The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XXVIII

The military operations of 1864 were of the most momentous importance. It was a year of intense activity in every department; and, although there were great miscarriages and serious and perplexing disasters, the grand results were such as to show to the people of the whole country that the end was not far off; and that that end would leave the rebellion hopeless and helpless at the feet of the national power. Although the principal interest was attached to the operations of the two grand armies under Grant and Sherman, there were minor movements of subsidiary bodies, which attracted considerable attention.

Early in February, an expedition under General Gillmore's direction, for clearing Florida of insurgent forces, so as to enable the Union elements of the state to reorganize, resulted in a failure. At the same time, Sherman, proceeding from Vicksburg, with a strong infantry force, and General Smith, starting from Memphis, with a heavy force of cavalry, undertook a joint movement for the purpose of destroying rebel supplies and communications; but they failed in their plan of forming a junction, though they were quite successful in their work of destruction. Later in the month, Kilpatrick made his bold and dashing raid upon Richmond, blowing up the locks of the Kanawha canal, cutting railways and telegraphs, and penetrating within the outer defenses of the rebel capital. In March, the disastrous Red River expedition of General Banks occurred. Much damage was done to the rebels, and more was received by ourselves. In April, Fort Pillow was captured from us; and here occurred one of the most shocking outrages of the war, already incidentally alluded to in these pages. Some three hundred negro troops, with women and children, were murdered in cold blood, after they had surrendered. The white officers of these troops shared their cruel fate; and the event was greeted with approval by rebel newspapers. The history of war is illustrated by no deed of blacker barbarism than this. It filled the country with horror, and inspired a universal demand for retaliation. Mr. Lincoln, who was as deeply touched as any one, promised retaliation publicly; but it was never inflicted.

Late in the spring, the western army, under Sherman, confronted Johnston at Chattanooga. The army of the Potomac, immediately under General Meade, faced Lee in Virginia. Both sides had gathered every available man for the last great trial of arms. Lieutenant-general Grant perfected his plans, and, after visiting the western army, and consulting with Sherman, he returned to the east, and took the general direction of military affairs. Everything was given into his hands; and he was supplied with all the men and material that were desired. "The particulars of your plans," said the President to him in a letter, "I neither know, nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints nor constraints upon you." General Grant's response to this note of Mr. Lincoln was evidently not given in ignorance of the charges which had so freely been made, by political enemies of the administration, that our generals were interfered with by the President and the Secretary of War. "From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my country to the present day," said he, "I have never had cause of complaint... Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked."

Everything having been made ready, the two armies moved, at the opening of May, to the work that lay before them. On Tuesday night, May third, the army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan; and on Thursday that series of actions was begun which will be known in history as "The Battles of the Wilderness." Thousands and tens of thousands of brave men fell on both sides; but the rebel general was obliged, from day to day, to fall back from his carefully prepared defenses, to save his communications; while Grant flanked him by a series of swift and daring swoops of his gigantic force, until Lee found himself and his army in Richmond. In co-operation with these movements of Grant's army, General Butler pushed up the James River with a large force, and secured and held City Point and Bermuda Hundred. This was his principal work; but he undertook various diversions without remarkable results.

It was not until the middle of June that the army reached the James River, and commenced the siege of Petersburgh, which was destined to ultimate in the downfall of the rebellion.

General Sherman pursued the strategy adopted by his superior. He had a larger army than Johnston, but Johnston had the advantage of strong positions and a knowledge of the country. He also moved toward his supplies, while Sherman left his behind him. The federal General flanked Johnston out of his works at Buzzard's Roost; and then, fighting and flanking, from day to day, he drove him from Dalton to Atlanta. Then Johnston was superseded by Hood, and Hood assumed the offensive. In three days of bloody battle, the new commander lost half of his army; and then he was glad to get behind the defenses of Atlanta. Here he remained more than a month, besieged. In the endeavor to escape from the toils which Sherman was weaving around him, he found himself at last thoroughly outgeneraled, and was obliged to run. Atlanta fell into our hands, on the second of September. Then Hood, a rash and desperate officer, set off to break up Sherman's communications; and, finding himself thoroughly whipped, started for a grand march to Nashville, where he hoped to find repayment for the losses and disgraces he had suffered. Sherman sent back to General Thomas, who had been left in command there, a portion of his army, and much of his material of war; and then he turned his hack on Hood, for a march to the sea-coast.

