Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Moreover, Lincoln recognized that Welles had accomplished a Herculean task—he had built a navy almost from scratch, utterly revamping a department initially paralyzed by subversion and strife. Even the normally critical
Times
of London was forced to concede the extraordinary growth of the American navy under the leadership of Gideon Welles. When Welles took office, there were only 76 vessels flying the American flag; four years later, there were 671. The number of seamen had increased from 7,600 to 51,000. In the span of only four years, the American navy had become “a first class power.”
A shrewd judge of character, Welles had assembled an excellent team, including his dynamic assistant secretary, Gustavus Vasa Fox, and the industrious commandant of the Navy Yard, John Dahlgren. Welles had opposed the blockade but, once overruled, had enforced it with determination and skill. He had fought Lincoln on the admission of West Virginia as a state and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, but he had never publicly vented his objections.
With Seward, Stanton, and Welles secure in their cabinet places, the resignation of Edward Bates provided the only opening for change in the immediate aftermath of the election. The seventy-one-year-old Bates had contemplated resigning the previous spring, after suffering through a winter of chronic illness. In May, his son Barton had pleaded with him to return to St. Louis. “The situation of affairs is such that you are not required to sacrifice your health and comfort for any good which you may possibly do,” urged Barton. “As to pecuniary matters, I know well that you have but little to fall back on…for the present at least make your home at my house & Julian’s, going from one to the other as suits your convenience…. You’ve done your share of work anyhow, & it is time the youngsters were working for you. If you had nothing at all, Julian and I could continue to take good care of you and Ma and the girls; & you know that we would do it as cheerfully as you ever worked for us, and we would greatly prefer to do it rather than you should be wearing yourself out as now with labor and cares unsuited to your age.”
The prospect of going home to children and grandchildren was attractive, especially to Julia Bates, whose wishes remained paramount with her husband after forty-one years of marriage. On their anniversary in late May, Bates happily noted that “our mutual affection is as warm, and our mutual confidence far stronger, than in the first week of marriage. This is god’s blessing.”
However, during the dark period that preceded the fall of Atlanta, when Bates believed “the fate of the nation hung, in doubt & gloom,” he did not feel he could leave his post. Nor did he wish to depart until Lincoln’s reelection was assured. “Now, on the contrary,” he wrote to Lincoln on November 24, 1864, “the affairs of the Government display a brighter aspect; and to you, as head & leader of the Government all the honor & good fortune that we hoped for, has come. And it seems to me, under these altered circumstances, that the time has come, when I may, without dereliction of duty, ask leave to retire to private life.”
Bates went on to express his profound gratitude to Lincoln “not only for your good opinion which led to my appointment, but also for your uniform & unvarying courtesy & kindness during the whole time in which we have been associated in the public service. The memory of that kindness & personal favor, I shall bear with me into private life, and hope to retain in my heart, as long as I live.”
Bates had served his president and his country faithfully. In his first months as Attorney General, though he had been uncomfortable confronting Justice Taney on the issue of arbitrary arrests, he had composed an elaborate opinion justifying Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. When McClellan had refused to divulge his plans in early 1862, Bates had urged Lincoln to assume control of his commanders, advising him that the authority of the presidency stood above that of his generals, even on military matters. When the president read his first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet in July 1862, Bates had been one of the first to speak favorably. Though Bates never fully escaped from the racial prejudices formed in his early years—he continued to believe until the end of his life that emancipation should be accompanied by colonization—his ideas had evolved to the point where he supported some very progressive measures. When asked in 1864 to deliver a legal opinion on the controversial question of the unequal pay scale for black soldiers, he declared “unhesitatingly” that “persons of color” who were performing in the field the same duties as their white counterparts should receive “the same pay, bounty, and clothing.”
