44° 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
I'M  VNCIPATION     ANNOUNCED. 
When,  on  the  220!  of  July,  after  full  Cabinet 
g  ussion,  President  Lincoln  decided  to  post- 
die  proclamation  of  emancipation  which 
he  had  first  prepared,  in  order  to  wait  for  a  vic- 
tory, all  indications  afforded  a  reasonable  hope 
that  the  delay  would  not  be  a  long  one.  The 
union  of  die  armies  of  McClellan  and  Pope  had 
been  ordered,  and  onee  combined  they  would 
umber  any  force  t'nev  were  likely  to  meet. 
Halleek  had  been  called  to  Washington  toexer- 
i  is(  chief  command  and  secure  unity  of  orders 
and  movements.  The  new  call  for  volunteers 
was  expected  to  bring  quick  reinforcements. 
We  have  seen  through  what  deplorable 
gs  of  McClellan  and  some  of  his 
:rs  this  reasonable  hope  was  frustrated, 
and  how.  instead  of  an  expected  victory,  an 
unnecessary  and  most  disheartening  defeat 
augmented  President  Lincoln's  difficulties  and 
inabilities ;  how  the  combined  armies 
were  forced  back  upon  Washington  in  such 
>ter  and  discouragement  that  the  Presi- 
dent felt  compelled  to  intrust  their  reorgani- 
zation to  the  very  man  whose  weakness  and 
jealousy  had  been  the  main  cause  of  the  result. 
The  damaging  effect  of  these  reverses  ex- 
tended beyond  mere  military  results ;  they 
gave  a  new  and  serious  character  to  the  polit- 
ical conditions  and  complications  which  were 
an  inseparable  part  of  the  President's  great  task. 
They  sharpened  anew  the  underlying  preju- 
dice and  distrust  between  the  two  factions  of 
his  supporters  —  radicals  and  conservatives,  as 
they  began  to  be  called;  or,  more  properly 
^ing,  those  who  were  anxious  to  destroy 
and  those  who  were  willing  to  preserve  slav- 
er}-. Each  faction  loudly  charged  the  other 
with  being  the  cause  of  failure,  and  clamored 
vehemently  for  a  change  of  policy  to  conform 
to  their  own  views.  Outside  of  both  was  the 
important  faction  of  those  Democrats  who 
either  yielded  the  war  only  a  sullen  support 
or  opposed  it  as  openly  as  they  safely  might, 
and  who,  on  the  slavery  issue,  directed  their 
denunciations  wholly  against  the  radicals.  It 
may  be  safely  said  that  at  no  time  were  po- 
litical questions  so  critical  and  embarrassing 
In  as  during  this  period.  His 
ion  had  been  reached ;  his  own 
Nearly  and  unalterably  marked 
out.  But  the  circumstances  surrounding  him 
did  not  permit  his  making  it  known,  and  he 
was  compelled  to  keep  up  an  appearance  of 
indecision  which  only  brought  upon  him  a 
greater  flood  of  importunities.  During  no  part 
of  his  administration  were  his  acts  and  words 
so  persistently  misconstrued  as  in  this  interim 
by  men  who  gave  his  words  the  color  and 
meaning  of  their  own  eager  desires  and  ex- 
pectations. To  interpret  properly  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's language  it  must  be  constantly  borne 
in  mind  that  its  single  object  was  to  curb  and 
restrain  the  impatience  of  zealots  from  either 
faction.  If  we  group  together  his  several  letters 
and  addresses  of  this  period,  we  may  see  that 
his  admonitions  and  rebukes  were  given  to 
both  with  equal  earnestness  and  impartiality. 
Occasions  were  not  wanting ;  for  all  request 
and  advice  which  came  to  him  was  warped  to 
one  side  or  the  other  by  the  culminating  con- 
test, in  which  he  alone  could  give  the  final 
and  deciding  word.  On  the  26th  of  July,  1862, 
he  wrote  the  following  letter  to  Reverdy  John- 
son, then  on  public  business  at  New  Orleans, 
who  had  made  communications  touching  af- 
fairs in  the  Department  of  the  Gulf  : 
Yours  of  the  16th,  by  the  hand  of  Governor  Shep- 
ley,  is  received.  It  seems  the  Union  feeling  in  Loui- 
siana is  being  crushed  out  by  the  course  of  General 
Phelps.  Please  pardon  me  for  believing  that  it  is  a 
false  pretense.  The  people  of  Louisiana — all  intel- 
ligent people  everywhere  —  know  full  well  that  I 
never  had  a  wish  to  touch  the  foundations  of  their 
society,  or  any  right  of  theirs.  With  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  this  they  forced  a  necessity  upon  me  to 
send  armies  among  them,  and  it  is  their  own  fault, 
not  mine,  that  they  are  annoyed  by  the  presence 
of  General  Phelps.  They  also  know  the  remedy  — 
know  how  to  be  cured  of  General  Phelps.  Remove 
the  necessity  of  his  presence.  And  might  it  not  be 
well  for  them  to  consider  whether  they  have  not 
already  had  time  enough  to  do  this  ?  If  they  can 
conceive  of  anything  worse  than  General  Phelps 
within  my  power,  would  they  not  better  be  look- 
ing out  for  it?  They  very  well  know  the  way  to 
avert  all  this  is  simply  to  take  their  place  in  the 
Union  upon  the  old  terms.  If  they  will  not  do  this, 
should  they  not  receive  harder  blows  rather  than 
lighter  ones  ?  You  are  ready  to  say  I  apply  to 
friends  what  is  due  only  to  enemies.  I  distrust 
the  wisdom  if  not  the  sincerity  of  friends  who 
would  hold  my  hands  while  my  enemies  stab  me. 
This  appeal  of  professed  friends  has  paralyzed  me 
more  in  this  struggle  than  any  other  one  thing. 
You  remember  telling  me  the  day  after  the  Balti- 
more mob  in  April,  1861,  that  it  would  crush  all 
Union  feeling  in  Maryland  for  me  to  attempt  bring- 
ing troops  over  Maryland  soil  to  Washington.  I 
brought  the  troops  notwithstanding,  and  yet  there 
was  Union  feeling  enough  left  to  elect  a  legislature 
the  next  autumn,  which  in  turn  elected  a  very  excel- 
lent Union  United  States  Senator  !  1  I  am  a  patient 
man — always  willing  to  forgive  on  the  Christian 
terms  of  repentance,  and  also  to  give  ample  time 
for  repentance.  Still,  I  must  save  this  Government, 
if  possible.  What  I  cannot  do,  of  course  I  will  not 
do  ;  but  it  may  as  well  be  understood,  once  for  all, 
that  I  shall  not  surrender  this  game  leaving  any 
available  card  unplayed.2 
Two  days  later  to  a  citizen  of  Louisiana  he 
sent  another  letter,  full  of  phrases  quite  as  posi- 
tive and  significant.    He  wrote  : 
1  Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson  himself. 
2  Unpublished  MS.
THE  ANNOUNCEMENT  OF  EMANCIPATION. 
II' 
Mr.  Durant  complains  that  in  various  ways  the 
relation  of  master  and  slave  is  disturbed  by  the 
presence  of  our  army,  and  he  considers  it  particu- 
larly vexatious  that  this,  in  part,  is  done  under 
cover  of  an  act  of  Congress,  while  constitutional 
guaranties  are  suspended  on  the  plea  of  military 
necessity.  The  truth  is,  that  what  is  done  and 
omitted  about  slaves  is  done  and  omitted  on  the 
same  military  necessity.  It  is  a  military  necessity 
to  have  men  and  money  ;  and  we  can  get  neither, 
in  sufficient  numbers  or  amounts,  if  we  keep  from, 
or  drive  from,  our  lines  slaves  coming  to  them.  .  .  . 
He  speaks  of  no  duty — apparently  thinks  of  none 
—  resting  upon  Union  men.  He  even  thinks  it  in- 
jurious to  the  Union  cause  that  they  should  be 
restrained  in  trade  and  passage  without  taking  sides. 
They  are  to  touch  neither  a  sail  nor  a  pump,  but 
to  be  merely  passengers, — dead-heads  at  that, — to 
be  carried  snug  and  dry  throughout  the  storm,  and 
safely  landed,  right  side  up.  Nay,  more  ;  even  a 
mutineer  is  to  go  untouched,  lest  these  sacred  pas- 
sengers receive  an  accidental  wound.  Of  course  the 
rebellion  will  never  be  suppressed  in  Louisiana  if 
the  professed  Union  men  there  will  neither  help  to 
do  it  nor  permit  the  Government  to  do  it  without 
their  help.  Now,  I  think  the  true  remedy  is  very 
different  from  what  is  suggested  by  Mr.  Durant.  It 
does  not  lie  in  rounding  the  rough  angles  of  the 
war,  but  in  removing  the  necessity  for  the  war. 
.  .  .  If  they  will  not  do  this,  if  they  prefer  to 
hazard  all  for  the  sake  of  destroying  the  Govern- 
ment, it  is  for  them  to  consider  whether  it  is  prob- 
able I  will  surrender  the  Government  to  save  them 
from  losing  all.  If  they  decline  what  I  suggest,  you 
scarcely  need  to  ask  what  I  will  do.  What  would 
you  do  in  my  position  ?  Would  you  drop  the  war 
where  it  is  ?  Or  would  you  prosecute  it  in  future 
with  elder-stalk  squirts  charged  with  rose  water? 
Would  you  deal  lighter  blows  rather  than  heavier 
ones  ?  Would  you  give  up  the  contest,  leaving  any 
available  means  unapplied  ?  I  am  in  no  boastful 
mood.  I  shall  not  do  more  than  I  can,  and  I  shall 
do  all  I  can  to  save  the  Government,  which  is  my 
sworn  duty  as  well  as  my  personal  inclination.  I 
shall  do  nothing  in  malice.  What  I  deal  with  is 
too  vast  for  malicious  dealing.1 
In  these  two  letters  the  President's  reproof 
was  addressed  to  conservatives  to  correct  ill- 
timed  complaints  that  the  interests  of  slave- 
holders were  allowed  to  surfer  in  the  rude 
necessities  of  military  operations  and  adminis- 
tration. But  complaints  equally  unreasonable 
were  assailing  him  from  the  other  side.  Mr. 
Greeley  of  the  "  New  York  Tribune "  was 
criticising  the  President  for  exactly  the  al- 
leged fault  of  not  doing  more  of  that  which 
had  brought  these  complaints  from  Louisiana. 
In  his  paper  of  August  20  he  addressed  a  long 
open  letter  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  accusing  him  of 
failure  to  execute  the  Confiscation  Act  "  from 
mistaken  deference  to  rebel  slavery,"  and  alleg- 
ing  that   he  was  "  unduly  influenced    b) 
counsels,  the  representations,  the  mei 
certain  fossil  politicians  hailing  from  the  bonier 
slave-States."    "  We  complain,"  he  continued, 
"that  a  large  proportion  of  our  regular  army 
officers,  with  many  of  the  volunteers,  evince 
far  more  solicitude  to  uphold  slavery  than  to 
put  down  the  rebellion."  These  phrases  are- 
samples  of  two  columns  or  more  of  equally 
unjust  censure.  Mr.  Lincoln  always  so 
and  generally  with  success,  to  turn  a  dilemma 
into  an  advantage;  and  shrewdly  seizing  the 
opportunity  which  Mr.  Greeley  had  created. 
he  in  turn  addressed  him  the  following  open 
letter  through  the  newspapers  in  reply,  by 
which  he  not  merely  warded  off  his  present 
personal  accusation,  but  skillfully  laid  the  foun- 
dation in  public  sentiment  for  the  very  radi- 
cal step  he  was  about  to  take  on  the  slavery 
question. 
Executive  Mansion, 
Washington,  August  22,   181  :. 
Hon.  Horace  Greeley. 
Dear  Sir  :  I  have  just  read  yours  of  the  19th,  ad- 
dressed to  myself  through  the  "  New  York  Tribune." 
If  there  be  in  it  any  statements,  or  assumptions  of 
fact,  which  I  may  know  to  be  erroneous,  I  do  not. 
now  and  here,  controvert  them.  If  there  be  in  it  any 
inferences  which  I  may  believe  to  be  falsely  drawn. 
I  do  not,  now  and  here,  argue  against  them.  If 
there  be  perceptible  in  it  an  impatient  and  dicta- 
torial tone,  I  waive  it  in  deference  to  an  old  friend, 
whose  heart  I  have  always  supposed  to  be  right. 
As  to  the  policy  I  "seem  to  be  pursuing,"  as  you 
say,  I  have  not  meant  to  leave  any  one  in  doubt. 
I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  the 
shortest  way  under  the  Constitution.  The  sooner 
the  national  authority  can  be  restored,  the  nearer 
the  Union  will  be  —  ''the  Union  as  it  was."2  If  there 
be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union  unless 
they  could  at  the  same  time  save  slavery.  I  do  not 
agree  with  them.  If  there  be  those  who  would  not 
save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same  time 
destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  My 
paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the 
Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  destroy  slav- 
ery. If  I  could  save  the  Union  without  freeing  any 
slave,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it  by  freeing 
all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it 
by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone.  I  would 
also  do  that.  What  I  do  about  slavers',  and  the 
colored  race,  I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save 
the  Union  ;  and  what  I  forbear.  I  forbear  because  I 
do  not  believe  it  would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I 
shall  do  less  whenever  I  shall  believe  what  I  am 
doing  hurts  the  cause,  and  I  shall  do  more  when- 
ever I  shall  believe  doing  more  will  help  the  cause. 
I  shall  try  to  correct  errors  when  shown  to  be  errors. 
1  Lincoln  to  Bullitt,  July  28, 1862.  MS. ;  also  incor- 
rectly printed  in  several  works. 
2  This  letter  was  first  printed  in  the  "National  In- 
telligencer" of  August  23,  1862.  As  originally  written 
it  contained  after  the  words,  "the  Union  as  it  was,"  the 
phrase,  "  Broken  eggs  can  never  be  mended,  and  the 
Vol.  XXXVII.— 60. 
longer  the  breaking  proceeds  the  more  will  be  broken." 
which  "  was  erased,  with  some  reluctance,  by  the  Presi- 
dent, on  the  representation,  made  to  him  by  the  editors, 
that  it  seemed  somewhat  exceptionable,  on  rhetorical 
grounds,  in  a  paper  of  such  dignity."  [Welling  in 
"North  American  Review,"  February,  1SS0.  p.  16S.]
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
and  1  shall  adopt  new  views  so  fast  as  they  shall 
appear  to  be  true  views.     I    have    here  stated    my 
>rding  lo  my  view  of  official  duty;  and 
tend  no  modification  of  my  oft-expressed  per- 
sonal wish  that  all  men  everywhere  could  be  1'ree. 
Yours,  A.  Lincoln. 
When  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  the  foregoing  let- 
he  defeat  ot  General  Pope  at  the  second 
battle  of  Bull  Run  had  not  yet  taken  place; 
on  the  contrary,  every  probability  pointed  to 
an  easy  victory  for  the  Union  troops  in  the 
battle  which  was  plainly  seen  to  be  impending. 
We  may  therefore  infer  that  he  hoped  soon  to 
be  able  to  supplement  the  above  declarations 
ssuing  his  postponed  proclamation,  which 
would  give  the  country  knowledge  of  his  final 
gns  respecting  the  slavery  question.    But 
:ad  oi  the  expected  victory  came  a  sad  and 
demoralizing  defeat,  which  prolonged,  instead 
lortening,    the    anxiety    and    uncertainty 
hanging  over  the  intentions  of  the  Administra- 
tion.   Under  this  enforced  necessity  for  further 
lonement  of  his  fixed  purpose,  in  addition 
to  his  many  other  perplexities,  the  President 
grew   sensitive   and   even  irritable  upon   this 
point.    He  was  by  nature  so  frank  and  direct, 
he  was  so  conscientious  in  all  his  official  re- 
sponsibilities,  that  he  made  the  complaints  and 
implied  reproaches  of  even  his  humblest  peti- 
tioner his  own.    The  severe  impartiality  of  his 
self-judgment  sometimes  became  almost  a  feel- 
ing of  self-accusation,  from  which  he  relieved 
himself  only  by  a  most  searching  analysis  and 
review  of  his  own  motives  in  self-justification. 
In  the  period  under  review  this  state  of  feeling 
was  several  times  manifested.    Individuals  and 
delegations  came  to  him  to  urge  one  side  or 
the  other  of  a  decision,  which,  though  already 
made  in  his  own  mind,  forced  upon  him  a  re- 
examination of  its  justness  and  its  possibilities 
jood  or  evil.    Imperceptibly  these  mental 
became  a  species  of  self-torment,  and 
well-meaning  inquirers  or  advisers  affected  his 
"rung  nerves  like  so  many  persecuting  in- 
quisitor-.   A    phlegmatic    nature  would  have 
turned  them  away  in  sullen  silence,  or  at  most 
with  an  evasive  commonplace.    But  Lincoln 
felt  himself  under  compulsion,  which  he  could 
not  resist,  to  state  somewhat  precisely  the  dif- 
ficulties  and  perplexities  under  which  he  was 
.  rather,  apparently  refusing  to  act; 
and  in  such   statements  his  public  argument, 
.  hypothesis  assumed  for  illustration,  was 
liable  to  outrun  his  private  conclusions  upon 
which  had  controlled  his  judgment. 
It  is  in  the  light  of  this  mental   condition 
that  we  must  judge  the  well-known  reply  made 
by  him  on  the  13th  of  September  to  a  deputa- 
tion from  the  religious  denominations  of  Chi- 
1  requesting  him  to  issue  at  once  a  procla- 
mation of  universal  emancipation.    He  said: 
The  subject  presented  in  the  memorial  is  one 
upon  which  1  have  thought  much  for  weeks 
past,  and  I  may  even  say  for  months.  1  am  ap- 
proached with  the  most  opposite  opinions  and  ad- 
vice, and  that  by  religious  men,  who  are  equally 
certain  that  they  represent  the  Divine  will.  I  am 
sure  that  either  the  one  or  the  other  class  is  mis- 
taken in  that  belief,  and  perhaps  in  some  respects 
both.  1  hope  it  will  not  be  irreverent  for  me  to  say 
that  if  it  is  probable  that  God  would  reveal  his  will 
to  others,  on  a  point  so  connected  with  my  duty, 
it  might  be  supposed  he  would  reveal  it  directly  to 
me;  for,  unless  I  am  more  deceived  in  myself  than 
I  often  am,  it  is  my  earnest  desire  to  know  the  will 
of  Providence  in  this  matter.  And  if  I  can  learn 
what  it  is,  I  will  do  it.  These  are  not,  however, 
the  days  of  miracles,  and  I  suppose  it  will  be  granted 
that  1  am  not  to  expect  a  direct  revelation.  I  must 
study  the  plain  physical  facts  of  the  case,  ascertain 
what  is  possible,  and  learn  what  appears  to  be  wise 
and  right.  .  '.  .  What  good  would  a  proclama- 
tion of  emancipation  from  me  do,  especially  as  we 
are  now  situated  ?  I  do  not  want  to  issue  a  docu- 
ment that  the  whole  world  will  see  must  necessarily 
be  inoperative,  like  the  Pope's  bull  against  the  comet. 
Would  my  word  free  the  slaves,  when  I  cannot  even 
enforce  the  Constitution  in  the  rebel  States  ?  Is  there 
a  single  court,  or  magistrate,  or  individual  that 
would  be  influenced  by  it  there  ?  And  what  reason 
is  there  to  think  it  would  have  any  greater  effect 
upon  the  slaves  than  the  late  law  of  Congress,  which 
1  approved,  and  which  offers  protection  and  freedom 
to  the  slaves  of  rebel  masters  who  come  within  our 
lines  ?  Yet  I  cannot  learn  that  that  law  has  caused 
a  single  slave  to  come  over  to  us.  .  .  .  Now, 
then,  tell  me,  if  you  please,  what  possible  result  of 
good  would  follow  the  issuing  of  such  a  proclama- 
tion as  you  desire?  Understand,  I  raise  no  objec- 
tions against  it  on  legal  or  constitutional  grounds, 
for,  as  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy, 
in  time  of  war  1  suppose  I  have  a  right  to  take  any 
measure  which  may  best  subdue  the  enemy  ;  nor 
do  I  urge  objections  of  a  moral  nature,  in  view  of 
possible  consequences  of  insurrection  and  massacre 
at  the  South.  I  view  this  matter  as  a  practical  war 
measure,  to  be  decided  on  according  to  the  advan- 
tages or  disadvantages  it  may  offer  to  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  rebellion.  .  .  .  Do  not  misunderstand 
me  because  I  have  mentioned  these  objections. 
They  indicate  the  difficulties  that  have  thus  far  pre- 
vented my  action  in  some  such  way  as  you  desire. 
I  have  not  decided  against  a  proclamation  of  liberty 
to  the  slaves,  but  hold  the  matter  under  advisement. 
And  I  can  assure  you  that  the  subject  is  on  my 
mind,  by  day  and  night,  more  than  any  other. 
Whatever  shall  appear  to  be  God's  will,  I  will  do.  I 
trust  that  in  the  freedom  with  which  I  have  can- 
vassed your  views  I  have  not  in  any  respect  injured 
your  feelings. 
This  interview  of  the  Chicago  delegation  with 
the  President  lasted  more  than  an  hour,  during 
which  a  long  memorial  was  read,  interspersed 
with  much  discursive  conversation  and  inter- 
change of  questions  and  replies.  The  report 
of  his  remarks,  which  was  written  out  and  pub- 
lished by  the  delegation  after  their  return  home, 
is  not  a  verbatim  reproduction,  but  merely  a
THE  ANNOUNCEMENT  OE  EMANCIPATION. 
