CHAPTER 31
I feel it to be my duty to put down this rabid abolition party at the north, which in my opinion is not only aiding the rebels to destroy the Union, but is violating the Constitution by its attempts to abolish slavery, and to establish a military despotism over the loyal states.
—MILLARD FILLMORE
Lincoln ~ Fillmore ~ Buchanan
It has been famously observed that war is a continuation of politics by other means. The converse is also true. In a democratic society, it is politics, itself a sublimation of war, that ultimately determines the initiation, objectives, and termination of armed conflict. Lincoln relied heavily on Republican support in Congress. He also depended on Union governors and state legislatures for the raising and delivery of troops. Now, in state and federal elections throughout the country, the public would render a verdict on the policies of the administration. The results reflected the public’s unease with a costly, bloody, and inconclusive war.
On October 16, 1862, John Nicolay wrote, “We are all blue here today on account of the election news. We have lost almost everything in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. We have not yet heard from Iowa, but expect that that too will be swallowed up by the general drift. It never rains but it pours.” Elections in different states were held on different days. As one after another brought bad news for the administration, all eyes turned toward the November 4 contest in New York. Democrat Horatio Seymour, the former governor, was seeking his old office on a platform hostile to the administration, opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation, or any war fought on the basis of limiting slavery, calling Lincoln’s expansion of the war objective “a violation of public faith,” while condemning the administration’s “criminal” acts against civil liberties.
Martin Van Buren had died before this critical election in his home state. Would he have maintained his steadfast support of Lincoln? Would he have fallen out with him over the Emancipation Proclamation? The answers can only be speculated. His son and longtime political ally, John Van Buren, gave a speech at Cooper Institute supporting Seymour.
What of the other former president from New York? Millard Fillmore, too, had begun the war as a strong supporter of Lincoln. But he had long been concerned about what he perceived as threats to civil liberties, and even more opposed to broadening the war aims. While Fillmore kept his views out of the newspapers, he gave the Seymour effort his considerable support. Seymour prevailed with 306,649, to 295,897 for the Republican.
A professor from Columbia wrote to Fillmore, noting that “from the vote of Erie County, that your influence, in the late election, was given for Governor Seymour.” Later that winter, Fillmore responded to a former Whig who had voted for Lincoln, asking for political advice in the upcoming New York state elections for the legislature and other statewide offices. Intending “nothing for publication,” Fillmore wrote, “I voted the Democratic ticket at our last election, not because I was a Democrat but because I was not a Republican. I feel it to be my duty,” he said, to put down “this rabid abolition party at the north, which in my opinion is not only aiding the rebels to destroy the Union, but is violating the Constitution by its attempts to abolish slavery, and to establish a military despotism over the loyal states. I care not for names—they have no charm for me. I go for the Union and Constitutional freedom, and oppose all those who violate it.”
When the elections of 1862 were said and done, the Democrats gained thirty-four seats in the US House of Representatives. Democrats won control of the state legislatures in New Jersey, Indiana, and even Lincoln’s Illinois, meaning a new Democrat would be joining the US Senate from all three states in 1863.
On November 5, a messenger called at the tent of General McClellan. With him was General Ambrose Burnside. McClellan was removed as commander of the Army of the Potomac, with Burnside to assume his place. When Lee heard the news, he said, “We always understood each other so well. I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find some one whom I don’t understand.” Burnside would waste no time making a move against Richmond. His plan would take the Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock River near Fredericksburg, and from there to the capital of the Confederacy.
The Bank of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, was having a problem with its five-dollar notes. The picture of James Buchanan in one corner led to their chronic defacement. Representative drawings included red ink over his eyes, a rope around his neck, and the word “Judas” on his forehead. Hundreds of bills evinced the creative backlash of their holders.
Cornell Jewett of the Colorado Territory had traveled as a private citizen throughout Europe to advocate for the Union cause. Upon his return he paid a visit to Wheatland. Buchanan told him of his plans to someday publish a “vindication before the world, placing his loyalty, integrity of purpose and public acts beyond question . . . With my hand upon my heart, before the Almighty, I acquit myself of any wrong to my country or to the Union.”
Jewett would write, “I will never forget . . . how forcibly I was reminded of the ingratitude of Republics, the severe, unjust criticisms of the mass, with the after all only reliable tribunal, a clear conscience, under sense of responsibility to the Almighty.” Jewett wrote of his visit to the New York Tribune. The paper printed his letter, which it followed with a severe editorial, arguing “Blacker than that of Arnold, of Judas, is the treason of James Buchanan, and fearful must be the verdict which history must pronounce on the pusillanimous, perfidious close of his inglorious public career.”
Jeremiah Black, his former secretary of state, encouraged Buchanan in his temporary silence, saying he had “no cause for low spirits. Your fame will be taken care of by history; though the passions or the interests of the hour may cloud it for the present.” Buchanan was right to wait for peace to publicly make his case.
Lincoln’s success, Buchanan believed, would vindicate him, as the president was simply following his own policies. “As to my course since the wicked bombardment of Fort Sumter—it is but a regular consequence of my whole policy towards the seceding states. They had been informed over and over again by me what would be the consequence of an attack upon it. They chose to commence civil war, and Mr. Lincoln had no alternative but to defend the country against dismemberment. I certainly should have done the same thing had they begun the war in my time; and this they well knew.”
But in the fall of 1862 came a public assault from the former general-in-chief of the army, Winfield Scott. With that, all the ex-president’s considerations of waiting were temporarily set aside. Buchanan wrote to the National Intelligencer to dispute Scott’s charges. First, he pointed out that no troops were available to fortify the nine garrisons that Scott proposed, quoting Scott’s report of October 30, 1860. To secure Washington during the inauguration, Buchanan could only muster 650 men, some of them engineers and cadets from West Point. To garrison these nine forts even his army of sixteen thousand would not have been enough. As for Fort Pickens, he pointed out that a Florida senator offered him assurance that no attack would be made if the fort were not reinforced. With the Peace Conference about to meet, Buchanan felt it was a worthy gamble. The fort, he pointed out, never fell to the Confederates. He asserted that he had always refused to surrender Fort Sumter, and that he had dispatched the Star of the West for the purpose of sustaining it one day after Scott requested it.
The Philadelphia Press reported that Buchanan should discontinue his efforts at rehabilitation. “He had better burn his sheets and say no more. His last defense has only dragged him deeper in the slough of shame.”
The Albany Evening Journal laughed, “James Buchanan makes another pitiable exhibition of himself in the papers. Is there no one to protect him against his own folly?” As for Buchanan’s argument that none of the national arsenal had been strategically moved by his secessionist secretary of war, the journal asked, “But what will the OPF [Old Public Functionary] say to the fact that the latter confessed the larceny and bragged of it?”
Buchanan seemed satisfied, particularly with the “letters and papers” he received indicating approval of his conduct against Scott. But it should have been increasingly apparent that the public was not now, nor would they ever be, receptive to his defenses.