Lincoln and episodes of the Civil War

Preface

During the writer's service in the field and in garrison, he jotted down, on the reverse side of field maps and on loose sheets of paper, memoranda of his experiences, and at the end of the war (1865-66) wrote out these memoranda substantially in the form in which they now appear.

In the period between the close of the war and 1909, the writer was too much occupied in professional and other labors to give attention to the publication of these recollections and they remained untouched, in manuscript.

During 1909, however, many requests came to him from all parts of the country for copies of an address on Abraham Lincoln which the writer had delivered in that year before Lehigh University, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The suggestion was also repeatedly made that he write out and publish, for preservation in permanent form, not only that address, but any other recollections that he might have about the war, including particularly those associated with the Old Capitol Prison and the conspiracy trial, topics alluded to in that address.

It is in compliance with these suggestions and requests that it was determined, at the end of fifty iv Preface

years from the declaration of peace, to publish the manuscripts in book form, in the modest hope that the record may prove of interest to the survivors of that struggle, to the descendants of those who have passed away, and that it may be of some value to the future historian.

W. E. D.

Bethlehem, Pa., June, 1915.

Contents

PAGE

Preface ...... iii

CHAPTER

Chapter I

Ladies and Gentlemen : We have met to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois. We have celebrated his birthday anniversary heretofore, not at the invitation of the National Government, nor of all the States, but at the request of fourteen States, out of forty-six, which have made the day a legal holiday. Seven of the Southern States have made a legal holiday of June 3d, the birthday of Jefferson Davis, so that, in the legislatures, at least, there is no unanimity in the distribution of glory, and the majority is silent. We all know, however, that, in the North, during the forty-four years which have elapsed since the war ended, and since Lincoln died, at the age of fifty-six, his name has grown in

* An address delivered at Lehigh University, South Bethlehem, Pa., February 12, 1909.

I popular esteem — that he is conceded to have been the apostle of freedom, the conqueror over great odds in a civil war, the emancipator of slaves, and the blessed martyr, standing, according to the vote taken in 1900 in the Hall of Fame of New- York University, next to Washington as second Father of his Country — two venerable names, surpassing in brightness all the twenty-six who have held the office of President. It is also known that his birth was humble, his race shiftless, his education limited and self-acquired, his reputation as a lawyer local, his career in Congress creditable, but without distinction, and that he rose, from a comparatively obscure Western attorney, to supreme eminence, at home and abroad, in about seven years, between 1858 and 1865. How did that come about? To leap from a Springfield law office to second place in the Hall of Fame is to jump faster and higher than any lawyer ever jumped before, and it is interesting to find out how he made it. To discover that, we must go back briefly, and remind ourselves of what happened before 1858, when Lincoln first came into public notice.^

Our good forefathers of the thirteen original States were, as States, with one exception, slaveholders. When they came to associate themselves, and to form a constitution, they neither forbade nor assented to slavery, but they did insert in their document the Bill of Rights, which asserted that all men were born free and equal, and that every one was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; charming doctrines which Jefferson had borrowed from the salons of Paris and which, previously, the salons of Paris had acquired from the Swiss philosopher Rousseau. When, however, it came to the matter of abolishing slavery, which act would cause a loss of property, they were hardly ready to give to the blacks the liberty they had taken for themselves from George III. of England; and so they went no further than the abolition of the slave trade, the source of the evil, the fair inference being that they were willing that slavery should die a natural death, and thus not affect injuriously the business interests of our illustrious founders. If that was the intention, it was not carried out, for, in time, cotton raising became very profitable, and, being profitable, it was desirable, from the planter's point of view, that every new State admitted into the Union should form an extension of slavery. In addition, the negro, as cook, nurse, and bodyservant had become a very comfortable and seemingly indispensable addition to the planter's home and household. On the other hand, human bondage in a republic was such a mockery and contradiction, and its effect on the masters was so demoralizing, that, in the North, succeeding the Whig party, a powerful party arose to prevent its extension, with one wing demanding abolition — compensated or not, but in any case, abolition. This quarrel arose in 1830, was debated in the

Senate between Webster and Calhoun, had been compromised, the compromise repealed, and the question raised on extension or no extension, when Kansas came to be admitted.

