The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XX

The victory of the rebels at Bull Run was singularly barren of material results to them. It did not encourage the disloyal masses of the country more than it filled with new determination the loyal people who opposed them. They were as badly punished as the troops they had defeated, and could take no advantage of their victory; and they failed to bring nearer the day of foreign recognition for which they were laboring and longing.

This matter of foreign recognition was a very important one to Mr. Davis and his confederates. That he expected it, and had reason to expect it, there is no question. Hostilities had hardly opened when the British and French governments, acting in concert, recognized the government established at Montgomery as a belligerent power. If this was not a pledge of friendliness, and a promise of recognition, nothing could have been, for the proceeding was unprecedented. The United States was a power in friendly intercourse with these two great powers of Europe, through complete diplomatic relations. Without a word of warning, without a victory on the part of the insurgents, without a confederate fleet afloat, with only a half of the slave states in insurrection, these two governments, with the most indecent haste, gave their moral support to the enemies of the United States by recognizing a portion of its people engaged in an insurrection which the government had not yet undertaken to suppress--as a belligerent power, with just the same rights on land and sea as if they were an established government.

But for the decided position assumed by Mr. Lincoln, through his accomplished Secretary, Mr. Seward, the rebel government would certainly have had an early and full recognition. England and France were, without doubt, very friendly to the United States; but they would have been friendlier to two governments than to one. In his instructions to Mr. Charles Francis Adams, on his departure to represent the government at the court of St. James, Mr. Seward said:

"'If, as the President does not at all apprehend, you shall unhappily find Her Majesty's government tolerating the application of the so-called seceding states, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose, for a moment, that they can grant that application, and remain the friends of the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case, that, if they determine to recognize, they may, at the same time, prepare to enter into an alliance with the enemies of this republic. You alone will represent your country at London, and you will represent the whole of it there.  When you are asked to divide that duty with others, diplomatic relations between the government of Great Britain and this government will be suspended, and will remain so until it shall be seen which of the two is most strongly intrenched in the confidence of their respective nations and of mankind.'"

Against the recognition of the rebels as a belligerent power, Mr. Adams was directed to make a decided and energetic protest; and when, on the fifteenth of June, the representatives of England and France at Washington applied to Mr. Seward for the privilege of reading to him certain instructions they had received from their governments, he declined to hear them officially until he had had the privilege of reading them privately. This privilege was accorded to him; and then he declined to receive any official notice of the documents. Four days afterwards, he wrote a letter to Mr. Adams, informing him of the nature of the instructions, which were prefaced by a statement of the decision of the British government that this country was divided into two belligerent parties, of which the government represented one; and that the government of Great Britain proposed to assume the attitude of a neutral between them.

Touching this decision, Mr. Seward said that the government of the United States could not debate it with the government of Her Majesty--much less consent to receive the announcement of a decision thus derogating from the sovereignty of the United States--a decision at which it had arrived without conferring with us upon the question. "The United States," said Mr. Seward, "are still solely and exclusively sovereign, within the territories they have lawfully acquired and long possessed, as they have always been. They are living under the obligations of the law of nations and of treaties with Great Britain, just the same now as heretofore; they are, of course, the friend of Great Britain; and they insist that Great Britain shall remain their friend now, just as she has hitherto been.  Great Britain, by virtue of these relations, is a stranger to parties and sections in this country, whether they are loyal to the United States or not; and Great Britain can neither rightfully qualify the sovereignty of the United States, nor concede nor recognize any rights or interests or power, of any party, state or section, in contravention to the unbroken sovereignty of the federal Union.  What is now seen in this country is the occurrence, by no means peculiar, but frequent in all countries, more frequent in Great Britain than here, of an armed insurrection, engaged in attempting to overthrow the regularly constituted and established government. But these incidents by no means constitute a state of war, impairing the sovereignty of the government, creating belligerent sections, and entitling foreign states to intervene or to act as neutrals between them, or in any other way to cast off their lawful obligations to the nation thus, for the moment, disturbed. Any other principle than this would be to resolve government everywhere into a thing of accident and caprice, and ultimately all human society into a state of perpetual war."

Instructions corresponding with these were sent to our representatives at the French and other European courts. These governments were plainly given to understand that our government considered the difficulty with the slaveholding states to be exclusively its own--that it was purely a domestic rebellion, which it proposed to extinguish by its own power, and one in which foreign governments had no right to inter-meddle. Our ministers were told by Mr. Seward that they could not be too decided or explicit in making known to the governments at which they represented us, that there was not then, and would not be, any idea existing in the government of suffering a dissolution of the Union to take place, in any way whatever.

