CHAPTER 25
No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted
—ULYSSES GRANT
Fillmore ~ Buchanan ~ Lincoln ~ Tyler ~ Pierce
With the Trent crisis averted, Millard Fillmore recorded himself “very happy, as myself and my family are all enjoying health.” To Dorothea Dix, a frequent correspondent and friend, who had asked him for reassurance, he wrote, “I regret to say that I have never been as confident as many seem to be of this restoration of the union. I thought some concession had been made last winter, that would have given truly loyal men of the south a firm ground to stand upon.” When this did not happen, Fillmore wrote, “I lost all hope for the Union and greatly feared that the government of the Northern states would be overthrown, and that the country” would end up in a “military despotism.” The “unauthorized and despotic imprisonments in the loyal states, where the courts of justice are in full operation,” led Fillmore to believe that the nation was more or less already there. “Will try to hope for the best,” he concluded.
James Buchanan wrote to Horatio King, his postmaster general, “I do most earnestly hope that our army may be able to do something effective before the 1st of April. If not, there is great danger not merely of British but of European interference. There will then be such a clamor for cotton among the millions of operatives dependent upon it for bread, both in England and on the Continent, that I fear for the blockade.”
Menaced at home and abroad, Lincoln had to have the very best men around him. Simon Cameron, who had been chosen as secretary of war for political and geographic considerations, simply could not do the job. Cameron made a move to stay by submitting his annual report directly to the newspapers, calling for the freeing and arming of slaves. He hoped the tactic would rally abolitionists behind him and protect his position. Lincoln rescinded the report and wrote Cameron that his time in the cabinet was at an end. Cameron cried when he read it, believing he would be personally and professionally ruined. Lincoln agreed to withdraw his own letter, allowing Cameron to resign.
Edwin Stanton, who had been Buchanan’s last attorney general, a highly organized and forceful war Democrat who had done so much to provide backbone to that dying administration, would now be secretary of war. “Although you now belong to an administration which has manifested intense hostility to myself,” Buchanan wrote, “I wish you all the success and glory in your efforts to conquer the rebellion and restore the Union which your heart can desire.”
Fillmore seemed to agree, saving a newspaper article calling the switch “a stroke of policy of the gravest character, and one which cannot fail to produce great and, we trust, happy results.” Lincoln’s secretaries remembered, “Both the War Department and the army instantly felt the quickening influence of his rare organizing power, combined with a will which nothing but unquestioning obedience would satisfy.”
Nearly six months after the defeat at Bull Run, the Army of the Potomac had not made another attempt at Richmond, McClellan was sick, and the country’s credit and patience were being sorely tested—as was its president’s confidence. Lincoln walked into the office of General Montgomery Meigs “in great distress.” Sitting in front of the open fire, he said, “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?”
A “council of war” met over several nights at the White House. At one such meeting, Meigs moved his chair near McClellan and said, “The President evidently expects you to speak; can you not promise some movement toward Manassas? You are strong.”
“I cannot move on them with as great a force as they have,” he replied.
“Why, you have near 200,000 men, how many have they?” Meigs said.
“Not less than 175,000, according to my devices.” (McClellan had four times the forces under his command as did the Confederates, who knew that they had less than a third of the Union’s men).
“Do you think so? The President expects something from you.”
“If I tell him my plans, they will be in the New York Herald tomorrow morning. He can’t keep a secret, he will tell them to Tadd.”
“That is a pity, but he is the President—the Commander-in-Chief; he has a right to know; it is not respectful to sit mute when he so clearly requires you to speak. He is superior to all.”
When McClellan finally spoke, he declined to explain his plans in detail, but “thought it best to press the movement” in the west.
“Well, on this assurance of the General that he will press the advance in Kentucky, I will be satisfied,” Lincoln said, “and will adjourn this council.” Which was not to say he would defer to McClellan indefinitely. Lincoln worked tirelessly to learn about military strategy and tactics, so that in a short time generals and admirals were “astonished . . . by the extent of [Lincoln’s] special knowledge and the keen intelligence of his questions.” Lincoln could now take a more forceful role in military affairs. On the last day of January, Lincoln ordered McClellan that “all the disposable force of the Army of the Potomac, after providing safely for the defense of Washington, be formed into an expedition, for the immediate object of seizing and occupying a point upon the rail road south westward of what is known of Manassas Junction.” Lincoln was careful to leave the details to McClellan, but on account of his extreme reticence to act, mandated that this occur on or before February 22. On January 27, Lincoln had read it to the cabinet, “not for their sanction but for their information.” Hay recorded, “From that time he influenced actively the operations of the campaign. He stopped going to McClellan’s and sent for the General to come to him.”
