The Inner War of Abraham Lincoln

Even before Abraham Lincoln set foot in the White House, he surrounded himself with the brightest of the Republican Party, as well as up-and coming lawyers and businessmen to round out his cabinet and staff.

Young men like part-time journalist William Stoddard and his colleagues John Hay and John Nicolay, tirelessly spread Lincoln's message to the world while memorializing historic events. Fellow candidates during the Campaign of 1860 and political tycoons William Seward, Simon Cameron and Salmon Chase added dimension to his cabinet, along with Gideon Welles and Edward Stanton. Mary, the President's wife of nearly twenty years, offered opinions on a wide variety of Lincoln's successes and struggles as did press from papers like the Chicago Times, the New York Tribune, the Springfield (MA) Republican and others.

This series of articles begins with the first year of the war, lets President Lincoln's associates-staff, cabinet, family and supporters-tell the story of how Lincoln made war, year by year.

Fort Sumter

As the morning of April 12 dawned, cannon fire bellowed over the ramparts of a sparsely equipped and manned Federal fort in Charleston harbor. Major Robert Anderson, former West Point instructor of mathematics, sat grimly inside the fort as Pierre Beauregard, Anderson's former and brightest pupil, gave the order to fire.

Lincoln had no intention of causing a war, but he had decided there would be nothing he could do if the newly-formed Confederacy made the first move. All the President hoped to do was send a harmless ship of supplies to the starving soldiers waiting inside. Beginning at 4:30 in the morning and lasting for 33 hours, the Rebels pounded Fort Sumter to rubble, until they saw the white flag of surrender fluttering in the breeze. "Fort Sumter is lost, but Freedom is saved," reported the New York Tribune. "Live the Republic!"

President Lincoln had offered the south the following words only a month earlier at his inauguration, "You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors."

William Russell of the London Times wrote, "The streets of Charleston present some aspect of those of Paris in the last revolution. Crowds of armed men singing and promenading the streets, the battle blood running through their veins-that hot oxygen which is called 'the flush of victory' on the cheek...Sumter has set them distraught; never such a victory

It is a bloodless Waterloo."

True, there were no fatalities, save an unfortunate horse, but war fever was high, both north and south. By the beginning of May, Lincoln had acted purposefully without Congress yet in session and asked for75,000 soldiers in his initial call to arms.

William Stoddard, one of Lincoln's secretaries, first came into service at the White House in 1860, right after the election. He received letters of recommendation from Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull and New York Congressman Ira Harris. His initial job was as a clerk in the land patent office and then as a mail clerk. Some accounts say he became secretary only after John Hay came down with an undisclosed sickness, most likely Typhoid Fever from Washington's dismal swamps. Either way, Stoddard began writing about the Lincoln administration as well as the state of the Federal capital for different publications and in his own journal.

As Washington readied itself for war, Stoddard remembered, "May 12-All the heights surrounding and commanding the city are being occupied and fortified and Sprague's regiment of Rhode Island men are to occupy the very ground offered to Virginia by General Lee, the traitor, for a far different purpose.

"May 27-The last four days have indeed been of a deeply exciting character. The 'movement' so long prophesied by newspaper correspondents has at last been made...on Thursday night last, the Third Battalion, DC Volunteers, received orders to cross the Potomac at Long Bridge, disperse or capture the Rebel pickets on the Alexandria road, and occupy good positions to keep the way open for the march of the army."

First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)

The army finally had arrived in Washington and Lincoln was ecstatic. He had started to wonder if there was any army at all, as Washington schools closed and citizens were afraid to leave their homes.

The President did all he could to pave the route toward Washington's safety, including suspending the 'writ of habeas corpus.' Lincoln hoped to reach any agitators in the surrounding border states, namely Maryland, before they could assemble their own forces to keep the Union army from reaching Washington.

It was a close shave in Baltimore as 'plug uglies' stopped the 6th Massachusetts on their way through. Six soldiers were killed and scores injured before they were able to break free. John Hay, a contemporary of Lincoln's son Robert wrote, "The streets were full of the talk of Baltimore...the town is full tonight of feverish rumours about a mediated assault on this town."

John Milton Hay was born in Indiana in 1838. He began his college education at Harvard, but then transferred to Brown University, where he graduated Class Poet in 1858. He became secretary to President Lincoln at age 22 and lived in the northeast corner bedroom of the White House with colleague John Nicolay. Eventually, he would serve in the war and rise to the rank of major.

