the military situation improved so that it did not seem like “our last
shriek, on the retreat.” Persuaded by Seward’s argument, he put the
document back in his desk.
But Lincoln said nothing publicly about his decision. As was his
custom, he often argued against his positions in order to see all sides
of a question and confirm that his thinking was right. When a group
of clergymen that summer presented to him a petition urging eman-
cipation be made a Union war aim, Lincoln asked what authority a
proclamation of his would have in areas in rebellion. Implying that
he had reached no conclusion, he added, “I can assure you that the
subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other.”
In a carefully timed move, he also resurrected the idea of coloni-
zation to undercut popular opposition to emancipation among North-
erners. At a meeting with free black leaders in mid-August, he argued
that white prejudice was an insuperable barrier to blacks ever being
Francis Carpenter stayed at the White House for six months in 1864 work-
ing on a large painting showing Lincoln presenting his draft of the Eman-
cipation Proclamation to the cabinet. From left, those present are Edwin
Stanton, Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln, Gideon Welles, Caleb B. Smith, Wil-
liam Henry Seward (seated, front), Montgomery Blair, and Edward Bates.
(Illinois State Historical Library)
treated as equals. Whether this feeling was right or wrong, “I cannot

alter it if I would. . . . It is better for us both, therefore, to be sepa-
rated.” Noting that “there is an unwillingness on the part of our peo-
ple, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with
us,” he urged those present to take the lead in recruiting volunteers
for a pilot colonization project in Central America. Black leaders had
no sympathy for Lincoln’s ideas or his proposal. Lincoln was not being
cynical in this appeal=he genuinely believed colonization would ben-
efit blacks=but his primary motive was to facilitate popular accep-
tance of emancipation.
In the gloom that followed the Union’s summer defeats, Horace
Greeley, the mercurial editor of the New York Tribune, published an
editorial entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” urging the presi-
dent to attack slavery as part of the war eVort. Knowing that eman-
cipation was the most diYcult problem he faced because of the strong
feelings it engendered on both sides, Lincoln used this opportunity to
skillfully prepare the public mind for a future change in policy. “I
would save the Union,” Lincoln replied on August 22, underscoring
what had been his guiding principle since the beginning of the war.
“I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. . . . My par-
amount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either
to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves
I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others
alone I would also do that.” Nowhere did he mention that he was
waiting for a military victory to issue his proclamation.
�
That victory did not come quickly or easily. Realizing that the
inactive McClellan posed no threat, Lee lost no time in confronting
Pope. Like McClellan, Pope constantly boasted about what he would
accomplish, but unlike his predecessor, Pope was an aggressive fighter.
On taking command, he announced that henceforth the army would
only advance and that headquarters would be in the saddle, prompting
one wag to comment that his headquarters were where his hindquar-
ters should be. Pope’s tactless statements alienated alike oYcers and
men under him.
Lee clashed with Pope at Manassas, the site of the war’s first major
battle, on August 28 and 29. Acidly commenting that his rival should
be left “to get out of his scrape,” McClellan ignored orders to rush
reinforcements to Pope, whose army was badly mauled in two days
of fighting. Pope bitterly complained of the treachery of oYcers loyal
to McClellan, but his public reputation had been destroyed and the
army was overtly hostile to him. A dark depression swept over Lin-
coln, who, Attorney General Edward Bates reported, “seemed wrung
by the bitterest anguish” and said “he felt almost ready to hang
himself.”
Second Manassas also ended Halleck’s usefulness as commanding
general. Lincoln had leaned heavily on the ineVective Halleck to direct
Pope and get McClellan to render assistance. Fearful that he would
be blamed for future Union military failures, Halleck subsequently
sloughed oV all decision-making responsibility and limited himself to
drafting orders as directed by the president. In a later conversation
with John Hay, Lincoln explained that after the second Battle of Bull
Run, Halleck “broke down=nerve and pluck all gone=and has ever
since evaded all possible responsibility=[he is] little more since that
than a first-rate clerk.” Halleck’s collapse left Lincoln as the Union’s
chief military strategist, a position he would fill until Grant took com-
mand in 1864. Functioning literally as commander-in-chief, Lincoln’s
role in guiding military aVairs now reached its peak.
Lincoln’s immediate problem was to find a new commander for
the eastern theater. McClellan’s politicization of the Army of the Po-
tomac, particularly its oYcer corps, severely limited his options. Mc-
Clellan had filled key staV and command positions with Democrats
who felt no loyalty to the president, opposed emancipation, and en-
dorsed a limited war strategy. Many of them were nothing more than
sycophants of McClellan, whose repeated failures they blamed on Lin-
coln, Stanton, Halleck, and Washington politicians in general. Unlike
in the western armies, openly disloyal talk pervaded the oYcer corps
in Virginia. Fitz John Porter, one of McClellan’s top lieutenants, wrote
to a New York Democrat in August, “Would that this army was in
Washington to rid us of incumbents ruining our country.” The hos-
tility and lack of cooperation Pope had encountered ruled out appoint-
ing another western general to command, and there was no time to
reform the army. Lincoln now paid the price for giving McClellan,
whom Hay aptly termed “the grand marplot of the Army,” too free
a hand in organizing the army and for failing to root out the attitude
that the army should dictate public policy.
Believing he had no other choice, Lincoln merged Pope’s army
with the Army of the Potomac and on September 1 reappointed Mc-
Clellan to command. He no longer harbored any illusions about Mc-
Clellan’s ability to conduct an oVensive campaign; instead, he intended
for McClellan to merely stand on the defensive while reorganizing the
army. Lincoln took this step without consulting the cabinet, whose
members strongly assailed his decision. Stanton, in particular, was
livid. It was a bitter pill for Lincoln, too, for he thought McClellan’s
refusal to help Pope was “unpardonable.” Nevertheless, he realized
that “McClellan has the army with him,” and “if he can’t fight himself,
he excells in making others ready to fight.” Moreover, McClellan’s
selection oVered potential political dividends, since as a Democrat his
appointment might bolster that party’s wavering support for Lincoln’s
war policies.
In reappointing McClellan, Lincoln had expected the eastern the-
ater to remain quiet for the moment. The Confederacy, however, now
launched a coordinated invasion in both theaters. In the West, the
Confederate invasion of Kentucky was finally checked at the Battle of
Perryville on October 8, when Buell battled Confederate general Brax-
ton Bragg to a standstill, after which Bragg withdrew. In the East,
hoping that a decisive victory would secure diplomatic recognition of
the Confederacy, Lee invaded Maryland with the intention of pushing
on into Pennsylvania. The war had strengthened Lincoln’s sense of
fatalism, and he made a vow to God that if the Union army won a
victory, he would issue the proclamation on slavery that he had
drafted.
Aided by a copy of Lee’s orders that fell into his hands, McClellan
moved with unaccustomed swiftness and intercepted the Army of
Northern Virginia at Sharpsburg, on the Potomac River near Antietam
Creek. Possessing a great numerical advantage, McClellan launched a
series of uncoordinated attacks on September 17 that Lee barely man-
aged to beat back in desperate fighting. With 5,000 Union and Con-
federate dead, Antietam was the bloodiest single day of the war. The
battle was essentially a draw, but because Lee retreated to Virginia,
popular opinion perceived it as a Union victory. McClellan had
checked Lee’s invasion, but he had fumbled the best opportunity of
the war to annihilate Lee’s army.
For Lincoln, Antietam was as close to a victory as he expected to
come with McClellan as his general. Fulfilling his earlier pledge, he
decided to announce his new policy on emancipation. On September
22, he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Under its
terms, Lincoln gave the rebel states one hundred days to return to
their loyalty to the United States. If they did not do so, he announced
he would issue a proclamation on January 1, freeing the slaves in areas
that were still in rebellion.
The reaction to Lincoln’s decision was mixed. Abolitionists and free
African Americans hailed the news, though they wished for a more
sweeping edict, while southern Unionists felt betrayed. Republicans in
Congress in general were pleased, but most Democrats denounced
Lincoln for perverting a war to save the Union into a war of eman-
cipation and angrily accused him of promoting a wild social revolution
in the South. Like Congress, the northern press divided along partisan
lines, with Democratic organs opposed to the war especially vehement
in their denunciation of Lincoln’s policy. But even the prowar New
York World assailed Lincoln’s “radical fanaticism.” Attitudes in the army
were mixed as well, and some oYcers in the Army of the Potomac
spoke of marching on Washington. In eventually discountenancing
such talk, McClellan noted that the polls were the proper remedy for
political errors, a clear thrust at the president.
Public reaction in Britain was initially scornful. The London Spec-
tator, for example, sneered that the proclamation’s principle “is not
that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot
own him unless he is loyal to the United States.” Nevertheless, the
policy of emancipation dealt a serious blow to the Confederacy’s hopes
for diplomatic recognition. The British cabinet, which had been de-
bating the possibility of recognition, postponed any action. From Lon-
don Henry Adams was soon reporting that “the Emancipation Proc-
lamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and
all our diplomacy.” Within a year, with all hope of recognition at an
end, the Confederacy recalled its minister.
Unaccustomed to much praise since the war had begun, Lincoln
appreciated the endorsements of Republican editors and leaders.
“Commendation in newspapers and by distinguished individuals is all
that a vain man could wish,” he conceded. But both sales of war bonds
and volunteering had fallen oV since he had issued the proclamation,
prompting him to observe, “The North responds to the proclamation
suYciently in breath; but breath alone kills no rebels.”
Earlier Lincoln had indicated that he would “not surrender this
game leaving any available card unplayed.” He now adopted new,
more stringent policies for the prosecution of the war. Shortly after
issuing his preliminary proclamation, Lincoln suspended the writ of
habeas corpus throughout the North for the duration of the war for
“any disloyal practice,” and for the first time authorized military trials
of civilians accused of antiwar activities. Calling for 600,000 more vol-
unteers, he resorted to a questionable interpretation of a law reorgan-
izing the militia to impose a draft on states that failed to fill their
enlistment quotas. And he quietly authorized the War Department to
begin recruiting black soldiers in the South.
�
Lincoln worried about the eVect the proclamation would have on
the upcoming state and congressional elections in the North. Indeed,
in cabinet discussions Montgomery Blair had opposed issuing the proc-
lamation out of fear that it would give the Democrats “a club to be
used against us” in the elections. Following the initial burst of bipar-
tisan enthusiasm when the war began, the Democratic party had be-
come increasingly divided over the war and Lincoln’s policies. Hoping
to cement Democratic support for the war eVort, Lincoln appointed
a number of prominent Democrats to important military commands,
but the hard fighting and heavy losses of 1862, coupled with Lincoln’s
policies on slavery and civil liberties, ended the possibility of a bipar-
tisan war eVort.
Three major Democratic factions emerged. War Democrats were
willing to heed Lincoln’s call for suspension of partisanship during the
war. They generally backed the Lincoln administration and its policies,
and in many states joined Republicans in forming Union coalition
tickets. A number of war Democrats ended up becoming Republicans.
Regular Democrats constituted the largest wing of the party. They
supported a war to save the Union, but opposed emancipation and
condemned Lincoln’s interference with civil liberties. The final group
was the peace Democrats. Republicans labeled them Copperheads,
after the poisonous snake, and charged they were aiding the Confed-
eracy by trying to kill the Union from within. Peace Democrats called
for negotiations with the Confederacy, and many were ready to accept
disunion rather than continue the war. They were never a majority
of Democrats, but they made a lot of noise and commanded a great
deal of attention. In the process, they tarred the Democratic party
with the popular image of disloyalty.
The target of various disaVected groups, Lincoln took a hands-oV
approach in the 1862 fall elections. One reason was that he was un-
willing to get involved in the bitter factional quarrels that divided
Republicans in many states. But he also knew his unpopularity limited
any impact he might have. He conceded to his cabinet, “I believe that
I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some
time since.” Observers noted the toll that the war was taking on him.
“His introverted look and his half-staggering gait were like those of a
man walking in sleep,” one visitor to Washington reported. His face
“revealed the ravages which care, anxiety, and overwork had
wrought.” Noah Brooks, who had first met Lincoln in Illinois in 1856,
was shocked at the change in his appearance. He seemed “prematurely
aged,” and in place of the previous sparkle there was “a sunken,
deathly look about the large, cavernous eyes.”
Focusing on the issues of emancipation, civil liberties, and the con-
duct of the war, Democrats made a political comeback in the fall
elections. In New York, Horatio Seymour was elected governor, and
Democrats won control of the legislatures in Indiana and Illinois,
which had holdover Republican governors. Moreover, the party picked
up thirty-two seats in the next House of Representatives. The Repub-
lican New York Times pronounced the results a “vote of want of con-
fidence” in the president.
While the 1862 election results were a setback for Lincoln and the
Republicans, they were not a clear defeat. Although the Democrats
had done well in the lower North, in the upper North=New England
and the upper Great Lakes states=the Republican party had tri-
umphed. The Republicans had also been victorious on the Pacific
Coast, and while the party’s margin had been reduced, it still con-
trolled both houses of Congress. Neither party could view the results
as a clear endorsement. The civil liberties issue, and to an even greater
extent emancipation, had put the Republicans on the defensive, but
they correctly identified the military situation as the major cause for
the party’s losses. “After a year and a half of trial and a pouring out
of blood and treasure, and the maiming and death of thousands, we
have made no sensible progress in putting down the rebellion,” ac-
knowledged one Republican. “The people are desirous of some
change, they scarcely know what.”
From Limited War to Revolution
119
The elections also marked the end of McClellan’s tenure as com-
mander. Following the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln visited McClellan
at the battlefield and urged him to vigorously pursue Lee. Instead,
McClellan oVered one excuse after another. When he claimed that he
could not move because his horses needed rest, Lincoln’s patience
snapped, and he fired back a telegram that read, “Will you pardon me
for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle
of Antietam that fatigue anything?” Lincoln’s uncharacteristic display
of temper in this message revealed the strain and pressure he was
under as he saw the chance to cripple Lee’s army slipping away. A
month elapsed before McClellan put his army across the Potomac,
and his movements were so slow, Lee easily eluded him. For Lincoln,
this outcome was the last straw.
By now Lincoln realized that a new approach to the war, one that
stressed “hard, tough fighting,” was required. Both McClellan and the
After the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln visited the Army of the Potomac in a
vain eVort to get General George McClellan to vigorously pursue the re-
treating enemy army. This picture, taken at army headquarters, shows
Lincoln in the center towering over McClellan (center foreground), who
strikes a characteristic pose. (Library of Congress)
army, he sarcastically commented, expected “to whip the rebels by
strategy. . . .” Unable to infuse any vigor into either McClellan or Buell,
he concluded that new leadership was needed.
The day after the northern elections were held, Lincoln perma-
nently removed George McClellan from command. Convinced that
McClellan would never display the aggressiveness needed to win, he
decided that he had “tried long enough to bore with an auger too
dull to take hold.” He also had no faith in a general whose political
convictions (and growing ambition) shaped his military strategy. He
named Ambrose Burnside as McClellan’s successor.
Earlier, Lincoln had removed Buell, who had come under heavy
criticism from western Republican governors and congressmen. Fol-
lowing the Battle of Perryville, Lincoln wanted Buell to liberate the
Unionists in eastern Tennessee, which had long been one of his goals.
When Buell raised a series of objections, Halleck wrote that the pres-
ident could not understand “why we cannot march as the enemy
marches, live as he lives, and fight as he fights. . . .” Finally in exas-
peration Lincoln placed William S. Rosecrans in command of Buell’s
army. Unlike McClellan and Buell, neither Burnside nor Rosecrans was
an opponent of the president’s policies.
Together with the policy of emancipation, the fall of McClellan
marked the end of the limited war. Buell had been McClellan’s closest
associate, and as Democrats opposed to emancipation they had been
the foremost advocates of the concept of a limited war. They were
good organizers and administrators, but that was not enough in what
had become a new kind of war. Overly cautious and hesitant, they
were inflexible in their military philosophy and conceived of war in
terms of maneuvering for territory rather than attacking and destroy-
ing the enemy’s armies, and they were insensitive to the political
aspects of the contest and the role of public opinion in the war. Both
commanders had scrupulously protected the property of southern ci-
vilians and refused to allow their men to forage for supplies. Their
failure had demonstrated that the war could not be won by such a
strategy. In addition, Lincoln had lost faith in southern Unionists, com-
plaining that they were too few and too timid to rely on. He finally
realized that his earlier view=that the bulk of southern whites were
essentially loyal=was erroneous. Southern soldiers had displayed a
tenacious fighting spirit in the 1862 campaigns, while southern civilians
had openly flaunted their Confederate loyalty in the presence of in-
vading Union soldiers.
In removing McClellan and Buell, Lincoln served notice that the
rosewater war was over. Henceforth, he intended to pursue a hard
war against both Confederate armies and southern civilians, and he
was determined to find generals who would successfully carry out this
strategy.
�
When he accepted appointment as head of the Army of the Po-
tomac, Burnside protested that he was unfit for the position. It took
him little more than a month to prove the accuracy of his assessment.
On December 13, after occupying Fredericksburg, Burnside launched
piecemeal assaults against an impregnable Confederate position. The
result was one of the worst Union defeats of the war, with over 13,000
casualties, compared with less than 5,000 for the enemy. OYcers and
men openly denounced Burnside, desertions soared, talk of a dicta-
torship intensified, and some observers feared the army might mutiny.
Lincoln was overcome with despair when he learned the true mag-
nitude of the Union’s reverse, and the northern press raised a chorus
of denunciation against Lincoln, Burnside, and the administration. Har-
per’s Weekly, normally a loyal Republican sheet, admonished that the
people “have borne, silently and grimly, imbecility, treachery, failure,
privation, loss of friends and means, . . . but they can not be expected
to suVer that such massacres as this at Fredericksburg shall be re-
peated.” Morale on the home front sank to its lowest point. “If there
is a worse place than Hell,” Lincoln observed, “I am in it.”
The harried president’s problems only got worse. For months
Chase had been telling Republican members of Congress that Seward
dominated the president and opposed a vigorous prosecution of the
war. Following the Fredericksburg debacle, a caucus of Republican
senators agreed to send a committee to see Lincoln and demand a
shake-up of the cabinet. Informed of these deliberations, and realizing
that he was the target of their hostility, Seward submitted his resig-
nation. When he learned of the caucus’s action, Lincoln moaned to
Browning that “we are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to
me that the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of
hope.” He recognized that he had to head oV this congressional chal-
lenge to his leadership without destroying his party. If he had let the
radicals force Seward out, he later explained to Hay, the cabinet
“would all have slumped over one way and we should have been left
with a scanty handful of supporters.”
Lincoln had entered oYce determined to be his own man, and as
his self-confidence had grown, he had relied less and less on his ad-
visors. Throughout his political career Lincoln had always made cru-
cial decisions by himself, and this approach continued when he became
president. Gathering advice from various quarters, he thought long
and hard about problems and then made up his mind in solitude.
He conferred with cabinet members on matters relevant to their
own department, but on other matters he consulted them sporadically
if at all. Welles grumbled that cabinet meetings were “infrequent, irreg-
ular and without system”; Seward was frequently absent, preferring to
deal with Lincoln privately; and Stanton, fearing leaks, refused to dis-
cuss military matters in front of other cabinet members. Lincoln rarely
took votes, which he he did not feel bound by in any case. No one was
more irritated at this state of aVairs than the pompous Chase, who com-
plained that “we . . . are in reality only separate heads of departments,
meeting now and then for talk on whatever happens to come upper-
most, not for grave consultation on matters concerning the salvation of
the country.” Members made “no regular and systematic reports of
what is done” to the president or the cabinet. Indeed, Chase fumed that
if he wanted to know what was going on in other departments, he had
to send a clerk to buy a copy of the New York Herald.
The senatorial committee came to the White House on the evening
of December 18 and had a long discussion with the president, who re-
quested that they return the following night. Lincoln asked the entire
cabinet except for Seward to attend the second meeting with the sena-
tors. He acknowledged that he had not regularly consulted the cabinet,
but insisted (not entirely accurately) that “most questions of importance
had received a reasonable consideration,” and added that he “was not
aware of any divisions or want of unity.” With his fellow cabinet mem-
bers present, Chase, who was clearly uncomfortable, had no choice but
to agree with Lincoln’s statement, thereby directly contradicting what
he had been telling members of Congress privately. In the meeting,
which lasted five hours, Lincoln declined an oVer to confer with the
Senate about the makeup of the cabinet, thus making it clear that he
considered the cabinet his concern and not that of Congress.
The next morning, when a greatly embarrassed Chase hesitantly
oVered his resignation, Lincoln snatched it from his hands. With both
Seward’s and Chase’s resignations now in his pocket, he wryly com-
mented, “I can ride on now, I’ve got a pumpkin in each end of my
bag.” Declaring that he needed both men’s services, Lincoln proceeded
to reject their resignations. The December cabinet crisis ended with
Lincoln in firm control of his administration and free from congres-
sional dictation. Lincoln had once again displayed great skill in ma-
neuvering his way around his critics. As Leonard Swett, a longtime
associate in Illinois politics, observed, “He handled and moved man
remotely as we do pieces upon a chessboard.”
In the end, the only cabinet change that occurred was that John
Usher replaced the ineVectual Caleb Smith, who resigned as head of
the Interior Department. Steering a middle course between the radi-
cals and conservatives, Lincoln conceded to Swett that he had not
pleased either group, “but I believe I have kept these discordant ele-
ments together as well as anyone could.”
�
Even after he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,
Lincoln still preferred a program of compensated emancipation under
state control. Thus in his annual message in December 1862, he asked
Congress to pass three constitutional amendments to provide federal
bonds to any state that abolished slavery before 1900; to secure the
freedom of all slaves freed by “the chances of the war,” with com-
pensation to loyal owners; and to authorize federal funding for colo-
nizing free blacks outside the United States. He still adhered to the
unrealistic view that if the border states enacted a program of eman-
cipation, this action would shorten the war. “The dogmas of the quiet
past, are inadequate to the stormy present,” he declared. “As our case
is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.” Lincoln’s plan was
vague and confusing=perhaps deliberately so=and appealed to many
diVerent groups. This scheme of compensated emancipation, which
Browning dismissed as an “hallucination,” revealed how fundamen-
tally conservative Lincoln was, and how much he hoped to control
the revolutionary forces the war had unleashed.
In the message’s most famous passage, he aYrmed: “Fellow-citizens,
we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration,
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. . . . The fiery trial through
which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest
generation. . . . In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the
free=honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall
nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.”
Lincoln’s endorsement of compensated state emancipation alarmed
antislavery advocates, who feared that it meant he did not intend to
issue the Emancipation Proclamation as promised, but radical senator
Charles Sumner reassured one concerned correspondent that on this
issue the president “will stand firm.” In November, Lincoln told a
group of Kentucky Unionists that he would rather die than retract his
proclamation. He ignored Chase’s advice that there was no possibility
Congress would pass any of the amendments he had recommended,
and remained hopeful that compensated, gradual emancipation would
be acceptable to the border states and even southern Unionists in the
occupied Confederacy. “Mr. Lincoln’s whole soul is absorbed in his
plan of remunerative emancipation and he thinks if Congress dont fail
him, that the problem is solved,” reported David Davis.
On New Year’s Day, the president held the traditional reception at
the White House. For three hours, he greeted and shook hands with
a parade of well-wishers. The Proclamation had already been copied,
but when he arrived at his oYce to sign it, his hand was badly swollen
from the reception. As a small group of oYcials watched, his hand
trembled as he wrote his full name, but he assured those present, “I
never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do
in signing this paper.”
The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to areas the president
declared in rebellion. Excluded from its terms were all of Tennessee,
which was largely under Union occupation; certain counties in Vir-
ginia and Louisiana; and all the border states, including the new state
of West Virginia (which Congress had required to adopt a program of
gradual emancipation as part of the process of admission). In a decision
of great future moment, the proclamation announced for the first time
that emancipated slaves would be accepted into the army and navy.
Promulgated strictly as a war measure by his authority as commander-
in-chief, the proclamation contained none of Lincoln’s usual appeals
to higher principles. Only in the last sentence, added at Chase’s sug-
gestion, did he sound such a note when he asked for “the considerate
judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”
The legal impact of the proclamation was limited. It applied only
to areas where the government had no power, whereas the loyal and
occupied areas of the South were not touched by its terms. In the
Second Confiscation Act, passed in August, Congress had already freed
slaves of disloyal masters (in one sense, the proclamation went beyond
this law because it applied to all slaves in rebellious areas, regardless
of their owner’s allegiance). Critics charged that Lincoln had no power
to interfere with slavery, and even if the courts upheld his action, its
true impact would depend on the outcome of the war. Only a Union
victory could make emancipation=even within the scope of the proc-
lamation=lasting. Believing that the proclamation could be constitu-
tionally justified only as a war measure, Lincoln refused subsequently
to apply its provisions to the areas excluded from its original terms.
To do so, he argued, would be an act of despotism.
Whatever its legal limitations, the Emancipation Proclamation had
immense symbolic significance, a point the black abolitionist Frederick
Douglass emphasized when he declared that its spirit had “a life and
power far beyond its letter.” With a stroke of the pen, Lincoln had
changed the nature of the war. Both sides understood that the war had
been fundamentally transformed, that the Union was no longer fighting
to restore the old Union but to create a new one. The Springfield Repub-
lican, accurately enough, pronounced the Emancipation Proclamation
“the greatest social and political revolution of the age.” Having wrestled
with this decision over the past months, Lincoln fully comprehended
that the war had reached a decisive turning point and that there was no
going back. The proclamation, he privately acknowledged, would
change “the character of the war” into “one of subjugation.” The gloves
were oV. The war had become remorseless revolution.
Chapter 6
MIDSTREAM
Lincoln’s decision to adopt emancipation as a Union war aim did