443 
condensed  abstract  of  what  was  said  on  the 
occasion.1  Much  adverse  criticism  has  been 
indulged  in  because  of  his  assumed  declaration 
that  an  emancipation  proclamation  would  be 
as  inoperative  as  "  the  Pope's  bull  against 
the  comet,"  and  that  he  nevertheless  issued  so 
preposterous  a  document  within  two  weeks  after 
the  interview.  The  error  lies  in  the  assump- 
tion that  his  words  were  literally  reported.  To 
measure  rightly  his  utterance  as  a  whole,  the 
conditions  under  which  the  interview  occurred 
must  continually  be  kept  in  mind.  The  Ad- 
ministration and  the  country  were  still  in  the 
shadow  of  the  great  disasters  of  the  Peninsula 
and  of  the  second  Bull  Run.  With  corre- 
sponding elation  the  rebels  had  taken  the  ag- 
gressive and  crossed  the  Potomac  to  invade 
Maryland.  A  new  campaign  was  opening, 
and  a  new  battle-cloud  was  gathering.  Whether 
victory  or  fresh  defeat  was  enfolded  in  its 
gloom  was  a  question  of  uncertainty  and  of 
fearful  anxiety  to  the  President,  straining  his 
thought  and  imagination  to  an  abnormal  and 
almost  unendurable  tension.  It  was  at  such  a 
moment  that  the  Chicago  delegation  had  ap- 
peared with  a  repetition  of  a  request  which 
seemed  to  him  inopportune.  Habitually  open 
and  patient  to  every  appeal,  he  was  neverthe- 
less becoming  restive  under  the  unremitting 
and  unreasoning  pressure  regarding  this  single 
point.  Could  no  one  exercise  patience  but  him- 
self? Could  antislavery  people  not  realize  and 
rest  content  with  the  undreamed-of  progress 
their  cause  had  already  made  —  slavery  abol- 
ished in  the  District  of  Columbia,  the  Ter- 
ritories restored  to  freedom,  almost  whole- 
sale emancipation  provided  through  the 
Confiscation  Act?  Had  he  not  aided  these 
measures,  signed  these  laws,  ordered  their  en- 
forcement, and  was  he  not,  day  and  night, 
laboring  to  secure  compensated  emancipation 
in  the  border  States  ?  Had  he  not  the  very 
proclamation  they  sought  lying  written  in  his 
desk,  waiting  only  the  favorable  moment 
when  he  might  announce  it  ?  Why  must  they 
push  him  to  the  wall,  and  compel  him  to  an 
avowal  which  might  blight  the  ripening  pub- 
lic sentiment  and  imperil  the  desired  consum- 
mation ?  We  may  infer  that  with  some  such 
feelings  he  listened  to  the  dogmatic  memorial 
of  the  delegation ;  for  his  whole  answer  is  in 
the  nature  of  a  friendly  protest  and  polite  re- 
buke against  their  impolitic  urgency,  and  the 
impressive  rhetorical  figure  he  employs  was 
not  intended  to  foreshadow  his  decision,  but 
to  illustrate  the  absurdity  of  attempting  to 
pluck  the  fruit  before  it  was  ripe.  The  great 
pith  and  point  of  the  interview  is  his  strong  and 
unqualified  declaration  that  he  held  the  sub- 
1  "Chicago   Tribune,"  Sept.  23,   1862,  and    "Na- 
tional Intelligencer,"  Sept.  26,  1862. 
ject  under  advisement, and  that  he  regarded  his 
military  authority  clear  and  ample.     Jf<:  said  : 
Understand,  I  raise  no  objection,  against  it  on 
legal  or  constitutional  grounds,  for,  as  Commander- 
in-Chief  of  the  Army  and  Navy,  in  time  of  war  I 
suppose  I  have  a  right  to  take  any  measure  which 
may  best  subdue  the  enemy. 
Three  days  after  this  interview  the  great 
battle  of  Antietam  was  begun,  which  resulted 
in  a  victory  for  the  Union  forces.  The  events 
of  war  had  abruptly  changed  political  condi- 
tions, and  the  President  seized  the  earliest 
possible  opportunity  to  announce  the  policy 
which  he  had  decided  upon  exactly  two 
months  before.  His  manner  and  language  on 
this  momentous  occasion  have  been  minutely 
recorded  in  the  diaries  of  two  members  of 
the  Cabinet,  and  liberal  quotations  from  both 
will  form  the  most  valuable  historical  presen- 
tation of  the  event  that  can  be  made.  The 
diary  of  Secretary  Chase  reads  as  follows : 
Monday,  Sept.  22,  1862. 
To  Department  about  9.  State  Department  mes- 
senger came  with  notice  to  heads  of  Departments 
to  meet  at  12.  Received  sundry  callers.  Went  to 
the  White  House.  All  the  members  of  the  Cabinet 
were  in  attendance.  There  was  some  general  talk, 
and  the  President  mentioned  that  Artemus  Ward 
had  sent  him  his  book.  Proposed  to  read  a  chapter 
which  he  thought  very  funny.  Read  it,  and  seemed 
to  enjoy  it  very  much  ;  the  heads  also  (except 
Stanton),  of  course.  The  chapter  was  ; '  High-handed 
Outrage  at  Utica."  The  President  then  took  a  graver 
tone,  and  said,  "Gentlemen,  I  have,  as  you  are 
aware,  thought  a  great  deal  about  the  relation  of 
this  war  to  slavery  ;  and  you  all  remember  that, 
several  weeks  ago,  I  read  to  you  an  order  I  had 
prepared  on  this  subject,  which,  on  account  of  ob- 
jections made  by  some  of  you,  was  not  issued. 
Ever  since  then  my  mind  has  been  much  occupied 
with  this  subject,  and  I  have  thought,  all  along, 
that  the  time  for  acting  on  it  might  probably  come. 
I  think  the  time  has  come  now.  I  wish  it  was  a 
better  time.  I  wish  that  we  were  in  a  better  con- 
dition. The  action  of  the  army  against  the  rebels 
has  not  been  quite  what  I  should  have  best  liked. 
But  they  have  been  driven  out  of  Maryland,  and 
Pennsylvania  is  no  longer  in  danger  of  invasion. 
When  the  rebel  army  was  at  Frederick,  I  determined. 
as  soon  as  it  should  be  driven  out  of  Maryland,  to 
issue  a  proclamation  of  emancipation,  such  as  I 
thought  most  likely  to  be  useful.  I  said  nothing 
to  any  one;  but  1  made  the  promise  to  myself, 
and  [hesitating  a  little]  to  my  Maker.  The  rebel 
army  is  now  driven  out,  and  I  am  going  to  fulfill 
that  promise.  I  have  got  you  together  to  hear  what 
I  have  written  down.  I  do  not  wish  your  advice 
about  the  main  matter,  for  that  I  have  determined 
for  myself.  This  I  say  without  intending  anything 
but  respect  for  any  one  of  you.  But  I  already 
know  the  views  of  each  on  this  question.  They 
have  been  heretofore  expressed,  and  I  have  consid- 
ered them  as  thoroughly  and  carefully  as  I  can. 
What  I  have  written  is  that  which  my  reflections 
have  determined  me  to  say.    If  there  is  anything  in
444 
ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN. 
the  expressions  1  use.  or  in  any  minor  matter,  which 
one  of  you  thinks  had  host  be  changed,  I  shall 
ad  to  receive  the  suggestions.    One  other  ob- 
tion  I  will  make.    I  know  very  well  that  many 
rs  might,  in  this  matter  as  in  others,  do  better 
than  1  can  :    and  it"  1  was  satisfied  that  the  public 
confidence  was  more  fully  possessed  by  any  one  of 
them  than   by  me.  and  knew  of  any  constitutional 
way  in  which  lie  could  he  put  in  my  place,  he  should 
have  it.      1   would    gladly  yield   it  to  him.      But, 
though  1  believe  that  1  have  not  so  much  of  the  con- 
fidence of  the  people  as  1   had  some  time  since,   I 
do  not   know  that,  all  things  considered,  any  other 
person  has  more  ;  and.  however  this  may  be,  there 
way  in  which  1  can  have  any  other  man  put 
where  I  am.     1  am  here.    I  must  do  the  best  I  can, 
and    bear  the   responsibility  of   taking  the   course 
which  1  feel  1  ought  to  take."1 
The  foregoing  account  written  by  Mr.  Chase 
is  full}-  corroborated  by  the  following  extract 
from  the  diary  of  Secretary  Welles,  in  which 
the  \ime  event  is  described  : 
September  22. 
A  special  Cabinet  meeting.  The  subject  was  the 
proclamation  for  emancipating  the  slaves,  after  a  cer- 
tain date,  in  States  that  shall  then  be  in  rebellion. 
For  several  weeks  the  subject  has  been  suspended, 
but  the  President  says  never  lost  sight  of.  When  it 
was  submitted,  and  now  in  taking  up  the  proclama- 
tion, the  President  stated  that  the  question  was 
finally  decided, —  the  act  and  the  consequences  were 
his. —  but  that  he  felt  it  due  to  us  to  make  us  ac- 
quainted with  the  fact  and  to  invite  criticisms  on 
the  paper  which  he  had  prepared.  There  were,  he 
had  found,  not  unexpectedly,  some  differences  in 
the  Cabinet ;  but  he  had,  after  ascertaining  in  his 
own  way  the  views  of  each  and  all,  individually 
and  collectively,  formed  his  own  conclusions  and 
made  his  own  decisions.  In  the  course  of  the  dis- 
cussion on  this  paper,  which  was  long,  earnest, 
and.  on  the  general  principle  involved,  harmonious, 
he  remarked  that  he  had  made  a  vow  —  a  covenant 
—  that  if  God  gave  us  the  victory  in  the  approaching 
battle  he  would  consider  it  an  indication  of  Divine 
will,  and  that  it  was  duty  to  move  forward  in  the 
cause  of  emancipation.  It  might  be  thought  strange, 
he  said,  that  he  had  in  this  way  submitted  the  dis- 
posal of  matters  when  the  way  was  not  clear  to 
his  mind  what  he  should  do.  God  had  decided  this 
question  in  favor  of  the  slaves.  He  was  satisfied  it 
was  right  —  was  confirmed  and  strengthened  in  his 
action  by  the  vow  and  results.  His  mind  was  fixed, 
his  decision  made,  but  he  wished  his  paper  an- 
nouncing his  course  as  correct  in  terms  as  it  could 
be  made  without  any  change  in  his  determination.2 
In  addition  to  its  record  of  the  President's 
language,  the  diary  of  Secretary  Chase  pro- 
ls  with  the  following  account  of  what  was 
said  by  several  members  of  the  Cabinet : 
1  Warden,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  pp.  481,  482. 
2  Welles,  Diary.     Unpublished  MS. 
•;   Hay's  Diary  (  MS. )  contains  the  following  record  : 
tember  23,  1862.  The  President  rewrote  the  proc- 
lamation on  Sunday  morning  carefully.    He  called  the 
Cabinet  together  on  Monday,  made  a  little  talk  to  them, 
and  read  the  momentous  document.    Mr.  Blair  and  Mr. 
The  President  then  proceeded  to  read  his  Eman- 
cipation Proclamation,  making  remarks  on  the  sev- 
eral parts  as  he  went  on,  and  showing  that  he  had 
fully  considered  the  whole  subject,  in  all  the  lights 
under  which  it  had  been  presented  to  him.  After 
he  had  closed,  Governor  Seward  said:  "The  general 
question  having  been  decided,  nothing  can  be  said 
farther  about  that.  Would  it  not,  however,  make 
the  proclamation  more  clear  and  decided  to  leave 
out  all  reference  to  the  act  being  sustained  during 
the  incumbency  of  the  present  President ;  and  not 
merely  say  that  the  Government  '  recognizes,'  but 
that  it  will  maintain,  the  freedom  it  proclaims?"  I 
followed,  saying  :  "  What  you  have  said,  Mr.  Presi- 
dent, fully  satisfies  me  that  you  have  given  to  every 
proposition  which  has  been  made  a  kind  and  can- 
did consideration.  And  you  have  now  expressed  the 
conclusion  to  which  you  have  arrived  clearly  and 
distinctly.  This  it  was  your  right,  and,  under  your 
oath  of  office,  your  duty,  to  do.  The  proclamation 
does  not,  indeed,  mark  out  exactly  the  course  I 
would  myself  prefer.  But  I  am  ready  to  take  it  just 
as  it  is  written,  and  to  stand  by  it  with  all  my  heart. 
I  think,  however,  the  suggestions  of  Governor  Sew- 
ard very  judicious,  and  shall  be  glad  to  have  them 
adopted."  The  President  then  asked  us  severally 
our  opinions  as  to  the  modification  proposed,  say- 
ing that  he  did  not  care  much  about  the  phrases  he 
had  used.  Every  one  favored  the  modification,  and 
it  was  adopted.  Governor  Seward  then  proposed 
that  in  the  passage  relating  to  colonization  some 
language  should  be  introduced  to  show  that  the  col- 
onization proposed  was  to  be  only  with  the  consent 
of  the  colonists  and  the  consent  of  the  States  in 
which  colonies  might  be  attempted.  This,  too,  was 
agreed  to,  and  no  other  modification  was  proposed. 
Mr.  Blair  then  said  that,  the  question  having  been 
decided,  he  would  make  no  objection  to  issuing  the 
proclamation  ;  but  he  would  ask  to  have  his  paper, 
presented  some  days  since,  against  the  policy,  filed 
with  the  proclamation.3  The  President  consented 
to  this  readily.  And  then  Mr.  Blair  went  on  to  say 
that  he  was  afraid  of  the  influence  of  the  proclama- 
tion on  the  border  States  and  on  the  army,  and  stated, 
at  some  length,  the  grounds  of  his  apprehensions. 
He  disclaimed  most  expressly,  however,  all  objection 
to  emancipation  per  se,  saying  he  had  always  been 
personally  in  favor  of  it  —  always  ready  for  immedi- 
ate emancipation  in  the  midst  of  slave  States,  rather 
than  submit  to  the  perpetuation  of  the  system.4 
The  statement  of  Mr.  Welles  which  relates 
the  Cabinet  proceedings  is  as  follows  : 
All  listened  with  profound  attention  to  the  read- 
ing, and  it  was,  I  believe,  assented  to  by  every 
member.  Mr.  Bates  repeated  the  opinions  he  had 
previously  expressed  in  regard  to  the  deportation  of 
the  colored  race.  Mr.  Seward  proposed  two  slight 
verbal  alterations,  which  were  adopted.  A  general 
discussion  then  took  place,  covering  the  whole 
ground  —  the     constitutional    question,    the     war 
Bates  made  slight  objections;  otherwise  the  Cabinet  was 
unanimous.  The  next  day  Mr.  Blair,  who  had  promised 
to  file  his  objections,  sent  a  note  stating  that  as  they 
referred  only  to  the  time  of  the  act,  he  would  not  file 
them,  lest  they  should  be  subject  to  misconstruc- 
tion." 
4   Warden,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  482.
THE   ANNOUNCEMENT  OF  EMANCIPATION 
\\\ 
power,  the  expediency  and  the  effect  of  the  move- 
ment. After  the  matter  had  been  very  fully  debated, 
Mr.  Stanton  made  a  very  emphatic  speech  sustain- 
ing the  measure,  and  in  closing  said  the  act  was  so 
important,  and  involved  consequences  so  vast,  that 
he  hoped  each  member  would  give  distinctly  and 
unequivocally  his  own  individual  opinion,  what- 
ever that  opinion  might  be.  Two  gentlemen,  he 
thought,  had  not  been  sufficiently  explicit,  although 
they  had  discussed  the  question  freely,  and  it  was 
understood  that  they  concurred  in  the  measure.  He 
referred,  he  said,  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
and  (hesitating  a  moment)  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy. 
It  was  understood,  I  believe,  by  all  present  that  he 
had  allusion  to  another  member,  with  whom  he 
was  not  in  full  accord.  Mr.  Chase  admitted  that  the 
subject  had  come  upon  him  unexpectedly  and  with 
some  surprise.  It  was  going  a  step  further  than  he 
had  ever  proposed,  but  he  was  prepared  to  accept 
and  support  it.  He  was  glad  the  President  had 
made  this  advance,  which  he  should  sustain  from 
his  heart,  and  he  proceeded  to  make  an  able  im- 
promptu argument  in  its  favor.  I  stated  that  the  Presi- 
dent did  not  misunderstand  my  position,  nor  any 
other  member ;  that  I  assented  most  unequivocally  to 
the  measure  as  a  war  necessity,  and  had  acted  upon  it. 
Mr.  Blair  took  occasion  to  say  that  he  was  an  eman- 
cipationist from  principle  ;  that  he  had  for  years, 
here  and  in  Missouri,  where  he  formerly  resided, 
openly  advocated  it ;  but  he  had  doubts  of  the  ex- 
pediency of  this  executive  action  at  this  particular 
juncture.  We  ought  not,  he  thought,  to  put  in 
jeopardy  the  patriotic  element  in  the  border  States, 
already  severely  tried.  This  proclamation  would,  as 
soon  as  it  reached  them,  be  likely  to  carry  over  those 
States  to  the  secessionists.  There  were  also  party  men 
in  the  free  States  who  were  striving  to  revive  old 
party  lines  and  distinctions,  into  whose  hand  we  were 
putting  a  club  to  be  used  against  us.  The  meas- 
ure he  approved,  but  the  time  was  inopportune.  He 
should  wish,  therefore,  to  file  his  objections.  This, 
the  President  said,  Mr.  Blair  could  do.  He  had, 
however,  considered  the  danger  to  be  apprehended 
from  the  first  objection  mentioned,  which  was  un- 
doubtedly serious,  but  the  difficulty  was  as  great 
not  to  act  as  to  act.  There  were  two  sides  to  that 
question.  For  months  he  had  labored  to  get  those 
States  to  move  in  this  matter,  convinced  in  his  own 
mind  that  it  was  their  true  interest  to  do  so,  but 
his  labors  were  vain.  We  must  make  the  forward 
movement.  They  would  acquiesce,  if  not  immedi- 
ately, soon  ;  for  they  must  be  satisfied  that  slavery 
had  received  its  death-blow  from  slave-owners  —  it 
could  not  survive  the  rebellion.  As  regarded  the 
other  objection,  it  had  not  much  weight  with  him  ; 
their  clubs  would  be  used  against  us  take  what 
course  we  might. 1 
The  Cabinet  discussion  of  the  proclamation 
being  completed,  Mr.  Seward  carried  the  doc- 
ument with  him  to  the  State  Department, 
where  the  formal  phraseology  of  attestation 
and  the  great  seal  were  added.  The  President 
signed  it  the  same  afternoon,  and  it  was  pub- 
lished in  full  by  the  leading  newspapers  of  the 
country  on  the  morning  of  September  23d.  As 
1  Welles  in  "  Galaxy,"  December,  1862,  pp.  846, 
847. 
elsewhere,  the  reading  of  die  official  annoui 
ment  created  a  profound  interest  in   . 
ton,  and  a  serenade  was  organized   the 
evening,  which   came  to  the   Executi 
sion  and  called  on  the  President  for  a  speech. 
1 1  is  reference  to  the  great  event  was  \ 
He  said  : 
1  appear  before  you  to  do  little  more  thai! 
knowledge  the  courtesy  you  pay  me,  and  to  thank 
you  for  it.  1  have  not  been  distinctly  informed 
why  it  is  that  on  this  occasion  you  appear  to  do  me 
this  honor,  though  I  suppose  it  is  because  of  the 
proclamation.  What  I  did,  I  did  after  a  v.  ry  full 
deliberation,  and  under  a  very  heavy  and  solemn 
sense  of  responsibility.  I  can  only  trust  in  God  I 
have  made  no  mistake.  I  shall  make  no  attempt  on 
this  occasion  to  sustain  what  I  have  done  or  said  by 
any  comment.  It  is  now  for  the  country  and  the 
world  to  pass  judgment,  and  maybe  take  action 
upon  it. 
Two  days  after  the  proclamation  was  issued 
a  number  of  the  governors  of  loyal  States  met 
for  conference  at  Altoona,  Pennsylvania  ;  and 
it  was  charged  at  the  time  that  this  occurrence 
had  some  occult  relation  to  the  President's  ac- 
tion. There  was  no  truth  whatever  in  the  alle- 
gation. It  was  directly  contradicted  by  the 
President  himself.  He  said  to  the  Hon.  George 
S.  Boutwell,  who  mentioned  the  rumor  to  him 
a  few  weeks  after  the  occurrence : 
1  never  thought  of  the  meeting  of  the  governors. 
The  truth  is  just  this  :  When  Lee  came  over  the 
river,  I  made  a  resolution  that  if  McClellan  drove  him 
back  I  would  send  the  proclamation  after  him.  The 
battle  of  Antietam  was  fought  Wednesday,  and  un- 
til Saturday  I  could  not  find  out  whether  we  had 
gained  a  victory  or  lost  a  battle.  It  was  then  too 
late  to  issue  the  proclamation  that  day  ;  and  the 
fact  is  I  fixed  it  up  a  little  Sunday,  and  Monday  I 
let  them  have  it.2 
The  collateral  evidence  is  also  conclusive  on 
this  point.  The  Altoona  meeting  originated 
with  Governor  Curtin  of  Pennsylvania,  who, 
warned  that  Lee's  army  was  about  to  cross  the 
Potomac,  was  with  all  diligence  preparing  his 
State  to  resist  the  expected  invasion.  On  the 
6th  of  September  he  telegraphed  to  the  gov- 
ernor ot  Massachusetts  and  others : 
In  the  present  emergency  would  it  not  be  well 
that  the  loyal  governors  should  meet  at  some  point 
in  the  border  States  to  take  measures  for  the  more 
active  support  of  the  Government? 
Receiving  favorable  replies,  the  governors 
of  Pennsylvania.  Ohio,  and  West  Virginia 
united  in  a  joint  invitation,  under  date  of  Sep- 
tember 14,  for  such  a  meeting  to  be  held  at 
Altoona  on  the  24th.  The  object  was  sim- 
ply to  consult  on  the  best  means  of  common 
2  Boutwell,  "The  Lawyer,  the  Statesman,  and  the 
Soldier,"  pp.  116,  117.
