Lincoln, the unknown Read online

  Lincoln repeatedly urged him to strike a blow. But he wouldn't do it. He held parades and talked a lot about what he was going to do; but that was all it amounted to—talk.

  He delayed, he procrastinated, he gave all manner of excuses. But go forward he would not.

  Once he said he couldn't advance because the army was resting. Lincoln asked him what it had done to make it tired.

  Another time—after the Battle of Antietam—an amazing thing happened. McClellan had far more men than Lee. Lee had been defeated; and had McClellan pursued him, he might have captured his army and ended the war. Lincoln kept urging him for weeks to follow Lee—urging by letter, by telegram, and by special messenger. Finally McClellan said he couldn't move because his horses were fatigued and had sore tongues!

  It you ever visit New Salem, you will see a depression about a rod down the hillside from Offut's grocery where Lincoln worked as a clerk. The Clary's Grove Boys used to have their cock-fights there, and Lincoln acted as referee. For weeks Bab McNab had been boasting of a young rooster that could whip anything in Sangamon County. But when this fowl was finally put into the pit, he turned tail and refused to fight. Bab, in disgust, grabbed him and tossed him high into the air. The rooster alighted on a pile of firewood near by, then strutted and ruffled up his feathers and crowed defiantly.

  "Yes, damn you!" said McNab. "You're great on dress-parade, but you are not worth a cuss in a fight."

  Lincoln said that McClellan reminded him of Bab McNab's rooster.

  Once, during the Peninsular Campaign, General Magruder with five thousand men held up McClellan with a hundred thousand. McClellan, afraid to attack, threw up breastworks and kept nagging Lincoln for more men, more men, more men.

  "If by magic," said Lincoln, "I could reinforce McClellan with a hundred thousand men, he would go into ecstasy, thank me, and tell me he would go to Richmond to-morrow; but when to-morrow came, he would telegraph that he had certain information that the enemy had four hundred thousand men and that he could not advance without reinforcements."

  "If McClellan had a million men," said Stanton, Secretary of War, "he would swear that the enemy had two million, and then sit down in the mud and yell for three million."

  "The Young Napoleon" had bounded into fame with one

  leap, and it had gone to his head like champagne. His egotism was boundless. He described Lincoln and his Cabinet as "hounds" . . . "wretches" . . . "some of the greatest geese I have ever seen."

  He was positively insulting to Lincoln; and when the President came to see him, McClellan kept him waiting for half an hour in the anteroom.

  Once the general got home at eleven o'clock at night and his servant informed him that Lincoln had been waiting there for hours to see him. McClellan passed the door of the room where the President sat, ignored him, went on upstairs, and sent down word that he had gone to bed.

  The newspapers played up incidents like these, and they became the gossip and scandal of Washington. With tears rolling down her cheeks, Mrs. Lincoln implored the President to remove "that awful wind-bag," as she called him.

  "Mother," he replied, "I know he doesn't do right, but I mustn't consider my feelings at a time like this. I am willing to hold McClellan's hat, if he will only bring us victories."

  The summer drifted into autumn; autumn passed into winter; spring was almost at hand; and still McClellan did nothing but drill men and have dress-parades, and talk.

  The nation was aroused, and Lincoln was being condemned and criticized on all sides for McClellan's inaction.

  "Your delay is ruining us," cried Lincoln, as he issued an official order for an advance.

  McClellan had to move now or resign. So he rushed to Harper's Ferry, ordering his troops to follow immediately. He planned to invade Virginia from that point, after bridging the Potomac with boats which were to be brought through the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. But, at the last moment, the whole project had to be abandoned because the boats were six inches too wide to float through the canal locks.

  When McClellan told Lincoln of this fiasco and said that the pontoons were not ready, the patient, long-suffering President lost his temper at last; and, lapsing into the phraseology of the hay-fields of Pigeon Creek Valley, Indiana, he demanded, "Why, in the hell, ain't they ready?"

  The nation was asking the same question in about the same tone.

