CHAPTER 40
The most reliable indication of public purpose in this country is derived through our popular elections.
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Lincoln ~ Pierce ~ Fillmore ~ Buchanan
“I always think of our arrival at Cold Harbor as marking a new phase of the war,” remembered George Eggleston, a sergeant-major in the Confederate army. “I remember surprise and disappointment were the prevailing emotions in the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia when we discovered, after the contest in the Wilderness, that General Grant was not going to retire behind the river,” allowing Lee to menace Washington as he had before, and instead moving forward to Spotsylvania. “We had been accustomed to a program which began with a Federal advance, culminated in one great battle, and ended in the retirement of the Union army, the substitution of a new Federal commander for the one beaten, and the institution of a more or less offensive campaign on our part. This was the usual order of events, and this was what we confidently expected.” Grant was “fresh from the west and so ill-informed as to the military customs in our part of the country that when the battle of the Wilderness was over . . . [he] had the temerity” to advance and fight Lee’s forces again.
The movement against Cold Harbor would be costly. Hundreds of Grant’s men wrote their names and addresses on pieces of paper, which they clipped to their uniforms. In the first eight minutes, “more men fell bleeding as they advanced than in any other like period of time throughout the war,” remembered a Union general. Grant lost 14,931 dead or wounded to seventeen hundred for the Confederates. Welles noted, “The bodies of our brave men, slain or mutilated, are brought daily to Washington by hundreds.”
In the last days of his life, Grant would write, “I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained.” But retreat was never an option.
Lee would not engage Grant’s superior numbers in an open field. Grant had watched for nearly two months as Lee fought from behind breastworks, staying on defense, refusing to risk his men. Forced to choose between two dangerous options—one, to fight straight to Richmond, over dangerous and defensible terrain against an entrenched army, or, two, to cross the James River and approach Richmond from the south—Grant opted for the latter.
For the 1864 election, Republicans branded themselves as the National Union Party, hoping to unite all supporters of the war. Lincoln was unanimously re-nominated, the first president since Van Buren in 1840, on a platform of unconditional Confederate surrender and amending the Constitution to abolish slavery. Entering the telegraph office to congratulations, Lincoln looked over the dispatches from the affair. “Send it right over to the Madam,” he said, “She will be more interested than I am.” Democrat Andrew Johnson, Tennessee’s military governor, was chosen as his running mate. “I thought possibly he might be the man,” Lincoln said. “Perhaps he is the best man, but—” without completing his thought, he rose and left the room.
Accepting the nomination, Lincoln said, “I will neither conceal my gratification, nor restrain the expression of my gratitude, that the Union people, through their convention, in their continued effort to save, and advance the nation, have deemed me not unworthy to remain in my present position.
“I approve the declaration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation . . . Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now, the unconditional Union men, north and south, perceive its importance, and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it legal form, and practical effect.”
To a Union League delegation from New York later that day, Lincoln confessed his unworthiness for the job, but was reminded of an old Dutch farmer who told a companion “it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”
Franklin Pierce believed Lincoln’s opponent would be none other than George McClellan, an anticipation shared by “All men in this region.” He wrote, “In the present condition of affairs, no man can guess what changes in public sentiment or opinion are likely to take place” before the election. The country, he believed, “should be animated by a common object—just and above all—the restoration of the Union, if folly and madness . . . have not placed it beyond hope.”