440 
UUt A II AM  LINCOLN. 
defense  and  the  vigorous  prosecution  of  the  war. 
There  was  no  design  to  organize  any  pressure 
upon  the  President,  either  about  the  question 
of  slavery  or  about  the  removal  of  McClellan 
from  command,  and  the  President  neither  an- 
ticipated  nor   feared   any  interference  of  this 
acter.  Several  members  of  the  body,  dif- 
lolitical  sentiment,  indignantly  denied 
theaecusation  of  a  political  plot,  which,  indeed, 
would  have  been  impossible  in  a  gathering  of 
men  oi  such  strong  individual  traits,  holding 
diverse  views,  and  clothed  with  greatly  vary- 
ing interests  and  responsibilities. 
The  Proclamation  of  Emancipation  was  as 
great  a  surprise  to  them  as  to  the  general 
public,  gratifying  some  and  displeasing  others. 
It  was  not  strange  that  it  should  immediately 
engage  their  eager  interest  and  call  out  some 
sort  of  joint  response.  The  proclamation  had 
been  printed  on  the  23d;  the  Altoona  gather- 
ing was  called  on  the  14th  and  held  on  the 
24th.  Between  the  date  of  the  call  and  the 
day  of  the  meeting  the  military  situation  was 
altogether  changed.  The  battle  of  Antietam 
had  driven  Lee;s  army  in  retreat  back  across 
the  Potomac.  Instead  of  emergency  measures 
for  defense,  the  assembled  governors  could 
now  quietly  discuss  points  of  general  and  mu- 
tual interest,  relating  to  the  recruiting,  organi- 
zation, equipment,  and  transportation  of  troops, 
the  granting  of  furloughs,  and  the  care  and  re- 
moval of  the  sick  and  wounded.  Their  con- 
ference passed  in  entire  harmony;  and  a  day 
or  two  later  they  nearly  all  proceeded  to 
Washington  for  a  personal  interview  with  the 
President  and  the  Secretary  of  War.  They 
presented  a  written  address  to  the  President, 
signed  then  and  within  a  few  days  afterward 
by  the  governors  of  sixteen  of  the  free  States 
and  the  governor  of  West  Virginia,  reiterating 
devotion  to  the  Union,  loyalty  to  the  Consti- 
tution and  laws,  and  earnest  support  to  the 
President  in  suppressing   rebellion;  and  em- 
ing  only  the  single  specific  recommenda- 
tion that  a  reserve  army  of  100,000  men  ought 
tantly  to  be  kept  on  foot,  to  be  raised, 
armed,  equipped,  and  trained  at  home,  ready 
for  emergencies.  The  written  address  also  con- 
tained a  hearty  indorsement  of  the  new  eman- 
ion  policy  announced  in  the  President's 
proclamation.  This  declaration,  as  was  to 
have  been  expected,  developed  the  only  an- 
tagonism of  views  which  grew  out  of  the  whole 
transaction.  The  address  was  written  at  Wash- 
ington, and  was  therefore  not  discussed  at 
Altoona.  Properly  speaking,  it  was  the  sup- 
pi  .mentary  action  of  only  a  portion  of  the 
assembled  delegates.  It  was,  however,  trans- 
mitted for  signature  to  all  the  loyal  executives; 
but  the  governors  of  the  States  of  New  Jersey, 
Delaware,  Maryland,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri 
replied,  that  while  concurring  in  the  other 
declarations  of  the  address,  they  declined  sign- 
ing it,  because  they  dissented  from  that  por- 
tion of  it  which  indorsed  the  Proclamation  of 
Emancipation. 
Coming  as  it  did  immediately  after  the  an- 
nouncement of  his  new  policy,  President  Lin- 
coln could  not  but  be  gratified  at  the  public 
declarations  emanating  from  the  Altoona  meet- 
ing. On  his  military  policy  it  assured  him  of 
the  continuation  of  an  individual  official  sup- 
port. On  his  emancipation  policy  it  gave  him 
a  public  approval  from  the  present  official 
power  of  seventeen  States,  as  against  the  dis- 
sent of  only  five  States  of  the  border,  where 
indeed  he  had  no  right  to  expect,  for  the 
present  at  least,  any  more  favorable  official 
sentiment.  Nevertheless,  it  did  not  free  the  ex- 
periment from  uncertainty  and  danger.  It  was 
precisely  this  balance  of  power,  political  and 
military,  wielded  by  these  hesitating  border 
States,  which  was  essential  to  the  success  of 
the  Union  cause;  but  he  had  measured  the 
probability  with  an  acuteness  of  judgment  and 
timed  his  proceeding  with  a  prudence  of  ac- 
tion that  merited  success,  and  in  due  time 
triumphantly  justified  his  faith. 
Every  thoughtful  reader  will  have  more 
than  a  passing  curiosity  to  examine  the  exact 
phraseology  of  a  document  which  ushered  in 
the  great  political  regeneration  of  the  Ameri- 
can people.     It  reads  as  follows : 
I,  Abraham  Lincoln,  President  of  the  United  States 
of  America,  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army  and 
Navy  thereof,  do  hereby  proclaim  and  declare  that 
hereafter,  as  heretofore,  the  war  will  be  prosecuted  for 
the  object  of  practically  restoring  the  constitutional 
relations  between  the  United  States  and  each  of  the 
States  and  the  people  thereof,  in  which  States  that  re- 
lation is  or  may  be  suspended  or  disturbed.  That  it  is 
my  purpose,  upon  the  next  meeting  of  Congress,  to 
again  recommend  the  adoption  of  a  practical  meas- 
ure, tendering  pecuniary  aid  to  the  free  acceptance 
or  rejection  of  all  the  slave  States,  so-called,  the 
people  whereof  may  not  then  be  in  rebellion  against 
the  United  States,  and  which  States  may  then  have 
voluntarily  adopted,  or  thereafter  may  voluntarily 
adopt,  the  immediate  or  gradual  abolishment  of  slav- 
ery within  their  respective  limits ;  and  that  the 
effort  to  colonize  persons  of  African  descent,  with 
their  consent,  upon  this  continent  or  elsewhere, 
with  the  previously  obtained  consent  of  the  gov- 
ernments existing  there,  will  be  continued.  That 
on  the  first  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty-three,  all  per- 
sons held  as  slaves  within  any  State,  or  designated 
part  of  a  State,  the  people  whereof  shall  then  be 
in  rebellion  against  the  United  States,  shall  be  then, 
thenceforward,  and  forever  free  ;  and  the  Executive 
Government  of  the  United  States,  including  the 
military  and  naval  authorities  thereof,  will  recog- 
nize and  maintain  the  freedom  of  such  persons,  and 
will  do  no  act  or  acts  to  repress  such  persons,  or 
any  of  them,  in  any  efforts  they  may  make  for  their
TIfK  ANNOUNCEMENT  OF  EMANCIPATION 
4*7 
actual  freedom.  That  the  Executive  will,  on  the 
first    day  of  January   aforesaid,    by    proclamation, 
designate  the  States,  or  parts  of  States  if  any,  in 
which  the  people  thereof,  respectively,  shall  then  be 
in  rebellion  against  the  United  States  ;  and  the  fact 
that  any  State,  or  the  people  thereof,  shall,  on  that 
day,  be  in  good  faith  represented  in  the  Congress 
of  tlie  United  States  by  members  chosen  thereto  at 
elections,  wherein  a  majority  of  the  qualified  voters 
of  such  State  shall  have  participated,  shall,  in  the 
absence  of  strong  countervailing  testimony,  be  deemed 
conclusive  evidence  that  such  State,  and  the  people 
thereof,  are  not  then  in  rebellion  against  the  United 
States. 
Then,  after  reciting  the  language  of  "  An  act 
to  make  an  additional  article  of  war,"  approved 
March  13,  1862,  and  also  sections  9  and  10  of 
the  Confiscation  Act,  approved  July  17,  1862, 
and  enjoining  their  enforcement  upon  all  per- 
sons in  the  military  and  naval  service,  the  proc- 
lamation concludes : 
And  I  do  hereby  enjoin  upon  and  order  all  per- 
sons engaged  in  the  military  and  naval  service  of 
the  United  States  to  observe,  obey,  and  enforce, 
within  their  respective  spheres  of  service,  the  acts 
and  sections  above  recited.  And  the  Executive  will, 
in  due  time,  recommend  that  all  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  who  shall  have  remained  loyal  thereto 
throughout  the  rebellion,  shall,  upon  the  restoration 
of  the  constitutional  relations  between  the  United 
States  and  the  people,  if  that  relation  shall  have 
been  suspended  or  disturbed,  be  compensated  for  all 
losses  by  acts  of  the  United  States,  including  the 
loss  of  slaves. 
A  careful  reading  and  analysis  of  the  docu- 
ment shows  it  to  have  contained  four  leading 
propositions:  (1.)  A  renewal  of  the  plan  of 
compensated  abolishment.  (2.)  A  continu- 
ance of  the  effort  at  voluntary  colonization. 
(3.)  The  announcement  of  peremptory  mili- 
tary emancipation  of  all  slaves  in  States  in  re- 
bellion at  the  expiration  of  the  warning  notice. 
(4.)  A  promise  to  recommend  ultimate  com- 
pensation to  loyal  owners. 
The  political  test  of  the  experiment  of  mili- 
tary emancipation  thus  announced  by  the  Presi- 
dent came  almost  immediately  in  the  autumn 
elections  for  State  officers  and  State  legisla- 
tures, and  especially  for  representatives  to  the 
thirty-eighth  Congress.  The  decided  failure  of 
McClellan's  Richmond  campaign  and  the  in- 
action of  the  Western  army  had  already  pro- 
duced much  popular  discontent,  which  was 
only  partly  relieved  by  the  victory  of  Antietam. 
The  canvass  had  been  inaugurated  by  the 
Democratic  party  with  violent  protests  against 
the  antislavery  legislation  of  Congress,  and  it 
now  added  the  loud  outcry  that  the  Adminis- 
tration had  changed  the  war  for  the  Union  to 
a  war  for  abolition.  The  party  conflict  became 
.  active  and  bitter,  and  the  Democrats,  having 
all  the  advantage  of  an  aggressive  issue,  made 
great  popular  gains,  not  only  throughoul 
middle  belt  of  States,  but  in  New  York,  v. 
they  elected  their  governor,  thus  gaining  1 
trol  of  iho  executive  machinery,  whu 
embarrassed  the    Administration    in 
measures  to  maintain  the  army.   Th<   1 
of  Democrats  in  the  Hon  e  of  Represental 
was  increased  from  forty-four  to  seventy  I 
and  the  reaction  threatened  for  a  tin 
prive  Mr.  Lincoln  of  the  support  of  the  If 
But  against  this  temporary  adverse  political 
current  the  leaders  and  the  bulk  of  the  Republi- 
can party  folio  wed  Mr.  Lincoln  with  loyal  adhe- 
sion, accepting  and  defending  his  emancipation 
policy  with  earnestness  and  enthusiasm.  In  his 
annual  message  of  December  1, 1862,  the  I  : 
dent  did  not  discuss  his  Emancipation  Procla- 
mation, but  renewed  and  made  an  elaborate 
argument  to  recommend  his  plan  of  compen- 
sated abolishment,  "not  in  exclusion  of,  but 
additional  to,  all  others  for  restoring  and  pre- 
serving the  national  authority  throughout  the 
Union."  Meanwhile  the  Democratic  minority 
in  the  House,  joined  by  the  pro-slavery  con- 
servatives from  the  border  slave-States,  lost  no 
opportunity  to  oppose  emancipation  in  even- 
form.  On  the  nth  of  December  Mr.  Yeaman 
of  Kentucky  offered  resolutions  declaring  the 
President's  proclamation  unwarranted  by  the 
Constitution  and  a  useless  and  dangerous  war 
measure.  But  these  propositions  were  only 
supported  by  a  vote  of  forty-seven,  while  they 
were  promptly  laid  on  the  table  by  a  vote  of 
ninety-five  members.  The  Republicans  were 
unwilling  to  remain  in  this  attitude  of  giving; 
emancipation  a  merely  negative  support,  A  few 
days  later  (December  15).  Mr.  S.  C.  Fessenden 
of  Maine  put  the  identical  phraseology  in  an 
affirmative  form,  and  by  a  test  vote  of  seventy- 
eight  to  fifty-two  the  House  resolved  : 
That  the  proclamation  of  the  President  o\  the 
United  States,  of  the  date  of  22d  September.  1S02. 
is  warranted  by  the  Constitution,  and  that  the  pol- 
icy of  emancipation,  as  indicated  in  that  proclama- 
tion, is  well  adapted  to  hasten  the  restoration  of 
peace,  was  well  chosen  as  a  war  measure,  and  is  an 
exercise  of  power  with  proper  regard  for  the  rights 
of  the  States  and  the  perpetuity  of  free  government. 
With  the  proclamation  thus  heartily  indoi 
by  nearly  every  free  State  governor  and  nearly 
two-thirds  of  the  loyal  representatives.  Mr. 
Lincoln,  who  had  accurately  foreseen  the  dan- 
gers as  well  as  the  benefits  ot  the  critical  step 
he  had  taken,  could  well  a  fiord  to  wait  for  the 
full  tide  of  approval,  for  which  he  looked  with 
confidence  and  which  came  to  him  from  that 
time  onward  with  steadiness  and  ever-growing 
volume,  both  from  the  armies  in  the  field  and 
the  people  in  their  homes  throughout  the  loyal 
North.  .  ,  Q 
GUJ   [  V  M
A    REGRET. 
OH.  could  we  but  have  seen,  while  they  were  ours, 
The  grace  of  days  forever  passed  away; 
Had  we  but  felt  the  beauty  of  the  flowers 
That  bloomed  for  us  —  before  they  knew  decay; 
Could  we  have  known  how  we  should  yearn  in  vain 
For  looks  and  smiles  no  more  to  greet  our  sight, 
Or  how  the  fruitless  tears  would  fall  like  rain 
For  hours  of  sweet  communion,  vanished  quite; 
Their  worth  to  us — had  we  but  better  known, 
Then  had  we  held  them  dearer,  while  our  own, 
Had  kept  some  salvage  from  the  joys  o'erthrown, 
And  loneliness  itself  had  found  us  less  alone ! 
Ames  Maule  Machar 
THE    SHERIFF'S    POSSE. 
PICTURES    OF    THE    FAR    WEST.       III. 
HIS  picture  is  not  so  sincere  as 
it  might  be.  The  artist,  in  the 
course  of  many  rides  over  these 
mountain  pastures,  by  daylight 
or  twilight  or  moonrise,  has 
never  yet  encountered  anything 
so  sensational  as  a  troop  of  armed  men  on  the 
track  of  a  criminal.  Yet  rumors  are  passing, 
from  turbulent  camps  above  us  in  the  moun- 
tains or  from  the  seductive  valley  towns,  that 
ea  sily  suggest  some  such  night  journey  as  this. 
The  riders  make  haste  slowly,  breasting  slope 
after  slope  of  the  interminable  cattle-ranges,  on 
the  alert,  as  they  climb  out  of  gulch  after  gulch 
of  shadow,  for  the  next  long  outlook  ahead. 
It  maybe  mentioned  that  by  far  the  greater 
number  of  criminals  confined  in  the  jails  of  the 
fir  West  are  there  for  a  class  of  offenses  pecul- 
iar to  the  country.  They  are  men  dangerous  in 
direction,  perhaps,  but  generally  not  de- 
praved. The  "trusties"  are  often  domesticated 
upon  ranches  near  the  town,  and  apparently 
are  unwatched,  and  on  the  best  of  terms  with 
the  ranchman's  family.  They  have  a  simple 
faith  in  t!  i  for  a  certain  sort  of  action, 
under  given  circumstances,  which  supports 
them  under  sentence  of  the  law,  and  serves 
instead  of  a  clear  c  onscience.  They  have  done 
nothing  of  which  they  are  ashamed. 
For  example,  a  cattle-man  meets  a  sheep-man 
on  the  hills.  The  sheep-man  represents  to  the 
cattle-man  that  his  only  possible  course  is  to 
take  his  band  across  the  cattle-man's  range  — 
to  "sheep"  him,  in  the  local  phrase.   A  sheep- 
man makes  no  treaty  with  the  owners  of  the 
land  he  crosses  that  he  will  not  "  turn  into  the 
fields,  or  into  the  vineyards  " ;  that  he  will  not 
"  drink  of  the  water  of  the  well  ";  but  go  by  the 
highway  until  he  has  passed  on.  The  land  be- 
longs to  him  as  much  as  to  the  cattle-man  who 
has  pitched  in  its  borders.  But  it  is  a  perfectly 
clear  case  to  the  cattle-man  that  the  sheep-man's 
multitude  will  lick  up  all  before  them,  and  that 
his  own  multitude  must  starve  on  what  is  left. 
He  does  not  waste  time  praying,  "  Curse  me  this 
sheep-man !  "  He  goes  out  against  the  sheep- 
man, without  prayerful  preliminaries.  He  "  lays 
for  him  "  at  night,  when  he  has  lighted  his  soli- 
tary fire  in  the  sage-brush.  The  next  day  a  dis- 
organized band  of  sheep,  minus  a  grimy  shep- 
herd, goes  wandering  back  to  the  river,  to  the 
despair  of  a  masterless  dog. 
The  case  is  tried  in  the  valley  town  and  the 
murderer  is  acquitted,  the  sentiment  of  the 
community  being  with  him  to  a  much  greater 
extent  than  would  be  generally  admitted.  No 
judge  nor  jury  nor  term  of  punishment  could 
have  altered  his  personal  conviction  and  that 
of  his  friends  that  his  deed  was  only  an  effort 
in  self-defense  and  an  act  of  public  justice. 
If  such  a  fugitive  as  this  is  overhauled  in  a 
night-chase  by  the  sheriff  and  his  men,  he  is 
treated  as  a  comrade  "  in  trouble."  To  quote 
a  description,  given  in  Hibernian  good  faith, 
of  a  young  man  at  large  with  the  murder  of 
his  father —  in  defense  of  his  mother,  it  is 
claimed  —  on  his  head,  "He  is  a  perfect  gen- 
tleman if  he  is  n't  crossed."  *    *    *
THE  ALL-KIND   MOTHER. 
545 
by  which  we  can  separate  the  work  of  one  from    associated  in  all  the  work  attributed  to  either, 
that  of  the  other,  and  we  may  imagine  them    except  that  at  Avignon. 
IV.  ./.  Stillman. 
NOTES    BY    TIMOTHY    COLE,     ENGRAVER. 
ST.     CATHERINE     OF    ALEXANDRIA. 
NOVEMBKR5, 1887.  — AtPisal  found  undoubtedly 
the  finest  work  of  Simone  Memmi  —  small  panels 
of  single  saints.  Such  rare  and  delicate  work  I  had 
not  supposed  him  capable  of.  The  finish  of  these  paint- 
ings is  most  exquisite,  and  reminds  me  much  of  the 
treatment  of  Duccio,  whom  he  succeeded.  Of  these 
I  had  begun  to  engrave  the  Santa  Chiara,  but  subse- 
quently abandoned  it  for  the  St.  Catherine. 
May  25,  1888.  —  "  St.  Catherine  of  Alexandria,"  by 
Simone  Martini,  called  Simone  Memmi,  is  a  detail 
from  a  panel  in  the  library  of  the  Seminario  at  Pisa. 
The  panel  itself  is  a  detail  of  what  was  once  a  large 
and  beautiful  work.  It  is  now  dismembered,  and  some 
of  its  parts  are  found  in  the  Pisa  Academy  and  the 
others  at  the  Seminario ;  none  of  the  panels,  however, 
are  lost.  It  was  painted  in  the  year  1320  for  the  high 
altar  of  the  Church  of  St.  Catherine,  Pisa,  and  was 
composed  of  seven  principal  compartments  represent- 
ing half-length  figures  of  apostles  and  saints.  One  of 
these,  a  Madonna  and  Child,  occupied  the  center,  the 
others  being  disposed  on  each  side.  They  are  about 
two  feet  high,  and  are  each  inclosed  in  a  handsome 
framework.  Above  each  are  two  small  half-lengths, 
and  above  and  between  each  of  these  two  is  a  smaller 
medallion,  the  whole  forming  a  panel  about  four  feet 
high.  These  seven  principal  panels  represent,  besides 
the  Madonna  and  Child,  the  following  saints  :  St.  John 
the  Evangelist,  St.  Mary  Magdalene,  St.  Peter,  St. 
John  the  Baptist,  St.  Catherine  of  Alexandria,  and  St. 
Dominic. 
The  predella  to  the    picture  consisted  of  an    I 
Homo  in  the  center,  and  twelve  saint:-,,  male  and   fe- 
male, six  on   each  side  —  half-length-,,  perhaps   nine 
inches   high.    The  whole  when   complete   must   have 
measured  some  14  or  15  feet  long  by  6  or  7  feet  high. 
It  is  painted  in  tempera  upon  wood.  The  backgrounds 
and  glories  are  of  gold,  as  well  as  much  of  the  trim- 
ming and  ornamentation  of  the  draperies.  The  dra- 
pery of  St.  Catherine  is  richly  ornamented,  and  the 
painting  of  this  is  exquisite  for  delicacy  and  clean- 
ness, as  is  the  engraved  work  in  the  glory  around  the 
head  —  far  too  delicate  and  neat  to  be  done  justice  to 
in  any  engraving.  It  will  be  noticed  that  the  execu- 
tion of  the  patterns  in  the  drapery  is  flat,  without  re- 
gard to  foreshortening  in  the  folds.  Attention  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  directed  to  this  foreshortening 
until  a  century  later,  in  the  time  of  Pietro  delia  Fran- 
ceses, (141 5-1 492).  The  color  of  the  drapery  is  of  a 
warm  gray  tone,  yellowish  in  the  lighter  portions,  and 
the  dark  folds  of  a  neutral  or  bluish  tint.  The  flesh  tints 
are  similar  in  tone,  but  darker.  The  book  is  red,  but 
of  a  soft,  agreeable  tone ;  the  hand  which  holds  it  has 
been  restored.  St.  Catherine,  as  patron  saint  and  martyr, 
has  several  attributes.  The  crown  is  hers  by  right  as 
sovereign  princess ;  she  bears  the  palm  as  martyr  ; 
she  holds  the  book  as  significant  of  her  learning. 