  At last, in April, "the Young Napoleon" made a grand speech

  to his soldiers, as the older Napoleon used to do, and then started off with one hundred and twenty thousand men singing "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

  The war had been going on for a year. McClellan boasted that he was going to clean up the whole thing now, at once, and let the boys get home in time to plant a little late corn and millet.

  Incredible as it seems, Lincoln and Stanton were so optimistic that they wired the governors of the various States to accept no more volunteers, to close the recruiting-places, and to sell the public property belonging to these organizations.

  One of the military maxims of Frederick the Great was: "Know the man you are fighting." Lee and Stonewall Jackson appreciated full well the kind of a weak-kneed Napoleon they had to deal with—a timid, cautious, whining Napoleon who was never on the battle-field, because he couldn't endure the sight of blood.

  So Lee let him spend three months crawling up to Richmond. McClellan got so close that his men could hear the clocks in the church towers striking the hour.

  Then the inspired Lee crashed upon him in a series of terrific onslaughts, and, in seven days, forced him back to the shelter of his gunboats and killed fifteen thousand of his men.

  Thus the "en grande affair," as McClellan called it, ended in one of the bloodiest failures of the war.

  But, as usual, McClellan blamed it all on "those traitors in Washington." The old story: they hadn't sent him enough men. Their "cowardice and folly" made his "blood boil." He hated Lincoln and the Cabinet, now, more than he despised the Confederates. He denounced their actions as "the most infamous thing history has ever recorded."

  McClellan had more troops than his enemies—usually far more. He was never able to use at one time all that he then possessed. But he kept on demanding more. More. He asked for an additional ten thousand, then for fifty thousand, finally for a hundred thousand. They were not to be had. He knew it, and Lincoln knew that he knew it. Lincoln told him his demands were "simply absurd."

  McClellan's telegrams to Stanton and the President were fiery and insulting. They sounded like the ravings of a madman. They accused Lincoln and Stanton of doing their best to destroy his

  army. They made charges so grave that the telegraph operator refused to deliver them.

  The nation was appalled, Wall Street was seized with panic, the country was submerged in gloom.

  Lincoln grew thin and haggard. "I am as nearly inconsolable," he said, "as one can be and live."

  McClellan's father-in-law and chief of staff, P. B. Marcy, said there was nothing to do now but capitulate.

  When Lincoln heard this, he flushed with anger, sent for Marcy, and said:

  "General, I understand you have used the word 'capitulate.' That is a word not to be used in connection with our army."

  Lincoln had learned, back in New Salem, that it was easy to rent a building and stock it with groceries; but to make it pay required qualities which neither he nor his drunken partner possessed.

  He was destined to discover, through years of heartbreak and bloodshed, that it was easy to get a half million soldiers who were willing to die, and a hundred million dollars to equip them with rifles and bullets and blankets; but to win victories required a kind of leadership which it was almost impossible to find.

  "How much in military matters," exclaimed Lincoln, "depends on one master mind!"

  So, time and again, he went down on his knees, asking the Almighty to send him a Robert E. Lee or a Joseph E. Johnston or a Stonewall Jackson.

  "Jackson," he said, "is a brave, honest
, Presbyterian soldier. If we only had such a man to lead the armies of the North, the country would not be appalled with so many disasters."

  But where in all the Union forces was another Stonewall Jackson to be found? Nobody knew. Edmund Clarence Sted-man published a famous poem every verse of which ended with the plea, "Abraham Lincoln, give us a Man."

  It was more than the refrain of a poem. It was the cry of a bleeding and distraught nation.

  The President wept as he read it.

  For two years he tried to find the leader for whom the

  140

  nation was crying. He would give the army to one general who would lead it to futile slaughter, and set ten or thirty or forty thousand widows and orphans weeping and wailing throughout the land. Then this discredited commander would be relieved; and another, equally inept, would try his hand and get ten thousand more slaughtered; and Lincoln, clad in dressing-gown and carpet-slippers, would pace the floor all night as the reports came in, crying over and over:

  "My God! What will the country say? My God! What will the country say?"