McClellan responded with a twenty-two-page explanation to Stanton, the first time he had deigned to reveal his plans to the administration. On February 3, Lincoln wrote McClellan acknowledging their differences of opinion. Lincoln wanted to move on Manassas, McClellan down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock, and then across land to the railroad terminus on the York River. Lincoln asked whether his plan was more economical, more certain of victory, promised a more valuable victory, would actually break the enemy’s line of communications, and made it easier to retreat if necessary. If McClellan answered satisfactorily, Lincoln promised, “I shall gladly yield my plan to yours.”
Ultimately, Lincoln did yield. He could force his general into an action the officer did not think would work, remove the popular general from command without any obvious replacement, or accept his judgment. He chose the last.
Julia Tyler awoke from a terrible dream. “I thought I had risen to dress, but on looking back to the bed, observed Mr. Tyler lying there, looking pale and ill.” She hastened to Richmond, where Tyler was serving in the Provisional Confederate Congress,* to check on her husband’s health.
* The First Confederate Congress, to which Tyler had been elected in November, would not meet until February 18, 1862.
Julia arrived at the Exchange Hotel unexpected and after dark. Tyler was summoned. Their baby girl clapped her hands when she saw him. “I really believe she knows me,” he delighted.
The next day they mingled with visitors, and “all were remarking on the health and cheerfulness of the President.” One man complimented his new suit. Tyler “laughed heartily,” replying “I wear it in honor of my wife’s arrival; but I had always thought until now that there was no use in my having a new suit of clothes, for no one ever noticed it.”
That night it was Julia who awoke with a headache. Tyler laughed at the irony; she had come out of concern for him and here he was taking care of her. Tyler gave her some morphine to ease the pain and help her sleep, telling her the dream was wrong. But when Julia awoke the next morning, her husband was standing by the fire fully clothed. He had arisen that morning with a chill, gone downstairs to have tea, and upon leaving the table, “staggered and fell.” He was moved to another room and placed on the sofa where he woke up. He insisted on coming back alone so as not to alarm his wife.
Physicians were rushed to the hotel, where they found Tyler in bed. “Doctor, I am dying,” he reported.
“I hope not, sir,” said one doctor.
“Perhaps, it is best.”
John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States, would lie in Congress Hall, the Capitol of the Confederacy. Plans were quickly made for a state funeral, flags were lowered to half staff, businesses closed, bells were tolled, and arrangements were made to bury him next to James Monroe.
The procession of 150 carriages included President Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander Stephens, the cabinet, the Congress, the judiciary, and the Virginia legislature. The military who accompanied Tyler’s coffin to St. Paul’s Church marched to the tune of “a solemn dirge.”
The Richmond Examiner recorded, “We have never seen the evidence of sorrow for the loss of the great and good more universal than it was on the occasion alluded to,” leading to a “never-ceasing throng pouring into the room to catch a last glimpse of the departed statesman.” Reaction in the North was vastly different. “In ordinary times,” the Albany Evening Journal reported, “the death of an Ex-President of the United States would arrest public attention for a brief hour,” but Tyler’s death “hardly adds a ripple to the rushing current of events.” The New York Herald called him “empty-minded and hollow hearted,” and pointed out that the annexation of Texas “commenced the long train of slavery aggressions which are beginning to bear fruit.
“Under other circumstances, a feeling of regret might have pervaded the entire country, but his treachery to the Union and its laws will prevent those persons in the North . . . from experiencing sorrow at his demise.
“He had been Chief Magistrate of the glorious Union, to the destruction of which he devoted the last ill-spent hours of his life.”