Throughout all the war that followed, England and France maintained their most unjustifiable and cruel recognition of the belligerent rights of the rebels--unjustifiable, because it was an unfriendly act toward a friendly power, on behalf of a rebellion whose forces were still unorganized, and whose suppression the government had hardly entered upon; and cruel, because it encouraged the rebels to persevere in a war which could only end in defeat to them, and which was so prolonged that it made a desolation of their whole country. There is probably nothing more morally certain than that the expectation of full recognition by England and France, on the part of Mr. Davis and his people, helped to continue the struggle of the rebellion with the government, until tens of thousands of loyal and disloyal lives were needlessly sacrificed. The act was unfriendly to this government; it was a cruelty to the hapless insurgents it deceived, for the promise it contained was never redeemed, and would have accomplished nothing if it had been; and it was a great blunder, from which those blundering governments have retreated, amid the jeers of the nations of the world, and the shuffling apologies of their own people. This sympathy with the rebellion on the part of these foreign governments is something not to be forgotten, because we are to measure by it the magnanimity of Mr. Lincoln in the treatment of international questions arising afterwards. This sympathy is to-day denied; it was then blatant and bellicose. An American could not pass through England without insult; he could not speak for the national cause in England without a mob. England, or all of England that had a voice, rejoiced in rebel successes and federal defeats, and garbled and qualified all the news which favored the prospects of national success. Whatever may be the professions of England now, no true American can forget that all the influence she dared to give in favor of the rebellion was given, beginning promptly at the start; and that her position rendered the task of subduing the rebellion doubly severe. Whatever may be the professions of her people now, no true American will forget the insults that were heaped upon his countrymen abroad whenever an allusion was made to the national difficulties, and heaped upon the country by the issues of a press that represented the British people, and persistently misrepresented our own. It was not, of course, to be expected that monarchies would be friendly to the great prosperity of democracies, or that they would give them their open sympathy and co-operation in difficulty; but the latter should be spared receiving the hypocrisies of the former as courtesies; and, after having been compelled to drink of gall for four years, should be permitted to remember that it was gall, and to make the best of it, without being persistently assured that it was honey.

The opening of the war found Colonel John C. Fremont in Europe; and he, with a large number of loyal Americans, hastened home to give their services to their country. Colonel Fremont, defeated as the republican candidate for the presidency four years before the election of Mr. Lincoln, had had military experience, and was recognized as a popular man, who would rally to his command, at the West, large numbers of soldiers, especially among the German population of the region. He received the appointment of Major-General, and on the same day (July 25th,) that General McClellan arrived in Washington to take command of the Army of the Potomac, he arrived at St. Louis, and entered upon the command of the Department of the West, to which he had been assigned. Before General Fremont arrived at St. Louis, a battle was fought on Wilson's Creek by General Lyon and General Sigel, with a large force under the command of Ben McCulloch. It was the second considerable battle of the war, and resulted in the death of General Lyon himself, and the final orderly retreat of the federal forces under Sigel. General Lyon had inflicted, with his little force of six thousand men, such injury upon McCulloch's twenty-two thousand, that the latter could not pursue; and, on the whole, there was no special discouragement as the result of the defeat.

General Fremont's name had a great charm for the western masses, and especially for the Germans; and volunteers in large numbers sought service under him. His campaign, upon the organization of which he entered with great energy, contemplated not only the restoration of order in Missouri, but the reclaiming the control of the Mississippi River. For this latter object, he organized a gun-boat service, which was destined to play a very important part in the operations associated with the western inland waters.

Missouri was in a condition of most unhappy disorder. It was a border slave state, containing many disunionists of its own, and abounding with secession emissaries from other states, determined to carry it over to the confederacy. Brother was arrayed against brother. Neighborhoods were distressed with deadly feuds. Murders were of every-day occurrence on every hand, and outrages of every kind were rife. The civil administration of the state was altogether unreliable; and on the thirty-first of August, General Fremont issued a proclamation declaring martial law, defining the lines of the army of occupation, and threatening with death by the bullet all who should be found within those lines with arms in their hands. Furthermore, the real and personal property of all persons in the state who should take up arms against the United States was declared confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if they had any, were declared free men.

This proclamation produced a strong effect upon the public mind. The proclaiming of freedom to the slaves of rebels struck the popular chord, particularly among thoroughly loyal men in the free states. Of course, it maddened all the sympathizers with the rebellion, infuriated the rebels themselves, and perplexed those loyal men who had upon their hands the task of so conducting affairs as to hold to their allegiance the border slave states which had not seceded.