THE   ALL-KIND    MOTHER. 
LO,  whatever  is  at  hand 
Is  full  meet  for  the  demand : 
Nature  ofttimes  giveth  best 
When  she  seemeth  chariest. 
She  hath  shapen  shower  and  sun 
To  the  need  of  every  one  — 
Summer  bland  and  winter  drear, 
Dimpled  pool  and  frozen  mere. 
All  thou  lackest  she  hath  still, 
Near  thy  finding  and  thy  fill. 
Yield  her  fullest  faith,  and  she 
Will  endow  thee  royally. 
Loveless  weed  and  lily  fair 
She  attendeth,  here  and  there  — 
Kindly  to  the  weed  as  to 
The  lorn  lily  teared  with  dew. 
Each  to  her  hath  use  as  dear 
As  the  other;  an  thou  clear 
Thy  cloyed  senses  thou  may'st  see 
Haply  all  the  mystery. 
Thou  shalt  see  the  lily  get 
Its  divinest  blossom ;  yet 
Shall  the  weed's  tip  bloom  no  less 
With  the  song-bird's  gleefulness. 
Vol.  XXXV II.—  74. 
Thou  art  poor,  or  thou  art  rich  — 
Never  lightest  matter  which  : 
All  the  glad  gold  of  the  noon. 
All  the  silver  of  the  moon. 
She  doth  lavish  on  thee,  while 
Thou  withholdest  any  smile 
Of  thy  gratitude  to  her. 
Baser  used  than  usurer. 
Shame  be  on  thee  an  thou  seek 
Not  her  pardon,  with  hot  cheek. 
And  bowed  head,  and  brimming  eyes. 
At  her  merciful  "  Arise  ! 
James  While omb  Riley.
ABRAHAM     LINCOLN:     A    HISTORY.1 
I  HI-     REMOVAL    OF    McCLELLAN.  — FINANCIAL    MEASURES.— 
SEWARD    AND     CHASE. 
iHN    G.    NICOLAY    AND    JOHN    HAY,    PRIVATE    SECRETARIES    TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 
HE  latter  part  of  September 
wore  away  in  resting  the 
exhausted  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  and  beginning 
anew  the  endless  work  of 
equipment  and  supply  — 
work  which  from  the  na- 
ture of  the  case  can  never 
be  finished  in  an  army  of  200,000  men,  any 
more  than  in  a  city  of  the  same  size.  But  this 
was  a  lesson  which  McClellan  appeared  never 
able  to  learn.  So  long  as  a  single  brigade 
commander  complained  that  some  of  his  men 
needed  new  shoes  it  seemed  impossible  for  Mc- 
Clellan to  undertake  active  operations  until  that 
special  want  was  supplied.  When  that  was 
done  some  company  of  cavalry  was  short  a 
few  horses,  and  the  vicious  circle  of  importu- 
nate demand  and  slow  supply  continued.  On 
the  23d  of  September,  General  McClellan  dis- 
covered signs  of  heavy  reinforcements  mov- 
ing towards  the  enemy  from  Winchester  and 
Charlestown.  The  fact  of  the  enemy's  remain- 
ing so  long  in  his  front,  instead  of  appear- 
ing to  him  as  a  renewed  opportunity,  only 
excited  in  him  the  apprehension  that  he  would 
be  again  attacked.  He  therefore  set  up  a  new 
clamor  for  re  enforcements.  "  A  defeat  at  this 
juncture  would  be  ruinous  to  our  cause.  .  . 
General  Sumner  with  his  corps  and  Williams's 
ks's)  occupy- Harper's  Ferry  and  the  sur- 
rounding heights.  I  think,"  is  the  doleful  plaint 
with  which  the  dispatch  closes,  "  he  will  be 
able  to  hold  his  position  till  reinforcements 
arrive."  Four  days  afterwards  he  writes  again 
in  the  same  strain : 
This  army  is  not  now  in  condition  to  undertake  an- 
other campaign.  .  .  My  present  purpose  is  to  hold 
the  army  about  as  it  is  now,  rendering  Harper's 
F-.-rry  secure  and  watching  the  river  closely,  intend- 
ing to  attack  the  enemy  should  he  attempt  to  cross 
to  this 
He  is  full  of  apprehension  in  regard  to  an 
attack  upon  Maryland,  and  prays  that  the  river 
may  rise  so  that  the  enemy  may  not  cross. 
2  In  his  memoirs  McClellan  tries  to  create  the  im- 
pression that  the  President  was  satisfied  with  his  delay 
at  this  time  ;  but  his  private  letters  printed  in  the  same 
volume  leave  no  doubt  of  the  contrary.  He  says,  refer- 
ring to  the  President's  visit,  October  2,  "  His  ostensi- 
The  President,  sick  at  heart  at  this  exasper- 
ating delay,  resolved  at  the  end  of  the  month  to 
make  a  visit  to  McClellan's  camp  to  see  if  in  a 
personal  interview  he  could  not  inspire  him  with 
some  sense  of  the  necessity  for  action.  The 
morning  report  of  the  30th  of  September 
showed  the  enormous  aggregate  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  present  and  absent,  including 
Banks's  command  in  Washington,  as  303,959. 
Of  this  number  over  100,000  wrere  absent, 
28,000  on  special  duty,  and  73,000  present  for 
duty  in  Banks's  command,  leaving  100,000 
present  for  duty  under  McClellan's  immediate 
command.  This  vast  multitude  in  arms  was 
visited  by  the  President  in  the  first  days  of  Octo- 
ber. So  far  as  he  could  see,  it  was  a  great  army 
ready  for  any  work  that  could  be  asked  of  it. 
During  all  his  visit  he  urged  with  as  much  en- 
ergy as  was  consistent  with  his  habitual  courtesy 
the  necessity  for  an  immediate  employment  of 
this  force.2  McClellan  met  all  his  suggestions 
and  entreaties  with  an  amiable  inertia,  which 
deeply  discouraged  the  President.  After  a  day 
and  a  night  spent  in  such  an  interchange  of 
views  the  President  left  his  tent  early  in  the 
morning  and  walked  with  a  friend  3  to  an  em- 
inence which  commanded  a  view  of  a  great 
part  of  the  camp.  For  miles  beneath  them, 
glistening  in  the  rising  sun,  spread  the  white 
tents  of  the  mighty  hosts.  The  President 
gazed  for  a  while  in  silence  upon  the  scene, 
then  turned  to  his  friend  and  said  :  "  Do  you 
know  what  that  is  ?  "  He  answered  in  some 
astonishment,  "  It  is  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac." "  So  it  is  called,"  responded  the  Presi- 
dent; "but  that  is  a  mistake:  it  is  only 
McClellan's  body-guard."  He  went  back  to 
Washington  taking  little  comfort  from  his 
visit ;  and  after  a  few  days  of  painful  delibera- 
tion, getting  no  news  of  any  movement,  he  sent 
McClellan  the  following  positive  instruc- 
tions : 
Washington,  D.  C,  October  6,  1862. 
Major-General  McClellan  :  I  am  instructed  to 
telegraph  you  as  follows:  The  President  directs  that 
you  cross  the  Potomac  and  give  battle  to  the  enemy 
ble  purpose  is  to  see  the  troops  and  the  battle-field  ;  I 
incline  to  think  that  the  real  purpose  of  his  visit  is  to 
push  me  into  a  premature  advance  into  Virginia." 
?>  Hon.  O.  M.  Hatch  of  Illinois,  from  whom  we  have 
this  story. 
1  Copyright  by  J.  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  1886.     All  rights  reserved.
A    HISTORY. 
547 
or  drive  him  South.  Your  army  must  move  now 
while  the  roads  are  good.  If  you  cross  the  river  be- 
tween the  enemy  and  Washington  and  cover  the 
latter  by  your  operations,  you  can  be  reenforced  by 
30,000  men.  If  you  move  up  the  valley  of  the 
Shenandoah,  not  more  than  12,000  or  15,000  can 
be  sent  to  you.  The  President  advises  the  interior 
line,  between  Washington  and  the  enemy,  but  does 
not  order  it.  He  is  very  desirous  that  your  army 
move  as  soon  as  possible.  You  will  immediately  re- 
port what  line  you  adopt  and  when  you  intend  to 
cross  the  river  ;  also  to  what  point  the  reinforce- 
ments are  to  be  sent.  It  is  necessary  that  the  plan 
of  your  operations  be  positively  determined  on  be- 
fore orders  are  given  for  building  bridges  and  re- 
pairing railroads.  I  am  directed  to  add  that  the 
Secretary  of  War  and  the  General-in-Chief  fully  con- 
cur with  the  President  in  these  instructions. 
H.  W.   Halleck,  General-in-Chief. 
These  orders  were  emphasized  a  few  days 
later  by  a  repetition  of  the  same  stinging  in- 
sult which  Lee  had  once  before  inflicted  upon 
McClellan  on  the  Peninsula.  Stuart's  cavalry 
crossed  the  Potomac,  rode  entirely  around  the 
Union  army,  recrossed  the  river  lower  down, 
and  joined  Lee  again  without  damage.  Mc- 
Clellan seems  to  have  felt  no  mortification 
from  this  disgraceful  occurrence,  which  he  used 
merely  as  a  pretext  for  new  complaints  against 
the  Government.  He  seemed  to  think  that  he 
had  presented  a  satisfactory  excuse  for  his  in- 
efficiency when  he  reported  to  Halleck  that 
his  cavalry  had  "  marched  78  miles  in  24 
hours  while  Stuart's  was  marching  90."  He 
pretended  that  he  had  at  the  time  only  a  thou- 
sand cavalry.  This  led  to  a  remarkable  corre- 
spondence 1  between  him  and  the  Government, 
which  shows  the  waste  and  destruction  of  mili- 
tary material  under  McClellan.  By  the  re- 
ports from  the  Quartermaster- General's  office, 
there  were  sent  to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
during  the  six  weeks  ending  the  14th  of  Octo- 
ber, 10,254  horses  and  a  very  large  number  of 
mules.  "The  cost  of  the  horses  issued  within 
the  last  six  weeks  to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac," 
says  General  Meigs,  "  is  probably  not  less  than 
$1,200,000."  We  may  well  ask  in  the  words 
used  by  the  Quartermaster- General  in  another 
place:  Is  there  an  instance  on  record  of  such 
a  drain  and  destruction  of  horses  "  in  a  country 
not  a  desert "  ?  Day  after  day  the  tedious  con- 
troversy went  on.  This  frightful  waste  of  horses 
was  turned  by  McClellan,  as  he  turned  every- 
thing, into  a  subject  of  reproach  against  the 
Government.  To  one  of  his  complaining  dis- 
patches the  President  sent  this  sharp  rejoinder: 
"  Will  you  pardon  me  for  asking  what  the  horses 
of  your  army  have  done  ance  the  battle  o: 
tietam  that  fatigues  anything?"    And  again: 
"  Stuart's  cavalry  outmarched  om  .  having 
tainly  done  more  marked  service  on  the  Penin- 
sula and  everywhere  since."    These  dis] 
elicited  only  new  complaints,  vindications,  and 
explanations. 
It  was  not  alone  the  pretended  lack  of  ho 
which  kept  him  idle.  In  his  dispatcher  to  V. 
ington  he  continually  complained  —  and  the 
complaint  was  echoed  in  the  correspondence  of 
his  satellites  and  by  his  adherents  in  thepresa  — 
that  the  army  was  unable  to  improve  the  fine- 
weather  on  account  of  the  deficiency  of  all 
manner  of  supplies.2  The  Secretary  of  War, 
thinking  it  necessary  at  last  to  take  noti< 
this  widespread  rumor,  addressed  1  a  letter  to 
the  General-in-Chief  demanding  a  report  upon 
the  subject.  General  Halleck  reported  that 
on  several  occasions  where  General  McClellan 
had  telegraphed  that  his  army  was  deficient  in 
certain  supplies  it  was  ascertained  that  in  even- 
instance  the  requisition  had  been  immediately 
filled,  except  in  one,  where  the  Quartermaster- 
General  was  forced  to  send  to  Philadelphia  for 
the  articles  needed.  He  reported  that  there 
had  been  no  neglect  or  delay  in  issuing  all  the 
supplies  asked  for,  and  added  his  belief  "  that 
no  armies  in  the  world,  while  in  campaign, 
have  been  more  promptly  or  better  supplied 
than  ours."  The  General-in-Chief  further  re- 
ported that  there  had  been  no  such  want  of 
supplies  as  to  prevent  General  McClellan's 
compliance  with  the  orders,  issued  four  weeks 
before,  to  advance  against  the  enemy :  that 
"  had  he  moved  to  the  south  side  of  the  Poto- 
mac he  could  have  received  his  supplies  al- 
most as  readily  as  by  remaining  inactive  on  the 
north  side."  He  then  goes  at  some  length  into 
a  detailed  and  categorical  contradiction  of  Gen- 
eral McClellan's  complaining  dispatches.  But 
we  need  not  go  outside  of  the  General's  own 
staff  for  a  direct  denial  of  his  accusations.  Gen- 
eral Ingalls,  the  Chief  Quartermaster  oi  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  makes  this  just  and 
sensible  statement  in  a  letter  to  the  Quarter- 
master-General dated  the  26th  of  October: 
I  have  seen  no  real  suffering' lor  want  o\  clothing, 
and  do  not  believe  there  has  been  any  only  where 
it  can  be  laid  directly  to  the  charge  of  regimental 
and  brigade  commanders  and  their  quartermasters, 
and  I  have  labored,  1  hope  with  some  effect,  in  try- 
ing to  instruct  them.  I  have  frequently  remarked 
that  an  army  will  never  move  if  it  waits  until  all 
the  different  commanders  repon  that  they  are  ready 
and  want  no  more  supplies.    It  has  been  my  pride 
1  War  Records.  how  long  it  would  take  to  give  him  three  or  four  thou- 
2  This  mania  of  General  McClellan's  for  providing  sand  hospital  tents.  Meigs  answered  that  a  sufficient 
camp  material  sometimes  assumed  an  almost  ludicrous  supply  had  already  been  sent  him,  and  that  to  provide 
form.  It  suddenly  occurred  to  him  on  the  7th  of  Octo-  the  additional  number  he  spoke  of  would  take  a  long 
ber  to  telegraph  to  the  Quartermaster-General  asking  time  and  half  a  million  of  dollars.
548 
AURA  If  AM  LINCOLN: 
to    know   the    feet    thai    no    army   was    ever   more 
ctly  supplied  than  this  has  been,  as  a  general 
rule. 
The  President,  weary  of  the  controversy,  at 
replies : 
rtainly  I  intend  no  injustice  to  any,  and 
it  1  have  done  any  1  deeply  regret  it.  To  be  told, 
after  more  than  five  weeks'  total  inaction  of  the 
army,  and  during  which  period  we  have  sent  to  the 
army  every  fresh  horse  we  possibly  could,  amount- 
ing "in  the  whole  to  7 ,91 S,1  that  the  cavalry  horses 
too  much  fatigued  to  move,  presents  a  very 
cheerless,  almost  hopeless,  prospect  for  the  future, 
and  it  may  have  forced  something  of  impatience 
in  my  dispatch.  If  not  recruited  and  rested  then, 
when  could  they  ever  be? 
General  Halleck,  in  a  letter  on  the  7th  of 
October,  had  urged  McClellan  to  follow  and 
seek  to  punish  the  enemy.    He  says : 
There  is  a  decided  want  of  legs  in  our  troops. 
They  have  too  much  immobility,  and  we  must  try  to 
remedy  the  defect.  A  reduction  of  baggage  and 
ige  trains  will  effect  something,  but  the  real 
difficulty  is,  they  are  not  sufficiently  exercised  in 
marching;  they  lie  still  in  camp  too  long.  After  a 
hard  march  one  day  is  time  enough  to  rest.  Lying 
still  beyond  that  time  does  not  rest  the  men.2 
The  President's  proclamation  of  emancipa- 
tion had  been  promulgated  to  the  army  in  gen- 
eral orders  on  the  24th  of  September.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  General  McClellan,  in  his 
manifesto  from  Harrison's  Landing,  had  ad- 
monished the  President  against  any  such  action. 
His  subsequent  negotiations  with  the  Demo- 
cratic politicians  in  the  North  had  not  tended 
to  make  him  any  more  favorably  disposed 
towards  such  radical  action.  His  first  impulse 
was  to  range  himself  openly  against  the  proc- 
lamation. We  are  informed  by  General  W. 
1  .  Smith  that  McClellan  prepared  a  protest 
against  it,  which  he  read  to  some  of  his  intimate 
friends  in  the  army.  The  advice  of  Smith,  and 
perhaps  of  others,  induced  him  not  to  commit 
so  fatal  a  breach  of  discipline.  For  a  moment 
he  thought  of  throwing  up  his  commission. 
In  a  private  letter  of  September  25  he  said: 
The  President's  late  proclamation,  the  continua- 
tion of  Stanton  and  Halleck  in  office,  render  it  al- 
most impossible  for  me  to  retain  my  commission 
and  self-respect  at  the  same  time.3 
He  could  not,  however,  pass  over  with  en- 
tire silence  an  order  of  such  momentous  im- 
Qce :  and  so  after  two  weeks  of  meditation, 
1  It  was  really  many  more  than  this. 
2  YY:: 
3  "McClellan',  Own  Story,"  p.   615. 
4  He  wrote,  October  5:  "Mr.  Aspinwall  [then  at 
McClellan's  camp]  is  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that  it 
is  my  duty  to  submit  to  the  President's  proclama- 
tion. "    ["  McClellan's  Own  Story,"  p.  655.] 
having  heard  from  his  friends  in  New  York,4 
he  issued  on  the  7th  of  October  a  singular 
document  calling  the  attention  of  the  officers 
and  soldiers  of  his  army  to  the  President's 
proclamation.  He  made  absolutely  no  refer- 
ence to  the  proclamation  itself.  He  used  it,  as 
he  says,  simply  as  an  opportunity  for  "  defin- 
ing the  relations  borne  by  all  persons  in  the 
military  service  towards  the  civil  authorities,"  a 
relation  which  most  of  his  army  understood  al- 
ready at  least  as  well  as  himself.  In  a  few  com- 
monplace phrases  he  restates  the  political  axiom 
that  the  civil  authority  is  paramount  in  our 
government  and  that  the  military  is  subordi- 
nate to  it.  He  therefore  deprecated  any  intem- 
perate discussion  of  "  public  measures  deter- 
mined upon  and  declared  by  the  Government" 
"  as  tending  to  impair  and  destroy  the  effi- 
ciency of  troops";  and  significantly  adds,  "The 
remedy  for  political  errors,  if  any  are  com- 
mitted, is  to  be  found  only  in  the  action  of  the 
people  at  the  polls."  There  is  no  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  this  order  of  General  McClellan's 
was  issued  with  any  but  the  best  intentions. 
He  believed,  and  he  thought  the  army  be- 
lieved, that  the  President's  antislavery  policy 
was  ill-advised  and  might  prove  disastrous.  He 
therefore  issued  this  order  commanding  his 
soldiers  to  be  moderate  in  their  criticisms  and 
condemnations  of  the  President,  and  to  leave 
to  the  people  at  the  polls  the  work  of  correct- 
ing or  punishing  him.  When  the  troops  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  had  an  opportunity  of 
expressing  at  the  polls  their  sense  of  the  politi- 
cal question  at  issue  between  Lincoln  and  Mc- 
Clellan, the  latter  had  occasion  to  discover 
that  there  was  a  difference  between  the  senti- 
ment of  staff  headquarters  and  the  sentiment 
of  the  rank  and  file. 
The  President's  peremptory  order  to  move, 
which  we  have  mentioned  as  having  been 
issued  on  the  6th  of  October,  having  produced 
no  effect,  he  wrote  to  General  McClellan  on 
the  13th  of  the  month  a  letter  so  important  in 
its  substance  and  in  its  relations  to  subsequent 
events  that  it  must  be  printed  entire.  Having 
already  given  the  general  his  orders  and  told 
him  what  to  do,  he  now  not  only  tells  him 
how  to  do  it,  but  furnishes  him  unanswerable 
reasons  why  it  should  be  done. 
Executive  Mansion, 
Washington,  D.  C,  October  13,  1862. 
Major-General  McClellan. 
My  Dear  Sir  :  You  remember  my  speaking  to 
you  of  what  1  called  your  over-cautiousness.  Are 
you  not  over-cautious  when  you  assume  that  you 
cannot  do  what  the  enemy  is  constantly  doing? 
Should  you  not  claim  to  be  at  least  his  equal  in 
prowess,  and  act  upon  the  claim  ?  As  I  understand, 
you  telegraphed  General  Halleck  that  you  cannot 
subsist  your  army  at  Winchester  unless  the  rail- 
road from  Harper's  Ferry  to  that  point  be  put  in
A    HISTORY. 
working  order.  But  the  enemy  docs  now  subsist 
his  army  at  Winchester,  at  a  distance  nearly  twice 
as  great  from  railroad  transportation  as  you  would 
have  to  do,  without  the  railroad  last  named.  He 
now  wagons  from  Culpeper  Court  House,  which  is 
just  about  twice  as  far  as  you  would  have  to  do 
from  Harper's  Ferry.  He  is  certainly  not  more  than 
half  as  well  provided  with  wagons  as  you  are.  I 
certainly  should  be  pleased  for  you  to  have  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  railroad  from  Harper's  Ferry  to  Win- 
chester, but  it  wastes  all  the  remainder  of  autumn 
to  give  it  to  you,  and  in  fact  ignores  the  question 
of  time,  which  can  not  and  must  not  be  ignored. 