This march, one of the most remarkable in the history of war, was called by the rebels a retreat. It was begun on the twelfth of November; and, leaving behind supplies and all means of communication, the gallant host started for the Atlantic. The most frantic efforts were made by the rebels to check the progress of the redoubtable army. Small forces hovered in front, in flank, and in rear, but nothing impeded its march. It was a gala-day affair, the soldiers supporting themselves upon the country through which they passed. On the eighth of December, the army arrived within twenty miles of Savannah. On the fourteenth, Fort McAllister was taken; and, on the same day, communication was opened with the federal fleet, sent to co-operate and bear supplies. The army had reached a new base; and had reached it without a single disaster. Savannah was occupied immediately, the rebel troops retreating and escaping. On the next day after Fort McAllister fell, Thomas defeated Hood in Tennessee, and sent him back, with his army cut in pieces and ruined.

In the meantime, Sheridan had whipped Early in the Shenandoah valley, in a series of brilliant engagements; and, although there had been raids of rebel cavalry across the Potomac, and panics and alarms in various quarters, the 1st of January, 1865, found the Union cause much advanced, and the rebels weakened and despondent. Sherman was at Savannah, organizing for another movement up the coast; Hood was crushed; Early's army was destroyed; Price, too, had been routed in Missouri; Canby was operating for the capture of Mobile; and Grant, with the grip of a bull-dog, held Lee in Richmond, while all these great movements in other parts of the country were in progress.

There was discord in the counsels of the rebels. They began to talk of using the negroes as soldiers. The commanding general demanded this measure; and, at last, the singular spectacle was exhibited of a slaveholders' rebellion, undertaken to make slavery perpetual, calling upon the slaves themselves for help. But the call for help came too late, even had it been addressed to more promising sources. Lee was tied, and Sherman was turning his steps toward him; and among the leaders of the rebellion there was a fearful looking-for of fatal disasters.

Two changes occurred in Mr. Lincoln's cabinet during the year, in addition to that already noted in the post-office department. Edward Bates of Missouri, the Attorney-general, left his post on the first of December, and was succeeded by James Speed of Kentucky. Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, resigned early in July. That this resignation was unexpected and unwelcome to Mr. Lincoln, was evident; but it was immediately accepted. There was probably some personal feeling on both sides, into the causes of which there is no occasion to enter. The matter excited Mr. Lincoln very much--probably more than anything that concerned him personally during his administration. He first appointed to the vacant office Governor David Todd of Ohio; and, the appointment being declined, he named Hon. William Pitt Fessenden of Maine. Mr. Fessenden was a gentleman in whom the country had full confidence; but, owing to his infirm health, he assumed the responsibilities of the place with great reluctance, and only after such an appeal from Mr. Lincoln as he could not resist.