Stephen A. Douglas, the ''Little Giant" of Illinois, was the leader of the Pro-Slavery party in the Senate, and much was heard of "Popular Sovereignty," ** Bleeding Kansas," and ''Border Ruffians." Buchanan, ''^ a Democrat, was President. This issue, extension or no extension, was up when Lincoln was nominated for the Senate by the Republicans of Illinois against Douglas, and that was the issue upon which the two debated, stumping through Illinois. This drew the attention of the country to the debaters, and their arguments were eagerly read throughout the land. I was then a law student at Cambridge and had heard Wendell Phillips denounce the Constitution as a "Covenant with Hell, " and recall the debate. Douglas planted himself squarely on the Constitution and on the Dred Scott Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld the Fugitive Slave Law, recently delivered. Lincoln took his stand on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. I quote one paragraph from Lincoln's speech of August 17, 1858. Speaking of the framers of the Declaration, he said:

Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of posterity to breed tyrants and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the battle, which their fathers began, so that truth and justice, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man should hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles, on which the temple of liberty was being built.

Lincoln was defeated for the Senate, but he was hailed as the inspired prophet of liberty, who, although he was weak in his technical, legal position, avoided the ranting of Garrison and Phillips and, on principles far above all common and statute law, was invulnerable. In fact, slavery never was extended after that debate. Lincoln had given it a mortal wound. Thereafter, it was clear to the planters that the survival of human bondage in twenty-one Northern States was out of the question, and that, if it were to survive at all, it could survive only under a separate government, formed of the seven slave States, making slavery its foundation, and trusting in the supremacy of cotton to obtain the recognition of other powers as an independent sovereign state. They made their plans accordingly, preparing for the event while the army and navy were under their control, between 1856 and i860, when the passive Buchanan retired to his home at Wheatland, Pa., surrendering to his successor nothing except what the planters considered not worth taking along. They left the building but took all the money in the treasury.

I next heard of Lincoln in i860 (while I was a student in Germany), as the candidate of the Republicans for President and at the same time I learned of the threat of seven of the States to secede, if he was elected. On the fourth day of July of that year, the Americans, of whom about one-half were Southerners, celebrated the day with a dinner at the ''Adler, " Heidelberg, which proceeded with decorum, until a student from Charleston, South Carolina, offered the toast, *' Here's to the United States, may they ever go on, but never Link-on. " This was too much, and the war between the States broke out, then and there, and took the form of duels to be fought next day. These, however, were peaceably settled by a Philadelphia lawyer present, who suggested to all hands to put off their fighting until they got home, when, in all likelihood, they would get more of it than they wanted. All of which turned out to be true, for, of my own class at Yale, numbering 105, one- third were in the armies, and ten killed, five on each side. No doubt, a similar percentage is true among men of other colleges. The gentleman who offered that toast, I am informed, kept out of the war altogether.

In November, i860, during the election, I was at sea on the steamer Vanderbilt, coming homxc with the late Robert H. Sayre, then Chief Engineer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and Robert Packer, eldest son of the President of the road, Judge Asa Packer. On landing, we heard that Lincoln had been elected, — that all business was at a standstill, — that seven Southern States were about to secede from the Union, and, what disturbed my friends most, that Lehigh Valley Railroad stock had dropped to $30 per share, they little dreaming that the impending war would make that railroad a source of great profit, and that that profit would by 1866 (six years later), through the munificence of its President, be used to found a seat of learning called Lehigh University. None of the passengers on the ship dreamt that the vessel would be presented by Commodore Vanderbilt to the Government, as his contribution to the cause of the Union. I hear that it is still in existence as a transport. My companion, another Heidelberg student, was bearer of letters from Mr. Huntington, then the Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune, and I went with him to the Tribune Ofhce, where we delivered them to Mr. Charles A. Dana, ' ^ then Mr. Greeley's assistant editor. Mr. Dana took a gloomy view of the future. He was sure there would be an insurrection, and doubted Lincoln's ability to put it down. He thought the new President a fine orator and an honest man, but no more ; he, also, little dreaming that, during the impending war, he wonld be appointed by Mr. Lincoln, Assistant Secretary of War and stand at his bedside when he died.

I first saw Lincoln on February 21, 1861 (while I was a student at Philadelphia), on his route from Springfield to Washington, to be inaugurated. I stood in the crowd at the corner of Ninth and Chestnut streets to see him drive from the Reading Station to the Continental. He came, seated in an open carriage, a person of very large, lean frame, dark complexion, jet black hair, full beard, no mustache, wearing a high silk hat and brown overcoat. His expression was mild, rather sad, but firm, as a benevolent person that had seen lots of trouble and saw lots more ahead. Soon afterward, he appeared on the balcony over the Chestnut Street entrance, and spoke very briefly.