not solve either his political or his military problems. To the contrary,
his action alienated many northern Democrats from the war eVort,
failed to mollify his Republican critics, and created deep divisions both
at home and within the army’s ranks. At the same time, Northerners
became increasingly despondent over the Union’s military failures and
the war’s mounting death toll; desertions from the army peaked; and
Union generals openly carped at one another and denounced the
government.
The only bright news from the front as the new year began was
General William Rosecrans’s victory at Stones River in Tennessee after
a ferocious two-day battle. “I can never forget,” Lincoln later told the
general, that “. . . you gave us a hard earned victory which, had there
been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.” But
Rosecrans, resenting the president’s suggestions for new movements,
made no eVort to follow up his victory, and gloom again gripped the
northern home front, making the winter of 1862–63 the North’s Valley
Forge. As he approached the midpoint of his term, Lincoln confronted
growing criticism over his domestic and military policies.
�
By now Lincoln’s daily activities followed a general routine. He
was an early riser and began work before breakfast. Never much in-
terested in food, he ate a light breakfast then returned to work in the
east wing of the White House. Around one he had lunch, which he
sometimes skipped. On Tuesday and Friday the cabinet met at noon.
He spent the rest of the afternoon at work, going over various matters
Midstream 127
and reading the correspondence his secretaries had selected from the
pile of mail. If an answer was required, he usually wrote it himself.
Likewise, Lincoln wrote his public papers and speeches.
Fearful for her husband’s health, Mary Lincoln insisted that he get
some exercise and fresh air, so in the late afternoon they usually took
a drive in a carriage. When his wife did not join him, Lincoln often
went on horseback instead. Dinner was at six, followed by more work
unless a formal function was scheduled. Except in summer, Lincoln
held a public reception one evening each week, when people high and
low could shake his hand and exchange greetings. Mary Lincoln’s
prolonged mourning after their son Willie’s death made these aVairs
an ordeal for her husband and increased the weight of loneliness that
pressed down on him.
Mary Lincoln, who had never been entirely stable emotionally, be-
came more flighty and hysterical in the White House and was increas-
ingly a burden on her weary husband. The loss of Willie, the fault
finding of the press regarding her public behavior, the sneers of Wash-
ington society, the aspersions against her loyalty because of her Con-
federate relatives, and the fear for her husband’s personal safety all
took their toll on her mental balance. Lincoln admitted that his wife’s
“nerves have gone to pieces; she cannot hide from me that the strain
she has been under has been too much for her mental as well as her
physical health.” She frequently directed volcanic temper tantrums at
anyone on the staV who crossed her, and John Nicolay and John Hay,
who tried to give her a wide berth, privately designated her “the
Hellcat.”
When there was no oYcial function, Lincoln spent the evening at
work or, more frequently, talking with friends and political cronies.
Secretary of State William Henry Seward, whose humor Lincoln en-
joyed and whose counsel he valued, was an especially frequent par-
ticipant in the evening gatherings. Navy secretary Gideon Welles, who
was jealous of his cabinet colleague, muttered that Seward spent “a
considerable portion of every day with the President, patronizing and
instructing him, hearing and telling anecdotes, relating interesting de-
tails of occurrences in the Senate, and inculcating his political party
notions.” Yet as Senator Zachariah Chandler perceptively recognized,
Lincoln maintained a personal distance in these sessions and, even
when relaxed and at ease, did not reveal his feelings and thoughts on
public aVairs.
Usually his last act before calling it a day was to go over to the
telegraph oYce in the War Department and check the latest news
from the front. Once the operators became accustomed to his nightly
visits, they began assembling the daily dispatches in order to make it
easier for him to go through them. It was often past midnight when
he returned to the White House.
During the humid summer months, Lincoln slept at the Soldier’s
Home, on the outskirts of Washington, in an eVort to escape the heat.
The rest of the year, after he returned from his nightly visit to the
War Department, he would try to unwind by reading or talking with
his wife. “I consider myself fortunate,” Mary Lincoln divulged, “if at
eleven o’clock, I once more find myself, in my pleasant room and
very especially, if my tired and weary Husband, is there, resting in the
lounge to receive me=to chat over the occurrences of the day.” Few
presidents have put in longer days, worked harder, or endured greater
strain. A government oYcial who called on him early in 1863 observed
that he looked “worn and haggard” and that “his hand trembled”
when he wrote. Urged to get some rest, Lincoln conceded that “it
was a pretty hard life for him.”
�
When he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln an-
nounced that black men would be accepted into the army and navy
for military service. Although the policy promised to help solve the
Union’s need for more troops, it was a more radical step than eman-
cipation, and Lincoln adopted it with even greater hesitation. He ex-
pected these troops to be used in noncombat roles, but their labor
would nevertheless free additional white troops for combat. When
northern free black leaders and their white allies protested against this
policy, the War Department finally endorsed organizing several elite
black combat units.
These units saw their first action in the summer of 1863. Black
troops from Louisiana fought at Port Hudson in May, and shortly
thereafter regiments of former slaves helped repel a Confederate attack
Midstream 129
at Milliken’s Bend in Louisiana. In both engagements, white observers
were impressed by the fighting ability of black troops. Even greater
publicity was given to the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, which was made
up largely of free blacks from the North and which was led by socially
prominent white oYcers. Their assault on Fort Wagner, in South Car-
olina, in July helped sway northern public opinion in favor of black
troops, although opposition, both on the home front and in the ranks,
did not disappear.
Prior to issuing the final Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had
continued to advocate the impractical idea of colonization as a means
to defuse opposition to emancipation, even going so far as to inau-
gurate a pilot project on a small island in the Caribbean. The settle-
ment failed ignominiously, and in 1864 Lincoln had the navy bring the
survivors back to the United States. Long before this project collapsed,
Lincoln had abandoned the idea of colonization, and indeed he made
no public appeals for colonization after issuing the Emancipation Proc-
lamation. Lincoln had come to the realization that for the foreseeable
future, at least, whites and blacks would have to live together in free-
dom in the United States.
Lincoln’s decision to enlist black soldiers was intended to
strengthen the Union war eVort and, by lessening the need for white
volunteers and conscripts, weaken opposition to emancipation among
Northerners. Eventually, more than 180,000 blacks, mostly ex-slaves,
served in the army, with another approximately 10,000 in the navy.
�
The contribution of black soldiers to the war eVort, however, still
lay in the future at the beginning of 1863. Matters quickly came to a
head in the eastern theater, where grumbling about Burnside’s lead-
ership among the senior oYcers in the Army of the Potomac soon
reached the president. Lincoln began to worry that Burnside, for all
his fighting spirit, was too reckless, and before long named Joseph
Hooker to replace him. Hooker was boastful and indiscreet (he had
openly declared that the country needed a dictator), but he had a
reputation as a hard fighter, stood high in popular opinion, and was
backed by the radicals in Congress.
In what had become his usual practice when dealing with his east-
ern commanders, Lincoln summoned Hooker to Washington for a
meeting. In a letter he handed to the general at this meeting, he
oVered some sage counsel to his supremely ambitious new com-
mander. Praising the army commander’s bravery, his avoidance of
politics, and his self-confidence, Lincoln added, “I have heard, in such
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.”
A good organizer, Hooker set about restoring morale in the Army
of the Potomac, which had reached its lowest ebb under Burnside.
He reorganized the commissary service so that adequate rations were
again provided, and desertions, which had been running at more than
a hundred a day, dropped dramatically. Boasting that he commanded
“the finest army on the planet,” Hooker proclaimed, “May God have
mercy on General Lee, for I will have none.”
Disturbed by Hooker’s pronouncements=he had heard this gas-
conade before from McClellan=Lincoln, who visited the army shortly
before campaigning resumed, enjoined Hooker to throw all of his
troops into the next battle. Hooker’s and his generals’ incessant talk
about capturing Richmond disturbed him as well. “Our prime object
is the enemies’ army in front of us, and is not with, or about, Rich-
mond=at all, unless it be incidental to the main object,” he empha-
sized to Hooker in reiterating his ideas on strategy, which by now had
fully crystallized.
Lincoln’s involvement with military strategy peaked during
Hooker’s tenure. In what may have been an eVort to strengthen
Hooker’s self-confidence, he encouraged the general to communicate
directly with him rather than through Edwin Stanton or Henry Hal-
leck. Lincoln sent advice and suggestions to Hooker directly, often
without informing Halleck, and when Hooker came to Washington,
he consulted with the president and ignored the commanding general
and secretary of war. Lincoln’s decision to bypass the traditional chain
of command, which often left Halleck in the dark about the Army of
the Potomac’s movements, was a mistake that demonstrated he still
Midstream 131
had not fully mastered his role as commander-in-chief. Nor was Lin-
coln’s eVort to lead Hooker by suggestion successful, as the general
became increasingly resistant to advice.
Hooker devised a strategically sound plan that initially fooled Lee,
and he crossed the Rappahannock River without opposition. But
Hooker’s nerve then failed, and he assumed a defensive position near
Chancellorsville. Quickly regaining the initiative, Lee boldly attacked,
and after two days of fighting, the psychologically whipped Hooker
withdrew across the river on the night of May 3. Ignoring Lincoln’s
earlier admonition, he had withheld half of his army from the fighting.
Yet another of Lincoln’s generals had failed.
For several days, Lincoln anxiously awaited word of the battle’s
outcome. Noah Brooks, a Washington reporter, was at the White
House when a telegram confirming the extent of the Union’s defeat
arrived. As he read it, Lincoln’s face turned “ashen,” and Brooks had
never seen him “so dispirited.” Pacing back and forth in his oYce, the
anguished president exclaimed, “My God! my God! What will the
country say!”
Following his stunning victory, Lee decided to again invade the
North. One of his purposes, he explained to JeVerson Davis, was “to
give all the encouragement we can . . . to the rising peace party of the
North” in the upcoming elections and thereby undermine northern
will. In June, the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac
River.
�
The idea of the “home front” as part of the war eVort dates from
World War I. Lacking this concept, Lincoln and other Union leaders
did not think of northern society as a separate front in the war, and
as a result the government did not produce oYcial propaganda to
sustain morale; mobilization of civilians was at best haphazard; and
the organization of the northern economy was hit and miss. Lincoln
focused on those aspects of the home front that aVected raising man-
power or materiel.
The initial bipartisan support for the war failed to survive the sec-
ond year of the fighting. Lincoln had recognized that he needed Dem-
ocratic support, and he had been especially careful to give Democrats
military commands. But the policy of emancipation undercut Demo-
cratic support for the war and strengthened the peace elements within
the opposition’s ranks. Indeed, at the beginning of the year, Lincoln
indicated to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts that he feared
“the fire in the rear” from peace Democrats more than he did the
fighting.
When in September 1862 Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas
corpus throughout the Union for cases of disloyalty, he had authorized
military trials of civilians who interfered with the war eVort. Lincoln
necessarily gave his military commanders wide latitude in enforcing
his proclamation. On the day the battle of Chancellorsville began,
former congressman Clement Vallandigham, a leading peace Demo-
crat, delivered a campaign speech in Ohio that condemned emanci-
pation, termed the draft and suspension of the writ of habeas corpus
unconstitutional, and called for an armistice and peace negotiations
with the Confederacy. Three days later Union soldiers arrested Vallan-
digham for violating General Ambrose Burnside’s order against ex-
pressing sympathy for the enemy. A military court quickly found Val-
landigham guilty and sentenced him to imprisonment for the duration
of the war.
A storm of protest erupted over Vallandigham’s arrest and trial,
and even some Republican papers were critical. Privately, Lincoln
wished that the army had left Vallandigham alone, but he felt he could
not constantly second-guess his generals’ decisions. It was testimony
to his political skill that he found a way to get out of the dilemma
Vallandigham’s arrest posed without undercutting his subordinates. As
commander-in-chief, the president had to review military convictions,
so Lincoln modified Vallandigham’s sentence to banishment to the
Confederacy. The Ohio Democrat soon left the South on a blockade
runner and made his way to Canada, where he cooperated with Con-
federate agents in seeking to overthrow the Lincoln administration.
Up to this point, Lincoln had made no concerted eVort to shape
northern public opinion beyond his annual messages and the oYcial
documents he issued as president, although Lyman Trumbull’s claim
that instead of “attempting to form or create public sentiment, he
waited till he saw whither it tended” and then simply took advantage
Midstream
133
In this anti-Lincoln cartoon, shadowy Union soldiers arrest Clement Val-

landigham in his bedroom in the middle of the night as the result of a
speech the Ohio Democrat delivered against the war. Democrats portrayed
Vallandigham, here shown in white, as a martyr following his arrest. (The
Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, IN #2579)
of it, was incorrect. In reality, Lincoln had been ahead of public opin-
ion on the most controversial domestic issues of the war: emancipa-
tion, conscription, and civil liberties. Sensitive to the potential danger
the civil liberties issue posed to the war eVort, he now took steps to
more directly influence public opinion. With Lee’s army currently
moving toward Maryland and Pennsylvania, states with large disaf-
fected populations, Lincoln was justly concerned about disloyalty at
home. Earlier he had ignored the resolutions of a meeting of Albany
Democrats that condemned Vallandigham’s arrest, but now he replied
with a carefully crafted, vigorously argued letter directed to Erastus
Corning defending his record on civil liberties.
“Under cover of ‘Liberty of speech’ ‘Liberty of the press’ and ‘Ha-
beas corpus,’ ” Lincoln declared, the rebellion “hoped to keep on foot
amongst us a most eYcient corps of spies, informers, supplyers, and
aiders and abbettors of their cause. . . .” The courts, he argued, were
“utterly incompetent” to deal with such an enormous threat. Vallan-
digham was arrested, not because he opposed the administration po-
litically, but because “he was damaging the army.” Lincoln avoided
actually examining Vallandigham’s words and instead shrewdly in-
voked one of his most eVective images to clinch his point. “Must I
shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,” he trenchantly asked,
“while I must not touch a hair of a wiley agitator who induces him
to desert?”
Republicans were ecstatic in their praise of Lincoln’s letter, which
was circulated throughout the North as a pamphlet by the Loyal Pub-
lication Society. Bolstered by this response, Lincoln issued an even
more forceful letter to a group of Ohio Democrats, bluntly accusing
Vallandigham of having done more than “any other one man” to
encourage desertions and resistance to the draft.
Indeed, one of Lincoln’s main motivations for suspending the writ
was to enforce conscription. He dismissed the idea that the draft was
unconstitutional. The Constitution, he noted, gave Congress the
power to raise armies “fully, completely, unconditionally,” which, he
insisted, included the power to coerce military service if volunteering
proved insuYcient. When Democratic state judges in Pennsylvania,
ignoring his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, began freeing
draftees in 1863, Attorney General Edward Bates reported that Lincoln
was “more angry than I ever saw him.” Vowing to enforce the law
and threatening to arrest any judge who interfered with the draft,
Lincoln considered these judicial acts “a formed plan of the democratic
copperheads, deliberately acted out to defeat the Government, and aid
the enemy.” Unwilling to brook any interference with the raising of
manpower, Lincoln instructed army oYcers to ignore these court or-
ders, a tactic that proved eVective.
Lincoln had skillfully minimized the damage from the Vallan-
digham case, but interfering with traditional civil liberties carried
great political risks. When Burnside subsequently suppressed the
Chicago Times, the most important Democratic paper in the West,
Lincoln quickly rescinded the order. The civil liberties issue further
Midstream 135
alienated regular Democrats, already angry over emancipation, from
the administration.
�
Following the Battle of Chancellorsville, Lincoln visited the Army
of the Potomac and found morale high. Hooker, however, was reluc-
tant to resume the oVensive, and the president was not entirely frank
when he said to a reporter that his confidence in the Union com-
mander was “unshaken.” With Halleck unwilling to oVer strategic
advice and his faith in Hooker waning, Lincoln felt compelled to ex-
ercise more forceful control over the Union’s main eastern army by
keeping its commander on a short leash. By this point the Union’s
military setbacks had induced Lincoln to discard his previous deference
to professional military men, and he began to exhibit a growing self-
confidence in military matters.
Possessing a sounder strategic grasp than his generals, Lincoln
found himself stymied by personalities and the Union’s ineYcient com-
mand system. Most of his generals resented civilian meddling in mil-
itary matters and almost automatically rejected any suggestions the
president oVered. At the same time, Halleck often dragged his feet
when he disagreed with Lincoln’s strategic decisions and invented a
host of excuses to delay issuing the requisite orders. Halleck’s declining
reputation in Washington made him an eVective shield to deflect con-
gressional criticism, but in other ways he was a severe disappointment
to the president. Lincoln in particular complained about what he called
Halleck’s perpetual “habitual attitude of demur.”
In invading Pennsylvania, Lee hoped to score a knockout blow
against the Army of the Potomac, then follow up this victory with
the capture of a major northern city such as Philadelphia. Uncertain
of Lee’s intentions, Hooker was slow to react and proposed to advance
on Richmond rather than pursue the Confederate army. “I think Lee’s
Army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point,” the president
patiently explained in vetoing this idea, after which Hooker tardily
turned north and warily shadowed Lee’s movements. With Lee’s army
strung out along several roads, Lincoln urged Hooker to find a weak
point and attack, but the Union commander seemingly had no desire
to confront Lee again.
It was by now obvious that Lincoln’s attempt to bolster Hooker’s
confidence by giving him direct personal access had not worked, and
he had also come to appreciate that this arrangement hurt the Union
military eVort by establishing competing channels of authority. Taking
decisive action to remedy the situation, Lincoln peremptorily in-
structed Hooker that he was under Halleck’s authority and was to
obey the general-in-chief ’s orders. Lincoln’s problems with Hooker
gave him a better understanding of the importance of maintaining a
clear chain of command, and he therefore corresponded with his gen-
erals less frequently in the second half of the war. Moreover, as the
war continued he increasingly confined his attention to strategy rather
than trying to direct the movement of armies from Washington.
Through trial and error, he was developing a sound conception of his
role as commander-in-chief.
Nevertheless, the Union still had not developed an eVective com-
mand structure. Several factors contributed to this situation. Lincoln’s
lack of military training meant he could not write unambiguous mil-
itary orders to his generals. He relied on Halleck to do this, but the
chief general had had no more luck than Lincoln in getting generals
to act quickly in accordance with these orders. Furthermore, the timid,
stolid commanding general was unwilling to exert any overall direc-
tion on the war. As a result, Lincoln had to be present to deal with
problems as they arose and make the crucial strategic decisions, so he
rarely left Washington except to visit the army.
In late June, Hooker submitted his resignation in a gambit to regain
his previous access to the president. Lincoln responded forcefully to
this new crisis. He promptly accepted Hooker’s resignation and, with-
out consulting his cabinet, placed George Gordon Meade in command
of the Army of the Potomac. Changing commanders in such a fluid
military situation was dangerous, but Lincoln believed he had no
choice. The army’s new commander, its fifth in a year, was a cautious,
industrious man who held aloof from politics and was respected by
the troops. His quick temper, however, caused one observer to call
him a “damned old goggle-eyed snapping turtle.”
Only a few days after Meade assumed command, the two armies
Midstream 137
accidentally collided outside the small town of Gettysburg, in south-
eastern Pennsylvania, and the largest, most costly battle of the war
ensued. For three days, from July 1 to 3, the two armies battered one
another. In the first day of fighting, Confederate forces pushed the
Union troops south of the town, where they formed a new line, but
Lee’s eVorts on the second day to dislodge Meade’s left and right flanks
failed. On the final day the Confederate commander launched a mas-
sive assault, led by General George Pickett, against the Union center.
The attacking troops were mowed down by Union artillery and rifle
fire. Following this failure, Lee ordered a retreat, but much to Lin-
coln’s chagrin, Meade failed to vigorously pursue, and the Army of
Northern Virginia escaped back to Virginia. Lincoln was convinced
that Meade had squandered an opportunity to destroy Lee’s army and
end the war. “Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand,”
he cried, “and they would not close it.” On this occasion, Lincoln’s
desire to eliminate the threat posed by Lee’s army clouded his judg-
ment, and he uncharacteristically exaggerated the ease with which it
could have been destroyed.
Still, Lincoln recognized how important this Union victory was.
JeVerson Davis had dispatched the Confederate Vice-President, Alex-
ander H. Stephens, on a peace mission, but when it was clear that
Lee had been defeated, Lincoln refused to allow Stephens to come to
Washington.
�
The Union pursued a more aggressive military strategy in the
Mississippi Valley, where Ulysses S. Grant was in command. Grant’s
goal was to capture Vicksburg, a heavily fortified stronghold situated
on a high bluV overlooking the Mississippi River. The Union con-
trolled the upper and lower reaches of the Mississippi River, but the
250-mile stretch from Vicksburg to Port Hudson remained in enemy
hands. Vicksburg blocked Union shipping and prevented the move-
ment of troops and supplies. It also provided the only link between
the trans-Mississippi Confederacy and the rest of the Confederacy and,
as such, was an important entry point for food and supplies. Early in
the war, Lincoln had correctly observed that Vicksburg was the vital
point on the Mississippi line, and “the war can never be brought to a
close until that key is in our pocket.”
In September 1862 former Illinois Democratic congressman John
McClernand presented Lincoln with a plan to gather recruits among
his midwestern supporters for a new army that would operate against
Vicksburg under his command. Perceiving military and political ben-
efits in this proposal, Lincoln gave his approval the following month,
and in accord with Lincoln’s instructions Stanton drew up Mc-
Clernand’s orders. In purposely vague language, these orders stated
that McClernand would have control of the troops he raised, subject
to Halleck’s direction, and if they were not needed by Grant. Events
would demonstrate that Lincoln and Stanton had left themselves con-
siderable leeway to abandon McClernand’s plan, but Lincoln’s action
badly muddied the situation. He compounded the problem by not
informing Grant of McClernand’s appointment. As Halleck later grum-
bled, Lincoln’s “fingers itch to be into everything going on.”
As was often the case, Lincoln carefully cloaked his true intentions
in this matter. On the one hand, the opening of the Mississippi was a
critical western demand, and he intended to use the ambitious Mc-
Clernand to cement western Democrats’ support for the war. On the
other hand, Vicksburg was in Grant’s department, and as Grant later
succinctly observed concerning McClernand’s appointment, “two
commanders on the same field are always one too many.” At this
point, Lincoln was not yet sold on Grant’s abilities, and in a serious
misjudgment he greatly overrated McClernand’s military talent, but it
seems likely that he never intended for the boastful McClernand to
exercise independent command unless Grant either refused to attack
Vicksburg or completely failed in his operations.
But McClernand proved too obtuse and too blinded by dreams of
military glory to fill the role Lincoln had devised for him. Bringing
his new bride with him to Memphis, he discovered that Grant had
taken control of the troops he had raised and sent them down the
river, and that instead of having an independent command, he was in
charge of a corps in Grant’s army. The indignant McClernand pep-
pered the president with complaints about his treatment and demands
for an independent command. “I have too many family controversies,
(so to speak) already on my hands, to voluntarily . . . take up another,”
Midstream 139
an exasperated Lincoln replied in January. “You are now doing well=
well for the country, and well for yourself. . . . Allow me to beg, that
for your sake, for my sake, and for the country’s sake, you give your
whole attention to the better work.”
Once again, Lincoln put too much faith in his powers of persuasion
to make a general useful. Unmollified, McClernand continued to nurse
his grievances until Grant finally sacked him, bringing to an end Lin-
coln’s ill-considered scheme. Still adjusting to his role as commander-
in-chief, Lincoln was slowly learning how to assess generals’ abilities,
as well as the necessity of maintaining clear lines of military authority.
Grant’s major problem in operating against Vicksburg was terrain.
The only dry land suitable for military operations was south and east
of the city, and Grant spent the entire winter unsuccessfully searching
for a water route that would take his army south of Vicksburg. Frus-
tration mounted with each new failure. Critics charged that Grant was
both incompetent and a drunkard and demanded his removal. Lincoln
dispatched several observers to check on Grant, and they sent back a
ringing endorsement of the general. Lincoln had never met Grant, but
he was impressed with the general’s energy and determination and
resisted demands he be removed from command. “I think Grant has
hardly a friend left, except myself,” the president remarked to one of
his secretaries.
Grant, however, was amazingly resourceful and not easily discour-
aged. In a new plan, he marched his army along the western bank of
the river to a point below Vicksburg, where Union gunboats that had
run past the Confederate guns at night transported his army across
the river. After fighting a series of battles, he drove the Confederate
army back into Vicksburg’s defenses and trapped it inside the town,
which surrendered on July 4, 1863. The fall of Port Hudson a few days
later brought the entire Mississippi under Union control. In saluting
this accomplishment, Lincoln observed that “the Father of Waters
again goes unvexed to the sea.”
As a westerner and a former flatboat operator, Lincoln understood
how critical Grant’s victory was. Unlike northern public opinion,
which was fixated on the Virginia theater, Lincoln recognized that the
western theater was every bit as important to the war’s eventual out-
come, and that the loss of the Mississippi Valley, with its concentration
of slaves and vital food– and cotton–producing areas, was a serious
blow to the Confederacy. Grant’s operation also had great significance
for Union military strategy. Lacking a base of supplies, Grant’s troops
foraged for food from nearby farms and plantations, increasing the
hardship on southern civilians. With Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, the
Union strategy moved relentlessly closer to that of total war.
Equally important, the Vicksburg campaign highlighted Grant’s
dogged determination and leadership ability. Lincoln, who had earlier
voiced doubts about Grant’s strategy, wrote a generous letter to the
victorious general in which he declared, “I now wish to make the
personal acknowledgement that you were right, and I was wrong.”
Having developed a new appreciation of Grant’s abilities, Lincoln af-
firmed, “Grant is my man and I am his the rest of the war.”
Together, the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were a
major turning point in the war. “We are now in the darkest hour of
our political existence,” conceded JeVerson Davis.
�
The improved military situation, however, did not eradicate the
deep divisions over the war on the northern home front. Especially
controversial was conscription, which in theory, at least, directly af-
fected large numbers of ordinary Northerners.
When volunteering fell oV in 1862, Lincoln had instituted a limited
draft, and in March 1863, Congress finally established a full-fledged
system of conscription. The conscription law, however, contained two
major loopholes. Men who were otherwise eligible could avoid service
by either hiring a substitute (which would free one from all subsequent
drafts) or paying a $300 commutation fee (which applied only to the
current draft call). Democrats raised the cry that it was “a rich man’s
war and a poor man’s fight.”
In reality, the draft produced very few men for the army=only
46,000 conscripts and 118,000 substitutes, or less than 10 percent of the
total Union strength. The real purpose of the draft was to stimulate
volunteering. Nevertheless, coerced military service was bound to be
controversial in a society that prided itself on the liberty it granted its
citizens, and where conscription had previously been unknown under
Midstream 141
the Constitution. Festering resentment soon boiled over into violent
resistance in a number of states, and antidraft riots occurred in several
northern cities.
None of these popular disturbances approached in scope or destruc-
tion the draft riots in New York City in July 1863. Violence exploded
following the initial drawing of names and continued for four days.
Members of the mob cheered for JeVerson Davis and attacked the
police, soldiers, well-known Republicans, and the city’s black popula-
tion. “JeVerson Davis rules New York today,” George Templeton
Strong, a socially prominent Republican, seethed as the riot raged.
Eventually the government had to rush troops from Gettysburg in
order to restore order. More than a million dollars in property was
destroyed and at least 105 people lost their lives, making this riot the
most deadly civil disturbance in American history.
Led by New York governor Horatio Seymour, Democrats de-
manded that Lincoln suspend the draft, alleging that it was unconsti-
tutional and should be tested in court first. Adopting a middle course,
Lincoln, who had earlier refused to employ massive force to suppress
the rioters, also rejected calls to stop the draft. The Union’s need for
more men was pressing, and he recognized that suspension of the
draft would encourage the Confederacy. Nor was he willing to wait
until the Supreme Court ruled on the issue (in fact, the court never
dealt with this question during the war). Instead, he postponed re-
sumption of the draft to allow emotions to subside. Then in August,
without fanfare, the draft quietly resumed in the metropolis.
As president, Lincoln tended to focus on policy goals rather than
constitutional issues. From his perspective, winning the war took pri-
ority, and he adopted policies that he believed promoted that objective
without anguishing over their constitutionality. His policies were nor-
mally responses to specific events and developments rather than based
on any constitutional blueprint. Nor was he excessively concerned
about the longterm eVect of such policies, as he was certain they
would cease once peace was restored. In his letter to Erastus Corning,
he denied that there was any danger that “the American people will,
by means of military arrests during the rebellion, lose the right of
public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the law of evi-
dence, trial by jury, and Habeas corpus, throughout the indefinite
peaceful future . . . any more than I am able to believe that a man
could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary
illness, as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of
his healthful life.”
To him the government’s power to institute a draft was clear, but
even so he too easily dismissed northern complaints about this inter-
ference with personal liberty. Late in 1863, Lincoln wrote a paper dis-
cussing the legal issues raised by conscription. Insisting that the power
to raise armies was “expressly” and “unconditionally” granted by the
Constitution, he argued that it was “not a power to raise armies if
State authorities consent; nor if the men to compose the armies are
entirely willing; but it is a power to raise and support armies given
to congress by the constitution, without an if.” Lincoln was on shakier
ground when he tried to defend the equity of substitution and com-
mutation. In the end, perhaps believing his letter was inadequate, he
decided not to send it.
The Union’s recent military victories made Lincoln more confident
and raised his spirits, which the New York City riots only temporarily
deflated. Hay reported in August that Lincoln was “in fine whack. I
have rarely seen him more serene and busy. He is managing this war,
the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union,
all at once.” Lincoln’s show of consulting the cabinet following the
crisis in December 1862 soon ended. “I never knew with what tyran-
nous authority he rules the Cabinet, till now,” Hay wrote. “The most
important things he decides and there is no cavil.”
The summer of 1863 represented the peak of antiwar Democrats’
power and influence. In the Midwest, the elections of 1862 had mo-
mentarily made radical Copperhead elements dominant in the legis-
latures in Indiana and Illinois. After repeated clashes, the Republican
governors of these states, Richard Yates in Illinois and Oliver P. Mor-
ton in Indiana, had, in eVect, dispensed with the legislature. In contrast
to more excitable Republican leaders, Lincoln was normally level-
headed in his judgments, but the harsh criticism and extreme rhetoric
of the opposition over the past year had convinced him that there
existed an organized conspiracy to undermine the war eVort. Hence
he believed that this was no time to stand on constitutional niceties
or democratic scruples. When Morton ran out of money to run the
Midstream 143
Indiana government, the War Department secretly provided him with
an illegal $250,000 subsidy.
In this situation, Democrats in several key states selected prominent
peace Democrats to head the party’s ticket. The most notorious ex-
ample was former congressman Clement Vallandigham, currently in
exile in Canada, who was nominated for governor in Ohio. In ac-
cepting the Democratic nomination Vallandigham declared that the
Confederacy could not be defeated and called for peace negotiations.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats named controversial state supreme court
justice George Woodward, who upheld the right of secession, as their
gubernatorial candidate. In both states, Democrats intended to chal-
lenge the Republicans not just on the issue of emancipation, but also
on the issue of continuing the war.
Although Lincoln’s own state did not have a statewide election in
1863, Republicans organized a rally, to be held on September 3, to
counteract Democratic calls for peace. When organizers asked Lincoln
to speak at the meeting, he was tempted to accept (it would have
been his first visit home since the war began), but with a Union
oVensive in East Tennessee finally under way, he concluded that mat-
ters were too pressing to leave Washington. Therefore, he decided to
write a public letter, which he promised would be “rather good.”
In appealing to Northerners to drop partisan motivations, Lincoln
asserted that compromise was impossible and that the only choices
were military victory or surrender of the Union. In the letter’s most
important section, he took up the issue of emancipation and reiterated
that “the promise being made, must be kept.” To his critics, Lincoln
responded, “You say you will not fight to free negroes. . . . Fight you,
then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on
purpose to aid you in saving the Union.” He emphasized that African
Americans’ assistance in the war was essential if the Union was to be
preserved, and noted that some military commanders believed that
emancipation and the recruitment of black troops “constituted the
heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.” Contrasting the patriotic zeal
of black soldiers with the sulking disloyalty of Copperheads, Lincoln
emphasized that when victory was finally won, “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 man-
kind 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.”
Near the end of his letter, which was addressed to his old friend
James Conkling, he observed that “the signs look better” and saluted
the contribution of both Union soldiers and sailors: “Thanks to all.
For the great republic=for the principle it lives by, and keeps alive=
for man’s vast future,=thanks to all.” Cautioning against over-
optimism, he closed, “Let us diligently apply the means, never doubt-
ing that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful
result.”
Once again Lincoln had employed great eloquence in defending his
policies. Yet the reaction to the letter divided along predictable partisan
lines. Democrats were generally critical, oVering no more than a
grudging nod to its sentiments, while Republicans applauded it,
though the New York Times certainly erred when it claimed, “Abraham
Lincoln is to-day the most popular man in the Republic.” A veteran
of many party campaigns, Lincoln knew that eloquence alone did not
sway many voters.
�
Lincoln had little time to bask in the praise Republicans heaped
on this letter before he confronted a new military crisis in Tennessee.
Like so many Union generals, William Rosecrans often seemed nearly
immobilized. He cited one pretext after another to delay action, and
it took constant=and increasingly forceful=prodding from Washing-
ton to get him to move. Once finally under way, however, he ad-
vanced with unusual speed and deftly maneuvered Braxton Bragg’s
Confederate army out of Tennessee and occupied Chattanooga, in the
southeast corner of the state. Chattanooga, which guarded critical rail
and river lines, was almost as vital a strategic site as Vicksburg.
Rosecrans’s zeal to push into northern Georgia soon outran pru-
dence, however, and he suVered a major defeat at Chickamauga when
Bragg attacked his dispersed forces on September 19–20, sending them
fleeing back to Chattanooga, where Bragg’s pursuing troops bottled
them up. Oscillating between confidence and despair, the Union com-
Midstream 145
mander sent contradictory messages about his situation, prompting
Lincoln to remark that Rosecrans seemed “confused and stunned like
a duck hit on the head.” The Union’s only supply line to the besieged
town was a vulnerable, tortuous road over the mountains, and federal
soldiers were soon put on quarter rations.
As was his usual practice, Lincoln acted decisively to deal with this
potentially disastrous situation. After an emergency night meeting at
the War Department, the government detached 20,000 troops from
the Army of the Potomac and sent them west by rail to reinforce
Rosecrans’s army. In addition, in mid-October Lincoln placed Grant in
command of all Union forces between the Appalachians and the Mis-
sissippi and gave him sweeping powers to deal with the crisis in Ten-
nessee. Grant immediately removed Rosecrans, who seemed almost
paralyzed, and went to Chattanooga to personally take command.
The army’s situation at Chattanooga was still precarious when the
Ohio and Pennsylvania elections occurred on October 14. Lincoln con-
fessed to Welles that he was exceedingly anxious about the outcome,
since Copperhead victories in those two key northern states would be
a major, perhaps fatal, blow to the Union cause. Lincoln’s concern
proved exaggerated, for the results demonstrated that the Democrats
had seriously blundered by nominating extreme peace candidates. The
Republicans won a narrow victory in Pennsylvania, while in Ohio,
Vallandigham was crushed by a margin of over 100,000 votes. Partic-
ularly striking was the overwhelming opposition to him among Ohio
soldiers, many of whom had been Democrats before the war. Unlike
Pennsylvania, Ohio allowed its soldiers to vote in their camps, and
about 95 percent cast Republican ballots. The soldier vote revealed
how deeply the troops hated the Copperheads, whom they considered
traitors.
Elections elsewhere in the North the following month brought
more cheering news. Republicans regained control of the New York
legislature by a commanding margin, and were generally victorious
outside New Jersey and the border states. Republicans believed that
Lincoln’s public letters had played an important role in the party’s
improved showing, and the northern elections demonstrated that
opinion was beginning to swing in favor of emancipation.
Additional good news soon arrived from Chattanooga. After open-
ing a more reliable supply line to the city and receiving additional
reinforcements, Grant assumed the oVensive and, following a series
of preliminary victories, in late November drove the Confederates
from a seemingly impregnable stronghold on Missionary Ridge. The
Confederate army retreated to northern Georgia. Both armies went
into winter quarters, but the Union army was now poised to invade
Georgia when campaigning resumed next year. In addition, the mili-
tary defeats of 1863 were a death blow to Confederate hopes for Eu-
ropean recognition. From London, Henry Adams reported that “the
disasters of the rebels are unredeemed by even any hope of success.
. . . It is now conceded . . . that all idea of intervention is at an end.”
Moreover, the capture of Vicksburg and rescue of the army at Chat-
tanooga established Grant as the Union’s most impressive commander.
Lincoln had finally found the general he was looking for.
A major diplomatic crisis with Britain was resolved as well. Unable
to construct a navy, the Confederacy sought to build ships by subterfuge
in Great Britain, in violation of international law. Several cruisers, in-
cluding the Alabama, had been built in British shipyards and had inflicted
damage totalling millions of dollars on Union shipping. In 1863 a Liver-
pool firm began constructing two rams powerful enough to destroy the
Union blockade. Armed with evidence provided by Charles Francis Ad-
ams, the American minister, that these vessels were secretly owned by
the Confederacy, the British government finally seized them. This epi-
sode marked the last serious diplomatic crisis of the war. The Confed-
eracy was left to stand or fall on its own resources.
�
Lincoln’s management of the war changed after mid-1863. He
turned much of the day-to-day direction over to Halleck and Stanton,
and he also abandoned his eVort to transform generals. His attempts
to invigorate McClellan, Hooker, and even Meade had been unsuc-
cessful. The war had winnowed out some of the Union’s less com-
petent generals, and Lincoln finally recognized that he could not direct
military movements from afar. Concentrating on larger strategic ques-
tions, he increasingly relied on his generals to evaluate their own
situations in the field.
Midstream 147
The military events of the year had confirmed in Lincoln’s mind
how hard it was to find generals who could administer large armies
and also make sound strategic decisions. He was especially frustrated
by most of his generals’ unwillingness to exploit the enemy’s mistakes.
“How much depends in military matters on one master mind,” he
observed during the Gettysburg campaign. He had found such a leader
in Grant. But the war was fundamentally a two-theater war, and Grant
could not be in both the East and the West. Hoping to instill some
energy in the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln considered the possibility
in 1863 of bringing Grant east. He rejected this idea for the moment,
but the seed had been planted in his mind.
The fighting in 1863 marked a transition phase in the evolution of
the Union’s military strategy. Lincoln’s policy of emancipation made
compromise with the rebels impossible. Early in 1863 Halleck wrote
to Grant, “The character of the war has very much changed within
the last year. There is now no possible hope of reconciliation. . . . We
must conquer the rebels or be conquered by them.” This attitude
resulted in much harsher treatment of civilians.
The Union’s new policy toward southern whites was most force-
fully directed against committed supporters of the Confederacy, es-
pecially slaveholders, but in practice all southern civilians, including
slaves, suVered at the hands of the invading armies. By 1863 Union
troops considered all southern whites to be essentially disloyal and
made no careful discrimination when destroying civilian property.
This new conception of war was most apparent in Grant’s opera-
tions in the West. Again, Lincoln’s policy of emancipation heralded
the change in policy. In the fall of 1862 Grant abandoned his earlier
approach of trying to protect civilian property and instructed his
troops to forage widely for supplies. “Our armies are devastating the
land,” Union general William Tecumseh Sherman noted early in 1863,
“and it is sad to See the destruction that attends our progress=we
cannot help it. Farms disappear, houses are burned and plundered and
every living animal killed and eaten.” The purpose of such action was
not to break civilians’ will to resist; rather, it was to deny these re-
sources to the Confederate army and to destroy the region’s economic
value to the Confederacy.
Beginning in 1863, Grant also sought to liberate as many slaves as
possible to weaken the Confederacy even further. It was the policy of
the government, Halleck tersely wrote Grant, “to withdraw from the
use of the enemy all the slaves you can, and to employ those so
withdrawn to the best possible advantage against the enemy.” These
policies, which provoked no opposition or criticism from Lincoln, laid
the basis for adoption of the strategy of total war in the final year of
the war.
�
Shortly after the 1863 elections, Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to
participate in ceremonies dedicating a national cemetery on the bat-
tlefield. The famous orator Edward Everett, a former president of
Harvard, was the featured speaker, but the organizers asked Lincoln
to make “a few appropriate remarks.” Throughout his presidency, Lin-
coln routinely declined speaking invitations, and thus observers were
surprised when he agreed to go to Pennsylvania. Several correspon-
dents had previously urged him to address the northern people con-
cerning the basic issues of the war, and he chose this forum to do so.
The national government had no wartime propaganda agency, and
much of the propaganda issued in the North during the war was the
work of civilian organizations such as the Loyal Publication Society
in New York. Nor did Lincoln try to systematically shape popular
opinion. His eVorts in this regard, while often eVective, were sporadic,
usually precipitated by a crisis, such as Vallandigham’s arrest, or by an
oYcial duty, such as his annual messages to Congress.
Lincoln gave considerable thought to what he would say on this
occasion. He intended to describe the larger purpose of the war, and
he carefully prepared a draft before he boarded a special train that
took him and other Washington dignitaries to Gettysburg. He revised
his speech that evening, and the next morning made a clean copy
from which to read.
A larger crowd than expected, perhaps 15,000, was present for the
ceremony. Everett spoke for more than two hours, describing in detail
the battle that had occurred there. Then the president rose and, after ad-
justing his glasses, delivered the most famous presidential speech in
American history. When he reached the conclusion, he spontaneously
Midstream 149
added the phrase “under God,” but otherwise stuck to the draft he had
prepared. The entire speech lasted only about two minutes. Indeed, the
audience, which had expected a longer speech, had hardly begun to pay
attention to the president’s words when he sat down. In his brief re-
marks, the former backwoodsman and onetime country lawyer distilled
the essence of America and the meaning of the war. Lincoln placed the
promise of equality at the heart of the American experience and, antic-
ipating the end of slavery in the Republic, called for a new birth of free-
dom in the country to redeem the war’s terrible cost.
The enduring fame of the Gettysburg Address derives from several
qualities: its musical cadences, reminiscent of the Bible Lincoln knew
so well; its simple language; its use of repetition; its succinct expression
of overarching ideas; and its generous spirit and soaring vision. The
structure allowed him to link the country’s past, present, and future
in one sustained, abstract view. Its eVectiveness also rests on Lincoln’s
shrewd decision not to focus on the recent battle, the events of the
war, or the cemetery that was being dedicated. Indeed, the speech
could have been delivered on any “great battle-field” of the war. It
has been frequently commented on that he used the word “nation”
no less than five times in the speech. But equally important was his
dating of the nation’s birth in 1776, with the Declaration of Indepen-
dence, and not with the adoption of the Constitution. His ultimate
purpose was to justify the transformation of Union war aims during
the last year to include not just preservation of the Union, but the
destruction of slavery, in order to fulfill the ideals of the Revolution.
Democratic papers generally dismissed Lincoln’s eVort, while Re-
publican papers were favorable, although some gave it only limited
attention. The importance and appreciation of the Gettysburg Address
would grow with time, but fair-minded observers discerned its quali-
ties immediately. To Lincoln, Everett frankly confessed, “I should be
glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea
of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
Yet the harsh political reality was that whatever the power of his
address, Lincoln remained a vulnerable president. True, after the grim
winter of 1862–63, the Union had made significant military strides. In
the East, while Lee’s army was still a genuine threat, it no longer had
the striking power it had possessed at the beginning of the year. In
the West, the Union’s achievements were more impressive=and more
decisive. The Mississippi River was under Union control, the Confed-
erate army had finally been pushed out of Tennessee, and the heart
of the Confederacy was now open to Union invasion.
Northern public opinion, however, failed to grasp the significance
of these developments. Fixated on Virginia and correctly recognizing
that Lee, if weakened, was hardly defeated, many Northerners contin-
ued to doubt Lincoln’s leadership ability. Once again, popular hopes
at the beginning of spring that the latest Union oVensive would end
the war had been dashed. As head of the government, Lincoln natu-
rally was the target of this growing impatience and frustration.
The 1863 elections in the North revealed that emancipation enjoyed
much broader support than a year earlier, less because of any moral
concern for the welfare of black Americans than from a conviction
that freeing the slaves would weaken the Confederacy and hasten the
end of the war. The Illinois State Journal, the Republican state organ
in Lincoln’s home town of Springfield, claimed that had a referendum
been held in the fall of 1862, northern voters would have soundly
rejected emancipation, but that it would now win by “an over-
whelming majority.” While this assertion was an exaggeration, Lincoln
acknowledged in his annual message in December that the Emanci-
pation Proclamation had been “followed by dark and doubtful days,”
but with hostility to emancipation dissipating, he optimistically
claimed that, “the crisis which threatened to divide the friends of the
Union is past.”
Nevertheless, the major lesson of the 1863 elections for Democrats
was the necessity of keeping the extreme peace advocates in the back-
ground to avoid a popular image of disloyalty. Experienced commen-
tators attributed the recent Republican victories primarily to the Dem-
ocrats’ blunder in nominating men such as Vallandigham, rather than
to any groundswell of popular support for Lincoln.
With victory still unattained and murmurings about his leadership
growing, Lincoln seemed destined to be a one-term president. Ever a
political realist, Lincoln recognized that without a dramatic change in
the military situation, he was unlikely to be reelected. Feeling desper-
ately alone, he was determined to persevere in the struggle, but he was
increasingly uncertain whether the northern people would sustain him.
Chapter 7
TO FINISH THE TASK
It is difficult today to appreciate Abraham Lincoln’s political sit-