Mr. Lincoln did not approve some features of General Fremont's proclamation. As soon as he read it, he wrote, under date of September second, to the General, that there were two points in it which gave him anxiety. The first was, that, if he should shoot a man according to his proclamation, "the confederates would certainly shoot our best men in their hands in retaliation, and so, man for man, indefinitely." He therefore ordered him to allow no man to be shot under the proclamation without first having his (the President's) approbation or consent. The second cause of anxiety was that the paragraph relating to the confiscation of property and the liberation of slaves of traitorous owners would alarm Unionists at the South, and perhaps ruin the fair prospect of saving Kentucky to the Union. He, therefore, wished General Fremont, as of his own motion, so to modify his proclamation as to make it conformable to the confiscation act just passed by the extra session of Congress, which only freed such slaves as were engaged in the rebel service. Mr. Lincoln did not wish to interfere with General Fremont, or unreasonably to curtail his authority, although he had assumed an unwarrantable responsibility in taking so important a step without consultation or notice. Congress had had that very matter in hand, and had embodied its opinion in an act. To this act he wished to have the General conform his proclamation, and that was all he desired. The wisdom of his criticism of the first point was proved by a document issued by the rebel Jeff Thompson on the same day he wrote it. "Jeff Thompson, Brigadier General of the first military district of Missouri," acting under the state government, did "most solemnly promise" that for every soldier of the state guard, "or soldier of our allies, the armies of the confederate States," who should be put to death under the proclamation, he would "hang, draw and quarter a minion of Abraham Lincoln."

General Fremont received the President's letter respectfully, and replied to it September eighth, stating the difficulties under which he labored, with communication with the government so difficult, and the development of perplexing events so rapid in the department under his command. As to the part of his proclamation concerning the slaves, he wished the President openly to order the change desired, as, if he should do it of his own motion, it would imply that he thought himself wrong, and that he had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded. This the President did, in a dispatch under date of September eleventh, in the words: "It is therefore ordered that the said clause of said proclamation be so modified, held, and construed, as to conform to, and not to transcend, the provisions on the same subject contained in the act of Congress entitled, 'An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 1861; and that such act be published at length with this order." Before this order had been received, or on the day following its date, General Fremont, though acquainted with the President's wishes, manumitted two slaves of Thomas L. Snead of St. Louis, in accordance with the terms of his proclamation.

Although Mr. Lincoln desired General Fremont so to modify his proclamation as to make it accordant with the act of Congress approved August sixth, it is hardly to be supposed that he did it solely out of respect to that act. Congressional acts that were passed under certain circumstances, could not be regarded as binding the hands of the executive under all circumstances; and when, in a state of war, circumstances were widely changing with the passage of every day, they would be a poor rule of military action. If he had believed that the time had come for the measure of liberating the slaves of rebels by proclamation, the act of Congress would not have stood in his way. This act was an embodiment of his policy at that time, and he used it for his immediate purpose.

The day after he gave his modifying order, he received a letter from Hon. Joseph Holt of Kentucky, in which that gentleman spoke of the alarm and condemnation with which the Union-loving citizens of that state had read the proclamation, and begged him to modify it by an order such as he had already issued. Judge Holt concluded his letter by saying: "The magnitude of the interest at stake, and my extreme desire that by no misapprehension of your sentiments or purposes shall the power and fervor of the loyalty of Kentucky be at this moment abated or chilled, must be my apology for the frankness with which I have addressed you."

Complications in the personal relations of General Fremont and Colonel F.P. Blair, under whose personal and family influence General Fremont had received his position, occurred at an early day. Colonel Blair doubtless thought that he had not sufficient weight in the General's counsels, and the General, doubtless, exercised his right, in choosing his own counselors. Whether he followed the advice of others, or was guided by his own judgment and impulses, he conducted himself quite as much after the manner of an eastern satrap as a republican commander. The public found it difficult to get at him, he kept around him a large retinue, and dispensed patronage and contracts with a right royal hand. The most there is to be said of the matter, is, that it was his way. Power was in his hands, a great work was before him, great personal popularity attended him, and the sudden elevation was not without its effect upon him. Colonel Blair, who was the gallant commander of the First Missouri Volunteers, stood in a peculiar relation to him, and was not, by virtue of that relation, and by reason of a high and worthily won political and social position, to be lightly put aside. He came down upon his superior with a series of charges which covered a long catalogue of sins:--neglect of duty, unofficerlike conduct, disobedience of orders, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, extravagance and the waste of the public moneys, and despotic and tyrannical conduct. Among the specifications were Fremont's alleged failure to repair at once to St. Louis to enter upon his duties; his neglecting to reinforce Lyon and Mulligan; his suffering Brigadier-General Hurlburt, "a common drunkard," to continue in command; his refusal to see people who sought his presence on matters of urgent business; his violation of the presidential order in the matter of his proclamation and the manumissions under it; his persistency in keeping disreputable persons in his employ; and his unjust suppression of the St. Louis Evening News. General Fremont had no better opinion of Colonel Blair than Blair had of him, and placed him under arrest for alluding disrespectfully to superior officers.