  Then another general would assume command, and the futile slaughter would go on.

  Some military critics now hold that McClellan, with all his astounding faults and amazing incapacity, was probably the best commander the Army of the Potomac ever had. So imagine, if you can, what the others must have been!

  After McClellan's failure, Lincoln tried John Pope. Pope had done splendid work out in Missouri, had captured an island in the Mississippi and several thousand men.

  He was like McClellan in two ways: he was handsome, and he was boastful. He declared that his headquarters was "in the saddle"; and he issued so many bombastic announcements that he was soon called "Proclamation Pope."

  "I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies." With that blunt, tactless sentence, he opened his first address to the army. He then proceeded to rebuke the troops for their inaction in the East, and insinuated that they were infernal cowards; and ended by boasting of the military miracles he would perform.

  This proclamation made the new commander about as popular as a diamond-backed rattlesnake in dog-days: officers and men alike detested him.

  McClellan's hatred for him was intense. Pope had come to take his place. Nobody realized that better than did McClellan —he was already writing for a position in New York—and he was consumed with jealousy, was bitter with envy and resentment.

  Pope led the army into Virginia; a great battle was imminent; he needed every man he could get; so Lincoln showered McClellan with telegrams, ordering him to rush his men to Pope's aid with all possible celerity.

  But did McClellan obey? He did not. He argued, he delayed,

  he protested, he telegraphed excuses, he recalled corps that he had sent ahead, and he "exhausted all the resources of a diabolical ingenuity in order to keep Pope from receiving reinforcements." "Let Mr. Pope," said he, contemptuously, "get out of his own scrape."

  Even after he heard the roar of the Confederate artillery, he still managed to keep thirty thousand of his troops from going to the aid of his obnoxious rival.

  So Lee overwhelmed Pope's army on the old battle-field of Bull Run. The slaughter was terrible. The Federal soldiers again fled in a panic.

  It was the story of the first Bull Run over again: once more a bloody and beaten mob poured into Washington.

  Lee pursued them with his victorious troops. And even Lincoln believed the capital was lost. Gunboats were ordered up the river, and all the clerks in Washington—civilian and government alike—were called to arms to defend the city.

  Stanton, Secretary of War, in a wild panic, telegraphed the governors of half a dozen States, imploring them to send all their militia and volunteer forces by special trains.

  Saloons were closed, church bells tolled; men fell on their knees, beseeching Almighty God to save the city.

  The old people and the women and children fled in terror. The streets resounded with the hoofs of hurrying horses, with the rattle of carriages dashing away to Maryland.

  Stanton, preparing to transfer the Government to New York, ordered the arsenal stripped and all its supplies shipped North.

  Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, ordered the nation's silver and gold transferred in feverish haste to the sub-Treasury in Wall Street.

  Lincoln, weary and discouraged, exclaimed with a mingled groan and sigh:

  "What shall I do? . . . What shall I do? . . . The bottom is out of the tub, the bottom is out of the tub."

  People believed that McClellan, in order to get revenge, had longed to see "Mr. Pope" defeated and his army crushed.

  Even Lincoln had already called him to the White House and told him that people were accusing him of being a traitor, of wanting to see Washington captured and the South triumphant.

  Stanton stormed about in a rage, his face fiery with indignation and hatred. Those who saw him said that if McClellan had

  walked into the war-office then, Stanton would have rushed at him and knocked him down.

  Chase was even more bitter. He didn't want to hit McClellan. He said the man ought to be shot.

  And the pious Chase wasn't speaking figuratively. Neither was he exaggerating. He literally wanted McClellan blindfolded, backed up against a stone wall, and a dozen bullets sent crashing through his heart.

  But Lincoln, with his understanding nature and Christ-like spirit, condemned no one. True, Pope had failed, but hadn't he done his best? Lincoln, himself, had met defeat too often to blame any one else for failure.