uation at the beginning of 1864. Blessed with hindsight, the modern
observer marvels at his growth in oYce, at his ability to deal with a
discordant group of advisers, at his skillful handling of a wide variety
of diYcult problems, and at his resolute determination to see the war
through to victory. Yet Lincoln’s contemporaries, who were denied
the advantage of knowing the future, were increasingly critical of the
president and his policies. The war had lasted much longer and proven
far more costly, in terms of both lives and money, than anyone had
anticipated in 1861, and yet after almost three years of fighting the
Confederacy remained strong and defiant. The growing frustration
over the war welled up in 1864 on the northern home front and
seriously threatened Lincoln’s chances of reelection.
�
Throughout his life, Lincoln’s ambition to be somebody had
driven him ahead. Believing that his leadership was necessary for the
Union to be preserved, he was anxious to win a second term in oYce,
but he felt compelled to observe the nineteenth-century propriety of
not seeming to seek the nomination. Having endured a torrent of
criticism since assuming oYce, he could not fail but be personally
satisfied by the popular endorsement that a victory in November
would represent.
While Lincoln had enjoyed a certain measure of support among
common citizens, he had never exercised the same hold over party
leaders in Washington, who were not in awe of him either personally
or politically. Even many Republicans in the capital believed that he
was too vacillating to be an eVective leader. Illinois Senator Lyman
Trumbull told an associate in February, 1864, “You would be surprised,
in talking with public men we meet here, to find how few, when you
come to get at their real sentiments, are for Mr. Lincoln’s reëlection.
There is a distrust and fear that he is too undecided and ineYcient to
put down the rebellion.”
The most important group that wanted to put Lincoln aside in
1864 was the radical Republicans. Strongly antislavery, the radical wing
of Lincoln’s party had clamored for a vigorous war against the Con-
federacy that would destroy slavery and remodel southern society
along lines of that of the North. When Lincoln took the first steps
toward instituting a program of Reconstruction in the occupied areas
of the South, the radicals privately voiced their unhappiness.
Unlike many Northerners during the war, Lincoln never demon-
ized Southerners or appealed to sectional hatreds to gain personal
support. He wanted a lasting peace that would avoid the need for any
long-term military occupation of the defeated southern states. In his
first message to Congress, on July 4, 1861, he glanced ahead to the
problem of Reconstruction. “Lest there be some uneasiness . . . as to
what is to be the course of the government, towards the Southern
States, after the rebellion shall have been suppressed,” he said with an
obvious eye toward reassuring southern whites, “the Executive deems
it proper to say, it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by
the Constitution, and the laws.” Yet by the time he formulated a
program of Reconstruction, the war had already forced him to stretch
the Constitution in ways he had never imagined when it began.
In devising a program of Reconstruction, he carefully balanced his
instinctive desire for a generous peace with the necessity of fashioning
a political consensus. The majority of Democrats, who wanted simply
to restore the Union as it existed in 1861 and opposed any penalties
on southern whites, were out of step with northern sentiment and
could be ignored. The division within the Republican party, however,
was more significant and troubling. Moderate and conservative Re-
publicans opposed any sweeping revolution in southern society, but
at the minimum they insisted on maintaining emancipation, and some
favored penalties against at least the leaders of the Confederacy. The
radicals, on the other hand, favored instituting fundamental change in
To Finish the Task 153
southern values and society. In addition to emancipation, they wanted
blacks to be given greater rights and for the government to protect
those rights. Most wanted to extend legal equality to the former slaves,
and some went so far as to advocate black suVrage in the South after
the war.
For a substantial period after the war began, Lincoln had clung to
the belief that secession was the act of a minority, and the majority
of whites in the seceded states wished to return to the Union. As long
as he held this view, Reconstruction seemed a rather straightforward
and simple problem. But the unexpected resiliency of the Confederate
military eVort in 1862 undercut these assumptions and forced him to
formulate a more comprehensive program.
He devoted his greatest attention to Louisiana, which he intended
to serve as a model for other states. After the Union captured New
Orleans in 1862, Lincoln urged General Benjamin F. Butler, the Union
commander in the city, to waste no time in organizing a loyal state
government. Venturing into uncharted constitutional waters, Lincoln
instructed Butler to “follow the forms of law as far as convenient.”
Unlike the president, neither Butler nor his successor, Nathaniel P.
Banks, gave priority to this task and little had been accomplished by
the summer of 1863. Finally, in November, Lincoln alerted the dilatory
Banks that “time is important” and pressed him to directly intervene
to start the process of organizing a loyal state government. “Without
waiting for more territory, . . . go to work and give me a tangible
nucleus which the remainder of the State may rally around as fast as
it can, and which I can at once recognize and sustain as the true State
government.” With matters moving more slowly in Louisiana than he
had hoped=Banks did not hold an election until February 1864, and
it was even longer before a new state constitution was approved=
Lincoln decided to oYcially frame a program of Reconstruction.
In issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had
been sensitive to the question of timing, not wishing his action to be
perceived as stemming from military weakness. The same considera-
tion influenced his announcement of a program of Reconstruction.
The Union’s military victories in 1863, capped by Grant’s success at
Chattanooga, prompted the president to outline his policy in his mes-
sage to Congress in December of that year. Other considerations were
pertinent as well. Unwilling to wait until the war was over, he was
anxious to get the process started, in part because he believed creating
loyal governments would weaken the Confederacy, but also because
the war powers of the presidency (which would cease in peacetime)
strengthened his hand against congressional interference.
Reflective of his ingrained conservative nature, he placed first em-
phasis on the need to establish loyal governments in the South, rather
than on changing racial or social arrangements. For Lincoln, future
loyalty, not past actions, was what counted, and he proposed a liberal
oath that “accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation
of his former unsoundness.” The task, as he saw it, was to induce
southern whites to return to their previous loyalty while preventing
die-hard rebels from exercising power. “The practical matter for de-
cision,” he commented to John Hay shortly before he outlined his
program in 1863, “is how to keep the rebellious populations from
overwhelming and outvoting the loyal minority.”
In conjunction with his annual message, he also issued a procla-
mation concerning pardon and amnesty, which outlined the oath of
allegiance southern whites had to take to regain their political rights.
He excluded certain high-ranking Confederate political, judicial, and
military oYcials from being eligible to take this oath; they would have
to apply for individual pardons, but he indicated he would be generous
in granting these.
The president specified that once 10 percent of the number of vot-
ers in 1860 had taken the stipulated oath, they could establish a new
state government. Those taking the oath had to support the Eman-
cipation Proclamation and the laws passed by Congress concerning
slavery, but Lincoln did not insist upon immediate and universal eman-
cipation. Conceding to Banks earlier that restrictions on black freedom
might initially be necessary, he suggested that “a reasonable temporary
arrangement, in relation to the landless and homeless freed people”
would be acceptable, but that he was publicly committed to “their
permanent freedom.” He thought it especially important that blacks
be given access to education, a manifestation of his longstanding belief
in self-improvement.
A political realist, Lincoln did not underestimate the tenacious
power of antiblack racism in American society, nor the diYculty of
eradicating such deep-seated feelings. Yet his views on race, and on
black Americans’ place in postwar society, were evolving, and he now
privately endorsed limited black suVrage in the South. In discussing
voting rights in Louisiana, he suggested that some blacks be included,
particularly “the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought
gallantly in our ranks.”
Lincoln’s program skillfully blended points that would satisfy radi-
cals and conservatives. His pledge to maintain the existing southern
states with their boundaries and laws appealed to conservatives, who re-
jected the radical argument that these states had ceased to exist. Radi-
cals, on the other hand, endorsed the president’s insistence that slaves
freed during the war could not be reenslaved, and that all Southerners
had to take a loyalty oath that included acceptance of emancipation.
Republicans publicly praised the president’s message, but privately
a number of party leaders believed that his program was too lenient
and rested on too small a kernel of loyalty, and many were uncertain
exactly what the condition of former slaves would be under these new
governments. The famous abolitionist Wendell Phillips, a persistent
critic, harshly accused Lincoln of seeking nothing beyond freedom for
southern blacks and being willing to leave the old landowning aris-
tocracy in power in the South. He dismissed Lincoln’s policy as de-
signed to “make as little change as possible!”
More concerned with pragmatic political objectives than ideological
rigor, Lincoln conceded that a larger base of popular support was
desirable, but he argued that the governments he had launched in
1864 in Louisiana and Arkansas would with time grow stronger. Such
a government “is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl,”
he subsequently declared, but “we shall sooner have the fowl by hatch-
ing the egg than by smashing it.”
The applause that greeted Lincoln’s Reconstruction program caused
radicals to rein in their criticism for the time being, but there was con-
siderable grumbling in Congress over Lincoln’s leadership on this and
other matters. David Davis, Lincoln’s 1860 campaign manager, who was
now a member of the Supreme Court, reported, “The politicians in and
out of Congress . . . would put Mr. Lincoln aside if they dared.”
�
Encouraged by this intraparty sniping, Secretary of the Treasury
Salmon P. Chase decided to challenge Lincoln for the Republican nom-
ination. Supremely ambitious, the egotistical Chase had unsuccessfully
sought the Republican nomination in 1860, and though he subse-
quently accepted a place in the cabinet, he never could get it out of
his head that he was more qualified to be president than Lincoln=or
indeed, anyone else in the country. Chase’s “theology is unsound,”
Ohio Senator Benjamin F. Wade acidly observed during the war. “He
thinks there is a fourth Person in the Trinity. . . . ”
The relationship between the informal, genial Lincoln and the stiV-
backed, humorless Chase had steadily deteriorated, particularly since
the cabinet crisis in December 1862. While Lincoln did not personalize
opposition, Chase was one individual he genuinely disliked, and over
the course of the war their personal relations had become increasingly
icy. In response, Chase began to regularly absent himself from cabinet
meetings. Never realizing the degree to which he was dependent on
Lincoln’s support to remain in oYce, Chase had on several occasions
resorted to the strategy of threatening to resign in order to get his
way on some matter. This strategy would work, however, only as
long as Chase was politically essential to the president.
Chase was also unhappy with Lincoln’s management style, which
left each cabinet member to run his own department without any
general consultation on policy. Convinced that Lincoln was too cau-
tious and hesitant, particularly on the slavery issue, Chase advocated
universal emancipation as part of any postwar settlement and believed
that Reconstruction required granting greater rights to former slaves,
including suVrage.
As Secretary of the Treasury, Chase controlled a vast number of
jobs, and he systematically used this patronage to advance his presi-
dential ambitions. Insisting that Chase was doing a good job in his
post, Lincoln looked the other way as the secretary built up a per-
sonal machine through his department’s patronage. Time would
show that this approach was a mistake. In much the same way that
the rot McClellan had fostered in the Army of the Potomac contin-
ued to fester after he was no longer its commander, the Treasury De-
partment politically hurt Lincoln in 1864. Only in the final weeks of
the campaign, when Lincoln finally reorganized the New York Cus-
tom House, did its employees fall in line behind the president’s re-
election campaign.
Chase’s actions were too transparent to fool veteran political lead-
ers. Fully informed of the secretary’s schemes, Lincoln outwardly
adopted a bemused attitude toward “Chase’s mad hunt after the Pres-
idency,” telling Hay with a laugh, “I suppose he will, like the bluebottle
fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find.” This pose masked
cool political calculation. Lincoln could not force Chase out of the
cabinet without oVending the radicals and deepening the internal di-
visions in the Republican party. Believing a rupture was inevitable,
Lincoln decided to wait until Chase put himself in a disadvantageous
position before taking action.
Chase always wore political blinders when it came to judging men’s
character or assessing his own political situation. It was extremely
awkward for a cabinet member to oppose the president under whom
he served, yet Chase moved serenely ahead, confident that his moral
superiority and great intellect would prevail over the ineVective, self-
educated frontier bumpkin in the White House.
In late February 1864 a group of Chase’s supporters, led by Senator
Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, issued a circular openly calling for his
nomination. The move recoiled upon its promoters. The circular gal-
vanized Lincoln’s supporters to more active eVorts at the same time
that it sparked considerable criticism of Chase’s seeming disloyalty, and
the Chase boom quickly fizzled. Disingenuously denying any knowl-
edge of these movements on his behalf, an embarrassed Chase oVered
to resign, but Lincoln declined to accept his resignation. Shortly
thereafter, when the Republican convention in his own state of Ohio
endorsed Lincoln, Chase withdrew as a candidate, but Lincoln’s sup-
porters were certain if the opportunity subsequently presented itself,
he would resume his candidacy.
Lincoln’s unpretentious manner, his folksy ways, and his obvious
sincerity and good-heartedness all carried weight with the common
people. Even the Chicago Tribune, long critical of the president, con-
ceded that Lincoln “has the confidence of the people, and even the
respect and aVections of the masses.” Such support was important in
the election, but party regulars and oYceholders played a much more
crucial role in selecting the nominee.
One of Lincoln’s great strengths as president was the skill with which
he ran the party machinery. He adeptly used the patronage to shore up
his support among party workers and made sure that his friends care-
fully managed the election of delegates to the national convention. In-
deed, with so many federal oYceholders who were beholden to the
president for their places selected as delegates, Lincoln’s renomination
was a forgone conclusion. Republican leaders who hoped to derail the
presidential express suVered another setback when the National Com-
mittee rejected proposals to postpone the convention. Desirous of
dumping Lincoln from the ticket, Horace Greeley, the erratic editor of
the New York Tribune, glumly concluded that unless the war went badly,
Republicans were saddled with Lincoln as their candidate.
The pressure of oYce was beginning to show on Lincoln. He had
noticeably aged under the strain of trying to hold his cabinet and party
together while energizing the army. Albert G. Riddle, an Ohio Re-
publican who called on Lincoln in late April, was struck by how much
he had changed in the half-year since he last saw him. He “looked
like a man worn and harassed with petty faultfinding and criticisms,”
Riddle wrote, “until he had turned at bay, like an old stag pursued
and hunted by a cowardly rabble of men and dogs.”
�
Confident of renomination, Lincoln nevertheless expected a dif-
ficult electoral contest and recognized that his political prospects in
1864 very much depended on the progress of the Union’s arms. In
response, he manifested a grimmer determination to continue the war,
and he called for more troops for the Union war machine: 500,000
men in February and 200,000 more a month later.
But the Union war eVort needed more than additional troops; what
it needed most was an eVective commanding general. By now neither
Lincoln nor Congress had any faith in Henry Halleck, who was nom-
inally the general-in-chief. In February 1864, Congressman Elihu B.
Washburne of Illinois, long Ulysses S. Grant’s personal champion, in-
troduced a bill to revive the rank of lieutenant general, last held by
George Washington, and to designate the recipient the commanding
general of all the Union armies. Once Congress approved the bill,
Lincoln, as expected, bestowed the honor on Grant and summoned
him to Washington. Lincoln was eager to meet Grant and also wanted
to sound him out about strategy. On March 9, he formally presented
Grant with his commission.
By now, Lincoln had developed a firm understanding of his position
as commander-in-chief and a greater self-confidence in his own stra-
tegic abilities. His dealings with generals such as George McClellan,
Joseph Hooker, and Halleck had served to lessen his deference to
professional military men. Lincoln was particularly frustrated by his
inability to get his eastern generals to adopt a more aggressive strategy
and abandon their fixation on Richmond. He reminded Halleck that
since the first year of the war, “I have constantly desired the Army of
the Potomac, to make Lee’s army, and not Richmond, it’s objective
point. If our army can not fall upon the enemy and hurt him where
he is, it is plain to me it can gain nothing by attempting to follow
him over a succession of intrenched lines into a fortified city.” He had
greater faith in Grant, having pronounced Grant’s Vicksburg campaign
“one of the most brilliant in the world,” and expected the new com-
mander to infuse more energy into the Union’s main army.
Grant did not initially fully comprehend the demands of his new
position. Wishing to isolate himself from the intrigues of Washington,
he indicated that he wanted to remain in the western theater, where
because of the distance from Washington, Union generals were subject
to less interference. Northern public opinion, however, expected the
Union’s leading general to take charge of the war in the eastern the-
ater, where Union arms had experienced only limited success. Lincoln
made it clear to Grant that for political reasons he had to come east.
Grant bowed to this necessity and placed his chief subordinate, Wil-
liam Tecumseh Sherman, in command of his old army, but he was
determined to avoid becoming a desk general in Washington, so he
decided to accompany the Army of the Potomac in the field. George
Meade would remain nominally in command of that army, while
Grant would communicate with the other Union armies via telegraph
through the War Department. Lincoln accepted this arrangement but
insisted that Halleck become something like a modern chief of staV.
Relieved of decision-making responsibilities, Halleck functioned well
in this new position, relaying Grant’s orders to Union generals in the
field and keeping Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in-
formed of military developments.
Grant’s appointment ended Lincoln’s attempt to manage the details
of the war in Virginia. In an interview, he told Grant that only the
slowness of his generals and the pressure of public opinion had caused
him to interfere with military movements in the past. He wrote the
Union commander that “the particulars of your plans I neither know,
or seek to know,” adding, “I wish not to obtrude any constraints or
restraints upon you.”
Despite such assurances, Lincoln continued to take an active role
in military matters. He refused to allow Grant to remove several po-
litical generals whose support he needed, particularly Benjamin F. But-
ler, a favorite of the radicals, and Franz Sigel, the German American
leader. The impression Grant gave in his Memoirs that Lincoln knew
little about strategy and left the conduct of the war to him is demon-
strably false. After his frustration in dealing with McClellan, Lincoln
never completely entrusted the war to any of his generals.
A case in point was his reaction to Grant’s proposal to invade North
Carolina by sea and operate against Lee’s communications. Grant was
certain that Lee would have no choice but to leave the defenses of
Richmond and come south to confront him. Lincoln failed to grasp
the logic of Grant’s plan, which would produce fewer casualties than
a head-on thrust against Lee’s veteran army. Always placing first pri-
ority on the security of Washington, Lincoln had no faith in the ability
of other Union generals to protect the capital (a belief subsequently
justified by the army’s ineVectual response to Jubal Early’s raid in July
1864), and he wanted Grant nearby. Lincoln also knew that northern
public opinion, which was obsessed with Lee and the Virginia theater,
expected Grant to make the constricted region between the two na-
tional capitals his area of operation. He vetoed Grant’s plan.
Grant eventually devised a strategy to have five Union armies
coordinate movements along a front extending more than a thousand
miles from Virginia to New Orleans. The Confederacy was too weak
to defend every threatened point, he explained, and somewhere the
Union would be able to break through. This was the strategy of a
simultaneous advance, which Lincoln had been trying unsuccessfully
to get his commanders to employ since 1862. When Grant out-
lined his plan, Lincoln observed, “Those not skinning can hold a
leg.”
A Union strategy of total war now began to come together under
Grant. To the idea of relentless pressure along a broad front, Grant
added the notion of destroying the southern economy in order to
weaken the Confederate armies in the field. These tactics would in-
evitably inflict hardship and suVering on southern civilians, white and
black. Unlike northern Virginia, which had been ravaged by three
years of fighting, Georgia, which lay open to Sherman’s army, was
relatively untouched, its farms bursting with food and supplies.
Grant’s orders to Sherman were to “get into the interior of the en-
emy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can
against their war resources.”
When the Army of the Potomac broke camp on May 4, Northern-
ers anticipated a decisive campaign that would bring the war to a
close by fall. For the next month, from the Wilderness to Spotsylva-
nia to Cold Harbor, Grant vainly tried to break Lee’s lines. Too weak
to confront Grant in the open field, Lee adopted a strategy of attri-
tion, hoping to inflict such heavy losses on his opponent that north-
ern public opinion would abandon Lincoln and the war eVort. And in
fact, Grant’s losses were staggering: 60,000 men in one month of
heavy fighting.
In the capital the president, haggard and weary from lack of sleep,
seemed overburdened with sorrow and anxiety. As he paced back and
forth in his oYce impatiently awaiting news from the front, he ex-
claimed to one congressman, “Is it ever to end!” The painter Francis
Carpenter, who saw Lincoln close-up at this time, reported that “he
scarcely slept at all.” Encountering him early one morning in the ex-
ecutive mansion, Carpenter found the president alone with his
thoughts, with “great black rings under his eyes, his head bent for-
ward upon his breast,=altogether such a picture of the eVects of sor-
row, care, and anxiety. . . .” Day after day the wounded continued to
arrive in Washington, until Lincoln admitted to his old friend Isaac
Arnold, “I cannot bear it. This suVering, this loss of life is dreadful.”
Grant’s strategy, however, failed to produce the victory Lincoln
so desperately needed. The Union armies commanded by Benjamin
F. Butler at Fortress Monroe, Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley,
and Nathaniel Banks in New Orleans, all political generals, abysmally
failed to achieve their assigned objectives. Union hopes for victory,
and Lincoln’s political prospects, therefore rested on the shoulders of
Grant and Sherman. Unable to flank Lee, Grant finally changed tac-
tics and mounted a siege of Petersburg, a key transportation center
south of Richmond. Meanwhile, the lanky, red-headed Sherman, who
overflowed with nervous energy, relentlessly worked his way toward
Atlanta but won no decisive victory in battle that would uplift north-
ern morale. Surveying the military situation, a Democratic paper de-
clared, “Patriotism is played out. . . . Each hour is but sinking us
deeper into bankruptcy and desolation.”
�
While Grant futilely assaulted Lee’s lines, dissident antislavery
supporters assembled in Cleveland at the end of May to nominate an
independent ticket. With most prominent radical leaders conspicu-
ously absent, the convention nominated John C. Frémont, whose 1861
emancipation edict in Missouri made him a favorite of advanced an-
tislavery elements, as the presidential candidate of the Radical De-
mocracy. Some considered Frémont merely a stalking horse for Chase,
but the real motive for his nomination was to defeat Lincoln by split-
ting the Republican vote.
As Republican delegates passed through Washington on their way
to the national convention, Lincoln made it clear that he wanted the
party platform to endorse a constitutional amendment abolishing slav-
ery. Such an amendment would remove all legal doubt about the
Emancipation Proclamation. It would also end slavery in the border
states and other areas of the South that were exempted from the
proclamation’s provisions. Otherwise, Lincoln left the convention to
its own will.
The Republican convention, which was rechristened the Union
convention, assembled in Baltimore on June 7. With his supporters in
complete control, Lincoln was easily renominated, with only the anti-
Blair Missouri delegation opposed. The platform urged a vigorous
prosecution of the war, demanded the “unconditional surrender” of
the Confederacy (without defining that term’s meaning), endorsed a
constitutional amendment against slavery, and vaguely called for har-
mony in the cabinet, a swipe at Postmaster General Montgomery
Blair, who was a vitriolic critic of the radicals. Because of the deep
divisions in the Republican ranks, the platform said nothing about
Reconstruction. For vice-president, the delegates named Andrew John-
son, a staunch Tennessee Unionist, to balance the ticket with a South-
erner and a Democrat. As the events of Reconstruction would prove,
Lincoln’s hands-oV approach which led to Johnson’s nomination was
a serious mistake.
After the convention adjourned, Blair submitted his resignation,
which Lincoln rejected. Nevertheless, Blair gave Lincoln an undated
letter of resignation, knowing that political pressures would probably
force the president to accept it.
It was not the conservative Blair, however, but the radical Chase
who now left the cabinet. Still smarting over the humiliating fiasco of
his recent presidential bid, the Secretary of the Treasury continued to
resist Lincoln’s wishes on patronage appointments in his department.
Twice already Chase had prevailed in these disputes by threatening to
resign. When he found himself at loggerheads with the president over
another appointment, he played the game once again and on June 30
submitted his resignation. Now that Lincoln had been renominated,
Chase posed less of a political threat, and to the secretary’s shock and
dismay, Lincoln accepted his resignation. Acknowledging Chase’s abil-
ity and service, the president nevertheless added, “You and I have
reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our oYcial relation which
it seems can not be overcome, or longer sustained, consistently with
the public service.” After his first nominee declined, Lincoln named
William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee, as Chase’s successor.
At the beginning of July, Robert E. Lee sent Jubal Early on a raid
toward Washington, hoping to relieve the pressure on his army by
drawing Union troops out of Virginia. As Early approached the capi-
tal’s outer defenses, Lincoln pressed Grant to take charge of the situ-
ation. The Union commander finally dispatched veteran troops to the
scene, and Early soon retreated, but not before he had given Wash-
ington the worst scare of the war. Northern despondency and war
weariness intensified. The New York Republican George Templeton
Strong, who outwardly kept up a hopeful demeanor, noted that even
truly loyal people “seem discouraged, weary, and faint-hearted.” Main-
taining that he saw “no bright spot anywhere,” he concluded that “the
blood and treasure spent on this summer’s campaign have done little
for the country.”
The war news continued to be discouraging. At Petersburg, Grant
was confident that his siege would force the eventual evacuation of
Richmond, but he knew it would take time and that he would not
achieve the military victory Lincoln so desperately needed before the
November election. All through the summer, Sherman moved relent-
lessly toward Atlanta as Joseph Johnston, the Confederate commander,
steadily retreated. JeVerson Davis became increasingly impatient with
this defensive strategy, however, and finally in mid-July replaced John-
ston with John Bell Hood, a much more aggressive fighter. Hood
quickly seized the oVensive, but after unsuccessfully assaulting Sher-
man’s lines he retired to the city’s defenses. Nevertheless, Confederate
leaders were confident that the southern army could hold Atlanta,
which was one of the most heavily fortified cities in the Confederacy.
Grant was bogged down in Virginia, Atlanta stubbornly defied Sher-
man, and no end to the war was in sight.
The heavy losses in the summer of 1864 deepened Lincoln’s fatalism.
Perhaps the only way he could confront the immense suVering was by
believing that events were beyond his control. Visitors now often found
him seeking solace by reading the Bible. In a letter to a Kentucky editor
discussing the evolution of his policy on slavery, Lincoln invoked his
deeply rooted fatalism. “I claim not to have controlled events, but con-
fess plainly that events have controlled me,” he wrote, adding, “Now, at
the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either
party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it.” Earlier
Lincoln had talked sternly about the necessity of hard fighting, but he
was unnerved by Grant’s heavy losses. Visiting the army in June outside
Petersburg, he expressed the hope that “all may be accomplished with
as little bloodshed as possible.”
Yet his determination to persevere, his courage when confronted
with disappointment, did not waver. Indeed, Lincoln’s resiliency in de-
feat was one of the defining characteristics of his presidential leadership.
“I have seen your despatch expressing your unwillingness to break your
hold where you are,” he telegraphed Grant in August, when his political
fortunes were bleakest. “Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog
gripe [sic], and chew and choke, as much as possible.”
Grant’s heavy losses necessitated obtaining more men to replenish
the Union ranks, but Republican leaders paled at the thought of a new
draft call. When they urged Lincoln to postpone such a step until after
the election in order to enhance his chances of reelection, he pointedly
observed, “What is the Presidency worth to me if I have no country?”
On July 19, he called for a half million more men and scheduled a new
draft for early September if the quotas were not met. Rarely was Lin-
coln’s moral courage more evident. When the draft was announced, a
Democratic editor gleefully predicted, “Lincoln is deader than dead.”
�
In the summer of 1864 Lincoln found himself under attack from all
sides. Radicals were unhappy with his policies on slavery and Recon-
struction, conservatives doubted his leadership abilities, and everyone
blamed him for failing to end the war. In this dark and discouraging
period, he manifested his steadfastness in the face of criticism, his
determination to do what he believed right, and his refusal to seek
mere partisan advantage.
When the new government in Louisiana, established under Lin-
coln’s guidelines, failed to grant additional rights to African Americans,
opposition in Congress to Lincoln’s program increased. Two leading
radicals, Benjamin F. Wade in the Senate and Henry Winter Davis in
the House, introduced a bill that established a more stringent program
of Reconstruction. The Wade–Davis bill placed the Confederate states
temporarily under a military governor. Rather than Lincoln’s nucleus
of 10 percent, it required a majority of a state’s 1860 voters to take the
loyalty oath before forming a new state government. Large categories
of southern whites were disqualified from participating in the resto-
ration process by mandating they take a so-called iron-clad oath that
they had never voluntarily supported the Confederacy. In addition,
slavery was abolished in the state, and Confederate oYcials barred
from holding oYce. With strong radical support, the bill passed Con-
gress on July 2, shortly before adjournment.
Radical leaders rushed to the White House to press Lincoln to sign
the bill, but he laid it aside. When Senator Zachariah Chandler stressed
the importance of its provision abolishing slavery in the reconstructed
states, Lincoln replied, “That is the point on which I doubt the au-
thority of Congress to act.” Reminded that he had issued the Eman-
cipation Proclamation, Lincoln answered, “I conceive that I may in an
emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done con-
stitutionally by Congress.” While Lincoln had issued the Emancipation
Proclamation as a military act based on the executive’s war powers,
he never believed Congress had the constitutional power to abolish
slavery in a state. In the end, he pocket-vetoed the bill (if a president
does not sign a bill after Congress has adjourned, it has the eVect of
a veto).
Lincoln then issued a proclamation explaining his action. Declaring
that he was unwilling “to be inflexibly committed to any single plan
of restoration,” he objected to abandoning the new governments al-
ready in place in Louisiana and Arkansas. He further roused the rad-
icals’ ire by noting that the Wade–Davis bill provided one plan, which
the people of the South were free to accept if they wished (an unlikely
occurrence, as he well knew).
Wade and Davis responded by publishing a manifesto that harshly
assailed Lincoln as a political usurper, bent on creating “shadows of
Governments” in the South to aid his reelection. Insisting that “the
authority of Congress is paramount” on the matter of reconstruction,
they characterized Lincoln’s proclamation as a “studied outrage on the
legislative authority of the people.” Wade and Davis’s vehemence
sorely tried Lincoln’s well-known patience. “To be wounded in the
house of one’s friends,” he lamented, “is perhaps the most grievous
aZiction that can befall a man.”
The division between Lincoln and the radicals over Reconstruction
involved more than whether Congress or the president would play
the major role in formulating a program of Reconstruction. Also in-
volved were diVerent perceptions of how best to restore loyal gov-
ernments in the South. Radicals had little faith in white southern
Unionists and believed that blacks were the only loyal group of any
size in the South. Therefore, they demanded immediate emancipation
and saw black suVrage as the best way to establish loyal governments.
Lincoln, in contrast, shrank from inaugurating a fundamental upheaval
in southern society and mores, and by stressing future over past loy-
alty, he was willing to allow recanting Rebels to dominate the new
southern governments. Moreover, Lincoln believed that the best strat-
egy was to introduce black suVrage in the South by degrees in order
to accustom southern whites to blacks voting. How far he was willing
to go in extending rights to former slaves remained unclear, but his
gradualist approach to social change remained intact, just as when he
had tried to get the border states in 1862 to adopt gradual emancipa-
tion. Finally, the radicals and Lincoln held quite diVerent views of the
relationship of Reconstruction to the war eVort. By erecting impos-
sibly high standards that no southern state could meet, the Wade–
Davis bill sought to postpone Reconstruction until the war was over.
For Lincoln, in contrast, a lenient program of Reconstruction would
encourage southern whites to abandon the Confederacy and thus was
integral to his strategy for winning the war.
At the same time, Lincoln was harshly denounced by antiwar Dem-
ocrats. Northern war weariness, which peaked in the summer of 1864,
fostered a powerful peace movement on the home front. The extreme
Copperheads claimed that a negotiated settlement was possible if Lin-
coln would only drop his insistence on emancipation. Lincoln correctly
understood that JeVerson Davis would never agree to a restoration of
the Union, but many Northerners, sickened by the bloodshed,
clutched almost in desperation at any hope for peace.
Already under attack from the peace wing of the Democratic party,
Lincoln came under heavy pressure from Horace Greeley to open
peace negotiations with the Confederacy. “Our bleeding, bankrupt,
almost dying country also longs for peace=shudders at the prospect
of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new
rivers of human blood,” Greeley plaintively wrote in early July. In-
formed that Confederate diplomats with authority to negotiate a peace
settlement were in Niagara Falls, Greeley urged the president to confer
with them. The belief that the administration did not favor peace, he
added, was doing great political damage and was certain to do even
more as the election approached.
Tired of Greeley’s censorious attitude and his flip-flops on public pol-
icy, Lincoln hit upon the brilliant strategy of sending the New York edi-
tor to Niagara Falls to meet these purported commissioners. He drafted
a letter, addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” laying out his peace
terms, which he gave to his secretary, John Hay, to take to Niagara Falls.
“Any proposition” from the Confederate government, the letter read,
“which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole
Union, and the abandonment of slavery . . . will be received and consid-
ered by the Executive government of the United States, and will be met
by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points.”
Lincoln no doubt smiled as he sent Greeley on what he knew was
a wild goose chase. When Greeley reported (as Lincoln suspected all
along) that the Confederates had no power to conduct peace negoti-
ations, the editor of the Tribune found himself the target of northern
ridicule. His eyes twinkling, Lincoln chuckled to Charles A. Dana, one
of Greeley’s former associates who was now working in the War
Department, “I sent Brother Greeley a commission. I guess I am about
even with him now.”
Realizing that a negotiated peace was impossible, Lincoln adopted
the strategy of appearing to be willing to open peace talks, while
setting the preconditions high enough that Davis would reject them
out of hand. His demand for the abandonment of slavery in his letter
outlining his peace terms was more sweeping than the terms of his
Emancipation Proclamation and the ambiguous language of his Re-
construction program.
Lincoln’s strategy backfired. All through the summer, Democrats
made eVective use of his “To Whom It May Concern” letter to argue
that Lincoln was prolonging the war because of a fanatical desire to
end slavery. That demand out of the way, Democrats insisted, a set-
tlement with the Confederacy could quickly be reached. The un-
friendly New York Herald proclaimed that the letter “sealed Lincoln’s
fate in the coming Presidential campaign.”
In this battle for northern public opinion, Lincoln was ironically
aided by JeVerson Davis, who blundered by not proposing an armistice
and peace talks without conditions. He also benefited when two
unoYcial emissaries, following an interview with Davis in Richmond,
quoted the Confederate president as having delivered an ultimatum
that “the war . . . must go on . . . unless you acknowledge our right to self-
government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Inde-
pendence,=and that, or extermination, we will have.”
Even so, Lincoln remained on the defensive. His peace terms failed
to mollify the radicals, still smarting over his veto of the Wade–Davis
bill, while they constituted a sharp blow to the prowar Democrats,
who were opposed to emancipation as a Union war aim. Conservative
and moderate Republicans were also discontented, believing that Lin-
coln’s letter would strengthen Confederate resistance; they also feared
that it would usher in wild scenes of revolutionary upheaval in the
postwar South. With the president under attack whichever way he
turned, his old friend Orville Browning flatly pronounced him a “fail-
ure” as president.
Nevertheless, Lincoln decided to stick to his position. He could not
give up the nearly 130,000 black men now serving in the Union ranks,
he explained, nor would he consent that slaves once freed be reen-
slaved. “I should be damned in time and in eternity for so doing.” In
an interview with several Wisconsin Republicans, Lincoln insisted that
the war was being waged solely to save the Union, but that “no
human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emanci-
pation lever as I have done.”
By the beginning of August, despair was evident among Republi-
cans, who believed that they were staring defeat in the face. Military vic-
tory appeared as far away as ever, party divisions were deepening, and
Lincoln seemed unable to rally public opinion to his side. There had
been griping all summer among disaVected Republicans about Lincoln’s
candidacy, but the movement to convene a new convention and dump
Lincoln now came to a head. At a meeting in New York City, a number
of prominent Republicans canvassed the possibility and a call soon ap-
peared, urging that a convention be held in Cincinnati on September 28.
“Mr. Lincoln is already beaten,” Greeley contended in endorsing the
call. “He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us
from utter overthrow.”
Disheartened reports from party leaders in a number of key states
poured in to Henry J. Raymond, chairman of the Republican National
Committee and editor of the New York Times. Raymond attributed
Lincoln’s problems to the military situation and the prevailing opinion
that the administration was prolonging the war solely to end slavery.
“The suspicion is widely diVused that we can have peace with Union
if we would,” he wrote the president on August 22. “It is idle to reason
with this belief=still more idle to denounce it. It can only be expelled
by some authoritative act, at once bold enough to fix attention and
distinct enough to defy incredulity and challenge respect.” He urged
that a commissioner be appointed to negotiate with Davis, specifying
only reunion as a condition for peace. Davis would certainly reject
such terms, Raymond added, but the oVer would dampen the cry in
the North for peace negotiations. At a subsequent meeting at the
White House with the leaders of the National Committee, Lincoln
rejected this proposal, insisting that it “would be worse than losing
the Presidential contest=it would be ignominiously surrendering it in
advance.”
Gloom pervaded the White House. “Everything is darkness and
doubt and discouragement,” Nicolay reported in late August. Lincoln
remained outwardly determined, but in reality he was deeply dis-
couraged. On August 23, after reading Raymond’s bleak letter, he took
out a sheet of paper and wrote the following: “This morning, as for
some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration
will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with
the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the
inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that
he can not possibly save it afterwards.” Lincoln was certain that party
pressure would force any Democratic president, no matter how com-
mitted to the war, to agree to an armistice, which he knew would be
fatal to the Union cause. After sealing this statement in an envelope,
he had each of his cabinet members sign the back without revealing
the contents to them. Only after the election was over did he open
the envelope and read to his advisers the statement they had blindly
endorsed.
The Democrats had postponed their convention until the end of
August in order to see what the military situation was before selecting
a ticket. Among the delegates who assembled in Chicago was Clement
Vallandigham, the Copperhead leader who had been banished the year
before, and who now returned from Canada breathing fire and daring
the administration to arrest him. Lincoln instructed his generals to
leave Vallandigham alone, convinced that he was doing more harm
to the Democrats than the Republicans.
The Democrats nominated former general George McClellan for
president. McClellan was the choice of the regular Democrats, who
favored a war to save the Union but balked at emancipation. The
platform, however, reflected the views of the peace wing of the party.
Largely written by Vallandigham, the 1864 Democratic platform pro-
nounced the war a failure and called for an armistice and peace ne-
gotiations with the Confederacy. “After four years of failure to restore
the Union by the experiment of war,” the controversial plank read,
“. . . justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that im-
mediate eVorts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of
an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the
end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored
on the basis of the Federal Union. . . .” In his acceptance letter, Mc-
Clellan repudiated the assertion that the war was a failure and, after
much indecision, rejected the idea of an armistice.
Privately, Confederate leaders considered McClellan their last hope
of victory. His triumph would signal the North’s unwillingness to con-
tinue the war; certainly it would revive southern morale and deter-
mination. McClellan’s election would lead to southern independence,
the Charleston Mercury assured its readers following the Democratic
convention, and thus it was “essential” that “for the next two months
we hold our own and prevent military success by our foes.”
�
Democrats’ = and Confederates’ =optimism was short lived.
Word soon arrived from Sherman that “Atlanta is ours, and fairly
won,” which completely transformed the existing political situation.
Sherman’s capture of the city on September 2 came on the heels of
Admiral David Farragut’s stirring success at Mobile Bay. Shortly
thereafter, Philip Sheridan smashed Jubal Early’s army and began to
devastate the Shenandoah Valley so that Lee could no longer draw
supplies from that fertile agricultural region. It was apparent that the
Union was much closer to victory than Northerners had previously
realized. Republican spirits revived, and Democratic ones correspond-
This Republican cartoon contrasts the two presidential candidates’ ap-