Next morning, February 22, 1861, I got up early to hear him make a speech at a flag raising in front of Independence Hall. The substance of what he said was, that, if we cultivated the spirit which animated our forefathers, the flag would stay there, and that additional stars would be placed on the flag, until we numbered many millions of happy and prosperous people. Of what trouble he had before the election, I knew nothing; but we all know of the great troubles later borne by him. In December, i860, a few months before, the defeated party had made good their threat, — not to stay in the Union if he were elected, — seven out of the thirtyone States had set up a separate government called ''The Confederate States of America," had adopted a constitution, had elected Jefferson Davis, President, and were organizing under a flag called the ''Stars and Bars," with a uniform of gray, an army to defend their possession of the custom-houses, forts, arsenals, mints, and other property of the United States, which they had seized, by fraud and force, and without a shadow of title. General Scott, ^ commander-in-chief of this army, was a Virginian, infirm and of uncertain loyalty at that time; Colonel Lee,^^ General Scott's Chief of Staff, Twiggs, Johnson, Hardie, and many other good West Point officers had joined the rebellion, and although Mr. Lincoln claimed the Union was incapable, in law, of being broken, it was, in fact, broken on a geographical line. He knew, moreover, that, to reach Washington, he would have to pass through Baltimore, a hostile city, and that, if he got there, he would land in the District of Columbia, a slave district, full of Southern sympathizers, who gave social tone to the Capital, and of officers whom he could not trust, and that he would be sandwiched between the slave States of Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. To save the Union and yet crush a rebellion was his job, and it was a task of which Senator Lodge says: "No greater, no more difficult task, has ever been faced by any man in modern times."

I next saw Lincoln in Washington in the fall of 1 86 1. He had passed through more trouble since I had seen him at Philadelphia. In March, he had gone to Washington in disguise, and had made his inaugural address, in which he said: "We are all friends, and must not be enemies." Scorning these advances, however, the rebels, on April 14, 1861, had bombarded Fort Sumter; the National flag had been hauled down ; the rebel flag had been hoisted in its place, and, in the North had sprung up an excitement unparalleled before or since. Party lines had been dissolved, and the outraged people arose in wrath to punish treason and to restore the Stars and Stripes to its rightful place. My own instructor, a Philadelphia lawyer, and a Democrat, became deranged and was sent to Kirkbride Asylum, where he occupied himself endeavoring to perfect a machine for manufacturing abolitionists. Simon Cameron, ^^ the new Secretary of War, had urged Lincoln to use all of the resources at his command to stamp out the insurrection, while young; to call out five hundred thousand men, to free the negroes and arm them, and so place the Confederacy between two fires. Thaddeus Stevens,^*' of Lancaster, a famous lawyer, who later led Johnson's impeachment, had advised the President that, legally, he could call out a million men, and invite the slaves to join the Union Army. The arming of the slaves as a war measure was strongly advocated by Stevens. General John E. Wool wanted two hundred thousand men; so did

Abraham Lincoln ii

Sherman. The former was called a dotard, the latter, a lunatic. Lincoln refused the advice of these men, because he feared it would cause the Border States to join the Confederacy, and called out seventy thousand men. This action, as it turned out, was trying to put out a conflagration with a syringe, for General McDowell'^ was routed at Bull Run. Lincoln had now called out three hundred thousand men, and a second three hundred thousand, who came, singing, ''We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more ! " He then appointed McClellan ' ^ to command, and that general, during the fall and winter of 1861-62, organized the raw levies but refused to advance against the enemy at Manassas, although, it turned out later, only wooden cannon were mounted in front of the city at Munson's Hill. In March, 1862, the President persuaded McClellan to advance, and the general moved (reluctantly, for he claimed he never had troops enough) towards the James River. At this stage, twenty thousand troops, left behind to defend Washington City, were placed under command of General James S. Wadsworth,^ Military Governor, who appointed me, as successor of General Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal of his military district, which extended from the Occoquan to Wicomico Bay, and who gave me command of a mixed brigade of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and a corps of detectives. A flotilla on the Potomac, under Commodore Harwood, also reported to me.