It was a very unhappy quarrel, and it is quite likely that there was blame upon both sides, though it occurred between men equally devoted to the sacred cause of saving the country to freedom and justice. It is not necessary to believe, with the enemies of General Fremont, that he found the country going to pieces and intended to place himself at the head of a huge north-western fraction; nor, with the enemies of Colonel Blair, that he was offended with his General because he could not have as good a chance at stealing from the government as was believed to be accorded to some of the General's California friends. Both were loyal men, both were anti-slavery men--Colonel Blair being quite the equal of General Fremont in this respect--and both wished to serve their country. Mr. Lincoln always gave to each the credit due to his motives, and so far refused to mingle in the general quarrel that grew out of the difficulty, that he kept the good-will of both sides, and compelled them to settle their own differences.

On the sixth of September, General Grant, under General Fremont's command, occupied Paducah, Kentucky, at the mouth of the Tennessee River. Price and Jackson were raising a formidable army for service in Missouri, and, on the twelfth of September, compelled the surrender of Colonel Mulligan and his forces at Lexington. General Fremont at length took the field in person. On the eighth of October he left Jefferson City for Sedalia. As he advanced with his forces, Price retreated, until it was widely reported that he would give battle to the national forces at Springfield. Just as Fremont was making ready to engage the enemy, he was overtaken by an order relieving him of his command. He was succeeded by General Hunter; but Hunter's command was brief, and was transferred at an early day to General Halleck.

General Fremont was relieved of his command by the President not because of his proclamation, not because he hated slavery, and not because he believed him corrupt or vindictive or disloyal. He relieved him simply because he believed that the interests of the country, all things considered, would be subserved by relieving him and putting another man in his place. The matter was the cause of great excitement in Missouri, and of much complaint among the radical antislavery men of the country: but the imputations sought to be cast upon the President were not fastened to him; and did not, four years later, when Fremont himself became a candidate for the presidency, prevent the warmest anti-slavery men from giving Mr. Lincoln their support.

The federal army under General Hunter retreated without a battle; and thus the campaign, inaugurated with great show and immense expense, was a flat failure.

In the meantime, General Rosecrans finished up the work in Western Virginia that General McClellan had prematurely declared, accomplished, and the army of the Potomac, under the latter General, was swelling in numbers, and active in organization and discipline. General McClellan's popularity with the army was very great. They felt his organizing hand, and regarded him with the proudest confidence. The country, however, was becoming impatient with him. He would spare no men for any outside enterprises, and still rolled up the numbers of his cumbersome forces, though good roads lay in front, and pleasant weather invited to action. On the twenty-ninth of August, General Butler, acting with a naval force under Commodore Stringham, took possession of the Hatteras forts, with a force which he had raised independently for the expedition. This gave great satisfaction to the country, and helped to keep up the popular courage under the depressing influence of delay on the part of the army of the Potomac.

In the month of August, Munson's Hill, within view of the capitol, was occupied by the rebel forces; and, though they were not strong in numbers, and took but limited pains to intrench themselves, they remained there undisturbed until nearly the last of September, when they left of their own accord. On the twenty-first of October, there occurred a disastrous battle and blunder at Ball's Bluff. It was a sad failure to fulfill the promise of a magnificent preparation for action. The country was disappointed and indignant. The number killed, drowned, wounded and captured was eleven hundred--full half that went into the action. Here Colonel Baker, the President's friend, fell; and, although General McClellan, in his report of the affair, said that, "situated as their troops were--cut off alike from retreat or reinforcements--five thousand against one thousand seven hundred--it was not possible that the issue could have been successful," the unmilitary mind will still inquire why, with an immense army but a few miles away, they were left or placed where reinforcement and retreat were alike impossible?