proaches to peace. McClellan holds out an olive branch to a defiant
JeVerson Davis while allowing him to re-enslave a black Union soldier,
whereas Lincoln resolutely demands unconditional submission and the end
of slavery. (The Library of Congress)
ingly declined. Almost overnight, Abraham Lincoln became the fa-

vorite to win the 1864 presidential election.
The prospect of a Republican victory in November did wonders
to close the party’s internal breach. The movement to hold a new
national convention promptly collapsed, and even “sorehead republi-
cans,” in the words of the New York Herald, scrambled aboard the
Lincoln bandwagon. At this point Zachariah Chandler, who considered
McClellan a traitor, apparently worked out an arrangement whereby
Frémont would withdraw from the race and Montgomery Blair, the
radicals’ chief nemesis, would leave the cabinet. Lincoln disliked giving
up Blair, who had been a loyal supporter, but he realized that Blair’s
endless personal quarrels and slashing attacks on his critics negated his
political usefulness. In late September Frémont withdrew as a candi-
date, and Lincoln accepted Blair’s long-standing oVer to resign and
named William Dennison of Ohio the new Postmaster General. Rad-
icals took to the campaign trail, though sometimes stumping with less
than good grace for the national ticket.
Three key northern states=Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana=held
their state elections in October. Unlike the other two states, Indiana
failed to adopt a procedure that would allow Union soldiers to vote
in the field. With an eye on the contest, Lincoln asked Sherman to
furlough as many Indiana troops as possible to go home and vote in
the state election. Sherman complied, and two of his generals, John
Logan and Frank Blair, Jr., both notable politicians and former Dem-
ocrats, campaigned for Lincoln in the state and elsewhere. When the
Republicans, aided by the soldier vote, carried all three states, Lincoln’s
success in November seemed likely, but the result in Pennsylvania was
uncomfortably close. Two days later, Lincoln estimated that he would
narrowly squeak through in the November balloting.
As was the custom for presidential candidates in the nineteenth
century, Lincoln refrained from actively campaigning, but he kept a
close eye on developments in various states. Indeed, Fessenden re-
ported that “the President is too busy looking after the elections to
think of anything else.” He especially used his enormous tact and great
powers of persuasion to paper over personal feuds and party divisions
in several states, including Pennsylvania. “I confess that I desire to be
re-elected,” Lincoln remarked. “God knows I do not want the labor
and responsibility of the oYce for another four years. But I have the
common pride of humanity to wish my past four years Administration
endorsed.”
Following such a heated campaign, the balloting on November 8
was surprisingly peaceful. Election day was “dull, gloomy and rainy”
in Washington. Calling around noon, Noah Brooks found the White
House virtually deserted. In talking to Hay during the day, Lincoln
reflected, “It is a little singular that I who am not a vindictive man,
should have always been before the people for election in canvasses
marked for their bitterness.” Except for the 1846 congressional race,
“the contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with
great rancor.” That evening Hay accompanied the president as he
went over to the War Department to receive the returns by telegraph,
just as Lincoln had done four years earlier at the oYce of the Illinois
State Journal in Springfield. The early returns were generally favorable,
and the Republican trend grew more pronounced as the evening wore
on. Lincoln was in a genial mood, and it was not until around three
that he at last went home.
The final returns gave Lincoln a popular majority of more than
400,000 votes. Lincoln carried all but three states (New Jersey, Dela-
ware, and Kentucky) and won an overwhelming victory in the elec-
toral college, 212 to 21. The election was closer than these numbers
suggest, however, for Lincoln’s margin was very small in several key
states, including New York. His vote in 1864 followed the same lines
as in 1860, except in the border states, where the Republican party
now was much stronger.
One of the most striking features of the balloting was Lincoln’s
support among Union soldiers. Nineteen states made provisions for
troops to vote in their camps. Lincoln won almost 80 percent of the
their votes, evidence of the great aVection ordinary soldiers had for
him, as well as the deep resentment they bore toward the Copper-
Most loyal states made provisions for Union soldiers to vote in their camps
in the 1864 presidential election. This sketch shows the voting in one
camp. Union soldiers overwhelmingly voted for Lincoln. (The Library of
Congress)
heads and the Democratic platform. One Democratic soldier who
voted for Lincoln explained, “I had rather stay out here a lifetime
(much as I dislike it), than consent to a division of our country. . . .
We all want peace, but none any but an honorable one.” The vote of
soldiers provided Lincoln’s margin of victory in New York and Con-
necticut, and probably Indiana and Maryland as well.
During the course of the war, Lincoln had developed a very special
relationship with Union troops, who aVectionately called him “Uncle
Abe” and “Father Abraham.” His unpretentious manner, common
looks, and homespun ways appealed to ordinary soldiers, who felt a
kinship with him. When he reviewed the troops, he did not cut a
dashing figure on horseback (one of Grant’s aides said he reminded
him of “a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday
clothes”), but the men spontaneously broke into cheers as he rode by.
A New York soldier wrote home after Lincoln visited the army in
1862, “The boys liked him. In fact, his popularity with the army is and
has been universal.” On another occasion, when Lincoln reviewed the
Army of the Potomac, Noah Brooks observed, “It was noticeable that
the President merely touched his hat in return salute to the oYcers,
but uncovered to the men in the ranks.” The troops appreciated the
interest he took in their condition and treatment, and when he told
them to bring their personal problems to his attention, many did. This
relationship grew stronger as the war continued, and the 1864 election
confirmed that Union soldiers were the strongest supporters Abraham
Lincoln had.
Two nights later Lincoln made a brief speech to a crowd of well-
wishers who came to the White House. “The election was a necessity,”
he aYrmed. “We can not have free government without elections;
and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national
election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined
us.” The election caused strife, but it also did good. “It has demon-
strated that a people’s government can sustain a national election, in
the midst of a great civil war.”
The election of 1864 marked the final turning point of the Civil
War. Its outcome constituted a great personal triumph for Lincoln
after four years of vicious and unrelenting criticism. It also evinced
the renewed commitment of the northern people, after the Union’s
recent military victories, to continue the struggle until the war was
won. Finally, it represented an endorsement of the policy of emanci-
pation, against which Democrats had directed their fire in the recent
campaign, and ended any doubt that slavery would be abolished as a
result of the war. “The crisis has been past,” George Templeton Strong
wrote in his diary, “and the most momentous popular election ever
held since ballots were invented has decided against treason and
disunion.”
To be sure, JeVerson Davis remained defiant and announced that
the Confederacy would fight on until independence was achieved, but
in the wake of Lincoln’s victory southern morale rapidly deteriorated.
With the defeat of the Confederacy now only a matter of time, Lincoln
turned his thoughts to peace.
Chapter 8
WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE
Among those who gathered in the War Department on election