On the twelfth of October, Chief Justice Taney died; and the friends of Mr. Chase urged that gentleman at once as the proper man to be endowed with the responsibilities of that august office. But Mr. Chase had his enemies, like all those who have achieved an equally prominent position. The antagonism between his friends and enemies was at once developed; and Mr. Lincoln was approached with all the motives for and against the appointment. In this matter, Mr. Lincoln's habit of hearing all the arguments in a case on which he had already passed his judgment, was strikingly exhibited. Intimate friends of Mr. Lincoln declare that there never was a time during his administration when he did not intend to appoint Mr. Chase to this place, if it should be made vacant by any cause. To all arguments which related to Mr. Chase's fitness or unfitness for the office, the President lent a ready ear; but he was exceedingly vexed with those who appealed to his selfish resentments. There were not wanting men who tried to arouse his prejudices, by reporting unpleasant words that Mr. Chase was alleged to have uttered against the President; but this gossip was always offensive, because it supposed that he could be affected in his choice by selfish motives. To one man who accused Mr. Chase to him of having used the patronage of his department to advance his own presidential prospects, he simply replied: "Well, Chase would make a pretty good president; and, so far as I am concerned, I wish some one would take it off my hands." To another friend he remarked that there were two considerations that controlled him in the appointment: first, the man appointed should be an anti-slavery man on principle; secondly, he should thoroughly understand the financial policy of the government. Mr. Chase's anti-slavery principles were universally acknowledged, and the financial policy of the government was his own. So, after a delay that gave Mr. Chase's friends and enemies time to urge the points of their respective cases, Mr. Chase received the appointment; and the country was no better satisfied with this disposition of the matter than was Mr. Lincoln himself.

On the sixth of December, Mr. Lincoln sent in his annual message to Congress, which had assembled on the fifth. The document opened with a review of the position of foreign governments, and our relations to those governments. The President announced the ports of Norfolk, Fernandina and Pensacola to have been opened by proclamation. His view of the Arguelles case, which the opposition had made the subject of severe criticism, he gave in the words: "For myself, I have no doubt of the power and duty of the executive, under the law of nations, to exclude enemies of the human race from an asylum in the United States. If Congress should think that proceedings in such cases lack the authority of law, or ought to be further regulated by it, I recommend that provision be made for effectually preventing foreign slavetraders from acquiring domicile and facilities for their criminal occupation in our country." Owing to raids into the states, planned in Canada by enemies of the United States harbored there, he announced that he had thought proper to give notice that, after the expiration of six months, the period conditionally stipulated in the existing arrangements with Great Britain, the United States would hold themselves at liberty to increase their naval armament upon the lakes, if they should deem it necessary to do so. Increased taxation had benefited the revenue; and the national banking system had proved to be acceptable to capitalists and the people. The naval exhibit gave a total of 671 vessels, carrying 4,610 guns, which showed an increase, during the year, of 88 vessels and 167 guns. The whole cost of the immense squadrons that had been called into existence since the beginning of the war, was more than two hundred and thirty-eight millions of dollars. One matter the President spoke of with special interest, viz: the steady expansion of population, improvement, and governmental institutions, over the new and unoccupied portions of the country, notwithstanding the civil war.

Mr. Lincoln thought fit to urge the passage of an amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States, notwithstanding the same Congress had killed the measure at its previous session. It may be stated here that Mr. Lincoln had contemplated this measure, and was ready for it long before Congress had come up to his position. Before even an allusion to this amendment had been publicly made, he talked about it with his friends, and was urged by one of them to become a leader in the movement. He replied that he had no ambition of that sort, but that he thought that the amendment ought to be made, and would be made. For himself, he was content to let others initiate the pleasure, and win the credit of it. But the matter had arrived at a new stage; and, when he saw that his influence was really necessary to its consummation, he did not hesitate to exert it.

Mr. Lincoln alluded to the lessons which had been taught by the presidential election. This election had proved the purpose of the people in the loyal states to maintain the integrity of the Union. It had proved, too, that, although the waste of war had been great, there were actually more men in the Union than when the war began. There had been, during the three years and a half of war, an increase of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand voters, without counting the soldiers who, by the laws of their respective states, were not permitted to vote. With this fact in view, it was plain that the government could maintain its contest with the rebellion indefinitely, so far as the supply of men was concerned. Mr. Lincoln closed his message by remarking that the rebels could, at any moment, have peace, by laying down their arms, and submitting to the national authority, under the Constitution. In saying this, however, he did not mean to retract anything he had said about slavery. He would not retract his Emancipation Proclamation, nor return to slavery any man free by the terms of that proclamation.