Again,  one  of  the  standard  maxims  of  war,  as  you 
know,  is  to  "  operate  upon  the  enemy's  communica- 
tions as  much  as  possible  without  exposing  your 
own."  You  seem  to  act  as  if  this  applies  against 
you,  but  cannot  apply  in  your  favor.  Change  posi- 
tions with  the  enemy,  and  think  you  not  he  would 
break  your  communication  with  Richmond  within 
the  next  twenty-four  hours?  You  dread  his  going 
into  Pennsylvania,  but  if  he  does  so  in  full  force, 
he  gives  up  his  communications  to  you  absolutely, 
and  you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  follow  and  ruin 
him.  If  he  does  so  with  less  than  full  force,  fall 
upon  and  beat  what  is  left  behind  all  the  easier. 
Exclusive  of  the  water  line,  you  are  now  nearer 
Richmond  than  the  enemy  is  by  the  route  that  you 
can  and  he  must  take.  Why  can  you  not  reach 
there  before  him,  unless  you  admit  that  he  is  more 
than  your  equal  on  a  march  ?  His  route  is  the 
arc  of  a  circle,  while  yours  is  the  chord.  The  roads 
are  as  good  on  yours  as  on  his.  You  know  I  de- 
sired, but  did  not  order,  you  to  cross  the  Potomac 
below  instead  of  above  the  Shenandoah  and  Blue 
Ridge.  My  idea  was  that  this  would  at  once  menace 
the  enemy's  communications,  which  I  would  seize 
if  he  would  permit.* 
If  he  should  move  northward  I  would  follow  him 
closely,  holding  his  communications.  If  he  should 
prevent  our  seizing  his  communications  and  move 
toward  Richmond,  I  would  press  closely  to  him, 
fight  him,  if  a  favorable  opportunity  should  present ; 
and  at  least  try  to  beat  him  to  Richmond  on  the 
inside  track.  I  say  "  try"  ;  if  we  never  try,  we  shall 
never  succeed.  If  he  makes  a  stand  at  Winchester, 
moving  neither  north  nor  south,  I  would  fight  him 
there,  on  the  idea  that  if  we  cannot  beat  him  when 
he  bears  the  wastage  of  coming  to  us,  we  never 
can  when  we  bear  the  wastage  of  going  to  him. 
This  proposition  is  a  simple  truth,  and  is  too  im- 
portant to  be  lost  sight  of  for  a  moment.  In  com- 
ing to  us  he  tenders  us  an  advantage  which  we 
should  not  waive.  We  should  not  so  operate  as  to 
merely  drive  him  away.  As  we  must  beat  him 
somewhere  or  fail  finally,  we  can  do  it,  if  at  all, 
easier  near  to  us  than  far  away.  If  we  cannot  beat 
the  enemy  where  he  now  is,  we  never  can,  he  again 
being  within  the  intrenchments  of  Richmond. 
Recurring  to  the  idea  of  going  to  Richmond  on 
the  inside  track,  the  facility  of  supplying  from  the 
side  away  from  the  enemy  is  remarkable — as  it  were, 
by  the  different  spokes  of  a  wheel  extending  from 
the  hub  toward  the  rim,  and  this,  whether  you 
move  directly  by  the  chord  or  on  the  inside  arc, 
hugging  the  Blue  Ridge  more  closely.  The  chord- 
line,  as  you  see,  carries  you  by  Aldie,  Hay  Market, 
and  Fredericksburg ;  and  you  see  how  turnpikes, 
railroads,  and  finally  the  Potomac,  by  Aquia  Creek, 
meet  you  at  all  points  from  Washington  ;  the  same, 
only  the  lines  lengthened  a  little,  if  you  press 
to  the  Blue  Ridge  part  of  the  way. 
The  gaps  through    the  Blue  Ridg  tand 
to  be  about  the  following  distances  from  Harj 
Ferry,  to   wit:    Vestal's,    5    miles;   G  .    15: 
Snicker's,  18  ;  Ashby's,  28  ;  Manassas,  38 
45  ;  and  Thornton's,  53.  I  should  think  it  p 
able  to  take  the  route  nearest  the  enemy,  disabling 
him  to  make  an  important  move  without  your 
knowledge,  and  compelling  him  to  keep  his  forces 
together  for  dread  of  you.  The  gaps  would  enable 
you  to  attack,  it  you  should  wish.  For  a  great  part 
of  the  way  you  would  be  practically  between  the 
enemy  and  both  Washington  and  Richmond,  en- 
abling us  to  spare  you  the  greatest  number  of  troops 
from  here.  When  at  length  running  for  Richmond 
ahead  of  him  enables  him  to  move  this  way,  if  he 
does  so,  turn  and  attack  him  in  the  rear.  But  I 
think  he  should  be  engaged  long  before  such  point 
is  reached.  It  is  all  easy  if  our  troops  march  as  well 
as  the  enemy,  and  it  is  unmanly  to  say  they  can- 
not do  it.    This  letter  is' in  no  sense  an  order. 
Yours  truly,  A.  Lincoln. 
In  the  absence  of  any  definite  plan  or  pur- 
pose of  his  own,  General  McClellan  accepted 
this  plan  of  the  President's,  giving  in  his  report 
a  characteristic  reason,  that  "  it  would  secure 
him  the  largest  accession  of  force."  But  even 
after  he  adopted  this  decision  the  usual  delays 
supervened  ;  and  on  the  21st,  after  describing 
the  wretched  condition  of  his  cavalry,  he  asked 
whether  the  President  desired  him  "  to  march 
on  the  enemy  at  once  or  to  await  the  recep- 
tion of  new  horses,"  to  which,  on  the  same 
day,  the  President  directed  the  General-in- 
Chief  to  send  the  following  reply  : 
Your  telegram  of  12  M.  has  been  submitted  to 
the  President.  He  directs  me  to  say  that  he  has  no 
change  to  make  in  his  order  of  the  6th  instant.  If 
you  have  not  been  and  are  not  now  in  condition  to 
obey  it,  you  will  be  able  to  show  such  want  oi  ability. 
The  President  does  not  expect  impossibilities,  but  he 
is  very  anxious  that  all  this  good  weather  should 
not  be  wasted  in  inactivity.  Telegraph  when  you 
will  move  and  on  what  lines  you  propose  to  march. 
With  the  exercise  of  a  very  little  sagacity 
General  McClellan  should  have  discovered 
from  the  tone  of  this  dispatch  that  the  Presi- 
dent's mood  was  taking  on  a  certain  tinge  0/ 
austerity.  Nevertheless  he  continued  his  prep- 
arations at  perfect  leisure,  and  four  days  after- 
wards he  sent  a  long  letter  asking  for  definite 
instructions  in  regard  to  the  details  of  guards 
to  be  left  on  the  upper  Potomac  :  to  which 
he  received  a  reply  saying  that  "  the  Govern- 
ment had  intrusted  him  with  defeating  and 
driving  back  the  rebel  army  in  his  front."  and 
directing  him  to  use  his  own  discretion  as  to 
the  matters  in  question.  As  General  McClellan 
in  his  dispatch  had  referred  with  some  appre- 
hension to  the  probable  march  of  Bragg's  army
55° 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
eastward,  General  Halleck  concluded  his  an- 
swer with  this  significant  intimation:  "You 
are  within  twenty  miles  oi  Lee,  while  Bragg  is 
nt  about  tour  hundred  miles." 
He  finally  got  his  army  across  the  Potomac 
on  the  ist  of  November.   It  had  begun  cross- 
n  the  26th  o(  October,  and  as  the  several 
detachments  arrived  in   Virginia,  they  were 
ly  distributed  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the 
Blue  Ridge  under  the  vigilant  and  now  dis- 
gustful eye  of  the  President. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  the  President's  regard 
ami  confidence,  which  had  withstood  so  much 
from  General  McClellan,  was  now  giving  way. 
The  President  had  resisted  in  his  behalf,  for 
more  than  a  year,  the  earnest  and  bitter  oppo- 
sition  of  the  most  powerful  and  trusted  friends 
ot  the  Administration.  McClellan  had  hardly 
a  supporter  left  among  the  Republican  sena- 
tors,  and  few  among  the  most  prominent  raem- 
of  the  majority  in  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives.  In  the  Cabinet  there  wras  the  same 
unanimous  hostility  to  the  young  general.  In 
the  meeting  of  the  2d  of  September,  when  the 
President  announced  that  he  had  placed  Mc- 
Clellan in  command  of  the  forces  in  Washing- 
ton, he  was  met  by  an  outbreak  of  protest  and 
criticism  from  the  leading  members  of  the 
Government  which  might  well  have  shaken 
the  nerves  of  any  ruler.  But  the  President 
stood  manfully  by  his  action.1  He  admitted 
the  infirmities  of  McClellan,  his  lack  of  energy 
and  initiative;  but  for  this  exigency  he  consid- 
ered him  the  best  man  in  the  service,  and  the 
country  must  have  the  benefit  of  his  talents, 
although  he  had  behaved  badly.  We  need  not 
refer  again  to  the  magnanimity  with  which  the 
President  had  overlooked  the  insolent  dis- 
patches of  General  McClellan  from  Savage's 
Station  and  Harrison's  Landing.  He  closed 
his  ears  persistently  during  all  the  months  of 
the  winter  and  spring  to  the  stories  which  came 
to  him  from  every  quarter  in  regard  to  the 
lone  of  factious  hostility  to  himself  which  pre- 
vailed at  McClellan's  headquarters.  But  these 
stories  increased  to  such  an  extent  during  the 
summer  and  autumn  that  even  in  his  mind, 
so  slow  to  believe  evil,  they  occasioned  some 
trouble.  Soon  after  the  battle  of  Antietam  an 
incident  came  to  his  hearing  of  which  he  felt 
himself  obliged  to  take  notice.  Major  John  J. 
Key.  brother  to  Colonel  Thomas  M.  Key,  of 
iellan's  staff,  was  reported  to  have  said, 
in  reply  to  the  question,  put  by  a  brother  ofn- 
■  Why  was  not  the  rebel  army  bagged  im- 
mediately after  the  battle  near  Sharpsburg?" 
':  That  is  no/  the  game.  The  object  is  that 
neither  army  shall  get  much  advantage  of  the 
other;  that  both  shall  be  kept  in  the  field  till 
they  are  exhausted,  when  we  will  make  a  com- 
1   Welles,  "Lincoln  and  Seward,"  pp.  195,  196. 
promise  and  save  slavery."  The  President 
sent  an  aide-de-camp  to  Major  Key  to  inform 
him  of  this  grave  charge,  and  to  invite  him 
to  disprove  it  within  twenty-four  hours.  A  few 
minutes  after  this  notice  was  sent,  the  Major 
appeared  at  the  Executive  Mansion  in  com- 
pany with  Major  Turner,  the  officer  to  whom 
the  remark  had  been  made.  A  trial,  as  prompt 
as  those  of  St.  Louis  dispensing  justice  under 
the  oak  at  Vincennes,  then  took  place.  The 
President  was  judge  and  jury,  attorney  for  the 
prosecution  and  for  the  defense,  and  he  added 
to  these  functions  that  of  clerk  of  the  court, 
and  made  a  record  of  the  proceedings  with 
his  own  hand,  which  we  copy  from  his  manu- 
script : 
At  about  11  o'clock  a.  m.,  September  27,  1862, 
Major  Key  and  Major  Turner  appear  before  me. 
Major  Turner  says:  "As  I  remember  it,  the  con- 
versation was,  I  asked  the  question  why  we  did  not 
bag  them  after  the  battle  at  Sharpsburg.  Major 
Key's  reply  was,  '  That  was  not  the  game  :  we  should 
tire  the  rebels  out  and  ourselves  ;  that  that  was  the 
only  way  the  Union  could  be  preserved,  we  come  to- 
gether fraternally,  and  slavery  be  saved.'"  On  cross- 
examination  Major  Turner  says  he  has  frequently 
heard  Major  Key  converse  in  regard  to  the  present 
trouble,  and  never  heard  him  utter  a  sentiment  un- 
favorable to  the  maintenance  of  the  Union.  He  has 
never  uttered  anything  which  he,  Major  T.,  would 
call  disloyalty.  The  particular  conversation  detailed 
was  a  private  one. 
Upon  the  reverse  of  this  record  the  Presi- 
dent made  the  following  indorsement : 
In  my  view  it  is  wholly  inadmissible  for  any 
gentleman  holding  a  military  commission  from  the 
United  States  to  utter  such  sentiments  as  Major 
Key  is  within  proved  to  have  done.  Therefore  let 
Major  John  J.  Key  be  forthwith  dismissed  from  the 
military  service  of  the  United  States. 
The  President's  memorandum  continues: 
At  the  interview  of  Major  Key  and  Major  Turner 
with  the  President,  Major  Key  did  not  attempt  to 
controvert  the  statement  of  Major  Turner,  but  sim- 
ply insisted  and  tried  to  prove  that  he  was  true  to 
the  Union.  The  substance  of  the  President's  reply 
was  that  if  there  was  a  game  even  among  Union 
men  to  have  our  army  not  take  any  advantage  of 
the  enemy  when  it  could,  it  was  his  object  to  break 
up  that  game. 
Speaking  of  the  matter  afterwards  the  Pres- 
ident said,  "  I  dismissed  Major  Key  because  I 
thought  his  silly,  treasonable  expressions  were 
'staff  talk,'  and  1  wished  to  make  an  example."2 
He  was  still  not  ready  to  condemn  General 
McClellan.  Lie  determined  to  give  him  one 
more  chance.  If  McClellan,  after  Antietam, 
had  destroyed  the  army  of  Lee,  his  official  po- 
sition would  have  been  impregnable.  If,  after 
Lee  had  recrossed  the  Potomac,  McClellan 
2  J.  H.,  Diary.
A   HISTORY. 
had  followed  and  delivered  a  successful  battle 
in  Virginia,  nothing  could  afterwards  have  pre- 
vented his  standing  as  the  foremost  man  of 
his  time.  The  President,  in  his  intense  anxiety 
for  the  success  of  the  national  arms,  would  have 
welcomed  McClellan  as  his  own  presumptive 
successor  if  he  could  have  won  that  position 
by  successful  battle.  But  the  general's  inex- 
plicable slowness  had  at  last  excited  the  Pres- 
ident's distrust.  He  began  to  think,  before  the 
end  of  October,  that  McClellan  had  no  real  de- 
sire to  beat  the  enemy.  He  set  in  his  own  mind 
the  limit  of  his  own  forbearance.  He  adopted 
for  his  own  guidance  a  test  which  he  commu- 
nicated to  no  one  until  long  afterwards,  on 
which  he  determined  to  base  his  final  judg- 
ment of  McClellan.  If  he  should  permit  Lee 
to  cross  the  Blue  Ridge  and  place  himself  be- 
tween Richmond  and  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
he  would  remove  him  from  command.1 
When  it  was  reported  in  Washington  that 
Lee  and  Longstreet  were  at  Culpeper  Court 
House,  the  President  sent  an  order,  dated  the 
5th  of  November,  to  General  McClellan,  which 
reached  him  at  Rectortown  on  the  7th,  direct- 
ing him  to  report  for  further  orders  at  Trenton, 
New  Jersey,  and  to  turn  the  command  of  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  over  to  General  Burn- 
side.  General  Buckingham  delivered  his  mes- 
sage first  to  Burnside  and  then  came  with  him 
to  McClellan's  tent.  McClellan  says  in  his 
memoirs  that  with  the  eyes  of  the  two  gener- 
als upon  him  he  "  read  the  papers  with  a 
smile  "  ;  but  when  they  were  gone,  he  turned 
to  finish  a  letter  he  had  been  writing,  and  broke 
out  in  the  heartfelt  ejaculation,  "  Alas  for  my 
poor  country  ! "  2  He  took  credit  to  himself  in 
after  years  for  not  heading  a  mutiny  of  the 
troops.  He  said,  "  Many  were  in  favor  of  my 
refusing  to  obey  the  order,  and  of  marching 
upon  Washington  to  take  possession  of  the 
Government."3 
Thus  ended  the  military  career  of  George 
Brinton  McClellan.  Now  that  the  fierce  pas- 
sions of  the  war,  its  suspicions  and  its  animosi- 
ties, have  passed  away,  we  are  able  to  judge 
him  more  accurately  and  more  justly  than  was 
possible  amid  that  moral  and  material  tumult 
and  confusion.  He  was  as  far  from  being  the 
traitor  and  craven  that  many  thought  him  as 
from  being  the  martyr  and  hero  that  others 
would  like  to  have  him  appear.  It  would  be 
unfair  to  deny  that  he  rendered,  to  the  full 
measure  of  his  capacity,  sincere  and  honest 
service  to  the  Republic.  His  technical  knowl- 
edge was  extensive,  his  industry  untiring;  his 
private  character  was  pure  and  upright,  his  in- 
1  These  are  the  President's  own  words,  taken  down 
at  the  time  they  were  uttered. 
2  "  McClellan's  Own  Story,"  p.  660. 
3  Ibid.,  p.  652. 
tegrity  without  stain.     In  the  private  life  to 
which  he  retired  he  carried  with  him  the 
eral  respect  and  esteem  and  the  affection 
troop  of  friends;  and  when  by  their  partiality 
he  was  afterwards  called  to  the  1  f  im- 
portant official  functions,  every  office  he  held 
he  adorned  with  the  highest  civic  virtues  and 
accomplishments.  No  one  now  can  doubt  his 
patriotism  or  his  honor,  and  the  fact  that  it 
was  once  doubted  illustrates  merely  the  part 
which  the  blackest  suspicions  play  in  a  great 
civil  war,  and  the  stress  to  which  the  public 
mind  was  driven  in  the  effort  to  account  for 
the  lack  of  results  he  gave  the  country  in  re- 
turn for  the  vast  resources  which  were  so  lav- 
ishly placed  in  his  hands. 
It  was  in  this  native  inability  to  use  great 
means  to  great  ends  that  his  failure  as  a  gen- 
eral lies.  It  was  in  his  temperament  to  exag- 
gerate the  obstacles  in  front  of  him,  and  this, 
added  to  his  constitutional  aversion  to  prompt 
decisions,  caused  those  endless  delays  which 
wasted  the  army,  exasperated  the  country,  and 
gave  the  enemy  unbroken  leisure  for  maturing 
his  plans  and  constant  opportunity  for  execut- 
ing them.  His  lethargy  of  six  months  in  front 
of  Washington,  to  the  wonder  and  scorn  of  the 
Southern  generals ;  his  standing  at  gaze  at  York- 
town,  halted  with  his  vast  army  by  Magruder's 
men  in  buckram ;  his  innocent  astonishment  at 
Williamsburg  at  finding  that  the  rebels  would 
not  give  up  Richmond  without  a  fight;  his 
station  astride  the  Chickahominy,  waiting  for 
the  enemy  to  grow  strong  enough  to  attack 
him,  while  his  brave  soldiers  were  fading  to 
specters  with  the  marsh  fevers ;  his  refusal  to 
assume  the  offensive  after  the  Confederate  re- 
pulse at  Seven  Pines ;  his  second  refusal  of  the 
favors  of  the  fortune  of  war  when  Lee  took  his 
army  north  of  the  Chickahominy  and  Porter 
fought  him  all  day  with  little  more  than  one 
corps,  but  with  splendid  courage ;  his  starting 
for  the  James,  in  this  crisis  of  his  fate,  when 
he  should  have'  marched  upon  the  scantily 
guarded  city  of  Richmond ;  his  final  retreat 
from  Malvern  Hill  to  Harrison's  Landing, 
breaking  the  hearts  of  the  soldiers  who  had 
won  on  that  field  a  victory  so  complete  and  so 
glorious — all  these  mistakes  proved  how  utterly 
incapable  he  was  of  leading  a  great  army  in  a 
grand  war.  No  general  had  ever  been  ottered 
such  wonderful  opportunities,  and  they  con- 
tinued to  be  offered  to  him  to  the  end.  When 
Pope  had  drawn  away  the  enemy  from  Rich- 
mond, and  given  him  an  unmolested  embarka- 
tion, and  had  fought  with  undaunted  valor 
against  Lee's  army,  before  which  at  last  he 
was  forced  to  give  way  for  the  want  of  relief 
which  he  had  the  right  to  expect  from  McClel- 
lan, the  President,  magnanimously  ignoring  all 
his  own  causes  of  quarrel,  gave  to  McClellan
A  BRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
more  his  old  army,  reenforced  by  Tope's, 
and  sent  him  against  an  enemy  who.  in  a  con- 
tempt for  his  antagonist  acquired  in  the  Penin- 
sula, had  crossed  the  Potomac  and  then  divided 
his  army  in  half.  As  a  crow  ning  favor  of  chance 
this  was  made  known  to  McClellan,  and  even 
3  incalculable  advantage  he  frittered  away, 
and  ga>  e  I  ee  forty-eight  hours  in  which  to  call 
in  his  scattered  battalions.  After  Antietam,  for 
six  long  weeks  ot  beautiful  autumn  weather  he 
red  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Potomac, 
under  the  constant  pressure  of  the  President's 
-  ins,  and  afterwards  under  the  lash  of 
-  irders  and  reproaches,  unable  to  make  up 
his  mind  to  pursue  the  enemy  so  long  as  he 
could  find  excuse  for  delay  in  a  missing  shoe- 
lace or  a  broken  limber. 
The  devoted  affection  which  he  received 
from  his  army  was  strange  when  we  consider 
how  lacking  he  was  in  those  qualities  which 
generally  excite  the  admiration  of  soldiers. 