night was Gustavus V. Fox, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. As
the returns came clattering in over the telegraph, he expressed partic-
ular pleasure that Henry Winter Davis, one of the president’s harshest
Republican critics, had been defeated for reelection to Congress. “You
have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I,” Lincoln
commented. “Perhaps I may have too little of it; but I never thought
it paid. A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any
man ceases to attack me I never remember the past against him.” This
outlook would continue to guide his policies in the last months of his
presidency.
�
In the after math of Lincoln’s reelection, the final component was
added to the Union’s military strategy. In a series of escalating steps,
the Union army had confiscated private property in the South, ex-
pelled disloyal civilians from Union lines, emancipated slaves, utilized
black soldiers, and waged a grinding, all-out form of warfare. To this
mix was now added the dimension of psychological warfare designed
to break the will of southern civilians. This was the nineteenth-century
equivalent of the strategy of total war.
After the fall of Atlanta, John Bell Hood had led the Confederacy’s
western army back into Tennessee in order to draw William Tecumseh
Sherman out of Georgia. Unwilling to chase Hood all over the state,
Sherman instead proposed to lead 60,000 men on a destructive march
across Georgia. With no Confederate army to oppose him, Sherman’s
purposes were political and psychological rather than military. “If we
can march a well appointed Army right through [JeVerson Davis’s]
territory,” he argued, “it is a demonstration to the World, foreign and
domestic, that we have a power which Davis cannot resist. This may
not be war, but rather Statesmanship. . . .” Sherman’s proposed move-
ment was risky, but after Grant gave his approval, Lincoln did too.
On November 16, Sherman’s army pulled out of the smoldering
ruins of Atlanta. Moving about ten miles a day, the army cut a swath
of destruction sixty miles wide to the sea. The troops foraged widely,
burned homes and buildings, tore up railroad tracks, and then twisted
the rails so they could not be used again. In late December, Sherman
captured Savannah. With the Confederacy steadily shrinking, evidence
of despair could be seen everywhere on the southern home front, and
an oYcer who accompanied Sherman concluded that southern whites
were whipped.
Elsewhere in the West the military news was equally encouraging.
Recklessly attacking his stronger, better-equipped foe, Hood suVered
a costly defeat at Franklin on November 30. Nevertheless, he pushed
on to Nashville, where Union general George Thomas attacked him
on December 15 and all but annihilated Hood’s army. JeVerson Davis
restored Joseph Johnston to command of the shattered Army of Ten-
nessee, but the war was essentially over in the West.
Sherman’s successful march reaYrmed Lincoln’s confidence in
Grant and led him to adopt more of a hands-oV approach in the final
stages of the war. “What next?” he asked Sherman after he occupied
Savannah, adding, “I suppose it will be safer if I leave General Grant
and yourself to decide.”
�
With the war effort at last in capable hands, Lincoln concen-
trated his attention on political matters. For one thing, he had to make
several key appointments. Edward Bates, who had been a dutiful but
unimaginative adviser, resigned as Attorney General, and William Pitt
Fessenden now left the Treasury Department to return to the Senate.
Lincoln selected James Speed of Kentucky, the brother of his old friend
Joshua Speed from his early years in Springfield, to succeed Bates. For
Secretary of the Treasury, Lincoln finally tapped the uninspiring Hugh
With Malice Toward None 179
McCulloch of Indiana. In addition, when John Usher, the undistin-
guished Secretary of the Interior, resigned in March 1865, Lincoln se-
lected Iowa Senator James Harlan to fill the post.
Lincoln’s reconstituted cabinet diVered from the original body in
that none of the new members was an important party leader or an
aspirant for the presidency. The cabinet still contained a variety of
political viewpoints, but the radical influence had been strengthened,
as William Dennison (who had earlier replaced Montgomery Blair as
Postmaster General) and Speed were identified with that faction. Per-
haps the most important diVerence was that all its members, including
holdovers William Henry Seward, Gideon Welles, and Edwin Stanton,
were personally loyal to the president.
Lincoln also needed to name a successor to Chief Justice Roger
Taney, who had died in October. The leading candidate was former
Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, whose appointment would please
the radicals. Moreover, Chase’s elevation would oVer assurances that
the government’s controversial war policies on slavery and the cur-
rency would be constitutionally sustained. But Lincoln worried that
Chase’s “head was so full of Presidential maggots” that he would use
the position to futilely pursue that oYce. As always, Chase’s eVorts
at self-promotion were clumsy and transparent. When he suddenly
wrote Lincoln during the 1864 campaign about the political prospects
in Ohio, the president handed the letter to John Nicolay with the
sarcastic comment, “File it with his other recommendations.”
Lincoln, however, never favored political vendettas, and on more
than one occasion remarked to John Hay that he was “in favor of
short statutes of limitations in politics.” On December 6, he nominated
Chase to be chief justice. As was normally the case, Lincoln did not
consult his cabinet concerning this appointment and was very tight-
lipped about his motives. Chase enjoyed wide support for the post in
the Republican party, and Lincoln certainly needed to foster better
relations with the radicals in his own party. But probably an equally
crucial consideration was Lincoln’s concern for the legal security of
emancipation. Lincoln was confident that under Chase’s direction, the
Supreme Court would never invalidate the Emancipation
Proclamation.
Congress assembled for its lame-duck session in December. Lin-
coln’s reelection and the improved military situation made Republican
congressmen reluctant to challenge him, and he encountered far less
hostility than in the previous session. Lincoln urged the House to pass
the proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery (the Senate
had already approved it in the previous session by the required two-
thirds’ majority). The results of the recent election, he argued, dem-
onstrated popular support for this action. “It is the voice of the people
now, for the first time, heard upon the question.” The next Congress,
with its overwhelming Republican majorities, would certainly pass the
amendment, but better to do it now, he advised, and start the process
of ratification.
As president, Lincoln rarely intervened in the legislative process,
either to shape legislation or to lobby for votes, relying instead on
members of his cabinet in these matters. He felt very strongly about
this issue, however, and therefore used all the resources at his com-
mand, including the patronage, to secure the votes of wavering Dem-
ocrats. While the fastidious might balk at such tactics, Charles Dana
pronounced Lincoln “a supreme politician. He understood politics be-
cause he understood human nature.” There was no “shabby philan-
thropy” in him. “He was all solid, hard, keen intelligence combined
with goodness.”
The vote on January 31 was close but suYcient: 119 to 56. Lincoln
was relieved, for the proposed amendment, which he pronounced “a
King’s cure for all the evils,” removed all the legal uncertainty per-
taining to wartime emancipation, and it covered areas exempted from
the terms of the Emancipation Proclamation. The next day, when a
procession of well-wishers came to the White House, Lincoln noted
that he was especially proud that his own state of Illinois was the first
to ratify the amendment. Illinois’s action was testimony to the revo-
lution the war had produced. Only a few years earlier, in his 1858
senatorial campaign, Lincoln had been constantly on the defensive
because of his assertion that slavery eventually had to end in the
United States.
Lincoln failed, however, to reach an accord with Congress on the
question of Reconstruction. Moderate Republicans helped defeat a re-
vised version of the Wade–Davis bill, but Congress refused to recog-
nize the loyal governments established under Lincoln’s program in
Louisiana and Arkansas. The inability of Congress to agree on a pro-
gram was a victory for Lincoln because it kept the problems of Re-
construction in his hands, at least until December 1865 when the new
Congress would assemble.
�
Meanwhile the military noose steadily tightened around the be-
leaguered Confederacy. On January 15, 1865, Union forces captured
Fort Fisher and closed Wilmington’s harbor, the last important port
in Confederate hands. At Petersburg, Grant continued to extend his
lines, stretching Lee’s army to the breaking point. And after refitting
his army in Savannah, Sherman turned north and entered South Car-
olina, intending eventually to join Grant in Virginia. His passage
through the state, which was the symbol of secession, was even more
destructive than his march through Georgia had been. Influenced by
despondent letters from home, Confederate soldiers began to desert
in droves, further weakening the Confederate cause.
Despite a new flurry of peace overtures, Lincoln continued to
doubt that JeVerson Davis would ever agree to reunion. In his message
to Congress in December, Lincoln contended that Davis “would accept
nothing short of severance of the Union=precisely what we will not
and cannot give. His declarations to this eVect are explicit and oft-
repeated. He does not attempt to deceive us. He aVords us no excuse
to deceive ourselves.” But hoping to detach the southern people from
Davis and divide Confederate leaders, Lincoln reaYrmed the generous
terms he had outlined a year earlier, accompanied by a warning that
“the time may come=probably will come=when . . . more rigorous
measures . . . shall be adopted.”
To repel the charge that he did not want peace, however, Lincoln
gave the elder Francis P. Blair permission in early January to go to
Richmond to see Davis. In their meeting, Davis agreed to appoint
peace commissioners “with a view to secure peace to the two coun-
tries.” Recognizing the import of Davis’s words, Lincoln replied that
he would receive any agent authorized to secure peace “to the people
of our one common country.” In the end Davis, whose primary aim
was to neutralize the peace movement in the Confederacy, appointed
three commissioners to negotiate with Union leaders, but he undercut
any possibility of success by instructing them to insist on the recog-
nition of southern independence.
When these commissioners arrived at the Union lines, Lincoln sent
Major William Eckert to inspect their credentials. Eckert confirmed
that, as Lincoln suspected, Davis had not accepted the specified pre-
conditions, but Grant reported that after talking to the commissioners
he was convinced that their motives were sincere. Lincoln therefore
decided to join Secretary of State William H. Seward in a conference
with them at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Lincoln and Seward received the Confederate delegates on Febru-
ary 3, 1865, on the steamer River Queen oV Fortress Monroe. The
participants agreed to keep no oYcial record of their talks. In the
discussion, which lasted four hours, Lincoln reiterated his terms for
peace: cessation of hostilities, reunion, and emancipation. To soften
the last point, he indicated his belief that slaveowners should be com-
pensated for their loss of property. Lincoln refused to negotiate the
terms of reconstruction, however, without a cessation of hostilities
and acceptance of reunion. From the Confederate perspective, these
terms were “nothing less . . . than unconditional submission,” and the
meeting ended without any agreement.
In these discussions, Lincoln’s desire for a liberal peace that would
lessen sectional hatreds overcame his political judgment. Compensa-
tion would require Congress’s approval, which by this point was a
political impossibility. In a cabinet meeting two days later, when Lin-
coln circulated a bill to appropriate $400 million to compensate sla-
veholders if the war ended by April 1, his advisers unanimously dis-
approved of his proposition, arguing it was inappropriate and
politically infeasible. Lincoln quietly shelved the proposal.
When Lee subsequently proposed to meet with Grant to resolve
“the present unhappy diYculties,” Lincoln rejected the idea. He was
willing that Grant discuss only purely military matters with Lee. “You
are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political question,”
Stanton wrote to Grant in relaying instructions that Lincoln had care-
fully written out. “Such questions the President holds in his own
hands; and will submit them to no military conferences or
conventions.”
The failure of the Hampton Roads conference demonstrated, as
Lincoln had realized all along, that peace depended on military victory.
His instructions to Grant in disapproving a conference with Lee were
blunt and to the point: “You are to press to the utmost, your military
advantages.”
�
The strain of the war was evident in Lincoln’s gaunt, haggard face
and in the flecks of white in his black hair. Visiting him at about this
time, his old friend Joshua Speed found him “jaded and weary.” His
friends repeatedly urged him to rest, but Lincoln replied that “the tired
part of me is inside and out of reach.” The full weight of the war had
These two photographs show how badly Lincoln had aged under the
strain of the war. In contrast to the vigorous presidential candidate in
the first picture, taken in the summer of 1860, a tired and weary
president appears in the last photograph of Lincoln, made on
April 10, 1865, just four days before his assassination. (Left: Library
of Congress; right: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC/Art
Resource, NY)
borne down on him, and he confronted daily what Hay termed “that
vast sum of human misery involved in civil war.” Day after day weep-
ing mothers, bulldozing congressmen, greedy oYce-seekers, and
irate critics gobbled up his time; to the end he remained the most
accessible of presidents and saw as many of them as possible. Nicolay
thought it “impossible to portray . . . the labor, the thought, the re-
sponsibility, the strain of intellect and the anguish of soul” he
experienced.
His kindhearted nature was especially apparent in dealing with
court-martial verdicts. Part of each Friday, which Lincoln designated
as “butcher’s day,” was set aside to review capital sentences, a task he
heartily disliked, and he looked for any reason to pardon soldiers con-
victed of falling asleep, going home without authorization, running
from battle, or deserting. Many were what he termed “leg cases”:
soldiers whose legs were stronger than their courage. He commuted
the bulk of these sentences and ordered the soldier returned to the
ranks where, he explained, “we may at least get some work out of
him.”
When James Madison Cutts, who was related to Lincoln’s old ad-
versary Stephen A. Douglas, was sentenced to be dismissed from the
army for quarreling, Lincoln penned a fatherly letter filled with wis-
dom. “You have too much of life yet before you, and have shown too
much of promise as an oYcer, for your future to be lightly surren-
dered. . . . The advice of a father to his son ‘Beware of entrance to a
quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee,’
is good, and yet not the best. Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to
make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still
less can he aVord to take all the consequences, including the vitiating
of his temper, and the loss of self-control.”
The burden of death was overwhelming. Among the war’s toll
were individuals close to him: Elmer Ellsworth, his former law clerk,
who was killed in the first month of the war; Senator Edward Baker,
for whom he had named his second son, lost at Ball’s BluV; and his
favorite child, Willie. Then there were members of his wife’s family:
her half-brothers Sam, David, and Alec, all of whom died fighting for
the Confederacy, and her sister Emilie’s husband, Benjamin Helm, the
Confederate general. And finally the thousands of young soldiers in
both armies, struck down in the bloom of life by orders he had given.
To a Democratic congressman, Lincoln shared the observation,
“Doesn’t it seem strange that I should be here=I, a man who couldn’t
cut a chicken’s head oV=with blood running all around me?”
From the depths of his own personal anguish, he wrote in late 1864
to Lydia Bixby of Boston, who he had been erroneously informed had
lost five sons fighting for the Union. “I feel how weak and fruitless
must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you
from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of
the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may
assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the
cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that
must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of
Freedom.”
One way he coped with the relentless pressure was through his
well-known sense of humor. Congressman Isaac Arnold of Illinois
once rebuked Lincoln for his levity in time of war. The president broke
down, tears streaming down his cheeks. “If I could not get momentary
respite from the crushing burden I am constantly carrying” by telling
stories, he explained, “I should die.”
Reading was a diversion and source of relaxation, particularly
comic stories. Late one evening, Lincoln came chuckling into Hay’s
oYce to read his secretaries a humorous story by Thomas Hood.
“What a man it is!” Hay exclaimed in his diary. “Occupied all day
with matters of vast moment, deeply anxious about the fate of the
greatest army of the world, with his own fame and future hanging on
the events of the passing hour, he yet has such a wealth of simple
bonhommie and good fellow ship that he gets out of bed and per-
ambulates the house in his shirt to find us that we may share with
him the fun of one of poor Hoods queer little conceits.”
At the end of the day, Lincoln would often unwind by sitting
around with friends, swapping stories. At these sessions “his wit and
rich humor had free play,” Hay remembered, and “he was once more
the Lincoln of the Eighth Circuit, the cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest
of story tellers.” Besides Seward, others frequently present included
old friends Ward Hill Lamon, Orville Browning, and Elihu Washburne
from Illinois. Yet Lincoln kept even these associates emotionally at a
distance and never fully confided in them.
The theater was another refuge from his daily cares. Here he could
escape the hordes of oYce-seekers and the weight of decision-making
while being diverted by the performance. He especially tried to attend
when a famous actor was featured and enjoyed both comedies and
tragedies. Having never seen Shakespeare performed on the stage until
he came to Washington, he eventually concluded that the comedies
were more enjoyable when performed, but he preferred reading the
tragedies.
Indeed, Shakespeare became a constant companion. Lincoln had
liked his plays since he was a youth, but the tribulations of the war
heightened his appreciation, particularly of the tragedies. “Some of
Shakspeare’s plays I have never read,” he told James H. Hackett, a
well-known Shakespearean actor, “while others I have gone over per-
haps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are
Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth.
I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful.”
As this letter indicated, Lincoln’s favorite plays focused on power
and politics, issues central to his own life. Like Shakespeare’s tragic
figures, Lincoln was also ambitious, but he derived little personal plea-
sure from the exercise of power. Instead, he found it only an ordeal,
which grew heavier as the war continued, and his deeply ingrained
melancholy drew him to the darkness of Shakespeare’s tragedies. In-
creasingly he found in the will of God the means to carry on under
the weight of responsibility.
�
The war not only deepened Lincoln’s sense of fatalism, it also
had a significant impact on his religious outlook. He had always be-
lieved in providence=a higher power that ordered human events=
and often used the word God to describe this power. But prior to the
war he had taken a rather complacent view of God’s designs, which
he thought were manifested through cause and eVect and irresistibly
promoted progress through historical processes. This view limited
God’s motive force in human aVairs and conceived of the Deity as
more a force or law than a divine personality.
The dark shadows of the war, however, gave a harder edge to
Lincoln’s religious thought, and he more frequently invoked God dur-
ing his presidency than he ever had before. Initially he thought of God
as a means to assist the Union in the struggle, but as the war contin-
ued despite his best eVorts to end it, Lincoln increasingly emphasized
the power of God’s often inscrutable will. In doing so, he embraced
the concept of a more judgmental God, and searched for the larger
meaning=God’s purpose=in the cataclysm of war. “He had some-
time[s] thought that perhaps he might be an instrument in God’s
hands of accomplishing a great work,” he divulged to a group of
religious leaders in 1862, but added pointedly that perhaps “God’s way
of accomplishing the end . . . may be diVerent from theirs.”
Sometime in the fall of 1862, he penned a meditation on the war:
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act
in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be
wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same
time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose
is something diVerent from the purposes of either party. . . . I am al-
most ready to say this is probably true=that God wills this contest,
and wills that it shall not end yet.”
By 1864 Lincoln had combined his religious ideas into a new out-
look that emphasized national sin, emancipation as God’s will, and
the war as part of God’s design. He no longer spoke, as he had earlier,
of the war as needless. God “intends some great good to follow this
mighty convulsion,” he wrote in 1864, “which no mortal could make,
and no mortal could stay.”
He brought these ideas together in his second inaugural address
on March 4. The day was “somber and drizzly,” but just as Lincoln
stepped forward to thunderous applause, “the sun . . . burst forth in
its unclouded meridian splendor. . . .” Delivered on the eve of victory
after almost four years of bloody conflict, the speech was remarkable
for its compassion, its humility, and its profound comprehension of
the tragedy the nation had suVered. As Lincoln noted, the speech was
much shorter (only 703 words) than the one he had given four years
earlier. After the opening paragraph, Lincoln did not refer to himself,
and he did not discuss any of his policies during the last four years.
Nor did he refer by name to either the North or the South, or the
Union or the Confederacy, and he made only the most general ref-
erence to the military situation.
He studiously avoided imputing blame for the war. “All dreaded it
=all sought to avert it,” but one party “would make war rather than
let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let
it perish. And the war came.” “All knew” that slavery, the issue that
most deeply divided the American people, “was, somehow, the cause
of the war.”
Yet neither side had expected a war of this magnitude and duration.
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each in-
vokes His aid against the other. . . . The prayers of both could not be
answered; that of neither has been answered fully.” The war demon-
strated the fundamental truth that “the Almighty has His own
purposes.”
Declining to oVer glib assurances of the North’s moral superiority,
Lincoln interpreted the war as God’s punishment of America for the
sin of slavery, which the North shared with the South. To remove the
oVense of slavery, God gave “to both North and South, this terrible
war, as the woe due to those by whom the oVence came.” All prayed
for a speedy conclusion to the conflict. “Yet, if God wills that it con-
tinue” until all the wealth created by slaves was destroyed, “and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another
drawn with the sword, . . . still it must be said ‘the judgments of the
Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’ ” This was as harsh a moral
pronouncement as any American president has ever rendered.
Having disassociated himself from the moral arrogance which mil-
itary victory spawns, Lincoln closed with an eloquent plea for a just
peace and a better future: “With malice toward none; with charity for
all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us
strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow,
and his orphan=to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and
lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Sensitive commentators immediately grasped the significance of
Lincoln’s speech, none more so than the elitist Charles Francis Adams,
Jr., the scion of the famous Massachusetts family. “That rail-splitting
lawyer is one of the wonders of the day,” he wrote in applauding
Lincoln’s speech. “Once at Gettysburg and now again on a greater
occasion he has shown a capacity for rising to the demands of the
hour. . . . This inaugural strikes me in its grand simplicity and direct-
ness as being for all time the historical keynote of this war.” Lincoln
himself believed it would “wear as well as=perhaps better than=any
thing I have produced.”
As he began his second term, Lincoln’s power and prestige were
at a peak. Military victory was imminent, emancipation was secure,
the radicals had been thwarted on Reconstruction, and after almost
four years of withering criticism, Lincoln was genuinely popular and
respected in the North. The New York Herald anointed him “the un-
questioned master of the situation in reference to American aVairs, at
home and abroad.” How had he come to be such a successful
president?
�
Abraham Lincoln was not born a great president. Indeed, he was
one of the least experienced men to be elected president in American
history, and he had to grow into the oYce by mastering the many
responsibilities that fall on a president in wartime. His touch became
more sure as the war continued, but he brought to the oYce certain
qualities of leadership forged in his career in Illinois politics that were
crucial to his eventual success as president.
His hardscrabble early life and experience stumping the state had
given him a knowledge of and faith in ordinary people, with whom
he had a genuine rapport. Putting together legislative and political
coalitions in Illinois taught him the art of working with men of diverse
viewpoints. He understood the ways of the political world and the
imperfections of human character and was not easily fooled, displayed
a firm grasp of the workings of party machinery, and knew how to
manage men. Moreover, his participation in rough-and-tumble state
campaigns had toughened him to criticism, strengthened his belief in
democracy, and taught him to rely on his own judgment and not to
depend on advisers or cronies.
At the same time, he had developed personal qualities that stood
him in good stead as president. He exhibited an extraordinary patience,
which his numerous political failures and diYcult marriage surely re-
inforced, and had learned to control his temper. Long before he be-
came president, he manifested a generous spirit and an unwillingness
to nurse political grudges or seek revenge. His many defeats and dis-
appointments before 1860 fostered a resiliency in the face of adversity
that would prove vital during his presidency. The New York Herald
observed, “Plain common sense, a kindly disposition, a straightforward
purpose, and a shrewd perception of the ins and outs of poor weak
human nature, have enabled him to master diYculties which would
have swamped almost any other man.”
These qualities shaped his presidency. Preeminently his own man,
he did not rely on his cabinet to determine policy, and he never felt
bound by the sentiment of its members. “The relations between him
and all the Secretaries were perfectly cordial always and unaVected,”
Charles Dana observed, “. . . but it was always his will, his order, that
determined a decision.” In seeking the opinions of others, he rarely
revealed his own thoughts until he had made up his mind. “He always
told enough only, of his plans and purposes, to induce the belief that
he had communicated all,” Leonard Swett, an Illinois Republican,
commented. “Yet he reserved enough, in fact, to have communicated
nothing.” At the same time, he did not isolate himself from dissenting
viewpoints or inflexibly adhere to policies if they failed. Through a
combination of persuasion, tact, and iron determination, he controlled
his administration and the war eVort. “He could have dispensed with
any one of his cabinet and the administration not been impaired,” an
admiring Gideon Welles concluded, “but it would have been diYcult
if not impossible to have selected any one who could have filled the
oYce of chief magistrate as successfully as Mr. Lincoln. . . . ”
Lincoln understood that patronage was the glue that held parties
together in the nineteenth century, and he devoted more time and
energy to patronage matters than to any other issue except the mili-
tary. He recognized all factions in the distribution of oYces and never
singled out his party critics for political annihilation. Lincoln’s careful
attention to the party machinery oiled his surprisingly easy renomi-
nation in 1864. Yet he realized that he never could satisfy everyone
because, as he mused to an Illinois colleague, he “always had more
horses than oats.”
Furthermore, he could take the political pounding and could not
be intimidated, as his resistance to the radicals’ pressure on emanci-
pation in 1862 and the popular cry for peace negotiations in 1864
showed. He endured personal slights, social humiliation, unprece-
dented ridicule, and vicious criticism without descending to pettiness
or vindictiveness. He said of the press’s relentless carping, “Those
comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me
through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much
malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from
ridicule. I am used to it.”
Like most strong presidents, Lincoln found Congress a severe trial,
and it was not just coincidence that his most decisive assertions of
presidential power usually occurred when Congress was not in session.
On matters he deemed beyond his responsibility, such as economic
legislation, he generally deferred to Congress. His most forceful ex-
ertions of executive authority came on questions of war policy, eman-
cipation, and reconstruction, which he considered his responsibility
because of his war powers as commander-in-chief. On all of these
issues, however, he made concessions to Congress, and his relations
with the legislative branch, while often strained, never broke down
completely, in part because Lincoln maintained a basic flexibility in his
approach, but also because he understood the need to maintain party
unity.
Lincoln devoted considerable attention to military aVairs, and in
the process redefined the nature of the president’s role as commander-
in-chief. Despite his limited military background, he displayed a keen
aptitude for military strategy, and as his self-confidence grew, he be-
came more assertive in promoting his ideas, while displaying enor-
mous skill in dealing with his generals. Military performance, not per-
sonal relations or partisan aYliations, counted most with Lincoln. He
never shared the widespread hostility in Washington to West Point
oYcers, and he rejected the view that Democratic generals lacked the
commitment to win the war. When the German Republican leader
Carl Schurz upbraided him for giving military commands to Demo-
crats, Lincoln retorted that the war “should be conducted on military
knowledge” and not “on political aYnity.” Referring to the many Re-
publicans who had received such commands, he trenchantly observed,
“I do not see that their superiority of success has been so marked as
to throw great suspicion on the good faith of those who are not
Republicans.”
The powers Lincoln exercised were breathtaking in their extent and
significance. He spent money without congressional authorization,
suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the Union, authorized
military trials of civilians, dictated the terms of peace, and abolished
slavery by presidential edict. With exceptional deftness, he walked the
thin line between failing to respond vigorously and abuse of power.
Exercising unprecedented power, he was neither corrupted by it nor
viewed it as an end in itself. “Lincoln certainly was the safest leader a
nation could have” at a time when constitutional rights had to be
suspended, Harriet Beecher Stowe argued. “A reckless, bold, theoriz-
ing, dashing man,” she concluded, “. . . might have wrecked our Con-
stitution and ended us in a splendid military despotism.”
In dealing with the greatest crisis in American history, Lincoln be-
came an accomplished and extraordinary president. He had a sure
sense of political timing, knew when to stand firm and when to com-
promise, and displayed an absolute genius for getting individuals of
diverse viewpoints to work together. “Slow and careful in coming to
resolutions” and basing his decisions on facts rather than “illusions”
of what “might be,” he possessed the ability to weigh alternatives and
to perceive clearly the consequences of his acts, and, as Noah Brooks
noted, was “never crushed at defeat or unduly excited by success” but
remained calm in the face of both. He never lost sight of his larger
objectives, yet he remained flexible in his approach and not afraid to
change his mind or admit that he had been wrong. As he began his
second term, the New York Herald commented, “He has proved him-
self, in his quiet way, the keenest of politicians, and more than a match
for his wiliest antagonists. . . .”
His two secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, marveled at his
unsurpassed ability “to still the quarrels of factions, to allay the jeal-
ousies of statesmen, to compose the rivalries of generals, to soothe
the vanity of oYcials, to prompt the laggard, to curb the ardent, [and]
to sustain the faltering.” Even in the darkest hours of the war, he
never lacked faith in his ability to lead the nation through this crisis.
Indeed, probably his most remarkable quality as president was his
unwavering belief in himself, what Welles termed his “wonderful self-
reliance.”
�
The war had exacted a heavy physical toll on Lincoln, and he
needed to get away from the daily grind of Washington. Indeed, the
normally robust president was so exhausted that in mid-March the
cabinet met in his bedroom. As a result, he decided to visit Grant at
his headquarters in City Point, Virginia. His wife and Tad accompanied
him, and they were reunited with Robert, who had graduated from
Harvard and was now a member of Grant’s staV.
Lincoln disembarked at City Point on March 24. After Sherman
arrived by sea from North Carolina, the president met with Grant,
Sherman, and Admiral David Porter on March 28 aboard the River
Queen, which had brought him from Washington. In discussing the
military situation, Lincoln expressed the hope that the war could be
concluded without another major battle. When the discussion turned
to matters once the fighting was over, Lincoln reiterated his desire for
a generous peace that would foster sectional reconciliation and avoid
anarchy in the South. As for Confederate soldiers, Lincoln advised,
“Let them all go, oYcers and all. I want submission, and no more
bloodshed.” He advocated the same approach toward JeVerson Davis
and the political leaders of the Confederacy. Rejecting any idea of
vengeance, Lincoln said with a wink that he would not complain if
they somehow managed to elude Union forces and successfully flee
the country.
Once again, Mary Lincoln proved an emotional cross for her al-
ready overburdened husband. Her public behavior made this trip ex-
cruciatingly painful for Lincoln. The First Lady exploded in a jealous
rage when the president rode alongside the pert wife of a Union gen-
eral as he reviewed the troops. At a subsequent dinner party she
This picture, entitled “The Peacemakers,” shows Lincoln conferring with

(from left) General William Tecumseh Sherman, General Ulysses S. Grant,
and Admiral David Porter in a cabin on the steamship River Queen a
few weeks before the end of the war. (Chicago Historical Society)
accused General Grant’s wife, Julia, of trying to upstage her and pub-
licly berated her husband for allegedly flirting with another general’s
wife; Lincoln’s eVorts to cajole her were unavailing. He probably
breathed a sigh of relief when she decided to return to Washington.
Indeed, a major scandal was brewing over Mary Lincoln’s abuse of
her position to extort favors from merchants. Shopping gave her a
welcome diversion from the pressures of her public position and the
constant criticism of the press, yet she failed to see that her extrava-
gant spending on clothing and luxuries, which she schemed to charge
to the government, was inappropriate in a wartime nation draped in
black. In 1864 Mary had been terrified that Lincoln would be defeated
and her expenditures revealed. His reelection postponed the day of
reckoning, but she persisted in her spending habits and had accumu-
lated debts totaling thousands of dollars. Only death spared Lincoln,
who in his wife’s words was “almost a monomaniac on the subject
of honesty,” from having to deal with her disreputable actions.
Mary’s tantrums and imperiousness caused Nicolay and Hay, who
heartily disliked her, to finally seek reassignment. In March, Lincoln
appointed Nicolay to be consul to Paris, and he intended to make Hay
secretary to the American legation in France. Noah Brooks, a reporter
whom Lincoln had known for almost a decade and who enjoyed Mrs.
Lincoln’s support, was designated to take Nicolay’s place. While loyal
to the president, Nicolay’s harsh and curt demeanor made him many
enemies, and the more congenial Brooks promised to handle these
duties more eVectively.
On April 3, while Lincoln was still at City Point, Union troops
entered Richmond after Lee was forced to pull out of the lines at
Petersburg. Lincoln decided to visit the former capital of the Confed-
eracy. To Stanton’s concern about the danger of such a visit, Lincoln
replied, “I will take care of myself.”
The next morning the president traveled on a Union naval vessel
up the James River to Richmond. Accompanied by Admiral Porter
and a small escort of seamen, he walked through the ruins of the
burned-out city to General Godfrey Weitzel’s headquarters in the for-
mer Confederate White House. Whites, especially those of higher
status, were generally sullen and stayed largely out of sight, but the
city’s black residents jubilantly welcomed the United States president
and marched along behind him.
When Lincoln had met Grant in Petersburg after its fall he had
reiterated his desire for a generous peace. He repeated this wish during
his visit to Richmond. He dissented when a Union oYcer, after view-
ing the city’s military prisons, urged that Davis be hanged. And when
Weitzel sought advice about how to handle the people of Richmond,
Lincoln replied, “If I were in your place, I’d let ’em up easy, let ’em
up easy.”
Lee and the remnants of his army moved westward, hoping even-
tually to turn south and join Johnston. But at Sayler’s Creek a de-
tachment of Grant’s army captured half of Lee’s troops. Sheridan
This engraving, based on a drawing by an artist who was present, shows