Abolitionists applauded this opinion along with an earlier one declaring blacks to be citizens of the United States. The citizenship issue had arisen when a commercial schooner plying the coastal trade was detained because its captain was a black man. The
Dred Scott
decision had declared that blacks were not citizens, and naval law required one to be a citizen to command a ship flying the American flag. When the question was put to him, Bates carefully researched definitions of citizenship dating back to Greek and Roman times. After much consideration, he concluded that place of birth, not color of skin, determined citizenship. The
Dred Scott
decision was wrong; free blacks were citizens of the United States.
Bates’s decision did not cover the status of slaves, nor did it suggest that citizenship implied the right of suffrage or the right to sit on juries. Nonetheless, as a local Washington paper noted at the time of his resignation: “Though esteemed by many as more conservative than the majority of his countrymen at the present day, Mr. Bates has given opinions involving the rights of the colored race which have been quite abreast with the times, and which will henceforth stand as landmarks of constitutional interpretation.”
From their first acquaintance, the relationship between Bates and Lincoln had been marked by warmth and cordiality. On occasion, Bates’s diary reveals frustration with Lincoln’s loose management style, which left the administration with “no system—no unity—no accountability—no subordination.” He believed Lincoln relied too heavily on Seward and Stanton. He could not fathom why the disloyal Chase had been kept in place for so long or why General Butler was not fired when complaints arose about his arbitrary arrests in Norfolk. In fact, Bates confided in his diary, his “chief fear” was “the President’s easy good nature.”
Nonetheless, by the end of his tenure as Attorney General, Bates had formed a more spacious understanding of the president’s unique leadership style. While troubled at the start by Lincoln’s “never-failing fund of anecdote,” he had come to realize that storytelling played a central role in the president’s ability to communicate with the public. “The character of the President’s mind is such,” Bates remarked, “that his thought habitually takes on this form of illustration, by which the point he wishes to enforce is invariably brought home with a strength and clearness impossible in hours of abstract argument.
“Mr. Lincoln,” Bates told Francis Carpenter, “comes very near being a perfect man, according to my ideal of manhood. He lacks but one thing…the element of
will.
I have sometimes told him, for instance, that he was unfit to be intrusted with the pardoning power. Why, if a man comes to him with a touching story, his judgment is almost certain to be affected by it. Should the applicant be a
woman,
a wife, a mother, or a sister,—in nine cases out of ten, her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail.”
As Bates prepared to leave Washington, each of his colleagues stopped to say goodbye, in contrast to the lonely leave-taking endured by Salmon Chase. Stanton was “especially civil,” Bates noted. “Told me to write to my sons, in the army and assure them that he would [do] any thing for them that they would expect me to do.” Bates joined Seward, Welles, and Usher in the president’s office for a “pleasant” farewell. The departing Attorney General was once again touched by the president’s “affable and kind” manner.
Bates left his colleagues and staff “with regret,” but with the knowledge that his life was forever connected with the history of his country. Because Lincoln had chosen him as his Attorney General, Edward Bates had been able to “leave a trail which might make known/That I once lived—when I am gone.”
To replace Bates, Lincoln felt he had to find a man from one of the border states. “My Cabinet has
shrunk up
North, and I must find a Southern man,” he explained to a colleague. “I suppose if the twelve Apostles were to be chosen nowadays the shrieks of locality would have to be heeded.” His first choice was Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt. The native Kentuckian had been one of the trio of cabinet members, together with Edwin Stanton and Jeremiah Black, who had stiffened Buchanan’s will to resist secession. Lincoln liked and respected Judge Holt, having worked closely with him on court-martial cases. Holt declined the offer, however, recommending instead his fellow Kentuckian James Speed, the older brother of Lincoln’s great friend Joshua. “I can recall no public man in the State of
uncompromising loyalty,”
Holt told Lincoln, “who unites in the same degree, the qualifications of professional attainments, fervent devotion to the union, & to the principles of your administration, & spotless points of personal character.”