When  Sumner,  swinging  his  hat,  charged  in 
front  of  his  lines  at  Savage's  Station,  his  white 
hair  blowing  in  the  wind;  when  Phil. Kearney, 
who  had  lost  his  bridle  arm  in  Mexico,  rode 
in  the  storm  of  bullets  with  his  reins  in  his 
teeth,  his  sword  in  his  right  hand,  there  was 
something  which  struck  the  imagination  of 
their  troopers  more  than  far  more  serious 
merits  would  have  done.  But  no  one  ever 
saw  General  McClellan  rejoicing  in  battle.  At 
Williamsburg,  the  first  Peninsula  fight,  while 
Hooker  and  Kearney  and  Hancock  were  in 
the  thick  of  the  conflict,  he  was  at  the  wharf 
at  Yorktown,  very  busy,  doing  an  assistant 
quartermasters  duty;  the  day  of  Fair  Oaks 
he  spent  on  the  north  side  of  the  river;  when 
at  Beaver  Dam  Creek  and  Gaines's  Mill  the 
current  of  war  rolled  to  the  north  side,  he 
staid  on  the  south  bank ;  during  the  retreat  to 
the  James  he  was  far  in  advance,  selecting  writh 
his  intelligent  engineer's  eye  the  spots  where 
Sumner,  Franklin,  and  the  rest  were  to  fight 
their  daily  battles ;  and  even  in  the  fury  and 
thunder  of  Malvern  Hill  —  the  most  splendid 
-farms  ever  performed  by  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  a  sight  which  a  man  with  the  true 
soldier  blood  in  his  veins  might  give  his  life  to 
—  he  spent  the  greater  part  of  those  glorious 
hours,  the  diapason  of  his  greatest  victory  boom- 
n  his  ears,  in  his  camp  at  Haxall's  or  on 
board  the  gun-boats,  coldly  and  calmly  making 
his  arrangements  for  the  morrow's  retreat  and 
for  the  cooperation  of  the  navy  ;  and  at  Antie- 
tam, the  only  battle  where  he  really  saw  his 
own  troops  attacking  the  enemy,  he  enjoyed  that 
wonderful  sight  "  all  day,"  says  General  Palfrey, 
"  till  towards  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  when 
all  the  fighting  wTas  over,  on  the  high  ground 
near  Fry's  house,  where  he  had  some  glasses 
strapped  to  the  fence,  so  that  he  could  look  in 
different  directions."  We  make  no  imputation 
on  his  courage :  he  was  a  brave  man ;  but  he 
was  too  much  cumbered  with  other  things  to 
take  part  in  his  own  battles. 
With  such  limitations  as  these  it  is  not  likely 
that  posterity  wall  rank  him  among  the  lead- 
ing generals  of  our  war.  The  most  his  apolo- 
gists ask  for  him  is  a  place  among  the  respect- 
able, painstaking  officers  of  the  second  order 
of  talent,  the  "  middle  category  of  meritorious 
commanders  " ; 1  but  when  we  see  such  ardent 
friends  and  admirers  of  his  person  as  General 
Wrebb  and  General  Palfrey  brought  by  a  con- 
scientious and  careful  study  of  his  career  to 
such  a  conviction  of  his  continuous  mistakes 
as  they  have  expressed,  we  may  well  conclude 
that  the  candid  historian  of  the  future  will 
have  no  sentiment  but  wonder  when  he  comes 
to  tell  the  story  of  McClellan's  long  misman- 
agement of  a  great,  brave,  and  devoted  army, 
backed  by  a  government  which  strained  every 
nerve  to  support  him,  and  by  a  people  whose 
fiery  zeal  would  have  made  him  the  idol  of  the 
nation  if  he  had  given  them  the  successes 
which  their  sacrifices  deserved,  and  which  were 
a  dozen  times  within  his  grasp. 
We  have  evidence  from  a  candid  and  intel- 
ligent, if  not  altogether  impartial,  witness  of 
the  impression  made  upon  the  peace  party  of 
the  North  by  the  dismissal  of  General  Mc- 
Clellan from  command.  On  the  8th  of  No- 
vember, 1862,  Lord  Lyons,  the  British  min- 
ister at  Washington,  arrived  in  New  York  from 
a  visit  to  England.  The  Democrats,  or  the 
Conservatives,  as  he  called  them,  had  carried 
the  State  and  elected  Mr.  Seymour  governor. 
He  found  them  in  great  exultation  over  their 
victory.  They  imagined  that  the  Govern- 
ment would  at  once  desist  from  the  measures 
which  they  had  denounced  as  arbitrary  or  il- 
legal ;  or,  if  not  at  once,  they  were  certain  that 
after  the  1st  of  January,  when  Mr.  Seymour 
would  be  inaugurated,  the  Government  would 
not  dare  to  exercise  its  war  powers  within  the 
limits  of  the  State  of  New  York.  They  con- 
fided to  the  urbane  and  genial  representative 
of  the  British  Government  much  more  specious 
hopes  than  these  —  hopes  which  they  were  not 
yet  ready  to  avow  to  their  own  countrymen:'2 
that  the  President  would  "  seek  to  terminate 
the  war,  not  to  push  it  to  extremity;  that  he 
would  endeavor  to  effect  a  reconciliation  with 
the  people  of  the  South  and  renounce  the  idea 
Swinton,  "  Army  of  the  Potomac,"  p.  229.  an    end  to   the  war   even   at  the   risk  of  losing  the 
2  I   listened  with    attention  to  the  accounts    given  Southern  States  altogether;  but  it  was  plain  it  was 
me  of  the  plans  and  hopes  of  the  Conservative  party,  not  thought  prudent  to  avow  the  desire.      [Letter  of 
At  the  bottom  I  thought  I  perceived  a  desire  to  put  Lord  Lyons  to  Earl  Russell,  Nov.  17,  1862-.]
A   HISTORY. 
553 
of  subjugating  or  exterminating  them."1  But 
these  rising  hopes,  Lord  Lyons  says,  "were 
dashed  by  the  next  day's  news."  The  dis- 
missal of  General  MeClellan  caused  "  an  irri- 
tation not  unmixed  with  consternation  and  de- 
spondency. The  general  had  been  regarded 
as  the  representative  of  Conservative  principles 
in  the  army.  Support  of  him  had  been  made 
one  of  the  articles  of  the  Conservative  electoral 
programme.  His  dismissal  was  taken  as  a  sign 
that  the  President  had  thrown  himself  entirely 
into  the  arms  of  the  extreme  Radical  party, 
and  an  attempt  to  carry  out  the  policy  of  that 
party  would  be  persisted  in."  The  "party" 
and  the  "policy"  referred  to  were,  of  course, 
the  Republican  party  of  the  nation  and  the 
policy  of  carrying  the  war  through  to  the  end, 
and  saving  the  Union  intact  by  all  the  means 
within  the  power  of  the  Government ;  and  in 
this  forecast  the  Conservative  gentlemen  of 
New  York,  who  sought  the  accomplished  envoy 
of  Great  Britain  to  unbosom  to  him  their  joys 
and  their  griefs,  showed  that  however  they 
may  have  been  lacking  in  patriotism  or  self-re- 
spect, they  were  not  deficient  in  either  logic  or 
sagacity. 
FINANCIAL    MEASURES. 
The  wisdom  displayed  by  Mr.  Lincoln  in 
choosing  his  Cabinet,  not  from  among  his  per- 
sonal adherents,  but  from  among  the  most  emi- 
nent representatives  of  the  Republicans  of  the 
country,  shone  out  more  and  more  clearly  as 
the  war  went  on,  and  its  enormous  exigencies 
tested  the  utmost  powers  of  each  member  of 
the  Government.  A  great  orator  and  states- 
man has  said  that  in  this  respect  Mr.  Lincoln 
showed  at  the  outset  that  nature  had  fitted 
him  for  a  ruler,  and  accident  only  had  hid  his 
earlier  life  in  obscurity. 
I  cannot  hesitate  [says  Mr.  Evarts]  to  think  that 
the  presence  of  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Chase  in  the 
great  offices  of  State  and  Treasury,  and  their  faith- 
ful concurrence  in  the  public  service,  and  the  public 
repute  of  the  President's  conduct  of  the  Government, 
gave  to  the  people  all  the  benefits  which  might  have 
justly  been  expected  from  the  election  of  either  to 
be  himself  the  head  of  the  Government,  and  much 
else  besides.  I  know  of  no  warrant  in  the  qualities 
of  human  nature  to  have  hoped  that  either  of  these 
great  political  leaders  would  have  made  as  good  a 
minister  under  the  administration  of  the  other,  as 
President,  as  both  of  them  did  under  the  adminis- 
tration of  Mr.  Lincoln.  I  see  nothing  in  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's great  qualities  and  great  authority  with  this 
people  which  could  have  commensurately  served 
our  need  in  any  place,  in  the  conduct  of  affairs,  ex- 
cept at  their  head.2 
We  do  not  question  that  posterity  will  con- 
firm this  sober  and  impartial  judgment  of  one 
1  Letter  of  Lord  Lyons  to  Earl  Russell,  Nov.  1 7, 
1862. 
Vol.  XXXVIL—  75. 
of  the  most  intelligent  of  contemporary  ob- 
servers. Lincoln,  Chase,  and  Seward  were,  by 
a  long  interval,  the  first  three  Republic 
their  time,  and  each,  by  what  would  almost 
appear  a  special  favor  of  Providence, 
placed  in  a  position  where  he  could  be  of 
most  unquestioned  service  to  the  country.  Had 
cither  of  the  three,  except  Lincoln,  been  Presi- 
dent, the  nation  must  have  lost  the  inestimable 
services  of  the  other  two.  We  have  already 
dwelt  at  some  length  upon  the  responsibility 
which  devolved  during  these  years  upon  the 
Secretary  of  State,  and  upon  the  unfailing  cour- 
age, sagacity,  and  industry  with  which  he- 
met  it.  Before  recounting  an  incident  which 
threatened  for  a  time  to  deprive  the  President 
of  the  powerful  assistance  of  his  two  great  sub- 
ordinates, it  will  be  necessary  to  review,  in  a 
manner  however  brief  and  inadequate,  some 
of  the  main  points  in  the  administration  of  the 
finances  during  the  war. 
The  Republican  party  came  to  power  at  a 
time  when  its  adversaries  had  reduced  the 
credit  of  the  country  to  a  point  which  now 
appears  difficult  to  believe.  Even  before  the 
election  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  Mr.  Cobb,  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury,  was  compelled  to  pay 
twelve  per  cent,  for  the  use  of  the  small  sums 
necessary  to  meet  the  ordinary  expenses  of  the 
Government,  and  early  in  the  session  of  Con- 
gress which  began  in  December,  i860,  after  the 
election  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  amid  the  gathering 
gloom  of  imminent  civil  war,  Congress  author- 
ized the  issue  of  ten  millions  of  Treasury  notes, 
payable  in  one  year,  to  be  issued  at  the  best 
rate  obtainable  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury. That  officer  having  advertised  for  bids 
for  half  the  amount  authorized,  only  a  small 
sum  was  offered,  the  rates  ranging  from  twelve 
to  thirty-six  per  cent.  The  Secretary  accepted 
the  offers  at  twelve,  obtaining,  even  at  that  ex- 
orbitant rate,  the  meager  sum  of  half  a  million 
dollars.  Afterwards  a  syndicate  of  bankers, 
upon  hard  conditions  proposed  by  themselves. 
took  the  remaining  four  and  a  half  millions  at 
twelve  per  cent.  A  month  after,  when  Mr. 
Cobb  had  retired  and  Mr.  Dix  had  assumed  the 
charge  of  the  Treasury,  the  slight  increase  of 
public  confidence  derived  from  the  character 
of  the  new  Secretary  enabled  him  to  dispose  oi 
the  other  five  millions  at  an  average  of  ten  and 
five-eighths  per  cent.  In  February,  Congress 
having  authorized  a  further  loan  of  twenty-five 
millions  at  six  per  cent..  Mr.  Dix  was  able  to 
obtain  eight  millions  at  a  discount  of  ten  per 
cent.  It  was  in  this  depressed  and  discourag- 
ing state  of  the  public  finances  that  Mr.  Chase 
took  charge  of  the  Treasury.  Without  any 
special  previous  experience,  without  any  other 
2  W.  M.  Evarts,  Eulogy  on  Chase  delivered  at 
Dartmouth  College.
ABKAHAM  LINCOLN. 
nation  for  bis  exacting  task  than  groat 
ral  abilities,  unswerving  integrity  and  fi- 
. .  and  unwearying  industry,  he  grappled 
with  the  difficulties  o\  the  situation  in  a  manner 
which  won  him  the  plaudits  oi  the  civilized 
world  and  will  forever  enshrine  his  name  in 
the  memory  of  his  fellow-citizens.  To  quote 
Mr.  Evarts  again: 
:tions  of  the  place  knew  no  limits.     A 
.   wholly  unaccustomed  to  the  pressure  of  tax- 
ation, and  with  an  absolute  honor  ot'a  national  debt, 
rapidly  subjected  to  the  first  without  stint, 
to   be    buried    under  a  mountain   of  the   last. 
5  which  should  support  military  operations  on 
scale,  and  yet  not  break  the  back  of  in-' 
.  .which  .done  could  pay  them  ;  loans,  in  every 
that  financial  skill  could  devise,  and  to  the  fa r- 
of  the  public  credit ;  and  finally,  the  ex- 
t  of  governments  under  the  last  stress  and 
sity,  of  the  subversion  of  the  legal  tender,  by  the 
substitution  of  what  has  been  aptly  and  accurately 
..  the  coined  credit  of  the  Government  for  its 
d  money  —  all  these  exigencies  and  all  these  ex- 
nts  made  up  the  daily  problems  of  the  Secre- 
tary's life.    .   .    .   Whether  the  genius  of  Hamilton, 
ing  with  great  difficulties,  transcended  that  of 
eeting  the  largest  exigencies  with  greater  re- 
sources, is  an  unprofitable  speculation.    They  stand 
her,  in  the  judgment  of  their  countrymen,  the 
great  financiers  of  our  history. 
Immediately  upon  assuming  office  Mr.  Chase 
I  himself  to  the  difficult  work  before 
him.    The    only  provisions  which   had  been 
made  by  law  for  the  support  of  the  Govern- 
ment were  the  fragments  of  the  loan,  authorized 
but  unsold,  of  his  predecessor.  Satisfied  that  the 
rates  at  which  money  had  been  borrowed  both 
obb  and  by  Dix  were  unnecessarily  de- 
grading to  the  national  credit,  he  firmly  refused 
terms  similar  to  those  which  they  had  accepted, 
and  succeeded  in  borrowing  $8,000,000,  none 
of  it  at  a  lower  rate  than  ninety-four,  and  a 
few  days  later  he  borrowed  $5,000,000  more 
at  par.    Even  in  May,  after  the  outbreak  of  the 
.  he  was  able  to  place  some  $9,000,000  of 
I  i        rnment  loans  at  a  rate  only  a  little  below 
face  value.    These  were  of   course  but 
>rary  make-shifts,  based   upon  previous 
1  ;   but  when  Congress  met  on  the' 
rth   of  July,   in  that  first  special  session 
by    President   Lincoln,  an  entirely  new 
n  of  finance  had  to  be  instituted.  The  na- 
tional debt  on  the  1st  of  July  was  $90,000,000, 
and  there  was  a  balance  in  the  Treasury  of 
only   • 
:re  was  something  appalling  in  the  sudden 
and  monstrous  increase  of  the  expenses  of  the 
rnment  as  a  consequence  of  the  war.   The 
appropriations  f'jr  the  fiscal  year  1 860-6 r  were 
£79,000,000,  and  the  estimates  for  the  year 
following,  notwithstanding  the  threatening  out- 
.    were    only  for    $75,000,000.     Nobody 
foresaw  the  coming exigencies,  no  provision 
was  made  to  meet  them.  Mr.  Chase's  esti- 
mates for  the  first  fiscal  year  of  his  adminis- 
tration reached  the  astounding  aggregate  of 
$3  [8,500,000,  but  before  the  short  session  of 
Congress  adjourned  even  this  enormous  sum 
was  found  inadequate.  To  meet  these  immense 
demands  he  proposed  to  raise  $80,000,000  by 
taxes  and  $240,000,000  by  loans.  By  increas- 
ing the  taxes  upon  imports  he  expected  to  add 
$27,000,000  to  the  $30,000,000  already  de- 
rived from  the  tariff,  and  $3,000,000  from 
miscellaneous  sources  made  up  $60,000,000, 
leaving  $20,000,000  to  be  derived  from  direct 
taxes  and  the  excise.1  Congress  responded 
with  the  greatest  decision  and  patriotism  to  the 
proposition  of  the  Secretary.  They  authorized, 
on  the  17th  of  July,  a  loan  of  $250,000,000, 
and  passed  laws  increasing  duties  on  a  great 
number  of  articles ;  they  apportioned  a  direct 
tax  of  $20,000,000  among  the  States,  which 
was  cheerfully  paid  by  the  loyal  States,  and 
an  unsuccessful  attempt  was  made  to  enforce 
it  by  commissioners  for  the  States  in  rebell- 
ion. The  estimates  voted  for  the  army  were 
$207,000,000;  for  the  navy,  $56,000,000;  and 
only  $  1 ,300,000  for  civil  and  miscellaneous  pur- 
poses. Every  day  during  the  summer  and  au- 
tumn the  expenses  of  the  war  increased ;  for  the 
last  quarter  of  the  year  they  averaged  nearly 
$50,000,000  a  month. 
One  of  the  first  measures  of  relief  adopted  by 
the  Secretary  under  the  authority  of  Congress 
was  the  issue  of  the  so-called  "  demand  notes," 
payable  in  coin,  for  the  payment  of  salaries  or 
other  debts  of  the  United  States,  and  by  a  later 
act  made  receivable  for  public  dues.  There 
was,  at  first,  a  great  distrust  of  this  form  of 
paper  money,  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury and  other  public  officers,  in  order  to  create 
confidence,  joined  in  an  agreement  to  receive 
them  in  payment  of  their  salaries.  General  Scott 
issued  a  circular  to  the  army  announcing  the 
issue  of  paper  money  and  advising  its  accept- 
ance. Several  corporations  declined  to  accept 
them  in  payment  of  freight.  There  is  an  in- 
stance recorded  where  a  bank  in  New  York  re- 
fused to  accept  a  large  amount  of  them  except 
as  a  special  deposit,  which  deposit  was  after- 
wards withdrawn,  the  value  of  the  notes  having 
increased  with  the  rise  of  gold,  in  which  they 
were  payable,  to  fifty  per  cent,  premium  in 
other  paper  money.  But  this  and  other  like  ex- 
pedients gave  only  temporary  relief.  For  the 
permanent  and  wholesome  administration  of  fi- 
nancial affairs  a  great  national  loan  was  neces- 
sary, and  Mr.  Chase  held,  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  on  the  19th  of  August,  1 861,  a  conference 
with  the  representatives  of  the  principal  bankers 
of  the  United  States.  He  laid  before  them,  with 
1  Round  numbers  are  used  in  this  chapter.
A    ///SVOA'Y. 
equal  eloquence  and  judgment,  not  only  the 
needs  of  the  Government,  but  the  safety  and 
value  of  its  securities;  and  after  a  long  and 
earnest  discussion,  during  the  course  of  which 
it  seemed  at  one  time  possible  that  his  mis- 
sion would  result  in  failure,  he  formed  a  syn- 
dicate of  banks  which  advanced  the  Govern- 
ment $50,000,000,  and  after  this  loan  was 
successfully  placed  $50,000,000  more  were  de- 
rived from  the  same  source,  the  Government 
paying  seven  and  three-tenths  per  cent,  for 
the  money,  and  later  he  used  the  authority 
conferred  upon  him  by  the  act  of  July   17, 
1861,  to  issue  $50,000,000  more  of  six  per 
cent,  bonds  at  a  rate  making  them  equivalent 
to  seven  per  cents. 
When  Congress  met  in  December  and  the 
Secretary  in  his  first  annual  report  gave  an  ac- 
count of  his  stewardship,  he  reported  an  aggre- 
gate of  $197,000,000  realized  from  loans  in  all 
forms.  The  receipts  from  customs  were  less  than 
had  been  expected,  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
expenditures  had  grown  to  a  sum  much  larger 
than  in  June  had  been  imagined  possible.  The 
estimates  of  the  summer  session  were  based 
upon  an  army  of  300,000  men;  double  that 
number  were  now  under  arms.  The  pay  and 
the  rations  of  soldiers  and  sailors  had  also 
been  augmented,  and  the  Secretary  found 
himself  under  the  necessity  of  asking  increased 
appropriations  to  the  amount  of  $200,000,000. 
To  meet  this  needed  sum  he  proposed  to  in- 
crease the  tariff  and  the  direct  tax,  to  impose 
duties  on  liquors  and  tobacco,  on  notes  and 
deeds,  and  to  modify  the  income  tax  to  the 
advantage  of  the  Government.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  the  vast  obligations  devolving  upon 
the  Administration  he  did  not  hesitate  to  face 
the  facts,  and  with  a  courage  unusual  in  his- 
tory, and  a  sagacity  as  surprising  as  his  cour- 
age, he  announced  to  Congress  that  the  public 
debt,  which  on  the  1st  of  July,  i860,  was  but 
$64,000,000,  and  on  the  1st  of  July,  1861,  was 
$90,000,000,  would  probably  amount  on  the 
1st  of  July,  1862,  to  $517, 000, 000. 1 
It  was  apparent  that  the  volume  of  currency 
in  the  country  was  not  sufficient  for  the  enor- 
mous requirements  of  the  public  expenditure. 
The  banks  could  neither  pay  coin  to  the  Gov- 
ernment for  bonds,  nor  dispose  of  them  to  their 
customers  for  specie.  The  weaker  institutions 
were  already  tottering,  and  the  stronger  ones 
feared  a  crisis  which  would  result  in  universal 
disaster.  They  met  in  convention  on  the  27th 
of  December  and  agreed  upon  a  suspension 
of  specie  payments,  which  took  place  the  fol- 
lowing day.    The  Government  necessarily  fol- 
1  It  actually  was  $524,000,000  on  the  1st  of  July, 
1862,  and  on  the  1st  of  July  following  it  was  $1,100,- 
000,000;  Mr.  Chase  having  estimated  it  in  his  report 
of  December  at  $1,000,000,000. 
lowed  the  example  of  the  banks,  and  the 
year  began  with  the  rnelancho! 