The most important measure effected by Congress at this session, was the passage of the amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in all the states. It passed the House by more than the requisite two-thirds vote, having passed the Senate during the previous session. The event was hailed with great satisfaction by the friends of the administration; and only a few of the more virulent of the opposition were disaffected by it. To the President, the measure was particularly gratifying; and he took occasion to express his satisfaction to a crowd that gathered around the White House, immediately after its adoption. He said that it seemed to him to be the one thing necessary to the winding up of the whole difficulty. It completed and confirmed the work of his proclamation of emancipation. It needed only to be adopted by the votes of the states; and he appealed to his auditors to go home, and see that work faithfully accomplished.

The figures which gave the result of the presidential election showed that the country was stronger in men than it was at the beginning of the war; and, as the call for five hundred thousand men, made in July, had failed to produce all the soldiers which the war, much longer protracted, would require, the President issued a call, on the nineteenth of December, for three hundred thousand more.

A peace conference, procured by the voluntary and irresponsible agency of Mr. Francis P. Blair, was held on the steamer River Queen, in Hampton Roads, on the 3d of February, 1865, between President Lincoln and Mr. Seward, representing the government, and Messrs. Alexander H. Stephens, J.A. Campbell and R.M.T. Hunter, representing the rebel confederacy. It was an informal affair, entirely verbal in its conduct, and unproductive of results. The President consented to become a party to the interview, on representations made by General Grant, who regarded at least two of the commissioners as very sincere in their desire for peace. In the conference, these commissioners favored a postponement of the question of separation, and mutual efforts of the two governments toward some extrinsic policy for a season, so as to give time for the passions of the people to cool. The armies, meantime, were to be reduced, and the intercourse between the people of the two sections to be resumed. This the President considered as equivalent to an armistice or truce; and he informed them that he could agree to no cessation of hostilities, except on the basis of a disbandment of the insurgent forces, and the recognition of the national authority throughout all the states of the Union. He also declared it impossible to recede from his Emancipation Proclamation; and informed the Richmond gentlemen that Congress had passed the constitutional amendment, prohibiting slavery; stating, in addition, that the amendment would doubtless be perfected by the action of three-fourths of the states. There was an earnest desire for peace on both sides, without a doubt; but Mr. Lincoln could, with truth to himself and honor to his country, make peace only on certain essential conditions; while the hands of the commissioners were tied by the obstinacy which reigned in Richmond.

The reports of the conversation at this conference are very meager, necessarily; but enough has been made public to show that some of the incidents were very interesting and somewhat amusing. The Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle has published an account of the conference, which is said to have been prepared under the eye of Mr. Stephens. This account states that Mr. Lincoln declared that, in his negotiations for peace, he could not recognize another government inside of the one of which he alone was President. "That," said he, "would be doing what you so long asked Europe to do in vain, and be resigning the only thing the Union armies are fighting for." To this, Mr. Hunter replied that the recognition of Davis' power to make a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace; and, to illustrate his point, he referred to the correspondence between King Charles the First and his Parliament, as a reliable precedent of a constitutional ruler treating with rebels. The Chronicle's account says that at this point "Mr. Lincoln's face wore that indescribable expression which generally preceded his hardest hits; and he remarked: 'Upon questions of history, I must refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be; but my only distinct recollection of the matter is that Charles lost his head.'"