Lincoln followed Holt’s recommendation that very day, sending a telegram to Speed. “I appoint you to be Attorney General. Please come on at once.” Though taken by surprise, Speed was honored to accept: “Will leave tomorrow for Washington.”
James Speed would prove to be an excellent choice. Over the years, he had arrived at a radical position on slavery. The previous spring, he and his brother, Joshua, had been instrumental in forming a new liberal party in conservative Kentucky, the Unconditional Union Party, which supported Lincoln’s reelection and emancipation. “I am a thorough Constitutional Abolitionist,” James Speed had declared during the fall campaign, meaning he, like Lincoln, was “for abolishing Slavery under the War Power of the National Constitution, and then clinching it by a Constitutional amendment prohibiting it everywhere forever.” Though unable to swing the state for Lincoln, the Unconditionalists remained hopeful that they might eventually direct Kentucky’s future. “We are less now but true,” James Speed had written Lincoln after the election.
To those unfamiliar with the Louisville lawyer, Lincoln explained that Speed was “a man I know well, though not so well as I know his brother Joshua. That, however, is not strange, for I slept with Joshua for four years, and I suppose I ought to know him well.” Lincoln’s ease in referring to his sleeping arrangement with Joshua Speed is further evidence that theirs was not a sexual relationship. Had it been, historian David Donald suggests, the president would not have spoken of it “so freely and publicly.”
“You will find,” Lincoln predicted as James Speed set out for Washington, “he is one of those well-poised men, not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office.”
T
HE EASE WITH WHICH
L
INCOLN
filled the post of Attorney General was not replicated when Roger Taney’s death in mid-October left vacant the seat of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Though Lincoln had initially planned to offer Salmon Chase the position, he discovered that three of his most loyal cabinet members—Edwin Stanton, Edward Bates, and Montgomery Blair—desired the honored post for themselves. He decided to postpone his choice until after the election.
Stanton’s claim seemed the most compelling. The Chief Justiceship was the only position, observed a longtime friend, “Stanton ever desired.” His brilliant legal career had brought him to argue numerous cases before the Supreme Court. Lifetime tenure would secure his family’s finances, which had diminished seriously during the war. His unstable health might be restored with the pressures of the war office removed. “You have been wearing out your life in the service of your country & have fulfilled the duties of your very responsible & laborious office with unexampled ability,” wrote his friend the Supreme Court justice Robert Grier. Though Grier himself was an obvious choice to fill Taney’s position, he believed Stanton deserved the honor. “It would give me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction,” he wrote Stanton, “to have you preside on our bench…. I think the Presowes it to you.”
Ellen Stanton, doubtless acting at her husband’s behest, invited Orville Browning to their house one Sunday night when Stanton was at City Point. “She expressed to me a great desire to have her husband appointed Chief Justice,” Browning recorded in his diary, “and wished me to see the President upon the subject. I fear Mr Chase’s appointment, and am anxious to prevent it. Mr Stanton is an able lawyer, learned in his profession, and fond of it, of great application, and capacity of endurance in labor—I think a just man—honest and upright, and incapable of corruption, and I, therefore, think would be an appointment most fit to be made. I will see the President upon the subject tomorrow.”
Methodist bishop Matthew Simpson also called on Lincoln to urge Stanton’s appointment “on the grounds of his fitness, and as a reward for his services and labors.” Lincoln “listened attentively” and then, “throwing his leg over a chair, and running his hands through his hair,” responded with heartfelt emotion: “Bishop, I believe every word you have said. But where can I get a man to take Secretary Stanton’s place? Tell me that, and I will do it.”
Like Lincoln, General Grant worried about losing Stanton’s indispensable talents in the War Department. At City Point, he urged the secretary to stay at his post. The strain of the situation likely contributed to Stanton’s ongoing illness that fall. In the end, Stanton informed Lincoln through a friend that he should no longer be considered “among candidates.” He “felt that the completion of the work he had in hand,” his sister Pamphila recalled, “was nearer to his heart, and a far higher ambition.”