Things went from bad to worse when Elmer Ellsworth arrived in Washington with his New York Zouaves. A friend of the President and his family, Ellsworth made a big splash as his troops marched past the White House. He saluted Willie and Tad, already huge fans of this flamboyant young man.

He had read law in Lincoln's Springfield office in 1860 and Lincoln took an instant shine to him as did his sons. Ellsworth spent so much time with the two boys, he even caught the measles from them.

Almost as soon as the New York Zouaves arrived, the young commander longed for glory. Across the river in Alexandria, a Confederate flag flew over the Marshall House hotel, flaunting Virginia's newly assumed secession status. Ellsworth decided he was duty bound to remove it. He and a few of his men marched to Alexandria, and climbed the steps of the hotel. Tearing the flag down with a flourish, he proudly descended to the first floor when he was met by proprietor James Jackson, who shot the boy at point blank range.

The young man's death rattled the Lincoln family to its core. The President and First Lady had the gruesome task of identifying the body, and prepared it for burial, even having Ellsworth placed in state in the East Room.

"Falling before he reached his twenty-fourth birthday, he leaves a reputation which will last as long as the history of his country and his funeral is attended by the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, a host of dignitaries and the sincere regrets of a whole people follow him to his honored but untimely grave," said Stoddard.

By the middle of July, Lincoln was conferring daily with Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War, now the commander-in-chief of the American army, and also too overweight to sit a horse. Scott appointed West Point graduate Irvin McDowell to lead the 30,000 men the country could put in the field. McDowell was friends with some influential politicians and thank to that, he became the first field general of the American Civil War. McDowell was nervous but Lincoln assured him, "You are green, it is true-but they are green also; you are all green alike."

John Hay sent a letter to the New York World that mentioned "

The attack came on July 21. The Federals nearly routed the Confederates until they rallied behind the strength of Thomas J. Jackson, a Virginia Military Institute instructor. Before the day was out, Union forces were running for cover, through and past a crowd of onlookers from Washington-mainly senators and their wives.

The New York World wrote, "The retreat, the panic, the hideous headlong confusion, was now beyond a hope...I saw officers with leaves and eagles on their shoulder-straps, majors and colonels, who had deserted their commands, pass me galloping as if for dear life."

Secretary of State William Seward, at one time Lincoln's fiercest competition for president, stopped Lincoln to tell him the bad news outside the telegraph office, "'The day is lost..." [General] McDowell confirmed, 'The routed troops will not reform.'"

Lost was right-five hundred Union and four hundred Confederate men lay dead. The war would not be short. Those 30-day recruits were asked to extend their service to 90 days and beyond that, maybe three years. Lincoln could not sleep; he was visibly pale.

The country refused to give in, no matter the reports from the field. William Stoddard was adamant that, "...all that happened was but the natural and legitimate consequence of the peculiar manner and circumstances under which our army has been organized and our officers selected. No fear that the same thing will ever occur again, and we may be sure that many of the regiments who were engaged at Bull Run came out from among the maze of masked batteries no longer raw levies, inexperienced volunteers, but ready to show themselves veterans on all subsequent occasions."

It was a difficult cross to bear. The President was determined to save the face of the damaged Union army. Lead secretary, John Nicolay, wrote to his wife, "The fat is on the fire now and we shall have to crow small until we can retrieve the disgrace somehow."

Little Mac

Between General Scott, who shouldered the blame for the confusion at Bull Run and Abraham Lincoln, it was decided to promote George B. McClellan, West Point graduate and former Illinois Central Railroad employee to whip the green army into shape. Scott retired soon after and retreated from the confines of Washington.

He was thirty-four, short in stature, with dark eyes. People called him "Little Mac" and "Young Napoleon." McClellan eagerly relocated to the capital less than a week after the Battle of Bull Run was decided. He had made a good showing in the western part of Virginia. As he arrived, his reception was grand and he felt "quite overwhelmed by the congratulations I received and the respect with which I was treated." Mac gave Lincoln a sound plan to end the war. He planned to move fast and hard, severing the south. One battle, he was sure, ought to do it.

