Lincoln: A Photobiography (10 page)

Many recruits on both sides of the Civil War were scarcely more than boys This is a portrait of Edwin Jennison, a Georgia private, killed in action at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

Union forces are routed at the Battle of Bull Run—the first major engagement of the war.

Until now, Lincoln had turned for strategic advice to his general in chief, seventy-five-year-old Winfield Scott. Scott had proposed his famous "anaconda plan" to surround the South and squeeze it into submission—a blockade of the Southern coast and occupation of the Mississippi River. Lincoln felt that the plan didn't go far enough. He wanted his commanders to take the offensive wherever they could. After Bull Run, he resolved to tighten the naval blockade, call up more troops for longer enlistments, and launch three offensives at once—into Virginia, into Tennessee, and down the Mississippi.

He gave command of the Eastern armies to General George B. McClellan, a thirty-five-year-old veteran of the Mexican War. McClellan was vain, pompous, and opinionated, but Lincoln had faith in him. The president brushed off criticism of the general's rude behavior by saying, "Never mind. I will hold McClellan's stirrups if he will bring us victory."

McClellan trained his growing army with meticulous care, but as the months passed, he showed no signs of moving against the rebel forces massed in Virginia. "Don't let them hurry me, is all I ask," he said. When the first snows fell at the end of 1861, McClellan's troops were not yet ready for battle. On the western front, it was the same story. Union commanders built up their forces and drilled their men, but they weren't ready to fight.

Congress and the public were losing patience. Why weren't the generals fighting? Was Lincoln too inexperienced to handle his job? A Congressional committee began to investigate the conduct of the war. Generals were called in from the field to testify on Capitol Hill.

Lincoln, too, was tired of the delays. But he wasn't a military man himself, and he was reluctant to overrule his commanders. And he had other troubles besides—corruption in the War Department, angry disputes within his cabinet, and mounting criticism from Congress. Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio called the Lincoln administration "blundering, cowardly, and inefficient."

By now, the president had serious misgivings about the professional soldiers who were running the war. He had collected a library of books on military strategy, and he studied them late into the night, just as he had once studied law and surveying. Attorney General Edward Bates had told Lincoln that it was his presidential
duty to "command the commanders.... The nation requires it, and history will hold you responsible." Lincoln began to play an active role in the day-to-day conduct of the war, planning strategy and sometimes directing tactical maneuvers in the field.

The Overdue Bill. A cartoon from the British magazine
Punch
pokes fun at Lincoln's vow to end the rebellion quickly.

He found relief from the pressures of the war during his private hours in the White House. Robert Lincoln was now studying at Harvard University, but eleven-year-old Willie and eight-year-old Tad lived with their parents in the executive mansion. They romped through the house, bursting into solemn conferences, playing tricks on cabinet members, making friends with the staff, and collecting a menagerie of pets, including a pony that they rode around the White House grounds, and a goat that slept on Tad's bed.

Robert Todd Lincoln, the Lincolns' eldest son, as a student at Harvard University in 1861.

Lincoln took the boys with him to visit troops camped along the Potomac. And he joined in their games, wrestling with his sons on the expensive Oriental carpets Mary had bought when she redecorated the White House. During the darkest moments of the war, Lincoln was able to throw off his fits of despair in the company of his two boys.

In February, 1862, both boys came down with fevers. Tad recovered, but Willie took a turn for the worse, tossing and turning through the night as his parents sat by his bedside, bathing his face and trying to comfort him. Willie died on February 20—the second son to be taken from the Lincolns. Mary was so overwhelmed with grief, she could not attend the funeral. For three months she refused to leave the White House. She would never fully recover from her emotional breakdown.

Lincoln plunged into the deepest gloom he had ever known. He had felt a special bond of understanding with Willie, and now he grieved as never before. Again and again, he shut himself in his room to weep alone.

As Willie lay dying, the pace of the war was quickening. Union armies had launched a broad offensive in the West, winning the first Northern victories of the war. By the spring of 1862, the North had captured New Orleans and was gaining control of the crucial Mississippi River. While the news was encouraging, the cost in human lives horrified everyone. During a single two-day battle at Shiloh Church in southern Tennessee, thirteen thousand Union soldiers had been killed or wounded.

On the Eastern front, General McClellan had finally led his huge army into Virginia. Instead of marching overland to Richmond, as Lincoln had urged, McClellan shipped his troops to the tip of the York Peninsula, landing seventy-five miles southeast of
Richmond. Then he moved up the peninsula to attack the Confederate capital from the rear. Unfortunately, he advanced so slowly and cautiously, the rebels had plenty of time to muster their defenses.

Thomas ("Tad") Lincoln, the youngest son, in his colonel's uniform. Tad and Willie were the first presidential children to live in the White House.

William Wallace ("Willie") Lincoln. His death in the White House in 1862 plunged the Lincolns into profound sorrow. "He was too good for this earth," the president was heard to say. "It is hard, hard to have him die.
"

In June, as McClellan paused outside Richmond, waiting to attack, rebel troops commanded by Robert E. Lee launched a surprise counter-offensive. During seven days of bitter fighting, McClellan was driven all the way back to the James River. His long-awaited campaign to take Richmond had been a bloody failure. More than twenty-three thousand of his troops were either dead, wounded, or missing.

Meanwhile, the rebels had been battering Union armies in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. As the casualty lists piled up on his desk, Lincoln wondered if the war would ever end. In the all-important Eastern theatre, the North had yet to win a victory.

For months, Lincoln had been shuffling his generals around, trying to find field commanders he could count on and a reliable general in chief to direct the war effort. The elderly and ailing Winfield Scott had been persuaded to retire. McClellan had stepped in as supreme commander, but he had little talent for strategic planning. When he sailed with his army for Virginia, Lincoln decided to act as his own general in chief. Then he called on General Henry W. Halleck to fill the top military command post. But Halleck was another disappointment. He offered good advice, but he shrank from making decisions. Once again, Lincoln had to make them.

The toughest decision facing Lincoln, however, was the one he had to make about slavery. Early in the war, he was still willing to leave slavery alone in the South, if only he could restore the Union. Once the rebellion was crushed, slavery would be confined to the Southern states, where it would gradually die out. "We
didn't go into the war to put down slavery, but to put the flag back," Lincoln said. "To act differently at this moment would, I have no doubt, not only weaken our cause, but smack of bad faith."

Left:
Winfield ("Old Fuss and Feathers") Scott, Lincoln's first general in chief. Suffering from vertigo and other ailments, he retired in October 1861.