  So he sent Pope out to the Northwest to subdue an uprising of Sioux Indians, and gave the army back to McClellan. Why? Because, Lincoln said: "There is no man in the army who can lick these troops of ours into shape half as well as he. . . . If he can't fight, himself, he excels in making others ready to fight." The President knew that he would be condemned for restoring "little Mac" to command. And he was—bitterly. Even by his Cabinet. Stanton and Chase actually declared that they would rather have Washington captured by Lee than to see the traitorous and contemptible McClellan given command of the army again.

  Lincoln was so hurt at their violent opposition that he said he would resign if the Cabinet wished it.

  A few months later, after the Battle of Antietam, McClellan absolutely refused to obey Lincoln's orders to follow Lee and attack him, so the army was taken away from him again; and his military career was ended forever.

  The Army of the Potomac must have another leader. But who was he? Where was he? No one knew.

  In desperation, Lincoln offered the command to Burnside. He wasn't fit for it, and he knew it. He refused it twice; and, when it was forced upon him, he wept. Then he took the army and made a rash attack on Lee's fortifications at Fredericksburg, and lost thirteen thousand men. Men uselessly butchered, for there wasn't the faintest hope of success.

  Officers as well as privates began to desert in large numbers.

  So Burnside, in turn, was relieved, and the army given to another braggart, "Fighting Joe" Hooker.

  "May God have mercy on Lee," he vaunted, "for I shall not."

  He led what he called "the finest army on the planet" against Lee. He had twice as many men as the Confederates, but Lee hurled him back across the river at Chancellorsville and destroyed seventeen thousand of his troops.

  It was one of the most disastrous defeats of the war.

  It occurred in May, 1863; and the President's secretary records that he heard the tramp of Lincoln's feet during all the terrible hours of sleepless nights as he paced up and down his room, crying, "Lost! Lost! All is lost!" Finally, however, he went down to Fredericksburg to cheer up "Fighting Joe" and encourage the army.

  Lincoln was denounced bitterly for all this futile slaughter; and gloom and discouragement settled over the nation.

  And quickly on top of these military sorrows, came a domestic tragedy. Lincoln was inordinately fond of his two little sons, Tad and Willie. He often s
tole away, on a summer evening, to play "town ball" with them, his coat-tails flying out behind him as he ran from base to base. Sometimes, he would shoot marbles with them all the way from the White House to the war-office. At night he loved to get down on the floor and roll and romp with them. On bright, warm days he would sometimes go out back of the White House and play with the boys and their two goats.

  Tad and Willie kept the White House in an uproar, organizing minstrel shows, putting the servants through military drill, running in and out among the office-seekers. If they took a fancy to a certain applicant, they would see that he got in to see "Old Abe" immediately. If they couldn't get him in the front way, they knew of back entrances.

  With as little respect for ceremony and precedent as their father had, they dashed in and interrupted a Cabinet meeting once to inform the President that the cat in the basement had just had kittens.

  On another occasion the stern Salmon P. Chase was irritated and disgusted because Tad climbed all over his father and finally perched on his shoulder and sat astride of his neck while Chase was discussing the grave financial situation that confronted the country.

  Some one gave Willie a pony. He insisted on riding it in all kinds of winter weather; so he got wet and chilled and came down with a severe cold. Soon it had become a serious fever. Night after night Lincoln sat for hours by his bedside; and

  when the little fellow passed away, his father, choking with sobs, cried:

  "My poor boy! My poor boy! He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. It is hard, hard to have him die."

  Mrs. Keckley, who was in the room at the time, says:

  He buried his head in his hands, and his tall frame was convulsed with emotion. . . . The pale face of her dead boy threw Mrs. Lincoln into convulsions. She was so completely overwhelmed with sorrow she did not attend the funeral.

  After Willie's death Mrs. Lincoln could not bear to look upon his picture. Mrs. Keckley tells us:

  She could not bear the sight of anything he loved, not even a flower. Costly bouquets were presented to her, but she turned from them with a shudder, and either placed them in a room where she could not see them, or threw them out of the window. She gave away all of Willie's toys . . . and, after his death, she never again crossed the threshold of the Guests' Room in which he died or the Green Room in which he was embalmed.