With this force, I was expected to keep order in the cities of Georgetown and Washington, to prevent blockade running, to receive and keep for exchange all prisoners of State and War, to take care of all contrabands, or fugitive negroes, to control passes to all persons or goods entering or leaving the city, to supervise all invoices, to regulate all sales of liquor and places of amusement, and to perform many other duties, two of which were to guard the person of the President and to report daily, in person, to Mr. Stanton, or his assistant, Peter Watson, at the War Department, where the President was often seen reading the telegrams as they came in from the front, or conferring with the officers about him. All of this routine continued until March, 1863, when I got leave to rejoin my regiment of cavalry in the field. During the whole of this year, Lincoln, while thoroughly trusted as a man for his honesty and sincerity, was not satisfactory as a leader. When I first reached Washington, the radicals were dissatisfied with him because he refused to abolish slavery and was determined to make the salvation of the Union the prime object in the war; the conservatives were grumbling because he did not seem to measure up to the size of the job on his hands; and the country, generally, was uneasy because his efforts, so far, to suppress the rebellion, had been a costly and humiliating failure. In fact, up to that time, the main fruits of the war had been heaps of coffins sent home by express, containing the bodies of lads who had died of camp fever, without having heard a shot fired, or having been near the enemy. This dissatisfaction rather increased between March, 1862, and March, 1863, for, although Grant had taken Forts Henry and Donelson, the Monitor had sunk the Confederate Merrimac, and Farragut had captured New Orleans, yet, McClellan made no headway toward capturing Richmond. Pope,'^ his successor, was badly beaten at the second Bull Run, because, it was claimed, McClellan's friends did not support him; McClellan, on being reinstated, fought at Antietam, a battle which was, at best, a draw; Burnside was repulsed at Fredericksburg, the army again went into winter quarters at Aquia Creek, no nearer to Richmond than two years before, and the appointment of a dictator was cautiously discussed at Washington and in the field. At Washington, the name of General Butler was hinted at in that connection. The most acrimonious critic of Lincoln's Administration at this time was Count Adam Gurowski, in his Diary printed at Boston, in 1862.

It was while this condition of affairs lasted, when the popular elections were going against Lincoln, and General Wads worth was defeated for Governor of New York by Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, that I saw most of Lincoln, sometimes on horseback, riding down Pennsylvania Avenue, beside his son Tad, or walking to Dr. Gurley's Presbyterian Church on New York Avenue, or strolling between the White House and War Department, where he would stop and talk with his bodyguard of Illinois Cavalry, or, yet again at receptions, in the company of senators, ladies, or any one who wanted to see him, for he wanted to see everybody, to keep in touch with the people, and to take what he called his "public-opinion baths." Most often I saw him, when he sent for me about some Provost business. The impression he made on me I give for what it may be worth.

As regards his appearance, Lincoln had the reputation, before he came East, of being a homely man, and, speaking generally, it may be said he deserved it. His features were not regular, his complexion was sallow, his hair was lank; a large wart disfigured his right cheek, his mouth was somewhat drawn on one side, and his big, bony hands and feet alone would have deprived him of the right to be called an Adonis. His gestures were awkward and clumsy, and he appeared to go through receptions or other fashionable functions like a martyr. This was especially noticeable when Miss Kate Chase, daughter of Secretary Chase, afterwards wife of General Sprague of Rhode Island, assisted, as she often did, in the absence of Mrs. Lincoln, and fascinated every one by her beauty and graceful manners. At the period of which I speak Lincoln usually looked haggard and tired, an expression that, however, was readily explained by the state of the Union cause, which was then at its lowest ebb. General after general had been tried and found wanting, advance after advance had always ended in retreats within the defenses of Washington; the Confederate sympathizers were hurrahing, under the shadow of the Capitol, at the discomfiture of him whom they were pleased to call the "Jester," the "Tyrant," and the "Buffoon," while the Union men at the other end of the city hung their heads and muttered about "incapables," "imbeciles," and "time for a dictator."

On horseback, also, Lincoln made a poor figure, riding without straps, his feet turned outward, and his arms flapping up and down with the bridle. In walking, his legs seemed to drag from the knees down, like those of a laborer going home after a hard day's work.

On the other hand, in the War Department, when he was standing up straight, dressed in black, showing his full six feet four inches in height, and was reading the despatches from the field as they were handed him by the operator, while making his comments to the Secretary or principal officers, his calm gigantic bulk looming up high above Stanton, Halleck, and McClellan (all short, pursy men) had an imposing effect, highly becoming in the active head of a vast army, and entitled him to be called a man of comely proportions.

So when he sat quietly on a big, gray horse in the field, beside General Hooker, '^ taking off his silk hat, and bowing to the squadrons as we marched past in review, at Aquia Creek, before our advance to Chancellorsville in April, 1863, he was as proper a figure as one would care to see.