Lincoln riding through the Confederate capital of Richmond in April 1865
to the enthusiastic cheers of the city’s black population. (Library of
Congress)
wired Grant, “If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender.”
Reading this message, Lincoln tersely responded, “Let the thing be
pressed.”
While in Virginia, he insisted on visiting the 7000 sick and wounded
soldiers in the hospital at City Point and personally greeting most of
them, including those who were Confederates. An agent for the
United States Sanitary Commission noted that when talking to rebel
soldiers, “he was just as kind, his handshakings just as hearty, his
interest just as real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among
our own soldiers.”
With Malice Toward None
197
News that Seward had been seriously injured in a carriage accident
prompted Lincoln to return to Washington. He arrived on April 9 and
quickly called on the bedridden secretary of state. “I think we are near
the end, at last,” he quietly informed his colleague. Indeed, later that
evening word arrived from Grant that Lee had surrendered at Appo-
mattox Court House.
When the news was announced the next morning, it set oV a day-
long celebration in the capital. Mary reported that an immense crowd
swarmed around the White House, singing songs and repeatedly
shouting for the president. That evening the weary chief executive
finally came out on the balcony and said a few brief words. Then
noticing that a band was present, he asked its members to play one
of his favorite songs: “Dixie.”
This illustration from Harper’s Weekly, drawn during his visit to Grant’s
army in 1865, was published the day Lincoln died. Reflecting Lincoln’s im-
age as Father Abraham, it conveys the aVection countless Northerners felt
for the unpretentious president.
�
The next evening, April 11, Lincoln delivered a public address,
which he had carefully written out, on the problem of Reconstruction.
Refusing to indulge in the speculative argument of whether the se-
ceded states had ever been out of the Union, Lincoln, as was his wont,
emphasized instead the practical problem of restoring these states to
their normal relationship with the federal government. “Let us all join
in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations
between these states and the Union. . . .” In an appeal to the radicals,
he granted that Congress had a legitimate role in Reconstruction.
Once again, flexibility and political dexterity were the hallmarks of
Lincoln’s position. Noting that “no exclusive, and inflexible plan can
safely be prescribed as to details and colatterals,” he indicated that he
might soon make a new announcement to the people of the South
concerning Reconstruction, and he also suggested that he might favor
diVerent programs for diVerent states. This thought was left undev-
eloped, but Lincoln may have been considering that states that did
not yet have a program of Reconstruction under way could be subject
to diVerent (and more stringent) terms than those that did. Certainly
such an approach would help assuage radicals’ fears while preserving
his governments in Louisiana and Arkansas. So would his public en-
dorsement for the first time of limited black suVrage in the Recon-
structed South. The audience, however, had expected a triumphant
speech on the occasion, and many present became inattentive or wan-
dered oV.
Despite his defense of his wartime governments in the occupied
South, Lincoln was troubled by developments in Louisiana. As radicals
had feared, without military intervention conservatives had seized
control of the government, and the new governor began appointing
former Copperheads and even Confederates to oYce. In response to
protests from Unionists in New Orleans, Lincoln ordered Nathaniel P.
Banks, his military commander who had come to Washington to lobby
members of congress to recognize the new state government, to re-
turn to Louisiana to put the program back on course.
Banks’s return and Lincoln’s speech indicated that he was recon-
sidering the whole process of Reconstruction. The need to establish
loyal governments as a way to win the war no longer existed, and
the conservative reaction in Louisiana, which boded ill for Unionists
and blacks alike, was a major cause for concern. In his speech, Lincoln
acknowledged that perhaps his 10 percent requirement was too low,
and he also apparently had abandoned his earlier willingness to accept
a transition period from slavery to freedom for former slaves.
There were other indications as well that Lincoln was reaching out
to the radicals on Reconstruction in hopes of establishing common
ground with Congress. He asked Stanton, who was known to favor
black suVrage, to draw up a plan to establish military governments in
the defeated states of the Confederacy. He also signed the Freedmen’s
Bureau bill, enacted by Congress in February, which established a
special agency within the War Department to aid refugees and super-
vise the situation of former slaves in the South. As was often the case,
Lincoln left himself room to maneuver as events dictated. What was
clear was that his program of Reconstruction was in the process of
evolution, and that he was moving in the direction of greater rights
and safeguards for black Americans, although he had not yet thought
through the problem of what position former slaves would occupy in
the postwar South.
The change in Lincoln’s thinking on race over the past four years
was striking. He had sloughed oV the idea of colonization and em-
braced universal black freedom as one of the consequences of the
Union’s triumph. He was the first American president to oYcially
receive African Americans at the White House, and when a group of
black residents hesitatingly showed up at the President’s annual New
Year’s reception in 1865, Lincoln, according to one witness, welcomed
them “with a heartiness that made them wild with exceeding joy.”
Two months later, blacks were allowed for the first time to participate
in the inaugural parade. Frederick Douglass, the famous black aboli-
tionist, testified, “In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was im-
pressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the
colored race.” Lincoln was, according to Douglass, “emphatically the
black mans President: the first to show any respect for their rights as
men.”
Among those in the audience listening to Lincoln’s speech was John
Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and a Confederate sympathizer. When
he heard Lincoln endorse black suVrage, he muttered to an associate,
“That means nigger citizenship,” and promised, “That is the last
speech he will ever make.”
�
Lincoln had appointed Ward Hill Lamon, who was an old friend
from the Illinois circuit, marshall of the District of Columbia. A large,
burly man, Lamon undertook to protect a president who seemed
oblivious to security. Heavily armed, he sometimes slept in the hall-
way outside the Lincoln’s room in the White House to guard against
intruders, and he repeatedly criticized the president for not taking
proper precautions in public.
Lincoln had never forgotten the ridicule he was subjected to when
he secretly entered Washington in February 1861, and he was deter-
mined henceforth not to show any fear. Ignoring the hatreds the war
had created, he adhered to the traditional view that the ruler of a free
people should not be surrounded by guards. “It would never do for
a President to have guards with drawn sabres at his door,” he main-
tained, “as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were as-
suming to be, an emperor.” Pointing to a batch of threatening letters,
he once told newspaper editor John W. Forney, “I know I am in
danger,” but he was convinced that “no precautions he could take
would be availing” against a determined assassin.
Over the course of the war security measures were tightened, but
by modern standards they remained amazingly lax. Lincoln often
walked on the streets or went to the War Department late at night
alone. Not until November 1864 were District police regularly sta-
tioned at the White House. In 1862, Stanton, who shared Lamon’s
fears, ordered an Ohio company to guard the White House, and in
the summer he detailed a cavalry unit to escort the president to the
Soldiers’ Home. Even so, in August 1864 as he was riding to the
Home, a shot fired from the bushes caused his horse to bolt, and he
lost his hat; when soldiers retrieved the hat, they found a bullet hole
in it. The incident was hushed up, but Stanton augmented the heavy
guard that accompanied the president.
On April 14, Good Friday, the cabinet assembled at eleven with
General Grant as an invited guest. The president’s spirits were high,
and Stanton reported that he was “grander, graver, more thoroughly
up to the occasion than he had ever seen him.” In the ensuing dis-
cussion, Lincoln conceded that perhaps he had tried to move too fast
on Reconstruction, but he nevertheless expressed the view that it
would be easier to work out a suitable program with Congress no
longer in session. “We could do better; accomplish more without than
with them,” he predicted. He hoped to have new governments in
operation by the time Congress convened in December.
Lincoln also renewed his call for a generous peace. When his ad-
visers asked what was to be done with Davis and the leaders of the
Confederacy, Lincoln replied, “Frighten them out of the country” as
he gestured with his hands as if he were shooing chickens. He criti-
cized the vengeful mood of some members of Congress, saying that
he wanted “no persecution, no bloody work, after the war was over.”
Explicitly disavowing any “feelings of hate and vindictiveness,” he in-
sisted that he would not “take any part in hanging” any Confederate
leaders. “Enough lives had been sacrificed.”
Late in the afternoon Lincoln went for a drive with his wife. “We
must both, be more cheerful in the future,” he said to Mary. “Between
the war and the loss of our darling Willie=we have both, been very
miserable.” Lincoln acted as if a great weight had been removed from
his shoulders, and observers reported that as in olden times, his face
was animated, his outlook cheerful.
It had been announced that President and Mrs. Lincoln would at-
tend Ford’s Theater that evening to see the comedy Our American
Cousin. They arrived at the theater at about 8:30. When the president
entered the special box, the audience broke into thunderous cheers as
the orchestra performed “Hail to the Chief.” Once the play had re-
sumed, the guard assigned to the presidential box soon left to get a
better view of the play.
Earlier that evening in a Washington hotel, John Wilkes Booth had
met with a group of Confederate sympathizers, who had been part of
an earlier abortive plot to kidnap the president. The defeat of the
Confederacy had left Booth despondent, and he was drinking heavily.
He now unveiled a plan to murder Lincoln and other government
oYcials, and assigned to himself the task of killing the president. Booth
was motivated by more than a desire to avenge the South: He was
also a strong defender of slavery and was enraged by the prospect of
black equality.
Booth entered the theater after the play was under way and, show-
ing his card to the White House footman, was allowed to go to the
door of the presidential box. During the third act, while the audience
roared at a particularly funny line, Booth quietly opened the door and
shot the president behind the ear with a derringer from only a few
inches away. With a flair for the dramatic, Booth then leapt down to
the stage, only to break his leg when he landed awkwardly. Brandish-
ing a knife, he shouted something that sounded like “Sic semper tyr-
annis,” the motto of the state of Virginia, and hobbled out the side
door. Two weeks later, Union troops killed Booth in a Virginia barn.
The unconscious president was taken across the street to a private
home and placed diagonally on a bed. Cabinet members and other
government oYcials quickly assembled at the house. The doctors pres-
ent announced that Lincoln’s condition was hopeless, and the end
came at 7:22 in the morning. He was fifty-six years old. After a minister
oVered a short prayer, Stanton, fighting to hold back tears, com-
mented, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
A military funeral was held on Wednesday, April 19, in the East
Room of the White House. Mary Lincoln was too distraught to attend,
and only oYcial dignitaries were invited. Following the funeral, the
body was taken to the Capitol, where it lay in state so the residents
of Washington could pay their last respects. Unable to reach their
assigned position, a regiment of black soldiers symbolically led the
procession down Pennsylvania Avenue. Finally, on April 21, a week
after the assassination, a special funeral train left Washington to carry
Lincoln’s casket back to Springfield. It mostly followed the same 1600-
mile route that Lincoln had taken in February 1861 when he had come
to Washington. The twenty-day trip from Washington to Springfield
transported the martyred president to immortality.
Thousands silently stood along the tracks as the train slowly passed,
and thousands more viewed the body as it lay in state in principal
cities along the way. All told, well over a million Americans viewed
the body of their fallen leader on this journey home. “History has no
parallel to the outpouring of sorrow which followed the funeral cortége
on its route from Washington to Springfield,” declared General E. D.
Townsend, who was on the train. In New York City, when oYcials
tried to prevent African Americans from taking part in the oYcial
ceremony, Stanton ordered the train not to stop in the nation’s me-
tropolis unless they were included, and the order prohibiting their
participation was quickly rescinded. Even in death, Lincoln could not
escape the power of antiblack prejudice.
On May 3, after the train reached Springfield, the casket was taken
to the state capitol in a special hearse and placed in the hall of the
House of Representatives, where Lincoln had delivered his House Di-
vided speech seven years earlier. For hours, thousands of friends, ac-
quaintances, supporters, and neighbors filed slowly past to bid him
farewell. The next day, Lincoln’s body was interred at Oak Ridge Cem-
etery, two miles outside of Springfield, as his widow wished. Abraham
Lincoln had come home to the Illinois prairie where, more than three
decades before, as a penniless young man, he had begun his journey
to greatness.
CHRONOLOGY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
1809 February 12 Born in Hardin County, Kentucky
1811 Spring Family moves to Knob Creek farm
1815 Autumn Attends first school
1816 December Family moves to Indiana
1818 October 5 Mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, dies
1819 December 2 Father marries Sarah Bush Johnson
1824 Formal schooling ends
1827 Operates a passenger ferry on the Ohio River
1828 Spring–Summer Travels to New Orleans by flatboat
1830 March Family moves to Illinois

Summer Makes first political speech in Illinois
1831 April–July Second trip to New Orleans

Late July Arrives in New Salem
1832 March 9 Writes platform as candidate for legislature

April–July Serves in Black Hawk War
August 6 Defeated for legislature in first political race
1833 January Lincoln–Berry store established

May 7 Appointed postmaster (serves until May 1836)
1834 August 4 Elected to state legislature

Autumn Begins studying law
December 1 Takes seat in legislature
Chronology of Abraham Lincoln
205
1835 March 7 Personal possessions sold for debt
August 25 Ann Rutledge dies
1836 August 1 Reelected to legislature

September 9 Receives law license
1837 March 3 Enters legislative protest against slavery

April 15 Moves to Springfield; joins law partnership with
John T. Stuart

Fall–Winter Engaged to Mary Todd; breaks engagement
1841 March Forms legal partnership with Stephen T. Logan
1842 September 19 Challenged to duel by James Shields

November 4 Marries Mary Todd
1843 August 1 Son Robert Todd Lincoln born
1844 December Forms legal partnership with William Herndon
1846 March 10 Son Edward Baker (Eddie) Lincoln born

August 3 Elected to Congress
1847– December 3– Serves in Congress

1849 March 4
1850 February 1 Son Eddie dies

December 21 Son William Wallace (Willie) Lincoln born
1853 April 4 Son Thomas (Tad) Lincoln born
1854 October 16 Peoria speech

November 7 Elected to the legislature; resigns to seek U.S.
Senate seat
1855 February 8 Defeated for senator

September 20–21 McCormick reaper patent trial
1856 February 22 Joins movement to organize the Republican party

in Illinois
May 29 Attends Republican state convention; nominated
for presidential elector
206 Chronology of Abraham Lincoln
June 19 Finishes second in balloting for Republican vice-

presidential nomination
Fall Campaigns for Republican ticket
1857 September 8 Mississippi River bridge case
1858 May 7 Almanac trial

June 16 Nominated for senator by Republican conven-
tion; delivers House Divided speech
August 21– Lincoln–Douglas debates
October 15
November 4 State election foreshadows defeat for Senate
1859 January 5 Defeated for senator
1860 February 27 Cooper Union address

May 10 State convention instructs delegates for Lincoln
May 18 Nominated for president
November 6 Elected president
December 20 South Carolina secedes
CIVIL WAR
1860– December–March Opposes compromise
1861 December–April Fort Sumter crisis
1861 February 11 Leaves Springfield to go to Washington

March 4 Inaugurated
April 12 Fort Sumter bombarded
April 15 Calls for 75,000 volunteers
April 19 Institutes blockade
April 27 Suspends writ of habeas corpus in Maryland
July 4 First message to Congress
July 21 Battle of Bull Run
July 22–25 Crittenden resolution approved
July 26 McClellan takes command of the army at
Washington
August 6 First Confiscation Act
September 12 Revokes Frémont’s proclamation
November 1 Appoints McClellan commanding general
November– Trent aVair
December
Chronology of Abraham Lincoln
207
1862 February 6–16 Forts Henry and Donelson captured
February 20 Son Willie dies
March–July Peninsula Campaign
April 6–7 Battle of Shiloh
April 25 Farragut captures New Orleans
May 19 Revokes Hunter’s emancipation proclamation
June 26–July 2 Seven Days’ Battles
July 12 Meets with border state representatives
July 17 Second Confiscation Act approved
July 22 Circulates draft of Emancipation Proclamation to
cabinet
July 23 Names Halleck general-in-chief (serves until
March 9, 1864)
August 4 Institutes militia draft
August 30 Second Battle of Bull Run
September 17 Battle of Antietam
September 22 Issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
September 24 Suspends writ of habeas corpus throughout the
Union
October 8 Battle of Perryville
October 24 Removes Buell from command
October–November Democrats gain in fall elections
November 5 Removes McClellan from command, replaced by
Burnside
December 13 Battle of Fredericksburg
December 16–20 Cabinet crisis
December 31– Battle of Stones River
January 1
1863 January 1 Issues final Emancipation Proclamation

January 25 Hooker replaces Burnside
May 2–4 Battle of Chancellorsville
May 6 Vallandigham arrested
May–July Siege of Vicksburg
June 7 Black troops fight at Battle of Milliken’s Bend
June 28 Names Meade commander of Army of the
Potomac
July 1–3 Battle of Gettysburg
July 4 Vicksburg captured
July 13–16 New York City draft riots
September 19–20 Battle of Chickamauga
October–November Democrats suVer severe defeats in state elections
November 19 Gettysburg Address
208 Chronology of Abraham Lincoln
November 23–25 Battle of Chattanooga

December 8 Announces Reconstruction program
1864 February 20 Pomeroy Circular published

March 9 Names Grant commanding general
April 8 Thirteenth Amendment passes the Senate
May–June Grant’s oVensive in Virginia
June 8 Renominated
June 19 Siege of Petersburg begins
June 30 Chase leaves the cabinet
July 4 Pocket vetoes Wade–Davis bill
July 11 Early’s invasion reaches outskirts of Washington
July 18 Greeley’s peace mission
August 5 Battle of Mobile Bay
August 29 McClellan nominated
August 30 Call for new Republican convention circulated
September 2 Sherman captures Atlanta
September 17 Frémont withdraws as a presidential candidate
September 23 Blair resigns from the cabinet
November 8 Reelected
November– Sherman’s march
December
December 6 Appoints Chase Chief Justice
December 15–16 Battle of Nashville
December 22 Sherman captures Savannah
1865 January 31 Thirteenth Amendment passes Congress

February 3 Hampton Roads Conference
March 3 Freedmen’s Bureau established
March 4 Second inauguration
April 3 Richmond falls
April 9 Lee surrenders
April 11 Last speech on Reconstruction
April 14 Shot at Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth;
dies the next morning
April–May Funeral train procession
April 26 Booth killed
May 4 Burial in Springfield
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Brooks, Washington Noah Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time (New York:

Century, 1895).
Browning Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall, eds., The Di-

ary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield: Illi-
nois State Historical Library, 1933).
CW Roy P. Basler et al., eds., The Collected Works of Abra-

ham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers
Univ. Press, 1954).
Carpenter Francis Carpenter, Six Months in the White House with

Abraham Lincoln (New York: Hurd and Houghton,
1866).
Donald David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and

Schuster, 1995).
Hay, Correspondence Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s

Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2000).
Hay, Inside Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds.,

Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Di-
ary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ.
Press, 1997).
Herndon’s Lincoln William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Life

of Lincoln, ed. Paul M. Angle (Cleveland: World Pub-
lishing, 1942).
HI Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Hern-

don’s Informants (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1998).
210 List of Abbreviations
Johannsen Robert W. Johannsen, The Lincoln–Douglas Debates of
1858 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965).
McClellen Papers Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George
McClellan (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989).
McPherson James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York:

Oxford Univ. Press, 1988).
Nicolay, Oral History Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham

Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1996).
Nicolay, With Lincoln Michael Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White
House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G.
Nicolay, 1860–1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ.
Press, 2000).
OR The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the OYcial

Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols.
(Washington: Government Printing OYce, 1880–1901).
Recollected Words Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, Recol-

lected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-
ford Univ. Press, 1996).
Thomas Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952).
Welles Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols.

(New York: W. W. Norton, 1960).
NOTES
In the notes that follow, I have indicated the sources only for quotations in the
text. In addition to my own research, I have also had many occasions to consult
the two best modern biographies of Abraham Lincoln: Benjamin Thomas, Abra-
ham Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), and David Herbert
Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). Also of particular impor-
tance have been Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1982), and Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day, 3 vols.
(Washington: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960).
Preface
ix “shut-mouthed man”: Herndon’s Lincoln, xxxix.
ix “or Expect to see”: David Davis HI, 348.
ix “inclined to silence”: CW, v. 4, p. 209.
ix “speak of any relative”: Leonard Swett, HI, 159.
ix “as I should of had”: George Spears, HI, 393.
x “ends he had in view”: Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (Boston:
Houghton MiZin, 1913), 427.
x “cheat posterity”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 353.
xi “this place”: Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dis-
patches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998), 202.
Chapter 1: A Son of the Frontier

1 “farm work”: CW, v. 3, pp. 511–12.
1 “simple annals of the poor”: John Scripps, HI, 57.
1 “open a farm”: CW, v. 3, p. 511.
1 “wandering laboring boy”: CW, v. 4, p. 61.
2 “a tinker”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI, 113.
2 “bunglingly sign his own name”: CW, v. 4, p. 61.
2 “short periods”: ibid.
3 “naturally anti-slavery”: CW, v. 7, p. 281.
3 “a wild region”: CW, v. 3, p. 511.
212 Notes
3 “plowing and harvesting seasons”: CW, v. 4, p. 62.
3 “taught him to work”: John Romine, HI, 118.
4 “ragged and dirty”: Dennis Hanks, HI, 41.
4 “more human”: Sarah Bush Lincoln, HI, 106.
4 “the best boy I Ever Saw”: ibid., 108.
5 “his best Friend in this world”: Augustus H. Chapman, HI, 136.
5 “looked upon as a wizzard”: CW, v. 3, p. 511.
6 “went to school no more”: Anna Gentry, HI, 131
6 “cipher to the Rule of Three”: CW, v. 3, p. 511.
6 “ambition for education”: ibid.
6 “soared above us”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI, 114.
6 “not Energetic Except in one thing”: Matilda Johnson Moore, HI, 109.
7 “understand Every thing”: Sarah Bush Lincoln, HI, 107.
7 “treated him rather unkind”: A. H. Chapman, HI, 134.
7 “slash[ed] him” and “Stubborn”: Dennis Hanks, HI, 41.
7 “pulled a trigger”: CW, v. 4, p. 62.
8 “naturally assumed the leadership of the boys”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI,
114.
8 “making all happy”: ibid.
8 “on his Simple word”: Joseph C. Richardson, HI, 120.
8 “make him quit”: Matilda Johnson Moore, HI, 110.
8 “argued much from Analogy”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI, 114–15.
8 “6 or more inches”: ibid., 113.
9 “a kind of news boy”: Dennis Hanks, HI, 105.
9 “talked Evry thing over”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI, 114.
9 “roughest work”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 52.
9 “wider and fairer before me”: Carpenter, 97–98.
10 “lived Easy”: Nathaniel Grigsby, HI, 113.
11 “a piece of floating driftwood”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 66.
11 “penniless” and “friendless”: CW, v. 1, p. 320.
11 “as ruV a specimen”: David C. Mearns, The Lincoln Papers (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1948), v. 1, 151.

12 “without any hat”: Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael
Burlingame (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998), 9.
12 “intellegence far beyond”: Jason Duncan, HI, 539.
12 “centre of the circle”: Robert L. Wilson, HI, 201.
12 “story to tell”: N. W. Branson, HI, 91.
14 “done with the Bible”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 67–68.
14 “people relied implicitly”: Robert B. Rutledge, HI, 386.
14 “flabby and undone”: Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters
and Papers of William H. Herndon (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1940),
165.
14 “men’s foibles”: Jason Duncan, HI, 541.
14 “for miles around”: N. W. Branson, HI, 91.
Notes 213
14 “studied English grammar”: CW, v. 4, p. 62.
15 “than any other Man”: Abner Y. Ellis, HI, 501.
15 “Doctrine of Necessity”: CW, v. 1, p. 382.
16 “great popularity”: CW, v. 4, p. 64.
16 “peculiar ambition”: CW, v. 1, p. 8.
16 “to recommend me”: CW, v. 1, pp. 8–9.
17 “morality, sobriety”: CW, v. 1, p. 8.
17 “so much satisfaction”: CW, v. 4, p. 64.
17 “mixt Jeans Coat”: Abner Y. Ellis, HI, 171.
17 “short and sweet”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 86.
17 “direct vote of the people”: CW, v. 4, p. 64.
18 “without a better education”: CW, v. 4, p. 65.
18 “wait on the Ladies”: Abner Y. Ellis, HI, 170.
18 “deeper in debt”: CW, v. 4, p. 65.
18 “national debt”: Mearns, Lincoln Papers, v. 1, 153.
18 “in his hat”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 101.
18 “a man better pleased”: Mearns, Lincoln Papers, v. 1, 157.
19 “soul and body together”: CW, v. 4, p. 65.
19 “by day and by night”: N. W. Branson, HI, 90.
19 “reading as he walked”: Robert B. Rutledge, HI, 426.
19 “eyes would Sparkle”: Robert L. Wilson, HI, 201–2.
19 “clear Shrill monotone”: ibid., HI, 203.
20 “in good earnest”: CW, v. 4, p. 65.
20 “said he was crazy”: Mearns, Lincoln Papers, v. 1, 158.
20 “Great God Almighty”: Russell Godbey, HI, 450.
22 “your happiness”: CW, v. 1, pp. 94–95.
22 “chain of womans happiness”: Mary Owens Vineyard, HI, 256.
22 “in love with her”: CW, v. 1, pp. 117–19.
23 “one long step removed”: CW, v. 1, pp. 65–66.
23 “injustice and bad policy”: CW, v. 1, pp. 74–75.
23 “so much generosity”: CW, v. 4, pp. 64–65.
Chapter 2: Thwarted Ambition

25 “experiment as a lawyer”: Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lin-
coln (Louisville: John P. Morton, 1884), 21–22.
25 “I am moved”: ibid.
25 “quite as lonesome”: CW, v. 1, p. 78.
25 “could have avoided it”: ibid.
26 “school in the county”: Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chi-
cago: A. C. McClurg, 1884), 56.
28 “studied very much”: Nicolay, Oral History, 37.
28 “shoot too high”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 262.
29 “of any consequence”: CW, v. 2, p. 126.
214 Notes
29 “whig in politics”: CW, v. 3, p. 512.
29 “from an oVended God”: Joshua F. Speed, HI, 477–78.
29 “10 or 12 feet”: James A. Herndon, HI, 460.
29 “many friends”: J. Rowan Herndon, HI, 51.
30 “defend ourselves with it”: CW, v. 1, pp. 205, 314.
30 “organize the whole State”: CW, v. 1, p. 201.
30 “sharing the privileges”: CW, v. 1, p. 48.
30 “one great living principle”: CW, v. 1, p. 507.
31 “his opponents ridiculous”: Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Trans-
formation of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 213.
31 “hard to foil”: Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day, vol. 1 (Wash-
ington: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), 144.
31 “plead guilty to the charge”: Ninian Edwards, HI, 447.
32 “unimpassioned reason”: CW, v. 1, p. 115.
32 “deepest chagrin”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 159–60.
33 “object of government”: CW, v. 2, p. 221.
34 “to improve his manners”: Thomas, 86.
35 “Scarcely Said a word”: Elizabeth Todd Edwards, HI, 443.
35 “of the courting”: Nicolay, Oral History, 1.
35 “most miserable man living”: CW, v. 1, p. 229.
35 “the chief gem”: CW, v. 1, p. 289.
35 “marry that girl”: James Matheny, HI, 251.
35 “to hell”: Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1858, vol. 1 (Boston:
35 “of profound wonder”: CW, v. 1, p. 305.
36 “look like somebody”: Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1987), 133.
37 “women folks out”: Harriet Chapman, HI, 646.
37 “played merry war”: Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, 133.
37 “put on Style”: Harriet Chapman, HI, 512.
37 “scoVer at, religion”: CW, v. 1, p. 382.
38 “never was much interested”: CW, v. 1, pp. 347–48.
39 “extending slave territory”: CW, v. 1, p. 476.
39 “sort of necessity”: CW, v. 1, p. 454.
39 “distracting question”: ibid.
40 “more assiduously than ever before”: CW, v. 3, p. 512.
41 “lack of discipline”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 247.
41 “nearly mastered”: CW, v. 4, p. 62.
41 “dripped from him”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 473.
41 “whistle oV sadness”: David Davis, HI, 350.
41 “Strong Emotional feelings”: ibid., 348.
41 “more painful than pleasant”: CW, v. 2, pp. 96–97.
41 “Loved his farther”: Dennis Hanks, HI, 176.
42 “was hipocritical”: ibid., 177.
Notes 215
42 “look in this”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 254.
42 “remember it better”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 268.
43 “place of Enjoyment”: David Davis, HI, 349.
43 “heartier than his”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 250.
43 “kept for ten years”: Henry C. Whitney, Life with Lincoln on the Circuit
(Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1892), 32.