Union private John Kick of Buffalo, New York, had marched with Grant’s army throughout the Overland Campaign. On the road from Cold Harbor toward the James, he suffered heatstroke and nearly died. His fellow soldiers arranged to leave him at the nearest house, which happened to be Sherwood Forest. Anna Tyler, the former president’s niece, who was “young, good looking, and withal strongly rebellious,” lived there along with an older relative. Over a course of weeks she nursed him back to health. What was likely an icy beginning quickly changed and the two fell in love. A minister from a nearby town was summoned, and “they were united in the bonds of matrimony, more fortunate, in this respect, than the prototypical ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet.’” Returning to his regiment, Kick asked for a thirty-day furlough to take his honeymoon. It was granted. Sherwood Forest was, throughout that stage of the war, near or within the lines of General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. Butler, frequently pestered by letters from Julia Tyler on a variety of subjects, including her niece’s well-being, responded with a note. Her niece should no longer give her anxiety, he wrote, now that she had “taken for her husband and lawful protector John Kick, a brave soldier of the army of the United States.” And if she wanted to see the happy couple, or give them “such advice as a matronly relative only could bestow,” he would finally grant her the pass she had been seeking to return. Kick would survive the war and live to take his bride back to Buffalo.
On June 14, Grant and his army reached the James. The general ordered boats to be sunk in the river to prevent the Confederate navy from interfering. Pontoon bridges were laid down, and the Army of the Potomac crossed, returning to the vicinity of Richmond. After days of skirmishing, Grant began a siege of the city of Petersburg, a vital source of supplies for the capital of Richmond and Lee’s army. Since Grant set forth from Washington, sixty-five thousand northern men had been “killed, wounded, or missing.”
On June 23, Lincoln arrived at the front, sunburned and exhausted, “but still refreshed and cheered.” Grant told him “it may be a long summer’s day before he does his work but that he is as sure of doing it as he is of anything in the world.” Lincoln returned from his visit “in very good spirits.” His “journey has done him good,” thought Welles, “physically, and strengthened him mentally and inspired confidence in the general and army.”
Meanwhile, tensions with the treasury secretary reached a breaking point. Chase’s candidate to serve at an important post in New York was opposed by the congressional delegation. Lincoln thought he had diffused the situation by convincing the incumbent to remain. He was writing Chase a letter to that effect, when he received his resignation. This time Lincoln decided to accept. “I thought I could not stand it any longer,” he said.
In the perennial chess match between Lincoln and Davis, a movement against Richmond meant a Confederate play for Washington. On July 11, Jubal Early was within five miles of the White House with fifteen thousand men. Grant countered by sending his own detachment, but believed that had Early arrived sooner he could have seized the capital.
Surveying the wreckage around Washington, Welles recorded “chimneys of the burnt houses, the still barricaded road, the trampled field.” The home of Montgomery Blair had been put to the torch. In an orchard where fighting had taken place trees were “riddled to pieces with musketry.”
Outside Atlanta, Jefferson Davis removed Johnston from command, replacing him with General John Hood. Johnston’s policy of falling back and playing for time dissatisfied the Confederate president. The change in command was evident on July 20, when Hood directed a vicious assault where the lines commingled and a four-hour hand-to-hand fight ensued. Hooker lost 4,796 men to Sherman’s 1,710. Sherman advanced again on Atlanta. Closing in, Hood sent half of his forces to attack Sherman’s left flank. From noon till nightfall they battled, Hood losing 8,499 to 3,641. Six days later, the same attack cost Hood 4,632 men, to Sherman’s seven hundred. With every hour it seemed Hood was vindicating Johnston’s cautious, defensive strategy. It had been an expensive lesson for the Confederates. Sherman would not attack, but wait, “because soldiers, like other mortals, must have food.” To that end, Sherman would carefully maneuver to destroy the railroad lines into the city.
As the Democratic Convention approached, there was a great deal of interest in Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce.
Senator George Read Riddle of Delaware wrote to Fillmore asking him to accept the nomination on a peace platform, or at least, “The Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.”
“Pardon me for saying,” Fillmore responded, “that I have no desire under any circumstances ever to be president again . . . That General McClellan would be nominated as the conservative Union candidate and in such a nomination I should most cordially concur.” As for the platform, Fillmore said, he did not see any use for one “beyond the Constitution . . . the sole object.”
