Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Seward feared that England would back the South simply to feed its own factories. While the “younger branch of the British stock” might support freedom, he told his wife, the aristocrats, concerned more with economics than morality, would become “the ally of the traitors.” To prevent this from happening, he was “trying to get a bold remonstrance through the Cabinet, before it is too late.” He hoped not only to halt further thoughts of recognition of the Confederacy but to ensure that the British would respect the Union blockade and refuse, even informally, to meet with the three Southern commissioners who had been sent to London to negotiate for the Confederacy. To achieve these goals, Seward was willing to wage war. “God damn ’em, I’ll give ’em hell,” he told Sumner, thrusting his foot in the air as he spoke.
On May 21, Seward brought Lincoln a surly letter drafted for Charles Francis Adams to read verbatim to Lord John Russell, Britain’s foreign secretary. Lincoln recognized immediately that the tone was too abrasive for a diplomatic communication. While decisive action might be necessary to prevent Britain from any form of overt sympathy with the South, Lincoln had no intention of fighting two wars at once. All his life, he had taken care not to send letters written in anger. Now, to mitigate the harshness of the draft, he altered the tone of the letter at numerous points. Where Seward had claimed that the president was “surprised and grieved” that no protest had been made against unofficial meetings with the Southern commissioners, Lincoln wrote simply that the “President regrets.” Where Seward threatened that “no one of these proceedings [informal or formal recognition, or breaking the blockade] will be borne,” Lincoln shifted the phrase to “will
pass unnoticed.
”
Most important, where Seward had indicated that the letter be read directly to the British foreign secretary, Lincoln insisted that it serve merely for Adams’s guidance and should not
“be read, or shown to any one.”
Still, the central message remained clear: a warning to Britain that if the vexing issues were not resolved, and Britain decided “to fraternize with our domestic enemy,” then a war between the United States and Britain “may ensue,” caused by “the action of Great Britain, not our own.” In that event, Britain would forever lose “the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim.”
Thus, a threatening message that might have embroiled the Union in two wars at the same time became instead the basis for a hard-line policy that effectively interrupted British momentum toward recognizing the Confederacy. Furthermore, France, whose ministers had promised to act in concert with Britain, followed suit. This was a critical victory for the Union, preventing for the time being the recognition that would have conferred legitimacy on the Confederacy in the eyes of the world, weakened Northern morale, and accorded “currency to Southern bonds.”
History would later give Secretary of State Seward high marks for his role in preventing Britain and France from intervening in the war. He is considered by some to have been “the ablest American diplomatist of the century.” But here, as was so often the case, Lincoln’s unseen hand had shaped critical policy. Only three months earlier, the frontier lawyer had confessed to Seward that he knew little of foreign affairs. His revisions of the dispatch, however, exhibit the sophisticated prowess of a veteran statesman: he had analyzed a complex situation and sought the least provocative way to neutralize a potential enemy while making crystal-clear his country’s position.
Seward was slowly but inevitably coming to appreciate Lincoln’s remarkable abilities. “It is due to the President to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman,” he told his wife in mid-May. “His confidence and sympathy increase every day.” As Lincoln began to trust his own abilities, Seward became more confident in him. In early June, he told Frances: “Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation.” Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet. He committed himself “to his chief,” Nicolay and Hay observed, “not only without reserve, but with a sincere and devoted personal attachment.”
Seward’s mortification at not having received his party’s nomination in 1860 never fully abated, but he no longer felt compelled to belittle Lincoln to ease his pain. He settled into his position as secretary of state, and his optimistic and gregarious nature reasserted itself. Once more, his elaborate parties and receptions became the talk of Washington. Five days after the dispatch was sent, Seward hosted “a brilliant assemblage” at his new home. All the rooms were full, with dancing in one, drinks in another, and good conversation all around. Seward was “in excellent spirits,” moving easily among cabinet members, military officers, diplomats, and senators. Even white-haired Secretary Welles, who, it was mockingly remarked, should have died, “to all intents and purposes, twenty years ago,” was having such a good time that he seemed “good for, at least, twenty years more.”
L
INCOLN LOOKED TO
C
HASE
for guidance on the complex problem of financing a war at a time when the government was heavily in debt. The economic Panic of 1857, corruption in the Buchanan administration, and the partial dismemberment of the Union had taken a massive toll on the government coffers. With Congress not in session to authorize new tariffs and taxes, Chase was forced to rely on government loans to sustain war expenditures. Banks held back at first, demanding higher interest rates than the government could afford to pay, but eventually, Chase cobbled together enough revenue to meet expenses until Congress convened.
Chase later noted proudly that in the early days of the war, Lincoln relied on him to carry out functions that ordinarily belonged to the War Department. According to Chase, he assumed “the principal charge” of preventing the key border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee from falling into secessionist hands. He authorized a loyal state senator from Kentucky to muster twenty companies. He drew up the orders that allowed Andrew Johnson, the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union, “to raise regiments in Tennessee.” He believed himself instrumental in keeping Kentucky and Missouri in the Union, seriously underestimating Lincoln’s critical role.