The President began borrowing and reading all the military strategy books he could find. Vom Kriege (On War) by Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz was on his desk often as was Henry Halleck's Elements of Military Art and Science.

John Hay wrote, "The President himself is a man of great aptitude for military studies. [He] gave himself, night and day, to the study of the military situation...He poured over the reports from the various departments and districts of the field of war. He held long conferences with eminent generals and admirals."

This was more than McClellan could take. It was difficult enough, he thought, trying to organize a large army, but to have an armchair general looking over his shoulder, was too stressful. McClellan took to hiding out. But Lincoln followed him, both on the battlefield and in his house on Jackson Square.

"The Presdt is an idiot," The general relayed to his wife. "The Presdt is nothing more than a well meaning baboon."

One day, Lincoln visited his top general at home. McClellan headed straight upstairs to his room. The President gave him the benefit of the doubt but and remained in the parlor to wait. But McClellan never came downstairs again, leaving Lincoln looking foolish.

Little Mac's men loved him, however, and by early fall, the country had an organized and respectable army. In October 1861, the Union Army of the Potomac met the Confederates across from each other along the Potomac-on a ridge called Ball's Bluff. Among the 1,070 Federal casualties was the President's friend Edward Baker. The Lincolns had named their deceased second child after the senator.

Willie Lincoln, eleven, wrote a poem about Baker and it was printed in the National Republican:

There was no patriot like BakerSo noble and so trueHe fell as a soldier on the fieldHis face to the sky of blue

William Stoddard remembered, "The events of the past week have given us a foretaste of combats yet to come. We have learned one or two good lessons from the battle of Leesburg...no deaths on the field, however glorious, can atone a soldier's fame for such an error as that of the gallant and noble-hearted Baker. A ripe orator, a soldier without fear, a man without reproach-another of our best and bravest has been laid upon the altar of the country."

By the end of 1861, Lincoln's cabinet, especially the Secretary of the War Department, felt keenly the disappointment of the people. Simon Cameron had not been able to put proper processes into place before the sudden start of the war.

Materiel such as rotten blankets, old muskets and threadbare uniforms somehow found their way into every regiment. Reports got back to Congress, who ordered a thorough investigation. Lincoln knew the pressure Cameron was under-he had lost a brother at Bull Run-but he knew the damage went deep. The only sure way to undo what had already been done was to find another place for the head of the War Department.

As decisions were being made, Cameron issued one directive after another, including the employment of runaway slaves in the army and arming fugitive slaves. That, the Secretary of War felt, was "clearly a right of Government to arm slaves, when it may become necessary as it is to use gunpowder taken from the enemy."

As 1861 came to a close, Lincoln made the decision to offer Cameron the position of Minister to Russia. Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase remembered his colleague, "was quite offended, supposing the letter intended as a dismissal, and therefore discourteous."

The Chicago Tribune watched Lincoln closely as the second year of the war rounded into view. Simon Cameron was still running the War Department and as far as they could see "Secretary Cameron gives day and night to the service of his country."

But it was not enough. Due to his respect for Lincoln, Cameron was in Russia by January 1862. The President felt bereft of his prospects, "What shall I do...the bottom is out of the tub."

The war was moving west and the President met with the Committee on the Conduct of the War. It had gone on long enough-many thought-policies and procedures needed to be created and administered. "For some months past (and lately more pressingly)," said Attorney General Edward Bates, "I have urged the President to have some military organization...I insisted that being Commander-in-chief, by law, he must command-especially in a war as this. The Nation requires it, and History will hold him responsible."

Already, the country wanted more decisive action, either from Lincoln or McClellan. Lincoln wasn't willing to give the Young Napoleon up-and therefore did nothing-seeming to be as frozen as the waters of southern Virginia. William Stoddard summed up the quandary well when he said, "The 'Great General' must do something soon, or people will begin to say-'how? And if so, why?'"

Sources:

Burlingame, Michael, Ed. Dispatches from Lincoln's White House: The Anonymous Civil War Journalism of Presidential Secretary William O. Stoddard. 2002, University of Nebraska Press.

Klingaman, William. Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation. 2001, Penguin Books, New York.

Maihafer, Harry. War of Words: Abraham Lincoln & the Civil War Press. 2001, Brassey's, Washington, DC.

White, Ronald. A. Lincoln: A Biography. 2009, Random House, New York.