, 
all  the  public  and  private  institutioi 
country  redeeming  their  broken  promises  with 
new  ones. 
The  public  debt  had  risen  to  $300,000,000; 
the  treasury  was  almost  empty;   the  dail) 
penditures  amounted  to  nearly  $2,000,000.  It 
was  estimated  that  $350,000,000  were  ne 
to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  Government  to 
close  of  the  fiscal  year,  and  the  treasury  had 
means  for  meeting  the  drafts  of  the  Govern- 
ment for  less  than  two  month-.  In  the  world 
of  finance,  as  well  as  in  the  world  of  polk: 
was  generally  agreed  that  the  only  resort  of  the 
Government  was  paper  money.  Leading  bank- 
ers throughout  the  United  States  urged  this 
upon  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  as  the  only 
practicable  expedient.  The  leading  statesmen 
in  both  houses  of  Congress  were  brought  with 
extreme  reluctance  to  the  same  conclusion.  1  0 
no  one  was  this  decision  more  painful  than  to 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  He  agreed  with 
the  greatest  of  his  predecessors,  in  that  famous 
report  which  has  become  a  classic  in  our  poli- 
tics and  our  finances,  that — 
The  emitting  of  paper  money  by  the  authority  of 
the  Government  is  wisely  prohibited  to  the  individ- 
ual States  by  the  Constitution,  and  the  spirit  of  that 
prohibition  ought  not  to  be  disregarded  by  the  Gov- 
ernment of  the  United  States.  .  .  .  The  wisdom 
of  the  Government  will  be  shown  in  never  trusting 
itself  with  the  use  of  so  seducing  and  dangerous  an 
expedient.  .  .  .  The  stamping  of  paper  is  an  op- 
eration so  much  easier  than  the  laying  o\  taxes,  that 
a  government  in  the  practice  of  paper  emissions 
would  rarely  fail  in  any  such  emergency  to  indulge 
itself  too  far  in  that  resource  to  avoid  as  much  as 
possible  one  less  auspicious  to  present  popularity. 
If  it  should  not  even  be  carried  so  far  as  to  be  ren- 
dered an  absolute  bubble,  it  would  at  least  be  likely 
to  be  extended  to  a  degree  which  would  occasion 
an  inflated  and  artificial  state  of  things  incompati- 
ble with  the  regular  and  prosperous  course  of  the 
political  economy. 
But  in  spite  of  all  this  reluctance  Mr.  Chase 
felt  that  an  emergency  was  upon  the  Govern- 
ment from  which  this  was  the  only  issue.  He 
saw  that  the  corporate  institutions  of  the  country 
would  not  receive  the  notes  of  the  Government 
unless  they  were  made  a  legal  tender  by  act  of 
Congress. 
"  This  state  of  things."  he  wrote.  "  Avas  the 
high  road  to  ruin,  and  I  did  not  hesitate  as  to 
the  remedy."  He  threw  the  enure  weight  of 
his  influence  upon  his  friends  in  Congress  and 
urged  them  to  prompt  and  thorough  action. 
In  a  letter  to  Mr.  Stevens,  of  the  Committee 
of  Ways  and  Means,  he  said: 
The  provision  making  the  United  States  notes  a 
legal  tender  has  doubtless  been  well  considered  by
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
mmittee,  and  their  conclusion  needs  no  sup- 
rrom  any  observation  of  mine.    I  think  it  my 
duty  to  say,  however,  that  in  respect  to  this  pro- 
i  my  reflections  have  conducted  me  to  the  same 
they  have  readied.    It  is  not   unknown 
em  that   I  have  felt,  nor  do  1  wish  to  conceal 
.  .i  aversion  to  making  anything 
ment  of  debts.    It  has  been  my 
ish  to  avoid  the  necessity  of  such  legisla- 
It  is  at  present  impossible,  however,  in  con- 
the  large  expenditures  entailed  by  the 
nd  the  suspension  of  the  banks,  to  procure 
ent    coin    for   current   disbursements.     It  has 
therefore  become    indispensably  necessary   that  we 
3  >rt  to  the  issue  of  United  States  notes. 
making   them    a   legal    tender  might   still  be 
avoided  if  the  willingness  manifested  by  the  people 
ally,  by  railroad  companies,  and  by  many  of 
the  banking  institutions,  to  receive  and  pay  them  as 
money  in  all  transactions  were  absolutely,  or  prac- 
tically, universal ;   but,  unfortunately,  there  are  some 
persons  and  some  institutions  which  refuse  to  receive 
and  pay  them,  and  whose  action  tends  not  merely 
to  the  unnecessary  depreciation  of  the  notes,  but  to 
establish   discriminations  in  business  against  those 
who  in   this  matter  give  a  cordial   support  to  the 
Government  and    in   favor   of  those  who   do   not. 
Such    discriminations   should,  if  possible,  be    pre- 
vented, and  the  provision  making  notes  a  legal  ten- 
der in  a  great  measure  at  least  prevents  it  by  put- 
ting all  citizens  in  this  respect  upon  the  same  level 
both  in  respect  to  rights  and  duties.1 
And  several  days  later,  on  hearing  some  inti- 
mation that  the  committee  thought  he  was  not 
specially  earnest  in  desiring  the  passage  of  the 
bill,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Spaulding : 
It  is  true  that  I  came  with  reluctance  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  legal-tender  clause  is  a  necessity,  but 
I  came  to  it  decidedly  and  I  support  it  earnestly. 
.  .  .  Immediate  action  is  of  great  importance;  the 
treasury  is  nearly  empty.  I  have  been  obliged  to 
draw  for  the  last  installment  of  the  November  loan. 
As  soon  as  it  is  paid  I  fear  the  banks  generally  will 
refuse  to  receive  United  States  notes.  You  will  see 
the  necessity  of  urging  the  bill  through  v/ithout 
more  d 
In  both    houses  of   Congress  the  measure 
ived  the  most  violent  denunciation  on  the 
part  of  those  opposed  to  it,  and  even  those 
who  voted  in  favor  of  it  explained  their  votes 
in  speeches  filled  with  deprecation  of  the  neces- 
which  demanded  it.      Mr.  Sumner,  after 
ting  in  an  eloquent  and  impassioned  speech 
the  evil  which  lie  thought  would  result  from 
such  a  measure,  concluded  by  saying: 
If  I  mention  these  things  it  is  because  of  the  un- 
feigned solicitude  I  feel  with  regard  to  this  measure, 
and  not  with  the  view  of  arguing  against  the  exer- 
cise of  a  constitutional  power,  when  in  the  opinion 
of  the  Government  in  which  I  place  trust  the  neces- 
sity for  its  exercise  has  arrived. 
1  Schuckers,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  244. 
Mr.  Fessenden  and  Mr.  Morrill  spoke  in  the 
same  strain  of  sorrowful  apprehension,  but  the 
bill  became  a  law  on  the  25th  of  February, 
1862. 
This  important  law,  which  Mr.  Chase,  as  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury,  urged  upon  Congress, 
and  which  Mr.  Chase,  as  Chief- Justice  of  the 
United  States,  afterwards  decided  to  be  uncon- 
stitutional, authorized  the  issue  of  $  1 50,000,000 
of  United  States  notes  not  bearing  interest, 
payable  at  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States, 
in  denominations  of  not  less  than  five  dollars. 
These  notes  were  to  be  received  in  payment 
of  all  debts  and  demands  of  every  kind  due 
to  the  United  States,  except  duties  on  imports, 
which  were  payable  in  coin;  and  they  were  to 
be  paid  by  the  United  States  in  satisfaction  of 
all  claims  against  the  Government,  except  for 
interest  upon  the  public  debt,  which  also  wras 
to  be  paid  in  coin,  the  receipts  from  customs 
being  devoted  to  this  purpose ;  and  these  notes 
were  to  be  lawful  money  and  legal  tender  in 
payment  of  all  debts,  public  and  private,  within 
the  United  States,  with  the  exceptions  above 
mentioned,  and  they  were  to  be  received  at 
par  in  exchange  for  Government  bonds.  By 
a  later  act  the  demand  notes  were  also  made 
a  legal  tender,  as  some  of  the  banks  had  re- 
fused to  receive  them  without  such  provision. 
It  was  thought  in  February  that  $150,000,- 
000  of  this  currency  would  be  enough,  but 
in  June  it  was  evident  that  this  would  not 
be  the  case;  $150,000,000  more  were  de- 
manded by  the  Secretary  and  at  once  author- 
ized by  Congress.  $35,000,000  of  this  last 
issue  were  to  be  in  denominations  less  than 
five  dollars. 
Even  this  vast  volume  of  currency  did  not 
satisfy  the  insatiable  demands  of  the  time,  and 
the  rapidly  increasing  popularity  of  the  United 
States  notes,  or  greenbacks,  as  they  were  called, 
induced  the  Government  to  ask,  and  Congress 
to  grant,  a  wide  extension  of  the  authority  to 
issue  them,  so  that  before  the  war  ended 
$1,250,000,000  of  legal  tender  had  been  au- 
thorized by  Congress.  Of  this  $450,000,000 
were  in  legal-tender  United  States  notes ; 
$400,000,000  in  Treasury  notes  payable  not 
more  than  three  years  from  date,  and  bearing  in- 
terest not  exceeding  six  per  cent. ;  $400,000,000 
in  Treasury  notes  redeemable  after  three  years, 
bearing  a  currency  interest,  not  exceeding  seven 
and  three-tenths  per  cent.  This  full  authority 
was  not  availed  of  by  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  The  legal  tenders  outstanding  on  the 
30th  of  June,  1864,  amounted  to  $600,000,000, 
and  a  yearlater,  under  the  administration  of  Mr. 
Fessenden,  they  amounted  to  $669,000,000. 
The  public  debt  at  the  close  of  the  fiscal  year 
1864  was  $1,740,000,000,  and  the  next  year 
$2,682,000,000,  which    was   increased   some
A   HISTORY. 
557 
$200,000,000  by  the  necessary  expenses  that 
followed  as  a  sequel  of  the  war.1 
This  is  not  the  place  to  reopen  the  contro- 
versy which  outlasted  the  war  and  for  years  after- 
wards was  an  element  of  disorganization  in 
politics  and  of  a  bitter  and  somewhat  demor- 
alizing dispute  in  both  houses  of  the  Con- 
gress of  the  United  States.  It  will  probably 
be  the  verdict  of  posterity,  as  it  was  the  opin- 
ion of  the  ablest  statesmen  of  the  time,  that  a 
legal-tender  act  was  a  necessary  exercise  of  the 
powers  of  the  Government  in  a  time  of  supreme 
emergency;  that  the  result  of  that  act  was  all 
that  its  advocates  hoped  for  in  sustaining  the 
Government  in  a  period  of  vast  and  compul- 
sory expenditure ;  and  that  the  evils  which  grew 
out  of  it,  great  as  they  unquestionably  were, 
were  not  so  disastrous  as  the  fears  of  intelligent 
economists  at  the  time  apprehended. 
Gold,  having  been  driven  from  circulation 
by  the  legal-tender  notes,  became  at  once 
the  favorite  stock  for  speculation  in  Wall 
street,  and  while  the  premium  upon  it  rose  to 
a  certain  extent  in  proportion  to  the  increase 
of  volume  of  paper  money,  and  was  subject  to 
violent  fluctuations  in  consequence  of  military 
successes  or  disasters,  there  was  no  such  method 
in  the  course  of  its  quotations  as  to  render 
them  explicable  by  either  of  these  influences. 
It  had  become,  so  to  speak,  a  fancy  stock,  and 
there  was  no  more  reason  for  its  wilder  fluctua- 
tions than  for  those  of  other  securities  which  rise 
and  fall  in  obedience  to  the  currents  of  Wall 
street  and  without  reference  to  intrinsic  values. 
Just  before  the  passage  of  the  legal-tender  bill 
the  premium  upon  gold  was  4^  per  cent.,  and 
shortly  after  it  became  a  law  the  premium  fell 
to  1  y2  ;  but  it  gradually  rose  until  in  the  mid- 
dle of  July  it  was  17,  in  the  middle  of  October, 
3  2^,  and  at  the  end  of  the  year,  34.  On  the  25  th 
of  February,  1863,  after  the  legal-tender  law 
had  been  in  operation  for  a  year,  the  premium  on 
gold  had  risen  to  72^  ;  the  brilliant  successes 
of  the  National  cause  at  Gettysburg  and  Vicks- 
burg  reduced  it  to  23^  ;  it  rose  again  in  Octo- 
ber to  56^,  and  rose  no  higher  than  that  until 
the  following  spring,  when  on  the  14th  of 
April,  1864,  it  was  quoted  at  88,  and  on  the 
2 2d  of  June,  as  the  consequence  of  an  ill-ad- 
vised bill  passed  by  Congress  to  prevent  specu- 
lation in  gold,  the  premium  climbed  at  once 
to  the  frightful  altitude  of  130,  falling  the  day 
afterwards  to  115.  On  the  1st  of  July  it 
jumped  to  185,  on  the  2d  it  fell  back  to  130, 
and  on  the  6th  the  unfortunate  law,  born  of 
a  short-sighted  patriotism,  was  repealed.    The 
1  The  cost  of  conducting  the  war,  after  it  was  fully  in- 
augurated, was  scarcely  at  any  time  less  than  $30,000,000 
a  month.  At  many  times  it  far  exceeded  that  amount. 
Sometimes  it  was  not  less  than  $90,000,000  a  month ; 
and  the  average  expenses  of  the  war,  from  its  incep- 
mischief,  however,  was  not  jret  over,  for  five 
(lays  later  there  was  a  rise  to  185, —  the  high- 
est figure  attained  during  the  war, —  followed 
by  a  sharp  fall,  which  continued  until  gold  was 
quoted  on  the  26th  of  Septemh  ,.  thus 
falling  nearly  100   pet  cent  in  k   i   than  I 
months.    There  was  no  warrant  in  the  finan- 
cial or  the  military  condition  of  tl. 
for  these  wild  fluctuations.    '1  hey  were  th 
spring  of  the  desperate  efforts  of  cupidity  and 
enterprise  which  found  their  predestined 
in  the  fears  and  apprehensi< 
speculators.    The   Secretary  of  the 
was  authorized  in  March,  1864,  to  sell  surplus 
gold  for  the  purpose  of  checking  this  specula- 
tion; and  in  April,  the  premium  having  risen 
to  75,  Mr.  Chase  went  in  person  to  New  York 
to  try  the  effect  of  the  sale  of  "cash  gold"  upon 
the  trade  in  phantom  gold.2    The  day  he  ar- 
rived the  speculators  defied  him  by  running 
the  premium  to  88.    He  sold  in  a  few  days 
about  $11,000,000,  reducing  the  premium  to 
65,  with  convulsive  fluctuations;  but  the  mo- 
ment the  pressure  of  the  Treasury  was  removed 
the  price  of  gold  mounted  as  before.  The  same 
experiment  was  frequently  tried  afterwards,  with 
more  or  less  success. 
The  troubles  of  the  time,  which  had  reduced 
the  treasury  of  the  United  States  to  a  condi- 
tion of  impoverishment,  had  exercised,  as  was 
natural,  exactly  the  contrary  effect  upon  the 
banks  of  New  York.  The  timidity  of  capital 
had  accumulated  a  great  surplus  of  money  in 
these  institutions,  with  a  far  smaller  number  of 
loans  and  discounts  than  usual.  The  deposits 
amounted  at  the  end  of  186 1  to  $146,000,000. 
At  the  suggestion  of  Mr.  Cisco,  the  Assistant 
Treasurer  in  New  York,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  adopted  a  system  of  temporary  loans 
which  was  sanctioned  by  Congress  in  a  clause 
of  the  legal-tender  law,  and  the  authority  thus 
given  was  increased  by  successive  acts  until  the 
limit  was  fixed  at  $150,000,000.  These  loans 
were  not  only  of  great  advantage  to  the  Gov- 
ernment as  well  as  to  the  lenders,  but  they  also 
served  as  a  useful  balance  to  the  money  market. 
In  times  of  severe  pressure  the  reimbursement 
of  large  sums  was  often  the  means  of  tempo- 
rary relief.  Another  expedient  authorized  by 
Congress,  on  the  1st  of  March,  1S62.  was  the 
issuing  of  certificates  of  indebtedness  to  such 
creditors  of  the  United  States  as  chose  to  re- 
ceive them  in  payment  of  audited  accounts. 
They  were  payable  one  year  from  date,  with 
interest  at  six  per  cent.  The  power  to  issue 
them  was  unlimited,  and  their  extensive  issue 
tion  to  its  conclusion,  may  be  said  to  have  been  about 
$2,000,000  each  day.  The  public  debt  reached  its  maxi- 
mum on  August  31,  1S65,  on  which  day  it  amounted  to 
$2,845,907,626.56.  [TJ.Ivnox,"rmted States Xotes."] 
2  Schuckers,  "Life  of  S.  P.  Chase."  p.  358.
5S« 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
led  at  last  to  their  serious  depreciation.   An- 
r  important  clause  of  the  legal-tender  act, 
in  addition  to  those  we  have  mentioned,  was 
that    which   authorized   the  Secretary  of  the 
ssue  coupon  or  registered  bonds 
to  an  amount  not  exceeding  $500,000,000,  re- 
deemable at  the  pleasure  oi  the  United  States 
after  five  years  and  payable  twenty  years  from 
.  and  bearing  interest  at  the  rate  of  six 
(  cut.  per  annum,  payable  semi-annually. 
They  were  to  be  exempt  from  taxation  by 
e  authority,  and  the  coin  from  duties  on 
imports  was  to  be  set  aside  as  a  special  fund 
for  the  payment  of  interest  on  the  bonds  and 
notes  o[  the  United  States  and  for  other  speci- 
fied purposes.  These  were  the  famous  "  five 
twenty  "  bonds,  which,  issued  at  first  at  a  slight 
discount  below  par  in  paper,  justified  the  faith 
and  the  sagacity  of  their  earliest  purchasers  by 
idy  rise  during  all  the  years  of  their  exist- 
ence and  were  all  paid  in  gold,  or  converted  into 
other  securities,  long  before  the  time  fixed  for 
their  redemption.  "  All  these  measures,"  the  Sec- 
retary said  in  his  annual  report  of  December, 
1S62.  "  worked  well."  If  Congress  had  passed 
at  the  previous  session  the  national  banking  law 
which  he  urged  upon  it,  he  thought  that  no 
financial  necessity  would  at  that  time  have 
demanded  additional  legislation.  But  the  bill 
which  had  been  introduced  for  that  purpose  the 
year  before  had  found  few  supporters.  Its  only 
prominent  advocate  in  the  House  of  Represen- 
tatives was  Mr.  Samuel  Hooper  of  Massachu- 
setts, a  gentleman  whose  sound  judgment  and 
whose  large  knowledge  of  financial  subjects 
gave  great  and  deserved  weight  to  his  opin- 
ions. He  could  do  nothing  more  at  the  moment 
than  to  obtain  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  for  that 
purpose  ;  but  in  the  course  of  the  year  that  fol- 
lowed, the  absolute  necessity  for  some  such 
measure  became  every  day  more  apparent. 
The  coin  in  the  country,  variously  estimated 
at  from  $150,000,000  to  $210,000,000,  was 
absolutely  inadequate  to  the  demands  of  the 
time.  The  system  of  State  banks  in  existence 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  was  not  only  in- 
commensurate to  the  needs  of  the  country,  but 
radically  vicious  in  itself.  There  was  no  uni- 
formity of  credit,  no  guaranty  whatever  of  au- 
thenticity in  circulation.  Out  of  1500  banks 
there  were  said  to  be  fewer  than  300  whose 
notes  were  not  counterfeited.  There  was  but 
a  comparatively  small  number  whose  notes 
were  not  subject  to  discount  outside  of  the 
State  in  which  they  were  issued,  and  a  citizen 
traveling  from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Hudson 
found  the  contents  of  his  wallet  changing  in 
value  whenever  he  crossed  a  State  line.  Of 
course  with  the  immense  demand  for  currency 
created  by  the  war  all  these  evils  were  greatly 
increased  and  aggravated,  and  when  Congress 
met  again  in  December,  1862,  the  Secretary 
urged  anew,  with  the  added  weight  of  author- 
ity which  came  from  a  more  fully  matured  plan 
and  an  enlarged  experience,  the  scheme,  which 
had  been  treated  with  neglect  the  year  before, 
for  establishing  a  safe  and  uniform  currency 
throughout  the  nation. 
The  National  Bank  Act  was  prepared  in  accord- 
ance with  the  views  of  Mr.  Chase  by  E.  G.  Spauld- 
ing  of  New  York  and  Samuel  Hooper  of  Massachu- 
setts, who  were  members  of  the  Committee  of 
Ways  and  Means,  and  during  the  month  of  De- 
cember, 1 86 1,  it  was  printed  for  the  use  of  that 
committee.  The  bill  encountered  most  earnest  op- 
position in  the  committee,  which  was  busily  en- 
gaged on  the  loan  and  internal-revenue  bills  and 
other  important  work,  and  it  was  finally  laid  aside. 
In  his  report  for  1862,  Mr.  Chase  again,  notwith- 
standing the  suspension  of  specie  payments,  ear- 
nestly advocated  the  measure.  He  said  that  among 
the  advantages  which  would  arise  from  its  passage 
would  be  "  that  the  United  States  bonds  would  be 
required  for  banking  purposes,  a  steady  market 
would  be  established,  and  their  negotiation  greatly 
facilitated.  ...  It  is  not  easy  to  appreciate  the 
full  benefits  of  such  conditions  to  a  Government 
obliged  to  borrow"  ;  it  will  "reconcile  as  far  as 
practicable  the  interests  of  existing  institutions  with 
those  of  the  whole  people,"  and  will  supply  "  a  firm 
anchorage  to  the  union  of  the  States." 