General Scott did not like the looks or management of military affairs, and felt that his place was becoming unpleasant. Only a few days after the affair at Ball's Bluff, he made known to Mr. Lincoln his desire to be released from all active duties, in consequence of his increasing physical infirmity. In a letter dated November first, the President acceded to his request, and added: "The American people will hear with sadness and deep emotion that General Scott has withdrawn from the active control of the army, while the President and the unanimous Cabinet express their own and the nation's sympathy in his personal affliction, and their profound sense of the important public services rendered by him to his country, during his long and brilliant public career, among which will ever be gratefully distinguished his faithful devotion to the Constitution, the Union and the flag, when assailed by parricidal rebellion." To do all possible honor to the noble veteran who had stood by the country when so many army officers had gone over to the rebellion under the appeal of sectional friendship--an appeal made to him with all the persuasions that ingenuity could devise--the President and his entire Cabinet waited upon him at his residence; and there, with his Secretaries around him, Mr. Lincoln read to him his letter. It was a grand moment in the old man's life. "This honor overwhelms me," he responded. "It overpays all services I have attempted to render to my country. If I had any claims before, they are all obliterated by this expression of approval by the President, with the unanimous support of the Cabinet.  I know the President and this Cabinet well--I know that the country has placed its interests in this trying crisis in safe keeping.  Their councils are wise; their labors are untiring as they are loyal, and their course is the right one."

Thus, after fifty-three years of service in the armies of his country, General Scott went into his nobly earned retirement, with the blessing of his government and the blessing of his country upon his venerable head; and it is one of the sweetest satisfactions of both to remember that he lived to see his country's enemies vanquished, and to hear of those who taunted him with faithlessness to his sectional friends, humbly seeking pardon of the government which they had outraged, and which he had so loyally supported.

On General Scott's retirement, General McClellan held the highest rank in the army, and was intrusted with the chief command.

During the month of November, the Union forces achieved several important and encouraging successes. South Carolina was invaded by an expedition under the joint command of General T.W. Sherman and Commodore Dupont; the latter of whom achieved a brilliant naval victory in Port Royal Harbor. Generals Grant and McClernand, with a force of three thousand five hundred men, attacked a rebel camp in Missouri under General Polk, captured twelve guns, burned their camp, and took baggage, horses and many prisoners. The rebels were afterwards reinforced, and compelled the Union forces to return to their transports. Notwithstanding the fact that the rebels claimed a victory, the results were substantially with their assailants. General Buckner, with whom McClellan was alleged to have made his treaty of neutrality, had thrown off his neutral mask, and was gathering an army of rebels in Kentucky, co-operating with General Bragg who was invading the state with the determination to force it into secession. To meet and repel this invasion, General W.T. Sherman advanced with a large force to Bowling Green, while General Nelson, on his left, gained a decisive victory over the rebels under Colonel Williams. The various operations of the Union forces broke up the rebel project of subjugation, and re-invigorated the efforts of the Union men to hold the state to its loyalty. General Halleck was appointed to the command of the army of the West, and General Buell took General W.T. Sherman's command in Kentucky.

The question of slavery was an ever-present one during all the operations of the year. The instructions given by the War Department to General Butler on the eighth of August, were based upon "the desire of the President that all existing rights in all the states should be respected and maintained;" yet it was declared that "the rights dependent on the laws of the states within which military operations are conducted must necessarily be subordinate to the military exigencies created by the insurrection, if not wholly forfeited by the treasonable conduct of the parties claiming them." The difficulty of settling the claims of loyal masters was such that it was recommended to receive all fugitives, keep a record of them, and set them to work. Congress, the Secretary of War believed, would provide for the repayment of loyal masters. On the departure of General T.W. Sherman on his expedition to Port Royal, Mr. Cameron referred him to the letter to General Butler on this subject. He was directed to receive the services of any persons, whether fugitives from labor or not, who should offer them to the national government. These fugitives might be organized into "squads, companies, or otherwise," though that liberty was not intended to mean a general arming of them for military service. Loyal masters were to be assured, meantime, that Congress would provide for them a just compensation for services thus lost to them. The time for emancipation had not come, in the opinion of the government. That Mr. Lincoln desired it, none can doubt; but he had undertaken to save the Union under the Constitution--to save the Union while preserving inviolate all the rights of all the states. He so understood the oath by which he was invested with power. Whatever might be his hatred of slavery--and it was the intensest passion of his life--he could only interfere with it as a military necessity--an essential means of saving the Union.