Declining to be put forth as the nominee, Fillmore similarly refused to attend, referencing his oft cited retirement from politics, telling another supporter, “All I ask and all I hope for is that that convention will make a judicious nomination, which will unite all opposition elements against the present administration. For in my opinion if this administration (and its destructive, tyrannical policy is) continued for four years longer, our government will become a military despotism and this country be ruined.” Strong language, but Fillmore insisted that the letter be kept private. That said, Fillmore was sharing his private views with a number of people. The same day he wrote, “all men who value their own liberty should unite to change the administration and if possible restore the Union and give peace to our bleeding country.”
On August 25, James Buchanan wrote, “From all appearances, McClellan will be nominated. Whether for good or for evil time must determine.” He was worried that the platform was too pacific: “We ought to commence negotiations with the South and offer them every reasonable guarantee for the security of their rights within the Union.” He even supported a temporary cease-fire and a convention of the states. But as for a peace that recognized the independence of the South, “I confess I am far from being prepared.”
Nor was Lincoln prepared. On August 17 he telegraphed Grant, “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”
Nicolay wrote to Bates, “There is rather a bad state of feeling throughout the Union party about the political condition of things. The want of any decided military successes thus far, and the necessity of the new draft in the coming month, has materially discouraged many of our good friends, who are inclined to be a little weak kneed, and croakers are talking everywhere about the impossibility of re-electing Mr. Lincoln ‘unless something is done.’”
The enormous death toll from Grant’s Overland Campaign, with Richmond still standing strong, and with Sherman shut out of Atlanta, was depressing the president’s fortunes with the war-weary public. On August 23, Lincoln gathered his cabinet and had them sign the back of a memorandum, sight unseen. “I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place badly beaten,” he wrote.
One week later, in one of the greatest acts of irony in the history of American politics, George McClellan was nominated by the Democratic Party to defeat Lincoln for failing to successfully end the war.
“He would not have been my first choice,” Buchanan said, “but I am satisfied. God grant that he may succeed! Peace would be a great, a very great blessing, but it would be purchased at too high a price at the expense of the Union.”
Nicolay recorded that August 28 was “a sort of political Bull Run.” The chairman of the Republican Executive Committee wrote the president that unless he sent commissioners with peace terms to the rebels, “we might as well quit and give up the contest.” Meeting him in person with the cabinet, Lincoln argued that it would be worse to preemptively surrender the war than to lose the race.
On September 5, Fillmore declined an invitation to attend a McClellan rally in Union Square. He pointed out however that he would “with great pleasure cast my vote for General McClellan,” on whose success “depends the salvation of our country.” The recipients of the letter immediately asked permission to publish. Fillmore repeated again his desire to stay above the fray, “but you seem to think its publication might do good to the . . . cause in which I confess I feel a very deep interest.” This he had also heard from others, and therefore “reluctantly permit it to be published. The fact is, I can see no reasonable prospect of a restoration of this Union—the object nearest my heart—without a change of the avowed policy of this administration itself. Hence I am for a change and I look upon the election of General McClellan as the last hope for the restoration of the Union, and an honorable peace, and the security of personal liberty; and this you may publish to the world as my views on the pending crisis.” Fillmore’s letter and sentiments made major news throughout the country. If anything, it increased rather than abated the clamor for his time and attention. He resisted, retreating to his previous silence, his strong words in favor of McClellan and in opposition of Lincoln leaving no room for doubt. Toward the end of the 1860 election, he had expressed regret at not having taken a more public stand against Lincoln. Come what may, there would be no such recriminations this time.
The Albany Evening Journal remarked that Fillmore “is just the man out of which to make a first class Copperhead.” The Albany Journal recorded that “The Copperhead press are rejoicing” over the endorsement, adding that “Fillmore, who stands about a shade worse than John Tyler, is quoted among the rebels in justification of their course.”