Indeed, Chase would never cease to underestimate Lincoln, nor to resent the fact that he had lost the presidency to a man he considered his inferior. In late April, he presumptuously sent Lincoln a
New York Times
article highly derogatory of the administration. “The President and the Cabinet at Washington are far behind the people,” the
Times
argued. “They are like a person just aroused from sleep, and in a state of dreamy half-consciousness.” This charge, Chase informed Lincoln, “has too much truth in it.” Lincoln did not reply, well understanding Chase’s implacable yearning for the presidency. But for now he needed the Ohioan’s enormous talents and total cooperation.
Cameron, meanwhile, found the task of running the War Department unbearable. Unable to manage his vast responsibilities, he turned to both Seward and Chase for help. “Oh, it was a terrible time,” Cameron remembered years later. “We were entirely unprepared for such a conflict, and for the moment, at least, absolutely without even the simplest instruments with which to engage in war. We had no guns, and even if we had, they would have been of but little use, for we had no ammunition to put in them—no powder, no saltpetre, no bullets, no anything.” The demands placed on the War Department in the early days of the war were indeed excruciating. Not only were weapons in short supply, but uniforms, blankets, horses, medical supplies, food, and everything necessary to outfit the vast numbers of volunteer soldiers arriving daily in Washington were unobtainable. It would have taken thousands of personnel to handle the varied functions of the quartermaster’s department, the ordnance office, the engineering department, the medical office, and the pay department. Yet, in 1861, the entire War Department consisted of fewer than two hundred people, including clerks, messengers, and watchmen. As Cameron lamented afterward: “I was certainly not in a place to be envied.”
Lincoln later explained that with “so large a number of disloyal persons” infiltrating every department, the government could not rely on official agents to manage contracts for manufacturing the weapons and supplies necessary to maintain a fighting force. With the cabinet’s unanimous consent, he directed Chase to dispense millions of dollars to a small number of trusted private individuals to negotiate and sign contracts that would mobilize the military. Acting “without compensation,” the majority of these men did their utmost under the circumstances. A few, including Alexander Cummings, one of Cameron’s lieutenants, would bring shame to the War Department.
A
S SPRING GAVE WAY
to the stifling heat of a Washington summer, Lincoln began work on the message he would deliver to Congress when the House and Senate assembled in special session on July 4. Needing time to think, he placed an “embargo” on all office seekers, “so strict” that they were not even allowed entry into the White House. As he labored in his newfound quiet, congressmen and senators gathered at Willard’s and Brown’s hotels, exchanging greetings and trading stories. They all anticipated, one reporter stated, that they would “soon ascertain the exact intentions of the Administration, through the medium of the President’s message.”
Lincoln worked long hours on the text, shifting words, condensing, deleting sentences. Even Senator Orville Browning, his old friend from Illinois who had come to see him, was told he was busy, but Lincoln overheard Browning talking and sent for him. It was after 9 p.m. on July 3, and he had just that moment finished writing. “He said he wished to read it to me, and did so,” Browning recorded in his diary. “It is an able state paper and will fully meet the expectations of the Country.”
Lincoln did not personally deliver his address on Capitol Hill. President Thomas Jefferson had denounced presidential appearances before Congress, considering them a monarchical remnant of the English system where kings personally opened parliamentary sessions. Since Jefferson, presidents had submitted their written messages to be read by a clerk. Yet, if the practice lacked theatricality, Lincoln’s arguments against secession and for the necessity of executive action in the midst of rebellion left an indelible impression. He traced the history of the struggle and called on Congress to “give the legal means for making this contest a short, and a decisive one.”
He asked for “at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars…a less sum per head, than was the debt of our revolution.” A “right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money,” he assured Congress. For “this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people—can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes….
“This is essentially a People’s contest,” the president asserted. “On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.” As evidence of the capacity of free institutions to better the “condition” of the people, “beyond any example in the world,” he cited the regiments of the Union Army, in which “there is scarcely one, from which could not be selected, a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.”
Northern newspapers generally praised the message, though some failed to appreciate the rigor of Lincoln’s appeal and the clear grace of his language. “In spite of obvious faults in style,” the
New York Times
correspondent conceded, “I venture to say it will add to the popularity of the Rail-splitter. It is evidently the production of an honest, clear-headed and straightforward man; and its direct and forcible logic and quaint style of illustration will cause it to be read with peculiar pleasure by the masses of the people.” More important, the Congress responded with alacrity. Its members authorized more money and an even larger mobilization of troops than the president had requested. In addition, they provided retroactive authority for nearly all of Lincoln’s executive actions taken before they convened, remaining silent only on his suspension of habeas corpus. With the Southern Democrats gone, the Republicans had a substantial majority. And, for the moment, Northern Democrats also acceded, their dislike of Republicans overshadowed by patriotic fervor.
Not everyone was pleased. Abolitionists and radical Republicans found the message disheartening. “No mention is, at all, made of slavery,” Frederick Douglass lamented. “Any one reading that document, with no previous knowledge of the United States, would never dream from anything there written that we have a slaveholding war waged upon the Government…while all here know that
that
is the vital and animating motive of the rebellion.”
Radicals tended to blame Seward for Lincoln’s reluctance to emphasize the role of slavery. “We have an honest President,” Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist editor, proclaimed before a celebratory crowd on the Fourth of July, “but, distrusting the strength of the popular feeling behind him, he listens overmuch to Seward.” Men like Phillips, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner could never forgive Seward for apparently lowering the antislavery banner he had once carried so triumphantly. Seward was accustomed to criticism, however, and while he had the president beside him, he remained secure in his position.