On February 9, Newton wrote to Fillmore, “I believe every thing is ready for a movement upon Manassas . . . I think we shall be successful this time.” McClellan, whom Newton had seen recently at the president’s party, “looks very badly . . . I think the little man has more upon him than his physical strength will be able to bear him through in this great struggle in our country.” On February 10, Buffalo’s Union Continentals advertised weekly drills in Kremlin Hall. “We have a neat and convenient Armory fitted up in Room No. 8, on the first floor,” the announcement read. “We now have about fifty muskets, purchased by individual owners, and the necessary accoutrements to accompany the same.” On Washington’s Birthday, Fillmore led the Union Continentals to the Presbyterian Church where he read the first president’s famous Farewell Address. With war against Britain still a viable prospect, Buffalo would do their best to be ready.
To settle the competing strategies of Lincoln and McClellan, the latter convened a war council, presented his plan, and left his generals to debate. General Franklin remembered the vote being 9–3 in favor of McClellan’s amphibious landing, although it was reported as 8–4. After the vote, the generals were summoned to the White House where Lincoln and Stanton awaited them. The president wanted their opinions on timetables, transportation, and organization. He concluded by asking them to use all of their energy to rescue the country, promising, “If you are faithful to me, I, on my part, will be faithful to you.”
Where Lincoln lost patience with McClellan, Fillmore was brimming with confidence. Fillmore sent a letter to John Pendleton Kennedy, his navy secretary, expressing his confidence in McClellan. Kennedy shared the letter with the general, who thanked Fillmore for “The comforting assurance of your confidence at a moment when he is the target for fanatical malevolence.” Fillmore replied that if he had known the letter would be shared, he would have been more effusive, and “expressed more fully and freely not merely my confidence in the General’s patriotism and ability, but” his “military qualities” that make him “the best man to lead our armies to victory.”
In the meantime, the man who was truly the best man to lead the Union armies to victory had launched a successful attack on Fort Henry. Ulysses Grant was a clerk in his younger brother’s store, in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War began. A West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran, he had struggled to find his footing in the civilian world. Grant rejoined as a colonel, but promotions were abundant in the rapidly expanding army, and he was now a general. He and his men had moved south to Paducah during the failed Confederate invasion of Kentucky. The Union now prepared to go on offense. The target was Fort Donelson, Tennessee, which protected the city of Nashville, scene of the first major engagement of the Western Theater. With roughly twenty thousand men, Grant approached a well-fortified structure protected by fifteen thousand troops. The defenders knew that they could not long withstand a siege, but they failed to drive away the Union forces. On the evening of February 15, as the Confederate commanders debated surrender, General Floyd, Buchanan’s secretary of war, decided to flee rather than be taken captive, knowing that he might be held to answer for his actions in the previous administration.
Grant received a note on February 16 from Fort Donelson asking for terms. “No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted,” Grant replied, in words that would arrest the nation. “I propose to move immediately upon your works.” Surrender came the following day, news enthusiastically received in the White House. It was a pleasant scene in the Cabinet Room when Stanton presented Lincoln with a nomination promoting Grant to Major General of Volunteers, which Lincoln signed “at once.”
Floyd’s escape was the only source of lament. “I am sorry he got away,” Stanton said of his former cabinet colleague. “I want to catch and hang him. The last I saw of Floyd was in this room,” Stanton remembered, “lying on the sofa which then stood between the windows yonder. I remember well—it was on the night of 19th of last December—we had had high words, and almost come to blows in our discussions over Fort Sumter.”
The path was clear to Nashville, but good news was never to last long. As one correspondent wrote to Fillmore, “We have a rejoicing in this place today with our recent victories mingled with sorrow at the White House the loss of the President’s son, is a severe stroke upon him.” Willie Lincoln had died at age eleven of typhoid fever.
Franklin Pierce, who knew the devastation of losing a son, looked past his differences with Lincoln to their shared roles as fathers, forced to govern the nation in times of great personal tragedy, and shared his sentiments with the president. “The impulse to write you, the moment I heard of your great domestic affliction was very strong, but it brought back the crushing sorrow which befell me just before I went to Washington in 1853, with such power that I felt your grief to be too sacred for intrusion.
“Even in this hour, so full of danger to our country, and of trial and anxiety to all good men, your thoughts will be, of your cherished boy, who will nestle at your heart, until you meet him in that new life, when tears and toils and conflict will be unknown.
“I realize fully how vain it would be, to suggest sources of consolation. There can be but one refuge in such an hour, but one remedy for smitten hearts, which, is to trust in Him ‘who doeth all things well,’ and leave the rest to ‘Time comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled.’” For whatever reason, Lincoln never acknowledged this timely and thoughtful note.