The President told his "little story," too, on this occasion, the best version of which is given in Mr. Carpenter's Reminiscences. They were discussing the slavery question, when Mr. Hunter remarked that the slaves, always accustomed to work upon compulsion, under an overseer, would, if suddenly freed, precipitate not only themselves, but the entire society at the South, into irremediable ruin. No work would be done, but blacks and whites would starve together. The President waited for Mr. Seward to answer the argument; but, as that gentleman hesitated, he said: "Mr. Hunter, you ought to know a great deal better about this matter than I, for you have always lived under the slave system. I can only say, in reply to your statement of the case, that it reminds me of a man out in Illinois, by the name of Case, who undertook, a few years ago, to raise a very large herd of hogs.  It was a great trouble to feed them; and how to get around this was a puzzle to him.  At length, he hit upon the plan of planting an immense field of potatoes; and, when they were sufficiently grown, he turned the whole herd into the field, and let them have full swing, thus saving not only the labor of feeding the hogs, but that also of digging the potatoes!  Charmed with his sagacity, he stood one day leaning against the fence, counting his hogs, when a neighbor came along. 'Well, well,' said he, 'Mr. Case, this is all very fine. Your hogs are doing very well just now; but you know out here in Illinois the frost comes early, and the ground freezes a foot deep. Then what are they going to do?' This was a view of the matter which Mr. Case had not taken into account. Butchering time for hogs was away on in December or January. He scratched his head, and at length stammered, 'Well, it may come pretty hard on their snouts, but I don't see but it will be root hog or die! '"

It is not supposed that Mr. Lincoln hoped for more from this conference than he did from the Niagara Falls negotiations; but he was determined to show that he was ready for peace, on the only grounds that would satisfy the loyal people of the country. The result strengthened the faith of the people in him; and the rebel President seized upon it to stir the ashes in the southern heart, in the vain hope to find fuel there which the long fire had left unconsumed.

Congress adjourned by constitutional limitation on the third of March, although the Senate was at once convened in extra session, in accordance with a proclamation of the President.

On the day of the adjournment of Congress, Mr. Lincoln's first term of office expired. Four years of bloody war had passed away--four years marked by the most marvelous changes in the spirit, position, feelings, principles and institutions of the American people. The great system of wrong, out of which the rebellion had sprung, was in rapid process of dissolution, and already beyond the reach of resuscitation. The government had passed through the severest tests, and had emerged triumphant. There was no longer doubt in the hearts of the people, and no longer contempt among the nations of the earth. Abraham Lincoln, the humble and unobtrusive citizen, the self-educated and Christian man, had been tried, and had not been found wanting. His foes no longer denied, and his friends no longer doubted, his great ability. He was, in every sense, the first citizen of the republic; and he had taken his place among the leading rulers of the world.

Mr. Lincoln was re-inaugurated into the presidential office on the fourth of March. An immense crowd was in attendance--a crowd of affectionate friends, not doubtful of the President, and not doubtful of one another and the future, as at the first inauguration. Chief Justice Chase administered the oath of office; and then Mr. Lincoln read his inaugural address--a paper whose Christian sentiments and whose reverent and pious spirit has no parallel among the state papers of the American Presidents. It showed the President still untouched by resentment, still brotherly in his feelings toward the enemies of the government, and still profoundly conscious of the overruling power of Providence in national affairs. The address was as follows:

"Fellow-Countrymen--At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper.  Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

"The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it.  While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation.  Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish; and the war came.

"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.  All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.  To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest, was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.  Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.  The prayers of both could not be answered.  That of neither has been answered fully.  The Almighty has his own purposes.  'Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come: but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.'  If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword; as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said; 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"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 orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

On the sixth of March, Mr. Fessenden, who had never regarded himself as permanently in the office of Secretary of the Treasury, resigned; and Hugh McCulloch of Indiana was appointed to his place. Further than this, Mr. Lincoln introduced no changes into his cabinet. The people had not only indorsed Mr. Lincoln, but they had indorsed his administration. On the eleventh of March, the President issued a proclamation, in pursuance of an act of Congress, calling upon deserters to return to their posts, and promising them pardon. The proclamation called many of the wanderers back to their duty. The draft for three hundred thousand men was commenced on the fifteenth of the same month, and every necessary measure was adopted for a continuance of the war, should the constant accumulation of federal successes fail to bring the rebellion to a close.