Or again, when, radiant with happiness, he appeared on the front balcony of the White House, in answer to the call of a crowd, as he did just after his return from Richmond and the surrender of Lee, and slowly rolled out his pithy sentences, tinged with Western humor, he seemed to me positively handsome. The band on that occasion had played Dixie, and he told us, among other things, that he "always liked that tune, and liked it better now than ever, for we had captured it, and it fairly belonged to us." I do not know whether, after Richmond fell, Lincoln felt that it was time to take off his old clothes and spruce up, but he certainly did look, during the speech I have mentioned, after Lee's surrender, better dressed and groomed than I had ever before seen him.

As regards his moods, it was said at the time that he was subject to long fits of depression, almost trance-like, but of these I saw nothing. In business he was bright, kind, careful not to wound the feelings of others, and surprisingly keen and sagacious.

As regards his oratory, I never heard him make a professional or political speech, and therefore, except from reading such, I cannot judge of his ability in that line. When I did hear him, he spoke as President in time of war, and as one having authority, and when people would listen to no other kind of talk. Speaking with those advantages, his awkward gestures made an impression of sincerity, and this, coupled with clear ideas conveyed in terse phrases, seemed to me the highest form of eloquence.

In conversation, he was a patient, attentive listener, rather looking for the opinion of others, than hazarding his own, and trying to view a matter in all of its phases before coming to a conclusion. On ordinary affairs, his conversation was such as one would expect from a Western lawyer who had been a good deal in politics, full of stories drawn from his experiences as farmer, flatboatman on the Mississippi, storekeeper, and riding the circuits when practicing law in Illinois. The stories certainly were often racy, but they were always humorous and in point. Often, one succeeded the other, and story-telling became the rage at the Capitol. And many a story was credited to him, that he never told. My good friend, John Hay,^ caught it from his Chief, and soon became, next to Lincoln, the best story-teller in Washington. It was at the same time that the President set the fashion of ** feeling the public pulse, " and accepting the "logic of events. "

When conversation took a wider range, he disclosed a mind singularly free from the delusions of vanity which turn people's heads in high places, and a level head, incapable of fooling itself, or being fooled by others.

Measuring himself accurately, he knew perfectly that he was no poHshed Southern gentleman, Hke Wade Hampton, for example, nor cultivated Boston scholar, like Charles Sumner, but a modest shoot of poor whites from Kentucky, who, through the reading of Shakespeare and the Bible, had become a writer of uncommonly good English, who had, by hard work, reached local but not national prominence at the bar, and who had, in politics, been lucky enough to establish in the debate with Stephen A. Douglas, on the slavery question, that reputation which led to his nomination by the Republican party, when the division of Democracy, split into three fragments, permitted his election as President. We know now that he was probably the one man in the country able to save it, but if this was so, he seemed unconscious of it.

As regards religion, I have said that Lincoln attended Dr. Gurley's Presbyterian Church. He was, however, not a church member, and I quote from Mr. Deming, as to what the President said to him on that subject •

I have never united myself to any church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to a long, complicated statement of Christian Doctrine, which characterizes the Articles of Belief, and Confessions of Faith. When any church shall inscribe on its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both law and gospel, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself," that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul.

Measuring the office of President, he realized that it was nothing that should turn the head of a sensible man — that it was a temporary elevation to be followed (even if it extended over eight years) by an old age of eclipse when he would either have to live on his savings from his salary or scramble for practice again among his younger competitors at Springfield. This humility formed a refreshing contrast with the haughty pretensions of the socalled "first families" — the pompous importance of contractors, and the supercilious airs put on by regulars, the naval officers, and marines, towards citizens and volunteers — a spirit that crystallized itself into contempt for everything not West Point or McClellan, and never ended until the court-martial of one of McClellan's generals, which, although set aside later, had a healthy effect at the time. Apropos of that, the lady with whom the general lodged at V/ashington (a red Lee — General Lee was a black Lee) told me the general never realized his sentence until a silk hat he had ordered, after his dismissal, came to the house with a card in the band on which was written, before his name, ''Mister."

Measuring people around him, Lincoln seemed to know thoroughly v/hat was valuable about them and what was not. Seward might be over-confident, but that was a good thing, when everybody else had the blues. Chase might be ambitious, but he knew how to raise funds. Stanton might be irritable and violent, but he had energy, and unquestioned loyalty. The judgment of Welles, if slow, was sound. McClellan lacked the fighting instinct and might be no match for Lee, but who was? And was not McClellan the idol of his army? Greeley might be erratic, but he was sincere.