43 “had no nap”: Henry C. Whitney, HI, 617.
44 “back in a ditch”: Leonard Swett, HI, 635–36.
44 “profession in this state”: Donald, 151.
45 “long armed Ape”: ibid., 186.
45 “roughly handled”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 287.
45 “not, a demonstrative man”: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner,
Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972),
293.
46 “love him better” and “paid no attention”: James Gourley, HI, 453.
47 “gutted the room”: Thomas, 100.
47 “garret or cellar”: Nicolay, Oral History, 1.
48 “could not tempt him”: Donald, 161.
48 “leave one’s country no better”: Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln
(New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1940), 75.
48 “become abstracted”: Donald, 163.
48 “picture of dejection and gloom”: Jonathan Birch, HI, 727–28.
Chapter 3: Rise to Power

49 “aroused him”: CW, v. 4, p. 67.
49 “of a storm”: David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, edited and
completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Harper and Row, 1976),
160.
51 “a lullaby”: CW, v. 2, p. 262.
51 “utter antagonisms”: CW, v. 2, p. 275.
51 “our ancient faith”: CW, v. 2, p. 276.
51 “a slave of another”: CW, v. 2, p. 266.
51 “but self-interest”: CW, v. 2, p. 255.
51 “robe is soiled”: CW, v. 2, p. 276.
52 “the existing institution”: CW, v. 2, p. 255.
52 “be safely disregarded”: CW, v. 2, p. 256.
52 “a GREATER one”: CW, v. 2, p. 270.
52 “instantly give it up”: CW, v. 2, p. 255.
53 “a little engine”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 304.
53 “activity and vigilance”: ibid., 302.
54 “moderately”: CW, v. 2, p. 306.
54 “personal to myself”: CW, v. 2, p. 307.
216 Notes
54 “crumbs of last year”: CW, v. 2, p. 317.
55 “no pretense of loving liberty”: CW, v. 2, pp. 322–23.
55 “personal friends”: CW, v. 2, p. 316.
56 “its territorial parts”: CW, v. 2, p. 341. The newspaper report put this pas-
sage in italics.
57 “maxim for free society”: CW, v. 2, p. 406.
58 “could not at all recognize it”: CW, v. 2, p. 404.
58 “equal in all respects”: CW, v. 2, pp. 405–6.
58 “rapidly combining against him”: CW, v. 2, p. 404.
59 “first and only choice”: Illinois State Journal, June 17, 1858.
60 “half slave and half free”: CW, v. 2, pp. 461–62.
60 “the latter condition”: CW, v. 2, p. 462.
60 “welcome or unwelcome”: CW, v. 2, p. 467.
61 “voted down or voted up”: CW, v. 2, p. 465.
61 “made Illinois a slave State”: CW, v. 2, p. 467.
61 “assumption of superiority”: Joseph Gillespie, HI, 181.
61 “splendid success”: CW, v. 2, p. 383.
61 “have my hands full”: John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, vol. 2
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1881), 179.
61 “against the South”: Johannsen, 29.
62 “founded on the white basis”: Johannsen, 33.
63 “showed his rough boots”: Edwin Earle Sparks, ed., The Lincoln–Douglas
Debates of 1858 (Springfield: Illinois State Library, 1908), 206–7.
63 “battle-ground in the Union”: Donald, 214.
63 “clenching his fists”: Carl Schurz, The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, vol. 2
(New York: McClure, 1907), 95.
63 “emphasis to his arguments”: Henry Villard, Memoirs of Henry Villard, vol.
1 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1904), 93.
65 “assigned to the white race”: Johannsen, 162.
65 “equal of every living man”: ibid., 52–53.
65 “social and political wrong”: ibid., 316.
66 “sink out of view”: CW, v. 3, p. 339.
66 “absolutely without money”: CW, v. 3, p. 337.
67 “fit for the Presidency”: CW, v. 3, p. 377.
68 “the precise fact”: CW, v. 3, p. 550.
68 “our duty as we understand it”: ibid. In the pamphlet version published
in 1860 that Lincoln corrected, this sentence was entirely in capital
letters.
68 “taste is in my mouth”: CW, v. 4, p. 45.
69 “not the first choice”: CW, v. 4, p. 34.
70 “neither [to] write or speak”: CW, v. 4, p. 80.
70 “bears his honors meekly”: Browning, v. 1, 415.
70 “thorough organization”: CW, v. 4, p. 109.
70 “bored badly”: Donald, 254.
Notes 217
70 “bursting by iron hoops”: Nicolay, Oral History, 155–56.
71 “the ladies like whiskers”: CW, v. 4, p. 130.
71 “silly aVect[at]ion”: CW, v. 4, p. 129.
71 “joined the Republicans”: William E. Gienapp, “Who Voted for Lincoln?,”
in John L. Thomas, ed., Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradi-
tion (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 51.
Chapter 4: A People’s Contest

72 “bed of roses”: CW, v. 2, p. 89.
72 “have just commenced”: Recollected Words, 460.
73 “trick”: Nicolay, With Lincoln, 7.
74 “accessible to the public”: CW, v. 4, pp. 139–40.
74 “beg forgiveness”: CW, v. 4, p. 152.
74 “tug has to come”: CW, v. 4, pp. 149–50.
75 “consent of the others”: CW, v. 4, p. 154.
75 “to govern themselves”: Hay, Inside, 20.
76 “makes no change”: Herndon’s Lincoln, 390.
77 “an aVectionate farewell”: CW, v. 4, p. 190.
77 “put the foot down firmly”: CW, v. 4, p. 237.
77 “run no risk”: Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago:
A. C. McClurg, 1885), 186–87.

78 “gentleman”: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Eu-
gene H. Berwanger (1863; rpt., New York: Random House, 1988), 45.
79 “yourselves the aggressors”: CW, v. 4, pp. 266, 268, 271.
79 “words of aVection”: Frederick Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator
and Secretary of State, vol. 2 (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 513.
79 “better angels of our nature”: CW, v. 4, p. 271.
79 “national destruction consummated”: CW, v. 4, p. 424.
80 “fair game for everybody”: Henry Villard, Memoirs of Henry Villard, vol. 1
(Boston: Houghton, MiZin, 1904), 156.
80 “entirely ignorant”: Robert L. Wilson, HI, 207.
81 “I must do it”: CW, v. 4, p. 317.
81 “the best of us”: Seward, Seward at Washington, v. 2, p. 590.
81 “troubles and anxieties”: Browning, v. 1, p. 476.
82 “course of judicial proceedings”: CW, v. 4, p. 332.
82 “disaVection lurked”: Thomas, 263.
82 “must have troops”: CW, v. 4, pp. 341–42.
83 “be violated”: CW, v. 4, p. 430.
83 “readily ratify them”: CW, v. 4, p. 429.
84 “to the scaVold”: Welles, v. 1, p. 549.
84 “insurrectionary combinations”: CW, v. 4, p. 353.
84 “a People’s contest”: CW, v. 4, p. 438.
218 Notes
84 “domestic foes”: CW, v. 4, p. 426.
85 “who doubted were wrong”: Edward Cary, George William Curtis (Boston:
86 “so much rosewater”: New York Times, June 30, 1861.
86 “fault of ABRAHAM LINCOLN”: Harper’s Weekly, May 4, 1861.
86 “green alike”: William Henry Hurlbert, General McClellan and the Conduct
of the War (New York: Sheldon and Co., 1864), 103.
87 “so let it be”: Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1861.
87 “in the fire”: Nicolay, With Lincoln, 52.
87 “a little fussy”: Russell, My Diary, 317.
88 “in favor of disunion”: CW, v. 4, p. 437.
88 “utmost care”: CW, v. 4, p. 332.
89 “over the mill dam”: Thomas, 275.
89 “lose the whole game”: CW, v. 4, p. 532.
89 “surrender of the government”: CW, v. 4, pp. 531–32.
90 “at a time”: Recollected Words, 173.
90 “confused disorder”: Hay, Inside, 6.
90 “at all hours”: Robert L. Wilson, HI, 207.
91 “than any of them”: John Hay, HI, 332.
91 “want the oYce”: Robert L. Wilson, HI, 206.
91 “as it was made”: Hay, HI, 331.
91 “must see them”: Henry Wilson, HI, 562.
91 “away from him”: Hay, HI, 331.
91 “public-opinion baths”: Recollected Words, 194.
92 “eyes almost shut”: Helen Nicolay, “Characteristic Anecdotes of Abraham
Lincoln,” Century Magazine, 84 (September 1913): 699.
92 “damned old house”: Benjamin B. French, Witness to the Young Republic,
eds. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press
of New England, 1989), 382.
95 “a good time”: Julia Taft Bayne, Tad Lincoln’s Father (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1931), 107.
95 “air of success”: Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon
(New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988), 111.
95 “power of the land”: McClellan Papers, 70.
95 “in one campaign”: ibid., 75.
96 “own way”: Hay, Inside, 25.
96 “taken into the account”: ibid., 29.
96 “for JeV Davis”: Donald, 320.
96 “do it all”: Hay, Inside, 30.
96 “oVensive was demanded”: James B. Fry, “McClellan and His ‘Mission,’ ”
Century Magazine 48 (October 1894): 934.
96 “a well meaning baboon”: McClellan Papers, 135, 106.
97 “bad faith”: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 1 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 305.
Notes 219
97 “personal dignity”: Hay, Inside, 32.
97 “hold McClellan’s horse”: Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, vol.
2 (New York: McClure, Phillips, 1900), 70.
98 “out of the tub”: “General M. C. Meigs on the Conduct of the Civil
War,” American Historical Review 26 (January 1921): 292.
98 “exceedingly discouraging”: CW, v. 5, p. 95.
98 “ruining us”: CW, v. 5, p. 92.
98 “our being two nations”: Earl Schenck Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day,
vol. 3 (Washington: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), 87.
Chapter 5: From Limited War to Revolution

99 “revolutionary struggle”: CW, v. 5, pp. 48–49.
100 “Constitutional rights of all”: McClellan Papers, 125.
100 “concentrating his scattered forces”: Stephen D. Engle, “Don Carlos Buell:
Military Philosophy and Command Problems in the West,” Civil War His-
tory 41 (June 1995): 92.
100 “defer to General McClellan”: Donald, 329.
100 “borrow it”: William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (New
York: Charles B. Richardson, 1866), 80.
100 “his own hands”: Donald, 331.
101 “advising general plans”: Nicolay, With Lincoln, 59.
101 “threaten all their positions”: Browning, v. 1, 523.
104 “end of the struggle”: New York Tribune, February 13, 1862.
104 “is gone”: Nicolay, With Lincoln, 71.
105 “within state limits”: CW, v. 5, p. 145.
106 “reserve to myself”: CW, v. 5, p. 222.
107 “he fights”: Alexander K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times
(Philadelphia: Times Publishing, 1892), 196. McClure put this quotation in
italics.
107 “you must act”: CW, v. 5, p. 185.
108 “sacrifice this Army”: McClellan Papers, 323.
108 “and troubled”: Browning, v. 1, 559.
108 “general panic”: CW, v. 5, p. 292.
108 “nearly inconsolable”: Recollected Words, 137.
109 “disintegrate our present Armies”: McClellan Papers, 344–45.
109 “rose water”: CW, v. 5, p. 346.
109 “enemies stake nothing”: CW, v. 5, p. 350.
109 “struck by accident”: CW, v. 5, p. 345.
110 “the presence of war”: OR, ser. I, v. 17, pt. 2, p. 150.
110 “kid-glove warfare”: Allan G. Bogue, The Earnest Men: Republicans of the
Civil War Senate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1981), 162.
110 “valuable in lieu of it”: CW, v. 5, p. 318.
220 Notes
110 “or be ourselves subdued”: Welles, v. 1, p. 70.
111 “heart of the rebellion”: Gideon Welles, “The History of Emancipation,”
Galaxy 14 (December 1872): 843.
111 “a military necessity”: ibid.
111 “lose the game”: Carpenter, 20–21.
111 “on the retreat”: ibid., 21–22.
111 “more than any other”: CW, v. 5, p. 425.
112 “to remain with us”: CW, v. 5, pp. 371–72.
113 “I would save the Union”: CW, v. 5, p. 388.
113 “his scrape”: McClellan Papers, 416.
113 “hang himself”: CW, v. 5, p. 404n.
114 “a first-rate clerk”: Hay, Inside, 191–92.
114 “ruining our country”: T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 146.
114 “the grand marplot”: Hay, Inside, 37.
115 “unpardonable”: ibid., 39.
115 “the army with him”: Welles, v. 1, p. 113.
115 “others ready to fight”: Hay, Inside, 39.
116 “radical fanaticism”: Donald, 380.
116 “loyal to the United States”: John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Procla-
mation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 68–69.
116 “all our diplomacy”: Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams
Letters, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1920), 243.
116 “kills no rebels”: CW, v. 5, p. 444.
116 “card unplayed”: CW, v. 5, p. 343.
117 “disloyal practice”: CW, v. 5, p. 437.
117 “be used against us”: Welles, “Emancipation,” 847.
118 “confidence of the people”: David Donald, ed., Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet:
The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York: Longmans, Green,
1954), 151.
118 “overwork had wrought”: Mary Livermore, My Story of the War (Hartford:
A. D. Worthington, 1889), 555, 560.
118 “prematurely aged”: Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War
Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998), 13.
118 “want of confidence”: New York Times, November 7, 1862.
118 “scarcely know what”: McPherson, 560–61.
119 “fatigue anything”: CW, v. 5, p. 474.
120 “by strategy”: Livermore, My Story, 556.
120 “too dull to take hold”: Donald, 389.
120 “fight as he fights”: OR, ser. I, v. 16, pt. 2, p. 627.
121 “shall be repeated”: Harper’s Weekly, December 27, 1862.
121 “worse place than Hell”: McPherson, 574.
122 “a ray of hope”: Browning, v. 1, p. 600.
122 “handful of supporters”: Hay, Inside, 104.
Notes 221
122 “without system”: Welles, v. 1, p. 136.
122 “salvation of the country”: Robert Warden, The Private Life and Public
Services of Salmon Portland Chase (Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin, 1874),
484.
122 “want of unity”: Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt
Fessenden, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1907), 243.
123 “end of my bag”: Frederick Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and
Secretary of State, vol. 3 (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 148.
123 “pieces upon a chessboard”: Leonard Swett, HI, 168.
123 “as well as anyone could”: ibid., 165n.
123 “act anew”: CW, v. 5, pp. 530, 537.
124 “hallucination”: Browning, v. 1, p. 591.
124 “best, hope of earth”: CW, v. 5, p. 537.
124 “will stand firm”: Thomas, 358.
124 “whole soul is absorbed”: Harry E. Pratt, ed., Concerning Mr. Lincoln
(Springfield: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1944), 95.
124 “signing this paper”: Seward, Seward at Washington, 151.
125 “favor of Almighty God”: CW, v. 6, p. 30.
125 “far beyond its letter”: Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, 135.
125 “revolution of the age”: Springfield Republican, September 24, 1862.
125 “subjugation”: McPherson, 558.
Chapter 6: Midstream
126 “scarcely have lived over”: CW, v. 6, p. 424.
127 “gone to pieces”: Katherine Helm, The True Story of Mary, Wife of Lincoln
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928), 225.
127 “Hellcat”: Hay, Correspondence, 20.
127 “political party notions”: Welles, v. 1, p. 136.
128 “occurrences of the day”: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary
Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Knopf, 1972), 187.
128 “hard life for him”: Benjamin B. French, Witness to the Young Republic,
eds. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press
of New England, 1989), 417.
130 “risk the dictatorship”: CW, v. 6, pp. 78–79.
130 “I will have none”: T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 229–30.
130 “incidental to the main object”: CW, v. 6, pp. 164–65.
131 “the country say”: Brooks, Washington, 57–58.
131 “peace party of the North”: CliVord Dowdey, ed., The Wartime Papers of
Robert E. Lee (Boston: Little, Brown, 1961), 508.
132 “fire in the rear”: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner,
vol. 4 (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893), 114.
222 Notes
132 “saw whither it tended”: Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull (Bos-
ton: Houghton MiZin, 1913), 428.
134 “wiley agitator”: CW, v. 6, pp. 263–64, 266.
134 “one man”: CW, v. 6, p. 304.
134 “unconditionally”: CW, v. 6, p. 446.
134 “aid the enemy”: Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–
1866 (Washington: Government Printing OYce, 1933), 306.
135 “unshaken”: Donald, 438.
135 “attitude of demur”: Brooks, Washington, 37.
135 “true objective point”: CW, v. 6, p. 257.
136 “snapping turtle”: Thomas, 383.
137 “would not close it”: Hay, Inside, 64–65.
138 “in our pocket”: David D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War
(New York: D. Appleton, 1885), 95–96.
138 “everything going on”: Stephen E. Ambrose, Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of
StaV (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1962), 110.
138 “one too many”: Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. 1
(New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885), 426.
139 “attention to the better work”: CW, v. 6, p. 70.
139 “except myself ”: Thomas, 373.
139 “unvexed to the sea”: CW, v. 6, p. 409.
140 “I was wrong”: CW, v. 6, p. 326.
140 “Grant is my man”: T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 271.
140 “our political existence”: Dunbar Rowland, ed., JeVerson Davis, Constitu-
tionalist, His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, vol. 5 (Jackson: Mississippi De-
partment of Archives and History, 1923), 554.
141 “rules New York today”: Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds.,
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1952), 336.
142 “his healthful life”: CW, v. 6, p. 267.
142 “without an if”: CW, v. 6, p. 446.
142 “there is no cavil”: Hay, Correspondence, 49
143 “rather good”: John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History,
vol. 7 (New York: Century, 1890), 385.
143 “in saving the Union”: CW, v. 6, p. 409.
144 “strove to hinder it”: CW, v. 6, pp. 409–10.
144 “signs look better”: ibid
144 “most popular man”: New York Times, September 7, 1863.
145 “hit on the head”: Hay, Inside, 99.
146 “is at an end”: Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters,
vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1920), 59–60.
147 “one master mind”: Welles, v. 1, p. 344.
147 “or be conquered by them”: OR, ser. I, v. 24, pt. 3, p. 157.
Notes 223
147 “are devastating the land”: Brooks D. Simpson and Jean D. Berlin, eds.,
Sherman’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999),
373.
148 “all the slaves you can”: OR, ser. I, v. 24, pt. 3, p. 157.
148 “appropriate remarks”: Donald, 460.
149 “under God” and “great battle-field”: CW, v. 7, pp. 22–23.
149 “in two minutes”: CW, v. 7, p. 25.
150 “overwhelming majority”: V. Jacque Voegli, Free but Not Equal: The Mid-
west and the Negro during the Civil War (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1967), 131.
150 “dark and doubtful days”: CW, v. 7, pp. 49–50.
Chapter 7: To Finish the Task

152 “to put down the rebellion”: Horace White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull
(Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1913), 218.
152 “there be some uneasiness”: CW, v. 4, p. 439.
153 “as far as convenient”: CW, v. 5, p. 462.
153 “a tangible nucleus”: CW, v. 7, p. 1.
154 “his former unsoundness”: CW, v. 7, p. 51.
154 “outvoting the loyal minority”: Hay, Inside, 106.
154 “permanent freedom”: CW, v. 7, pp. 1–2.
155 “gallantly in our ranks”: CW, v. 7, p. 243.
155 “little change as possible”: McPherson, 701.
155 “than by smashing it”: CW, v. 8, p. 404.
155 “if they dared”: Thomas, 410–11.
156 “in the Trinity”: Hay, Inside, 77.
157 “rotten spot he can find”: ibid., 103.
157 “aVections of the masses”: Donald, 478.
158 “rabble of men and dogs”: ibid., 497.
159 “into a fortified city”: CW, v. 6, p. 467.
159 “most brilliant”: CW, v. 6, p. 230.
160 “restraints upon you”: CW, v. 7, p. 324.
161 “hold a leg”: Hay, Inside, 194.
161 “all the damage you can”: OR, ser. 1, v. 32, pt. 3, p. 246.
161 “ever to end”: Allen Thorndike Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln
(New York: North American Review, 1888), 337.
161 “sorrow, care, and anxiety”: Carpenter, 30–31.
161 “is dreadful”: Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: A. C.
McClurg, 1884), 375.
162 “bankruptcy and desolation”: Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the
Middle West (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), 233.
163 “unconditional surrender”: Kirk H. Porter and Donald Bruce Johnson,
224 Notes
comp., National Party Platforms, 1840–1968 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1970), 35.
163 “point of mutual embarrassment”: CW, v. 7, p. 419.
164 “little for the country”: Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds.,
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 3 (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1952), 467, 474.
164 “events have controlled me”: CW, v. 7, pp. 281–82.
164 “bloodshed as possible”: Horace Porter, Campaigning with Grant (New
York: Century, 1897), 223.
165 “a bull-dog gripe”: CW, v. 7, p. 499.
165 “have no country”: John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A His-
tory, vol. 9 (New York: Century, 1890), 364.
165 “deader than dead”: Klement, Copperheads, 233.
166 “constitutionally by Congress”: Hay, Inside, 218.
166 “single plan of restoration”: CW, v. 7, p. 433.
166 “authority of the people”: New York Tribune, August 5, 1864.
166 “can befall a man”: Brooks, Washington, 170.
167 “rivers of human blood”: CW, v. 7, p. 435.
168 “collateral points”: CW, v. 7, p. 451.
168 “even with him now”: Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War
(New York: D. Appleton, 1898), 180.
168 “sealed Lincoln’s fate”: Donald, 523.
169 “we will have”: Atlantic Monthly 14 (September 1864): 379.
169 “failure”: James G. Randall, Lincoln the Liberal Statesman (New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1947), 81.
169 “lever as I have done”: CW, v. 7, p. 507.
169 “from utter overthrow”: Burton J. Hendrick, Lincoln’s War Cabinet (Bos-
ton: Little, Brown, 1946), 454.
170 “suspicion is widely diVused”: CW, v. 7, pp. 517–18.
170 “surrendering it in advance”: Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, v. 9, p. 221.
170 “doubt and discouragement”: Nicolay, With Lincoln, 152.
170 “possibly save it afterwards”: CW, v. 7, p. 514.
171 “four years of failure”: Porter and Johnson, Platforms, 34.
171 “by our foes”: Larry E. Nelson, Bullets, Ballots and Rhetoric: Confederate Pol-
icy for the United States Presidential Election of 1864 (University: Univ. of Al-
abama Press, 1980), 113.
171 “Atlanta is ours”: Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, v. 9, p. 289.
172 “sorehead republicans”: Donald, 536.
173 “think of anything else”: Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of Wil-
liam Pitt Fessenden, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1907), 343.
173 “Administration endorsed”: Nicolay, Oral, 78.
173 “and rainy”: Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dis-
patches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998), 142.
173 “marked with great rancor”: Hay, Inside, 243.
Notes 225
175 “but an honorable one”: McPherson, 803–4.
175 “wearing his Sunday clothes”: Porter, Campaigning, 218.
175 “has been universal”: Joseph H. Twichell, “Army Memories of Lincoln,”
Congregationalist and Christian World, January 30, 1913, p. 154.
175 “men in the ranks”: Brooks, Washington, 49–50.
175 “was a necessity”: CW, v. 8, p. 101.
176 “treason and disunion”: Nevins and Thomas, Strong Diary, v. 3, p. 511.
Chapter 8: With Malice Toward None

177 “the past against him”: John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A
History, vol. 9 (New York: Century, 1890), 377.
178 “rather Statesmanship”: Brooks D. Simpson and Jean D. Berlin, eds., Sher-
man’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999), 751.
178 “to decide”: CW, v. 8, p. 182.
179 “Presidential maggots”: Nicolay, Oral History, 152.
179 “other recommendations”: Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, v. 9, p. 392.
179 “statutes of limitations”: Hay, Inside, 249.
180 “heard upon the question”: CW, v. 8, p. 149.
180 “hard, keen intelligence”: Charles A. Dana, Recollections of the Civil War
(New York: D. Appleton, 1898), 174.
180 “a King’s cure”: CW, v. 8, p. 254.
181 “to deceive ourselves”: CW, v. 8, p. 151.
181 “shall be adopted”: CW, v. 8, p. 152.
181 “the two countries”: CW, v. 8, p. 275.
181 “one common country”: CW, v. 8, p. 221.
182 “unconditional submission”: Dunbar Rowland, ed., The Messages and Pa-
pers of JeVerson Davis, vol. 6 (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives
and History, 1923), 465.
182 “unhappy diYculties”: CW, v. 8, p. 331.
182 “conferences or conventions”: CW, v. 8, pp. 330–31.
183 “your military advantages”: CW, v. 8, p. 331.
183 “jaded and weary”: Joshua F. Speed, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (Louis-
ville: John P. Morton, 1884), 26.
183 “out of reach”: Noah Brooks, “Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln,” Scrib-
ner’s Monthly 15 (March 1878): 673.
184 “sum of human misery”: Hay, Correspondence, 139.
184 “anguish of soul”: Thomas, 472.
184 “butcher’s day”: William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War
Times, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2000),
171.
184 “work out of him”: Nicolay, Oral History, 69.
184 “loss of self-control”: CW, v. 6, p. 538.
226 Notes
185 “blood running all around me”: Recollected Words, 458.
185 “the altar of Freedom”: CW, v. 8, pp. 116–17.
185 “should die”: Recollected Words, 18.
185 “queer little conceits”: Hay, Inside, 194.
185 “riskiest of story tellers”: Hay, Correspondence, 136–37.
186 “nothing equals Macbeth”: CW, v. 6, p. 392.
187 “diVerent from theirs”: CW, v. 5, p. 279.
187 “shall not end yet”: CW, v. 5, pp. 403–04.
187 “no mortal could stay”: CW, v. 7, p. 535.
187 “unclouded meridian splendor”: Brooks, Washington, 235, 239.
188 “with all nations”: CW, v. 8, pp. 332–33.
189 “keynote of this war”: Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams
Letters vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton MiZin, 1920), 257.
189 “I have produced”: CW, v. 8, p. 356.
189 “at home and abroad”: New York Herald, March 4, 1865.
190 “swamped almost any other man”: ibid.
190 “determined a decision”: Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, vol. 1
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 205.
190 “communicated nothing”: Leonard Swett, HI, 168.
190 “as successfully as Mr. Lincoln”: Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward (New
York: Sheldon, 1874), 32.
191 “horses than oats”: Leonard Swett, HI, 165.
191 “constitute a fair specimen”: CW, v. 6, p. 559.
192 “who are not Republicans”: CW, v. 5, pp. 494–95.
192 “splendid military despotism”: Littell’s Living Age, February 6, 1864, p. 284.
192 “coming to resolutions”: ibid.
192 “might be”: Dana, Recollections, 183.
192 “crushed at defeat”: Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln Observed: Civil War
Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998),
215.
192 “his wiliest antagonists”: New York Herald, March 4, 1865.
193 “sustain the faltering”: John Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A
History, vol. 4 (New York: Century, 1890), 367–68.
193 “self-reliance”: Welles, Lincoln and Seward, 32.
193 “no more bloodshed”: Charles M. Segal, ed., Conversations with Lincoln
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1961), 382.
195 “subject of honesty”: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary
Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 180.
195 “take care of myself”: CW, v. 8, p. 385.
195 “let ’em up easy”: Recollected Words, 182.
196 “be pressed”: CW, v. 8, pp. 389, 392.
196 “our own soldiers”: Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2
(New York: McClure, Phillips, 1900), 161.
Notes 227
197 “the end at last”: Frederick Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and
Secretary of State, vol. 3 (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 271.
198 “safely be prescribed”: CW, v. 8, pp. 403–4.
199 “wild with exceeding joy”: New York Independent, January 8, 1865.
199 “freedom from popular prejudice”: Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminis-
cences of Abraham Lincoln (New York: North American Review, 1888), 193.
199 “the black mans President”: Draft of speech, June 1, 1865, Frederick
Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
200 “will ever make”: William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Ur-
bana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1983), 37.
200 “an emperor”: Carpenter, 65.
200 “in danger”: John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, vol. 2 (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1881), 425.
200 “would be availing”: Joseph Gillespie, HI, 185.
201 “up to the occasion”: Donald, 591.
201 “than with them”: Gideon Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson,” Galaxy 13
(April 1872): 526.
201 “had been sacrificed”: ibid.
201 “been very miserable” Turner and Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, 285.
202 “to the ages”: Donald, 599.
202 “history has no parallel”: E. D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War (New
York: D. Appleton, 1884), 220–21.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The bibliographical notes for each chapter are mostly limited to books dealing
with Abraham Lincoln. The best overview of the politics of the 1850s is David M.
Potter’s The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861, edited and completed by Don E. Fehren-
bacher (New York: Harper and Row, 1976). For the Civil War, James M. McPher-
son, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), is a sound and
thoughtful account. These works will refer the interested reader to important
secondary works on a host of topics.
Chapter 1: A Son of the Frontier

Untangling the events of Abraham Lincoln’s early life is a monumental challenge.
The major sources for the years before 1837 are the interviews and recollections
assembled by William Herndon, his law partner, after Lincoln’s death. This ma-
terial is finally available in a well-edited modern edition with a thorough index:
Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants (Urbana: Univ.
of Illinois Press, 1998). These interviews are the basis for William H. Herndon
and Jesse W. Weik, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, ed. Paul M. Angle (Cleveland: World
Publishing, 1942). There are also some important recollections of Lincoln’s early
acquaintances in Walter B. Stevens, A Reporter’s Lincoln, ed. Michael Burlingame
(Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1998). The fullest study of Lincoln’s years in
Indiana is Louis Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years (Indianapolis: Indiana State
Historical Society, 1959). One of the most important books on Lincoln to appear
in recent years is Douglas L. Wilson, Honor’s Voice: The Transformation of Abraham
Lincoln (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), which carefully examines his life in
New Salem.
Chapter 2: Thwarted Ambition

The sources for Lincoln’s life improve after his move to Springfield, though the
Herndon interviews and recollections of acquaintances remain the major source
for his career outside politics. Thus Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants,
and Angle’s edition of Herndon’s Life of Lincoln remain essential. There are addi-
tional interviews in Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1996), which collects material from the
John G. Nicolay Papers. John Simon, “Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge,” Jour-
nal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 11 (1990): 13–34, is a crucial contribution to
this period of Lincoln’s life. For Lincoln’s marriage, see Wilson, Honor’s Voice, and
Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois
Press, 1994). Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), is
the best biography of Lincoln’s wife and has much material on their marriage.
For the tangled chronology of Lincoln and Mary Todd’s courtship and engage-
ment, see Douglas Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln and ‘That Fatal First of January,’ ”
Civil War History 38 (1992).
Lincoln’s legal career awaits a full-scale study, but John J. DuV, A. Lincoln:
Prairie Lawyer (New York: Rhinehart, 1960), is a good introduction. John Evangelist
Walsh, Moonlight: Abraham Lincoln and the Almanac Trial (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2000), discusses his most famous court-room eVort. Lincoln’s economic
ideas are carefully examined in Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the
American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State Univ. Press, 1978). For Lincoln’s Whig
loyalty, Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979) and Joel H. Silbey, “ ‘Always a Whig in Politics’:
The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln,” Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association
8 (1986): 21–42, are basic. David Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1948), examines Lincoln’s partnership with Herndon. The two accounts of
Lincoln’s term in Congress are Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln
(Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1979), and Paul Findley, A. Lincoln: The Cru-
cible of Congress (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979).
Chapter 3: Rise to Power

The most important study of Lincoln’s political career in the 1850s is Don E.
Fehrenbacher’s Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
Univ. Press, 1962), which is a gem of historical analysis. Robert W. Johannsen’s
Lincoln, the South, and Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1991), is
much more critical of Lincoln, but it asks probing questions that historians have
too often glided over. There are many editions of the Lincoln–Douglas debates.
I have relied on the edition edited by Robert W. Johannsen, The Lincoln–Douglas
Debates of 1858 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965). Edwin Earle Sparks, ed., The
Lincoln–Douglas Debates of 1858 (Springfield: Illinois State Library, 1908), includes
valuable descriptions of campaign pageantry along with coverage in the press.
Harold Holzer, ed., The Lincoln–Douglas Debates (New York: Harper Collins, 1993),
highlights the problem of bias and distortion by printing alternative texts drawn
from newspapers hostile to each candidate. For the 1860 campaign, William E.
Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), and Reinhard H.
Luthin, The First Lincoln Campaign (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1944), are
230 Bibliographical Essay
good accounts. William E. Gienapp, “Who Voted for Lincoln?,” in John L. Tho-
mas, ed., Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition (Amherst: Univ. of
Massachusetts Press, 1986), analyzes Lincoln’s popular support in 1860.
Chapter 4: A People’s Contest