Throughout the war, elections for state and federal offices alternatively constrained and strengthened the administration’s efforts. But these elections were in great part influenced by the success of the war. The two were symbiotic; Union victories at the ballot box helped produce Union victories on the battlefield, which in turn lifted Union candidates. There is no better example of this than September 1, 1864, when General Sherman entered Atlanta. This, Grant believed, “probably had more effect in settling the election of the following November than all the speeches, all the bonfires, and all the parading with banners and bands of music in the north.” Later in the month Hood would counterattack, driving around Sherman into Tennessee, hoping to cut him off from supplies and communications, trapping him and his army in Georgia. Detaching several divisions to deal with Hood, Sherman would drive into the heart of the Confederacy, to Savannah, before turning north with the objective of joining Grant before Richmond.
“Returns of the elections from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana come in today,” wrote Welles on October 12. “They look very well, particularly the two latter.” Chief justice Taney’s death that day led one congressman to speculate, “The elections carried him off.” Taney passed from the scene with his view of America as a stronghold for slavery thoroughly discredited, and the institution he had promoted so vigorously on the verge of destruction. The following day, in lieu of flowers, his home state of Maryland adopted a constitution that abolished slavery.
The former presidents were living in a world they did not recognize. The war policy they had criticized was working. The institution of slavery that they had conciliated was on the verge of destruction. With days to go in the election, Franklin Pierce reached out to Millard Fillmore. “I have been gratified by the attitude you have had from the commencement of the terrible civil war which has brought the Constitution to the dust and” the country “to the brink of utter ruin . . . What have we to do but observe the march of events, thus far beyond the control of human wisdom and wait for returning reason and patriotism?”
November 8 was Election Day. Hay recorded, “The [White] House has been still and almost deserted today. Every body in Washington, not at home voting seems ashamed of it and stays away from the President.” Lincoln told his secretary, “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: always but once: When I came to Congress it was a quiet time: But always besides that the contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with great rancor.”
Around 7:00 p.m., Lincoln went to the War Department to await the verdict. Major Eckert “came in shaking the rain from his cloak, with trousers very disreputably muddy,” having fallen outside. “For such an awkward fellow,” Lincoln said, “I am pretty sure-footed. It used to take a pretty dexterous man to throw me. I remember, the evening of the day in 1858, that decided the contest for the Senate between Mr. Douglas and myself, was something like this, dark, rainy, and gloomy. I had been reading the returns, and had ascertained that we had lost the legislature and started to go home. The path had been worn hog-backed and was slippering. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other one out of the way, but I recovered myself and lit square: and I said to myself, ‘It’s a slip and not a fall.’” Lincoln had the first results sent to his wife, saying “She is more anxious than I.” Abraham Lincoln had been the first president to win re-election since 1832. Conducted in the midst of a Civil War, the contest of 1864 brought over four million voters to the polls. Lincoln prevailed with 55 percent to 44 percent, winning every state but three—Kentucky, Delaware, and McClellan’s home of New Jersey.
At the November 11 cabinet meeting, Lincoln revealed the secret document he had directed them to sign on August 23. “Gentlemen, do you remember last summer I asked you all to sign your names to the back of a paper of which I did not show you the inside? This is it.” He directed Hay to open the letter without tearing it. The letter pledged their cooperation with the new president “as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”
“You will remember,” Lincoln said, “that this was written at a time (6 days before the Chicago nominating convention) when as yet we had no adversary, and seemed to have no friends. I then solemnly resolved on the course of action indicated above. I resolved, in the case of election of General McClellan being certain that he would be the candidate, that I would see him and talk matters over with him.” Lincoln intended to tell him “the election has demonstrated that you are stronger, have more influence with the American people than I. Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the government, try to save the country. You raise as many troops as you possibly can for this final trial, and I will devote all my energies to assisting and finishing the war.”
Seward joked that McClellan would answer “‘yes, yes,’ and then when you saw him again and pressed these views upon him he would say ‘yes-yes’ and so on forever and would have done nothing at all.”
“At least,” Lincoln said, “I should have done my duty and have stood clear before my own conscience.”