For this and all subsequent chapters, Phillip S. Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham
Lincoln (Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1994), is basic. A much fuller account
but more partisan in its defense of Lincoln is John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: Century, 1890).
Lincoln’s activities as president-elect are covered in William Baringer, A House
Dividing: Lincoln as President Elect (Springfield, Ill.: Abraham Lincoln Association,
1945). The best studies of Lincoln’s handling of the Fort Sumter crisis are Kenneth
M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861 (Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1950), and Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the
First Shot (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1963), which reach similar conclusions.
Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), oVers an acute analysis of Lincoln’s suspension of the
writ of the habeas corpus during the war. For Lincoln’s leadership during the early
stages of the war, see Don E. Fehrenbacher’s incisive “Lincoln’s Wartime Lead-
ership: The First Hundred Days” and William E. Gienapp, “Abraham Lincoln and
the Border States.” These essays are reprinted in Thomas F. Schwartz, ed., “For a
Vast Future Also”: Essays from the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (New
York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1999). In the same volume Norman B. Ferris oVers a
revisionist account of Lincoln and Seward in “Civil War Diplomacy: Their Rela-
tionship at the Outset Reexamined.”
Chapter 5: From Limited War to Revolution

Mark E. Neely’s The Fate of Liberty perceptively analyzes Lincoln’s record on civil
liberties in wartime. The fullest discussion of the war’s constitutional issues is
James G. Randall’s old but still important Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, rev.
ed. (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1951). More recent constitutional scholarship is
summarized in Harold M. Hyman and William M. Wiecek, Equal Justice under
Law (New York: Harper and Row, 1982). Civil War diplomacy is discussed in
Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War
(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992).
T. Harry Williams oVers a positive assessment of Lincoln’s strategic ideas in
his influential Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952). My
distinction about the components of war strategy is derived from James M. Mc-
Pherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1991).
DiVering views of Republican factionalism are oVered in T. Harry Williams,
Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1941), which is critical
of the Radicals, and Hans Trefousse, The Radical Republicans (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1969), which is sympathetic. While Lincoln’s biographers have given con-
siderable attention to emancipation, historians have strangely neglected the topic.
John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1963), is a good short account of that subject. The best discussion of Lincoln and
the colonization issue is Michael Vorenberg, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics
of Black Colonization,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 14 (Summer 1993):
23–45.
Chapter 6: Midstream
T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, skillfully examines Lincoln’s relation-
ship with his commanders in 1863. Lincoln’s use of the unpopular Henry Halleck
to deflect criticism from himself is discussed in Stephen E. Ambrose, Halleck:
Lincoln’s Chief of StaV (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1962). For the
concept of a home front, see Mark Neely’s discussion in The Last Best Hope of
Earth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993). The most important study
of the opposition to the war in the North is Frank Klement’s influential The
Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), which
unduly minimizes the threat posed by antiwar elements. V. Jacque Voegli, Free but
Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro during the Civil War (Chicago: Univ. of Chi-
cago Press, 1967), demonstrates the strength of antiblack sentiment in the western
states. The best study of Lincoln’s political ideas, encapsulated in the Gettysburg
Address, is Harry V. JaVa, A New Birth of Freedom (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000). Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), is a fuller account of this speech but is
considerably overdrawn in its interpretation.
Chapter 7: To Finish the Task

Lincoln’s reconstruction policy and his diVerences with the Radicals are carefully
analyzed in William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of
the Union (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1997). Also useful is Herman Belz’s
Reconstructing the Union (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1969), which pays par-
ticular attention to the constitutional basis of Reconstruction. The best study of
the racial dimensions of Lincoln’s reconstruction program is LaWanda Cox, Lincoln
and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership (Columbia: Univ. of South
Carolina Press, 1981), which corrects some long-standing misimpressions.
David E. Long, The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-Election and the End
of Slavery (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1994), is a solid account of the
232 Bibliographical Essay
1864 presidential election. In some ways it has been superseded by Michael Vor-
enberg’s Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth
Amendment (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001), which is a thoroughly re-
searched account of the issue of emancipation that gives considerable attention to
political developments in 1864. The fullest examination of the peace movement is
Edward C. Kirkland’s old but still useful The Peacemakers of 1864 (New York: Mac-
millan, 1937). T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, discusses Lincoln’s con-
tinuing role in military matters after Grant assumed command. William C. Davis,
Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation (New
York: Free Press, 1999), examines Lincoln’s special relationship with Union soldiers.
Chapter 8: With Malice Toward None

Michael Vorenberg’s Final Freedom and Herman Belz’s Reconstructing the Union,
cited above, discuss the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Belz and William
C. Harris, With Charity for All, examine the continuing issue of reconstruction and
Lincoln’s evolving views on this problem. Allen C. Guelzo sensitively analyzes
Lincoln’s religious ideas in Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999). Also see Nicholas Parrillo, “Lin-
coln’s Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War,” Civil War History 46 (Sep-
tember 2000): 227–53. William C. Harris, “The Hampton Roads Conference: A
Final Test of Lincoln’s Presidential Leadership,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln
Association 21 (Winter 2000): 31–62, is the best account of that controversial subject.
William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press,
1983), is a sound treatment of the assassination. Thomas Turner, Beware the People
Weeping (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Univ. Press, 1982), surveys public reaction to the
event. Aspects of Lincoln’s leadership are examined in Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Lincoln
the War President (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992); David Donald, Lincoln
Reconsidered, 2nd ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972); and James M. McPherson,
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1991). This chapter incorporates portions of my essay, “Abraham Lincoln and Pres-
idential Leadership,” in James M. McPherson, ed., “We Cannot Escape History”:
Lincoln and the Last Best Hope of Earth (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1995), 63–
85.
INDEX
Adams, Charles Francis, 146 Blair, Francis P., Sr., 181

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 189 Blair, Frank, Jr., 173
Adams, Henry, 146 Blair, Montgomery, 76, 79, 117, 163,
African Americans, 58, 116; as soldiers, 172, 179
117, 128–29, 169, 202; and Booth, John Wilkes, 200–202
Reconstruction, 153, 165, 166–67, 199; Bragg, Braxton, 115, 144–45
and suffrage, 153, 155, 156, 167, 198, Brooks, Noah, 118, 131, 173, 175, 192,
200. See also emancipation; slaves 195
and slavery Browning, Orville H., 35, 47, 70, 78,
American party. See Know Nothings 89, 101, 108, 122, 124, 169, 186
anaconda plan, 86 Buchanan, James, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 78
Anderson, Robert, 79, 80 Buell, Don Carlos, 98, 99–100, 115, 120–
Antietam, battle of, 115, 119 21
Arkansas, reconstruction in, 155, 166, Bull Run, first battle, 86, 88, 96
181, 198 Bull Run, second battle of, 113–14
Armstrong, Jack, 12, 22, 44 Burnside, Ambrose E., 120, 121, 129,
Armstrong, Duff, 44 132, 134
Army of the Potomac, 145, 147, 159, Butler, Benjamin F., 88, 105, 153, 160,
161; discontent in, 114, 116, 126, 129– 162
30; Lincoln visits, 108, 119, 130, 135, Butler, William F., 11
175, 193; McClellan and, 114–15, 156.
See also specific battles, commanders cabinet crisis, 121–23
Arnold, Isaac N., 161, 185 Cameron, Simon, 76, 101
Atlanta campaign, 164, 171 Carpenter, Francis, 161
Cartright, Peter, 37
Baker, Edward, 30, 184 Chancellorsville, battle of, 131, 135
Ball’s Bluff, 96 Chattanooga, 144, 145–46, 153
Banks, Nathaniel, 153, 154, 162, 198 Chase, Salmon P., 51, 67, 75, 98;
Bates, Edward, 76, 113, 134, 178 appointed chief justice, 179; and
Bedell, Grace, 70–71 cabinet, 90, 121, 156; and cabinet
Berry, William, 18, 19 crisis, 121–23; and emancipation, 124,
Bixby, Lydia, 185 125; and Lincoln, 156, 163; and 1864
Black Hawk War, 17 nomination, 156–57; resigns, 123, 163
234 Index
Chandler, Zachariah, 96, 97–98, 127, copperheads, 117, 134, 142, 143, 167, 174–
166, 172 75. See also peace Democrats
Charleston Mercury, 171 Corning, Erastus, 133, 141
Chicago Times, 134 Crittenden, John J., 105
Chicago Tribune, 67, 86, 157 Crittenden Resolution, 88, 105
Chickamauga, battle of, 144 Curtis, George W., 84–85
civil liberties, 83, 116–17, 118, 141–42, Cutts, James Madison, 184
192
Civil War: black troops in, 117, 128–29, Dahlgren, John, 98
169; blockade, 83, 84, 87, 146; border Dana, Charles A., 168, 180, 190
states, 85–86, 88–90; civil liberties, Davis, David, ix, 41, 43, 68, 124, 155
83, 116–17, 118, 141–42, 192; Davis, Henry Winter, 165–66, 177
conscription, 117, 134, 140, 142, 165; Davis, Jefferson, 74, 81, 96, 131, 137,
diplomacy, 90, 116, 146; northern 140, 141, 164, 167, 168, 170, 176, 178,
morale, 82, 86–87, 98, 118, 126, 162, 181, 182, 195, 201
164, 167; peace negotiations, 167–69, Democratic party: and civil liberties,
181–82; as revolution, xi. See also 132–35; and conscription, 134–35, 140–
emancipation; specific battles and 41; and emancipation, 88, 116–17,
generals 126, 132, 169, 176, 180; factions, 117,
Clay, Henry, 9, 17, 33, 40, 53 171; 1862 elections and, 118; 1863
Cold Harbor, battle of, 161 elections and, 143, 145; 1864 election
Confederacy, 74, 81, 82, 84, 95, 111, 116, and, 170–71; peace Democrats, 117,
146 132, 134, 142–43, 145, 150, 167, 174–75;
Confiscation Act, First, 88 and war, 115, 117, 126, 131–32, 134–35,
Confiscation Act, Second, 110, 125 138, 143, 167, 168
Congress, U.S.: and cabinet, 121–23; Dennison, William, 172, 179
and conscription, 140; Joint Douglas, Stephen A., 49, 50, 51, 54, 58,
Committee on the Conduct of the 59–66, 70, 184
War, 97–98; opposition to Lincoln, Douglass, Frederick, 125, 199
106, 116, 121–23, 151–52, 155, 166–67; Draft riots, 141–42
and reconstruction, 165–67, 180–81; Dred Scott decision, 57, 60, 106
and slavery, 88, 105–6, 110, 125, 162, Duncan, James, 12
165–66, 180
Conkling, James C., 144 Early, Jubal, 160, 163, 171
conscription, 117, 134, 140, 142, 165 Eckert, William, 182
Constitution, U.S.: conscription and, Ellsworth, Elmer, 184
134, 142; Emancipation Proclamation emancipation, 88–89, 110, 115, 118, 129,
and, 125, 166; and habeas corpus, 83; 145, 147–48, 150, 156, 176, 180, 182;
proposed amendments to, 74, 78, army and, 109, 116, 147–48; Congress
123–24; secession and, 75, 78, 84; and, 88, 110, 125; in the District of
slavery and, 51–52, 66–67, 78; Columbia, 40, 106; opposition to,
Thirteenth Amendment, 162, 180 109, 116, 131–32, 171; support for, 116,
“contrabands,” 88, 105 145, 150, 176, 180
Index 235
Emancipation Proclamation, 124–25,

Habeas corpus, 83, 116–17, 134
154, 162, 166, 168, 179, 180

Hackett, James H., 186
Emancipation Proclamation,
Halleck, Henry W., 98, 120, 146; chief
preliminary, 115, 123, 153

of staff, 159–60; commanding
Everett, Edward, 148, 149

general, 108, 109–10, 130, 136, 138, 147–
48, 158; dodges responsibility, 113–14,
135
Farragut, David, 171
Hampton Roads Conference, 181–83
Fair Oaks, battle of, 108
Hanks, Dennis, 4, 7, 8–9, 41–42
Fell, Jesse, 66
Hanks, John, 10, 68
Fessenden, William Pitt, 110, 163, 173,
Harlan, James, 179
178
Harper’s Weekly, 86, 121
Forney, John W., 200
Hay, John, 72, 90–91, 97, 114, 122, 154,
Forquer, George, 29
157, 168, 173, 179; Lincoln’s humor,
Fort Donelson, 104
185–86; Lincoln’s leadership, 142, 192–
Fort Fisher, 181
93; and Mary Lincoln, 92, 127, 195
Fort Henry, 104
Helm, Benjamin, 184
Fort Pickens, 80–81
Helm, Emilie, 184
Fort Sumter, 79–82
Herndon, William, ix, 28, 37, 40–41,
Fort Wagner, 129
42, 43, 47, 48, 76
Fox, Gustavus, 80–81, 100, 177
Hill, Parthena, 11
Franklin, battle of, 178
Hood, John Bell, 164, 177, 178
Fredericksburg, battle of, 121
Hooker, Joseph, 129–31, 135–36, 146
Frémont, John C., 56, 88–89, 162, 172
Howells, William Dean, 47
Fry, James B., 96
Hunter, David, 106
Gettysburg, battle of, 137, 141

Illinois, 22–23, 32, 56, 62–66, 118, 142–
Gettysburg Address, 148–49

43
Godbey, Russell, 20
Illinois State Journal, 150
Graham, Mentor, 14
Indiana, 118, 142–43, 173, 175
Grant, Julia, 194
Grant, Ulysses S., 104, 106, 110, 114,

Jayne, Julia, 32
181, 182–83, 193, 201; at Chattanooga,

Johnson, Andrew, 163
145–46, 153; as commanding general,

Johnston, John D., 7, 10, 41
159, 160–61, 178; and end of the war,

Johnston, Joseph E., 108, 164, 178, 195
195–97; 1864 military campaign, 161–

Joint Committee on the Conduct of
62, 164; at Shiloh, 106–7; Vicksburg

the War, 97–98
and, 137–39, 159

Judd, Norman, 66
Great Britain, 90, 116, 146
Greeley, Horace, 59, 112–13, 158, 167–

Kansas–Nebraska Act, 49–51
68, 169
Kelso, Jack, 15
Green, Bowling, 15
Know Nothings (American party), 50,
Grigsby, Nathaniel, 8, 9
53–55, 69
236 Index
Lamon, Ward Hill, 186, 200 relation with soldiers, 174–75; total
Lecompton constitution, 58–59 war, 140, 148, 161, 177
Lee, Robert E., 82, 108, 113, 114, 119, Domestic life: courtship, 34–35; as
131, 135, 160, 161–62, 163, 182, 195, 197 father, 46–47, 94–95, 104;
limited war, concept of, 87–88, 99, marriage, 35–37, 45–46, 92–93, 104,
109, 120 127, 193–94; relatives and, 41–42;
Lincoln, Abraham: accent, 11, 68; self-study, 40–41; society and, 25,
appearance, 8, 17, 19, 62–63, 67, 70– 34, 36–37, 46, 47
71, 78, 108, 118, 128, 158, 161, 175, Early years: education and self-study,
183–84; clothes, 7, 8, 11–12, 17, 36, 2, 5–7, 8–9, 14–15, 19, 20, 21;
43, 62–63, 67, 175 family, 2–5, 7–11; females and, 7,
Character and personality: ambition, 12, 18, 21–22, 25; finances, 9, 17,
6, 15–16, 34, 40, 48, 50, 53; aspects 18, 19; military service, 17;
of, x; compassion and tolerance, physical prowess, 7–8, 12, 29–30;
7, 52, 177, 184–85, 188, 193, 195, work, 3, 8, 9–10, 11, 14, 18–19, 21
196, 201; fatalism, 11, 15, 41, 164, Legal career: on circuit, 26, 43–44, 47,
186–87; honesty, 8, 14, 195; humor, 48; income, 26, 45, 47; partners, 23–
8, 11, 12–14, 15, 18, 19, 43, 70, 74, 28, 42, 47, 76; passes bar exam, 23;
185–86; melancholy, 4, 21, 35, 41, practice, 28, 40, 44–45
45, 48, 108, 113; modern outlook, Political career to 1861: cabinet,
10–11, 16–17, 33–34; patience and selection of, 75–76; campaigns, 16,
tact, 33, 46, 190; pretension, lack 17, 19, 20, 29–31, 39, 50, 61, 63, 56,
of, 16, 17, 20, 44; resiliency, 164–65, 62–66, 68, 70; challenged to duel,
190, 192; reticence and reserve, ix- 32–33; and Congress, 30, 37, 38–40;
x, 1, 41, 43, 45, 48, 127–28, 186, 190 debates with Douglas, 62–66;
Commander-in-chief: black soldiers, Know Nothings, 55, 69;
117, 125, 128–29, 143, 169, 202; call legislature, 20–21, 22–23, 32, 37;
for troops, 82, 83, 87, 117, 158, 165; presidential candidate, 68–71;
evolution of role as, 96–97, 100, Republican party, 50, 53, 55–56, 65–
101–4, 108, 114, 130–31, 135–36, 138– 66; secession, 52, 56, 72–76, 78–79;
39, 146–47, 159–60, 191–92; Grant, senatorial races, 53–54, 59–66;
107, 138–40, 146, 147, 159–60, 161, slavery and race, 23, 39–40, 51–52,
163, 165, 178, 182–83, 196; Halleck 55, 60–61, 64, 65, 68; Whig party
and, 108, 113–14, 130, 135–36, 159; and, 20, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38–
hard war, 110–11, 119–21, 147; 39, 50, 55
Hooker and, 130–31, 135–36, 146, Presidency: African Americans and,
159; Lee’s army as objective, 130, 111–12, 195, 198–99; border states,
135, 159; limited war, 87–88, 99, 85, 88–89; burden of, 118, 161, 173,
109, 120–21; McClellan and, 96–97, 183–85, 186, 193; and cabinet, 79–
100, 101–4, 107–9, 114–15, 119–20, 80, 92, 101, 111, 121–23, 142, 156,
130, 146, 159, 160; Meade and, 136– 163, 170, 178–79, 182, 190; civil
37, 146; military strategy, 86–87, liberties, 83, 116–17, 132–34, 141–42;
101–4, 109–10, 120–21, 135, 160–61, and Congress, 83, 91–92, 106, 110,
178, 191; Pope and, 109, 114; 166–67, 191, 198; conscription and
Index 237
troops, 117, 141–42, 165; criticism 70, 128, 184, 197, 201, 202, 203;
of, 89, 90, 105, 116, 118, 121–23, 125, courtship, 34–35; as First Lady, 92,
126, 150, 151–52, 155, 166, 169, 185, 127; instability, 46, 47, 104, 127; and
191; death and funeral, 202–3; Know Nothings, 55; marriage, 35–37,
despair during, 98, 113, 121; 45–46, 128, 201; and Shields duel, 33;
election of 1864, 162, 167–70, 173– spending habits, 47, 92, 94, 194–95
75; emancipation, 88–89, 105–6, Lincoln, Nancy Hanks (mother), 1, 2,
110–11, 115, 123–24, 145, 150, 180, 3, 4
182; Fort Sumter, 79–81; Lincoln, Robert Todd (son), 36, 46, 94,
leadership, 80, 83–84, 89–90, 91– 193
92, 106, 141–42, 148, 151, 164–65, Lincoln, Sarah (sister), 1, 4, 9
173, 189–93; messages and Lincoln, Sarah Bush (stepmother), 4–5
proclamations, 82, 83, 84, 105, 123– Lincoln, Thomas (father), 1–4, 7–11, 41–
24, 152, 153–54, 166, 187–88; office- 42
seekers and patronage, 80, 156–57, Lincoln, Thomas (Tad) (son), 46–47,
158, 179, 190–91; peace terms, 168– 94, 193
70, 181, 193, 201; powers of office, Lincoln, William (Willie) (son), 46–47,
83–84, 106, 117, 125, 152, 166, 141– 94, 104, 127, 184, 201
42, 152, 166, 192; praise and Logan, John, 173
support, 81, 84–85, 144, 151, 155, London Spectator, 116
157–58, 175, 189; public letters, 113, Louisiana, reconstruction in, 153, 155,
132–33, 143–44; reconstruction, 152– 165–66, 181, 198–99
55, 166–67, 180–81, 198, 201; in Loyal Publication Society, 134, 148
Richmond, 195; routine, 90–91, 126–
28; self-confidence, 122, 135, 190, McClellan, George B., 106, 130, 146,
193; speeches, 78–79, 148–49, 187– 156, 172; assumes command, 87, 96;
89, 198; threats against, 195, 200; character, 95–96; emancipation and,
and visitors, 90–91, 184, 199 109, 171; generalship of, 96–97, 107–
Thought: colonization, 52, 111–12, 129, 8, 113, 115, 119; limited war and, 99–
199; Constitution, 51, 141–42, 149, 100, 109, 120; Lincoln and, 96–97,
152, 166; Declaration of 100, 107–8, 119–20; peninsula
Independence, 51, 57–58, 65, 75, campaign, 101–4, 107–8; presidential
149; democracy, 16, 24, 30–31, 70, candidate, 171; removed from
75, 78, 84, 190; economic ideas, 16, command, 120–21; restored to
17, 22–23, 32, 33, 39, 45; equality, command, 114–15; support in army,
55, 57, 65; Founding Fathers, 51– 109, 114–15
52, 57, 67–68; government, McClernand, John A., 138–39
purpose of, 16, 33; race, 52, 64–65, McCulloch, Hugh, 178–79
111–12, 155, 199; reason, 31–33; McDowell, Irvin, 86, 87
religion, 7, 15, 37–38, 186–88; McNamar, John, 21
slavery, 23, 39–40, 50–52, 55, 58, 65; McNeil, John, 21
Union and, 52, 75, 78, 84, 113, 143 Manassas. See Bull Run
Lincoln, Edward (son), 36, 46 Matheny, James, 35
Lincoln, Mary Todd (wife), 37, 43, 62, Meade, George G., 136–37, 146, 159
238 Index
Meigs, Montgomery C., 98 1860 election, 68–70, 70–71; in 1862

Milliken’s Bend, battle of, 129 elections,118; in 1863 elections, 145;
Morton, Oliver P., 142 in 1864 election, 162–63, 169–70, 171–
73; radicals, 75, 88, 89, 105, 106, 122,
Nashville, battle of, 178 129, 152–53, 155, 162, 165–67, 169, 172–
New Salem, 12, 15, 23 73, 179
New York, 145, 174–75 Riddle, Albert G., 158
New York City, 80, 141–42, 203 Rosecrans, William S., 120, 126, 144–45
New York Herald, 122, 168, 172, 189, 190, Russell, William Howard, 78, 87
192 Rutledge, Ann, 21
New York Times, 86, 118, 144
New York Tribune, 59, 68, 86, 104 Sayler’s Creek, battle of, 195
New York World, 116 Schurz, Carl, 192
Nicolay, John, 72, 87, 90–91, 104, 170, Scott, Winfield, 79, 86, 87, 96
179; Lincoln’s leadership, 92, 192–93; Seven Days, battles of, 108
and Mary Lincoln, 92, 127, 195 Seward, William Henry, 67, 69, 75, 79,
80–81, 82, 83–84, 97, 108, 179, 182,
Offutt, Denton, 10, 18, 19 186, 197; cabinet crisis, 121–23;
Ohio, politics in, 132, 143, 145, 173 diplomacy, 91; emancipation, 111;
Owens, Mary, 21–22 Fort Sumter and, 79–81; Lincoln
and, 80–81, 127; Trent affair and, 90
Pea Ridge, battle of, 104 Seymour, Horatio, 118, 141
peace Democrats, 117, 132, 143, 145, 150 Shakespeare, Lincoln’s appreciation of,
peace issue, 167–69, 181–82 6, 186
Pennsylvania, 133, 134, 143, 145, 173 Sheridan, Philip, 171, 195
Perryville, battle of, 115, 120 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 147, 159,
Phillips, Wendell, 155 161, 164, 171, 173, 177–78, 193
Pierce, Franklin, 49, 60 Shields, James, 32–33, 53
Polk, James K., 38, 39 Shiloh, battle of, 106–07
Pomeroy, Samuel, 157 Sigel, Franz, 160, 162
Pope, John, 109, 113, 115 slaves and slavery: colonization, 52, 111–
popular sovereignty, 58, 59 12, 129, 199; Congress and, 38–39, 49–
Port Hudson, 128, 137, 139 51, 59, 74, 88, 105–6, 110, 125, 165–66;
Porter, David D., 193, 195 constitutional amendments and, 74,
Porter, Fitz John, 114 123–24, 162, 180; as contrabands, 88,
105; Declaration of Independence
Raymond, Henry J., 169–70 and, 51, 57–58, 65; in District of
Reconstruction, 152–53; and Congress, Columbia, 40, 106; Dred Scott
165–67, 180–81; Lincoln’s plan, 153–55, decision and, 57–58, 60, 106;
166–67, 198–99; in Louisiana, 153, 155; expansion of, 38–39, 49–50, 51–52, 55,
Republican divisions and, 152–55 58, 59, 60–61, 64, 68, 74; moral issue,
Republican party, 50, 53, 54, 55–56, 57; 61, 64, 65–66, 68; peace negotiations
conservatives, 75, 155, 165, 169; and, 167–69, 181–82; threat to
moderates, 75, 105, 152, 169, 180; in nationalize, 58, 60–61. See also
Index 239
emancipation; Emancipation Townsend, E. D., 203

Proclamation Trent affair, 90
Smith, Caleb, 76, 123 Trumbull, Lyman, x, 54, 68, 132, 152
soldier vote, 145, 173, 174–75
Sparrow, Elizabeth, 4 Usher, John P., 123, 179
Sparrow, Thomas, 4 Union army:emancipation and, 88–89,
Spears, George, ix 106, 109, 148; intensifying strategy
Speed, James, 178, 179 of, 110; soldier vote and, 145, 173, 174–
Speed, Joshua F., 25, 35, 55, 178, 183 75. See also African Americans;
Spotsylvania, battle of, 161 Army of the Potomac; Lincoln,
Springfield, 22, 25, 34, 42–43 Abraham, Commander in Chief;
Springfield Republican, 125 specific battles and generals
Stanton, Edwin M., 45, 122, 130, 138,
146, 160, 179, 182, 195, 199, 200–201, Vallandigham, Clement L., 132–34, 143,
202, 203; character, 101; appointed 145, 150, 170–71
secretary of war, 101; and Vicksburg campaign, 137–39, 144, 146,
McClellan, 107, 108, 114 159
Stephens, Alexander H., 137 Villard, Henry, 80
Stone, Dan, 23
Stones River, battle of, 126 Wade, Benjamin F., 97–98, 156, 165–66
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 192 Wade–Davis bill, 165–66, 167, 169, 180
Strong, George Templeton, 141, 164, Washburne, Elihu B., 158, 186
176 Washington, 82, 160, 163
Stuart, John T., 20, 23, 25, 28, 35 Weitzel, Godfrey, 195
Sumner, Charles, 56, 124, 132 Welles, Gideon, 76, 111, 122, 127, 145,
Swett, Leonard, ix, 44, 123, 190 179, 190, 193
Whig party, 20, 22, 29, 30, 31, 33, 38–39,
40, 54
Taney, Roger B., 57, 58, 60, 78, 83, 179 Wilderness, battle of, 161
Taylor, Dick, 31 Wilkes, Charles, 90
Taylor, Zachary, 39–40 Wilmot Proviso, 38, 39
Thirteenth Amendment, 162, 163, 180 Woodward, George W., 143
Thomas, George, 178
Thomas, Jesse, 32 Yates, Richard, 53, 142

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America - A Biography

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Abraham Lincoln and

Civil War America:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

CIVIL WAR AMERICA

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and associated companies in

Copyright � 2002 by William E. Gienapp

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.

198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America : A biography /

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–19-515099–5 – ISBN 0–19-515100–3 (pbk.)

1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865. 2. Presidents—United States—

Biography. 3. United States—Politics and government—1861–1865.

4. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Military leadership. I. Title.

973.7’092—dc21 [B] 2001050056

William and Jonathan

I shall do nothing in malice.

What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.

1 A Son of the Frontier 1

5 From Limited War to Revolution 99

7 To Finish the Task 151

8 With Malice Toward None 177

Chronology of Abraham Lincoln 204

List of Abbreviations 209

Bibliographical Essay 228

This page intentionally left blank

June 2001 William E. Gienapp

A SON OF THE FRONTIER

Abraham Lincoln rarely talked about his childhood. This silence

Elizabethtown Knob Creek

Gre Farm (1811)

clothing he had ever owned. Then hopping aboard a stagecoach, the

A Son of the Frontier 21

On April 15, 1837, at the age of twenty-eight, Lincoln arrived in

CO. LOGAN CO.

couple took lodgings at the Globe Tavern, hardly plush accommoda-

Abraham Lincoln’s withdrawal from politics abruptly ceased in

Stephen A. Douglas (left) and Abraham Lincoln as they appeared about

While Lincoln’s speeches varied more than Douglas’s, he often read

While immensely gratified by his victory, Abraham Lincoln

In this 1863 photograph, Lincoln is ﬂanked by his two private secretaries,

94 Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America

FROM LIMITED WAR TO

Wars often take on a momentum of their own that defeats the

Port Hudson Mobile

(First and Second)

Jacksonville Cold Harbor

treated as equals. Whether this feeling was right or wrong, “I cannot

Lincoln’s decision to adopt emancipation as a Union war aim did

In this anti-Lincoln cartoon, shadowy Union soldiers arrest Clement Val-

TO FINISH THE TASK

It is difficult today to appreciate Abraham Lincoln’s political sit-

This Republican cartoon contrasts the two presidential candidates’ ap-

ingly declined. Almost overnight, Abraham Lincoln became the fa-