The  bill  is  understood  to  have  had  the  sanction  of 
every  member  of  the  Administration,  and  President 
Lincoln  earnestly  advocated  its  passage  in  his  annual 
message  in  1862  ;  and  in  1863  he  said,  ll  The  enact- 
ment by  Congress  of  a  national  banking  law  has 
proved  a  valuable  support  of  the  public  credit,  and 
the  general  legislation  in  relation  to  loans  has  fully 
answered  the  expectations  of  its  favorers.  Some 
amendments  may  be  required  to  perfect  existing  laws, 
but  no  change  in  their  principles  or  general  scope  is 
believed  to  be  needed."  Again, in  1864,  he  favored  the 
taxation  of  the  issues  of  State  banks  and  the  substi- 
tution of  national-bank  notes  therefor.  About  four- 
teen months  thereafter  the  same  bill  which  had  been 
printed  for  the  use  of  the  Committee  of  Ways  and 
Means  was  introduced  by  Mr.  Sherman  and  referred 
to  the  Finance  Committee  of  the  Senate, from  which 
it  was  reported  by  him  on  February  2,  1863,  with 
amendments.  Ten  days  later  it  passed  that  body  by 
a  vote  of  23  to  21  ;  and  on  the  20th,  same  month, 
it  also  passed  the  House  of  Representatives  by  a  vote 
of  78  to  64.1 
It  was  warmly  advocated  by  those  who  ap- 
preciated its  advantages,  and  as  earnestly  op- 
posed by  those  who  thought  they  foresaw  the 
growth  of  a  powerful  monetary  system  danger- 
ous to  the  popular  liberties.  Its  chief  opponent 
in  the  Senate  was  Mr.  Collamer,  who  ably  rep- 
resented the  traditions  of  the  past ;  it  was  most 
efficiently  advocated  by  Mr.  John  Sherman  of 
Ohio,  to  whom  was  reserved  a  part  of  great 
1  Address  of  Comptroller  Knox  before  the  Mer- 
chants' Association  of  Boston,  Nov.  27,  1880.  "  Bank- 
ers' Magazine,"  Vol.  XV.,  p.  545.
A    ///S'/'OA'Y. 
honor  and  usefulness  in  bringing  to  a  close  the 
financial  history  of  the  war. 
The  bill  was  thoroughly  revised,  discussed,  and 
repassed  a  little  more  than  one  year  afterwards  (June 
3,  1864).  .  .  .  The  vote  in  the  Senate  was  30 
in  favor  and  9  against  the  bill,  and  in  the  House 
the  vote  was  78  to  63. 1 
The  principal  features  of  this  comprehensive 
scheme  were  to  open  to  private  capital  the  busi- 
ness of  national  banking  so  freely  that  there 
could  be  no  reasonable  accusation  of  privilege 
or  monopoly ;  to  give  to  the  whole  system  of 
banks  a  homogeneous  circulation  of  notes,  hav- 
ing a  common  impression,  authenticated  by  a 
common  authority,  made  safe  by  an  adequate 
provision  of  specie,  and  secured  for  redemption 
by  the  pledge  of  United  States  bonds  deposited 
in  Washington ;  and  finally  by  the  Act  of  March 
3,  1865;  to  tax  out  of  existence  the  circulation 
of  the  banks  organized  under  State  laws.  The 
whole  system  being  thus  based  upon  Govern- 
ment bonds,  several  hundreds  of  millions  of 
United  States  notes  were  funded  in  bonds.  It 
was  the  Secretary's  belief,  afterwards  fully  jus- 
tified under  the  wise  and  masterly  administra- 
tion of  Mr.  Sherman,  that  this  system  of  national 
banks  would  be  of  invaluable  assistance  in  the 
resumption  of  specie  payments  by  the  Govern- 
ment.   He  said : 
If  temporarily  these  associations  redeem  their  is- 
sues with  United  States  notes,  resumption  of  specie 
payment  will  not  thereby  be  delayed  or  endangered, 
but  hastened  and  secured  ;  for,  just  as  soon  as  vic- 
tory shall  restore  peace,  the  ample  revenue  already 
secured  by  wise  legislation  will  enable  the  Govern- 
ment through  advantageous  purchases  of  specie  to 
replace  at  once  large  amounts,  and  at  no  distant  day 
the  whole  of  this  circulation,  by  coin,  without  detri- 
ment to  any  interest,  but,  on  the  contrary,  with 
great  and  manifest  benefit  to  all  interests. 
The  bill  was  constantly  amended  and  im- 
proved, and,  although  it  might  be  too  much 
to  say  that  it  was  ever  rendered  entirely  per- 
fect, it  is  perhaps  now  unquestioned  that  few 
more  wise  and  beneficent  measures  have  ever 
been  devised  by  American  statesmanship. 
No  financial  operations  so  prodigious  as 
those  which  we  have  thus  briefly  sketched  had 
ever  before  been  known.  The  largest  loans  ever 
made  by  England  were  those  which  she  nego- 
tiated in  the  terrible  years  of  1 8 1 2-13  when  she 
was  fighting  at  the  same  time  Napoleon  and  the 
United  States.  The  British  Government  bor- 
rowed in  those  years  $534,000,000,  only  a  little 
more  than  Mr.  Chase  borrowed  in  nine  months. 
The  estimated  wealth  of  the  United  Kingdom 
at  that  time,  and  of  the  loyal  States  in  i860, 
was  almost  exactly  the  same,  in  each  case  some- 
thing over  $100,000,000,000.  Nowhere,  we 
believe,  do  the  annals   of  the  world  record 
such  an  appreciation  of  the  public  credit  as 
that  which  is  seen  from  the  time  oi    Mr.  Lin- 
coln's accession   to  the  pr<  until  the 
period  of  the  resumption  of  sp  rment 
;i(tcr  the  close  of  the  war.     It.  was  hard  for 
Mr.  Buchanan's  Secretaries  of  the  Ti 
borrow  money  to  pay  the  ordinary  exp* 
of  the   Government  at  twelve   per  1 
Ghase,  as  soon  as  Congress    1  him 
command  of  the  machinery  required,  in  the 
legal-tender  currency,  the  popular  loan,  and 
the  national  banking  law,  found  no  great  1 
culty  in  supplying  at  six  per  cent  tie  raven- 
ous wants  of  a  most  costly  war ;  and  under  the 
operation  of  the  laws  provided  lor  him  and 
similar  legislation  called  for  by  his  - 
the  Government  credit  gradually  rose  until  its 
four  per  cents,  sold  at   130,  and  its  three  per 
cents,  commanded  a  premium.    At  the  1; 
ning  the  Secretary  was  forced  to  rely  □ 
upon  individual  patriotism  than  upon  public 
confidence  ;  but  long  before  the  war  ended  he 
had  hundreds  of  millions  at  his  command. 
In  all  these  important  labors  Mr.  Chase  had 
the  constant  support  of  the  President.  Mr.  Lin- 
coln exercised  less  control  and  a  less  constant 
supervision  over  the  work  of  the  Treasury  than 
over  some  other  departments.  But  he  rated  at 
their  true  value  the  industry  and  the  abilit 
the  Secretary  and  the  immense  responsibilitv 
devolved  upon  his  department,  and  contrib- 
uted to  its  success  in  every  way  in  his  power. 
He  sometimes  made  suggestions  of  financial 
measures,2  but  did  not  insist  on  their  being 
adopted,  and  when  the  Secretary  needed  his 
powerful  assistance  with  Congress  he  always 
gave  it  ungrudgingly.  In  regular  and  special 
messages  he  urged  upon  Congress  the  iv. 
ures  which  the  Secretary  thought  important.11 
and  in  frequent  and  informal  conferences  at 
the  Executive  Mansion  with  the  leading  mem- 
bers of  both  houses  he  exerted  all  his  powers 
of  influence  and  persuasion  to  assist  the  Secre- 
tary in  obtaining  what  legislation  was  needed. 
SEWARD    AND    CHASE. 
Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Chase  became  at  an 
early  day,  and  continued  to  be,  respectively. 
the  representatives  in  the  Cabinet  of  the  more 
conservative  and  the  more  radical  element! 
the  Republican  party.  Each  exerted  himself 
with  equal  zeal  and  equal  energy  in  the  branch 
of  the  public  service  committed  to  his  charge ; 
but  their  relative  attitudes  towards  the  Presi- 
dent soon  became  entirely  different  Mr. 
Seward,  while    doing   everything   possible  to 
1  Address  of  Comptroller  Knox. 
2  Lincoln  to  Chase,  May  18,  1864 
3  Especially  the  message  of  January  10. 1863,  in  favor 
of  the  funding  bill  and  the  bill  to  provide  a  national 
currency.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
e    the   national    cause,  and    thus    uncon- 
>lv  building  for  himself  an  enduring  mon- 
ument in  the  respect  and  regard  of  the  country, 
can  be  discerned,  absolutely  free 
ambition  or   afterthought  personal 
to  himself.     He  was.  during  the  early  part  of 
the  war,  so  intent  upon  the  work  immediately 
in  hand  that  he  had  no  leisure  for  political 
•nations;    and  later,  when  the  subject  of 
Presidential  nomination  began  to  be 
considered  and  discussed,  he  recognized  the 
that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  best  qualified  by  his 
abilities,  his  experience,  and  his  standing  in 
untry  to  be  his  own  successor. 
The  attitude  of  Mr.  Chase  was  altogether 
unlike  this.    As  we  have  seen,  he  did  all  that 
man  could  do  to  grapple  with  the  problem 
of  supplying  the  ways  and  means  of  the  gi- 
gantic war.     "With  untiring   zeal   and  perfect 
■    grity  he  devoted  his  extraordinary  ability 
to  the  work  of  raising  the  thousands  of  mill- 
expended    in   the   great   struggle  which 
crowned   with  a  colossal   success.     But 
his  attitude  towards  the  President,  it  is  hardly 
too    much    to    say,    was    one    which    varied 
between    the   limits    of   active    hostility   and 
\olent  contempt.  He  apparently  never 
changed  his  opinion  that  a  great  mistake  had 
been  committed  at  Chicago,  and  the  pre- 
dominant thought  which  was  present  to  him 
through  three  years  of  his  administration  was 
that  it  was  his  duty  to  counteract,  as  far  as 
possible,  the  evil  results  of  that  mistake.  He 
felt  himself  alone  in  the  Cabinet.  He  looked 
upon  the  President  and  all  his  colleagues  as 
his  inferiors  in  capacity,  in  zeal,  in  devotion 
to  liberty  and  the  general  welfare.  He  sin- 
cerely persuaded  himself  that  every  disaster 
which  happened  to  the  country  happened  be- 
cause his  advice  was  not  followed,  and  that 
every  piece  of  good  fortune  was  due  to  his 
having  been  able,  from  time  to  time,  to  rescue 
the  President  and  the  rest  of  the  Cabinet  from 
the  consequences  of  their  own  errors.  He 
kept  up  a  voluminous  correspondence  with 
friends  in  all  sections  of  the  country,  to  which 
we  should  hesitate  to  refer  had  it  not  been 
that  he  retained  copies  of  his  letters,  and  many 
years  afterwards  gave  them  into  the  hands 
of  a  biographer  for  publication.  These  letters 
are  pervaded  by  a  constant  tone  of  slight  and 
criticism  towards  his  chief  and  his  colleagues. 
He  continually  disavows  all  responsibility  for 
the  conduct  of  the  war.  "  My  recommenda- 
tions," he  says,  "before  [Halleck]  came  in 
were  generally  disregarded,  and  since  have 
been  seldom  ventured.  .  .  .  Those  who  re- 
ject my  counsels  ought  to  know  better  than  I 
1  Schucker,,  "  Life  of  S. 
2  [bid.,  p.  458. 
3  Ibid.,  379. 
C'lia 
se,"  p.  443. 
do."  1  "I  do  not  wonder  that  dissatisfaction 
prevails.  .  .  .  It  is  sad  to  think  of  the  delay 
and  inaction  which  have  marked  the  past."2 
To  Senator  Sherman  he  wrote : 
The  future  does  not  look  promising  to  me.  .  .  . 
We,  who  are  called  members  of  the  Cabinet,  but 
are  in  reality  only  separate  heads  of  departments, 
meeting  now  and  then  for  talk  on  whatever  hap- 
pens to  come  uppermost,  not  for  grave  consultation 
on  matters  concerning  the  salvation  of  the  country  — 
we  have  as  little  to  do  with  it  as  if  we  were  the 
heads  of  factories  supplying  shoes  or  clothing.  .  .  . 
It  is  painful  to  hear  complaints  of  remissness,  de- 
lays, discords,  and  dangers,  and  feel  that  there  must  be 
ground  for  such  complaints,  and  know,  at  the  same 
time,  that  one  has  no  power  to  remedy  the  evils 
complained  of,  and  yet  be  thought  to  have.3 
To  another  he  said  : 
Some  consolation,  in  the  review  of  the  disasters  we 
have  experienced,  may  perhaps  be  found  in  the  sup- 
position that  they  were  necessary  to  convince  the 
President  and  the  country  that  a  decided  measure  in 
relation  to  slavery  was  absolutely  necessary.  .  .  . 
Though  charged  with  the  responsibility  of  provid- 
ing means  for  the  vast  expenditures  of  the  war,  ! 
have  little  more  voice  in  its  conduct  than  a  stranger 
to  the  Administration.4 
He  says  if  his  judgment  had  more  weight 
the  war  would  be  prosecuted  with  more  vigor 
and  success.  The  letters  in  this  strain  are  in- 
numerable. In  all  of  them  he  labors  to  keep 
himself  distinct  and  separate  from  the  rest  of 
the  Government,  protesting  against  its  faults 
and  errors,  and  taking  credit  for  the  good  ad- 
vice he  wastes  upon  them.    He  says: 
We  have  fallen  on  very  evil  days.  .  .  .  The 
President  has  hitherto  refused  to  sanction  any  ade- 
quate measures  for  the  liberation  of  the  loyal  popu- 
lation of  the  South  from  slavery  to  the  rebels.  .  .  . 
Then  we  have  placed  and  continued  in  command 
generals  who  have  never  manifested  the  slightest 
sympathy  with  our  cause  as  related  to  the  control- 
ling question  of  slavery.  ...  All  these  causes 
tend  to  demoralization,  and  we  are  demoralized.  .  .  . 
It  is  some  consolation  to  me  that  my  voice,  and,  so 
far  as  opportunity  has  allowed,  my  example,  has 
been  steadily  opposed  to  all  this.  I  have  urged  my 
ideas  on  the  President  and  my  associates  till  1  begin 
to  feel  that  they  are  irksome  to  the  first  and  to  one 
or  two  at  least  of  the  second.5 
All  this  time,  with  the  most  facile  self-decep- 
tion, he  believed  in  his  own  loyalty  and  friend- 
ship for  the  President,  and  nightly  recorded 
in  his  diary  his  sorrow  for  Mr.  Lincoln's  fatal 
course.    September  1 2  he  writes : 
The  Secretary  of  War  informed  me  that  he  had 
heard  from  General  Halleck  that  the  President  is 
going  out  to  see  General  McClellan,  and  commented 
with  some  severity  on  his  humiliating  submissive- 
4  Warden,  "Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  491. 
•r>  Ibid.,  pp.  453,  454.
A   HISTORY. 
ness  to  that  officer.  It  is  indeed  humiliating,  but 
prompted,  I  believe,  by  a  sincere  desire  to  serve  the 
country.  ...  I  think  that  the  President,  with 
the  most  honest  intentions  in  the  world,  and  a 
naturally  clear  judgment  and  a  true,  unselfish  patriot- 
ism, has  yielded  so  much  to  border  State  and  negro- 
phobic  counsels  that  he  now  finds  it  difficult  to 
arrest  his  own  descent  towards  the  most  fatal  con- 
cessions. He  has  already  separated  himself  from  the 
great  body  of  the  party  which  elected  him  ;  distrusts 
most  those  who  represent  its  spirit,  and  waits  —  for 
what?* 
He  says  in  another  place  : 
September  nth.  How  singularly  all  our  worst 
defeats  have  followed  administrative  cr —  no,  blun- 
ders. McDowell  defeated  at  Bull  Run,  because  the 
Administration  would  not  supersede  Patterson  by 
a  general  of  more  capacity,  vigor,  and  devotion  to 
the  cause  ;  McClellan  defeated  at  Richmond,  be- 
cause the  Administration  recalled  Shields  and  forced 
Fremont  to  retire  from  the  pursuit  of  Jackson  ;  .  .  . 
Pope  defeated  at  Bull  Run,  because  the  Administra- 
tion persisted  in  keeping  McClellan  in  command  of 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac.2 
He  never  lost  an  opportunity  for  ingratiating 
himself  with  the  general  in  favor,  or  the  gen- 
eral in  disgrace.  He  paid  equally  assiduous 
homage  to  the  rising  and  the  setting  sun.  In  the 
dawn  of  McClellan's  first  successes  in  the  West 
he  made  haste  to  write  to  him : 
The  country  was  indebted  to  me  .  .  .  in  some  con- 
siderable degree  for  the  change  of  your  commission 
from  Ohio  into  a  commission  of  major-general  of 
the  army  of  the  Union,  and  your  assignment  to  the 
command  of  the  Department  of  the  Ohio.  I  drew 
with  my  own  hand  the  order  extending  it  into  Vir- 
ginia. ...  It  was  my  wish  that  you  should  re- 
main in  command  of  the  Mississippi,  but  in  this  I 
was  overruled.3 
His  present  command,  however,  he  says,  is 
a  more  important  one,  and  he  wishes  Ken- 
tucky and  Tennessee  to  be  included  in  it,  and 
thinks  both  will  be  done.  When  McClellan 
was  appointed  General-in-Chief,  the  Secretary, 
eager  to  be  the  first  to  tell  the  good  news,  im- 
mediately wrote  a  note  to  Colonel  Key,  Mc- 
Clellan'sjudge-advocate  :  "  McClellan  is  Com- 
mander-in-Chief. Let  us  thank  God  and  take 
courage."4  To  newly  appointed  and  promoted 
generals  he  wrote  in  the  same  strain. 5  Even 
when  he  had  become  estranged  from  a  promi- 
nent officer  the  slightest  appeal  to  his  amour 
propre  was  sufficient  to  bring  about  a  recon- 
ciliation. After  he  had  lost  all  confidence  in 
McClellan  and  almost  given  up  the  President 
for  not  dismissing  him,  General  John  Coch- 
ran came  to  him  and  said  McClellan  would 
like  to  retire  from  active  command  if  he  could 
1  Warden,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  470. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  469. 
3  Shuckers,  "Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  427. 
4  Ibid.,  p.  445. 
Vol.  XXXVII.— 76. 
do  so  without  disgrace — which  could  be 
complished,  and  a  more  active  general  secured, 
by  restoring  him  to  the  chief  command,  "  where 
he  could  act  in  unison  with  myself,"  says  the 
Secretary/5  He  entered  at  once  into pour-par- 
lers,  saying  how  much  he  had  once  admired 
and  confided  in  McClellan  ;  how  the  general 
came  to  lose  his  confidence;  how  heartily  he- 
had  supported  him  with  supplies  and  reenfon  e- 
ments,  notwithstanding  his  mistrust ;  his  entire- 
willingness  to  receive  any  correction  whieh 
facts  would  warrant;  his  absolute  freedom 
from  personal  ill-will.  When  the  amiable  am- 
bassador told  him  that  Colonel  Key  had  often 
expressed  his  regret  that  McClellan  had  not 
conferred  and  acted  in  concert  with  the  Sec- 
retary, he  replied,  "I  think  if  he  had,  that 
the  rebellion  would  be  ended  now."7  Further 
letters  followed  between  them  which  are  faith- 
fully recorded  in  his  diary ;  but  during  these 
platonic  negotiations  McClellan  was  finally 
removed  from  command. 
Mr.  Chase  cultivated,  however,  the  closest  re- 
lations with  those  generals  who  imagined  they 
had  a  grievance  against  the  Administration. 
He  took  General  Shields  to  his  arms  when 
he  returned  from  the  Shenandoah  after  his 
disastrous  experience  with  Jackson.  Shields's 
account  of  how  he  would  have  destroyed 
Stonewall  Jackson  if  the  President  had  per- 
mitted him  did  not  apparently  touch  the  Sec- 
retary's sense  of  humor.  He  received  it  all  in 
good  faith ;  assured  Shields  that  if  he  had  had 
his  way  he  should  have  been  supported,  and 
wrote  in  his  diary :  "  Sad  !  sad !  vet  nobody 
seems  to  heed.  General  Shields  and  I  talked 
all  this  over,  deploring  the  strange  fatality 
which  seemed  to  preside  over  the  whole  trans- 
action. He  dined  with  us  and  after  dinner 
rode  out."  To  Hooker,  after  the  failure  of  the 
Chickahominy  campaign,  he  said,  "  General, 
if  my  advice  had  been  followed,  you  would 
have  commanded  the  army  after  the  retreat 
to  the  James  River,  if  not  before  ";s  to  which 
Fighting  Joe  of  course  responded,  "  If  I  had 
commanded,  Richmond  would  have  been 
ours."  He  warmly  sympathized  with  General 
Hunter  after  the  revocation  of  his  emancipa- 
tion order  in  South  Carolina,  and  allowed  his 
preference  for  military  emancipation  to  carry 
him,  in  one  instance,  to  the  point  of  absolute 
disloyalty  to  the  President.  On  the  31st  of 
July/  1862,  he  wrote  a  long  letter  to  Gen- 
eral Butler  in  New  Orleans  striving  to  contro- 
vert the  views  of  the  President  in  relation 
to  slavery  in  the  Gulf  States,  and  urging  in 
place  of  them  his  own  opinions,  "  to  which," 
5  Ibid.,  p.  457. 
6  Warden,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  499. 
7  Ibid.,  p.  500. 
S  Ibid.,  p.  487.
56: 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
jaid,  "  1  am  just  as  sure  the  masses  will 
and  the  politicians  must  come,  as  1  am  sure 
that  both  politicians  and  masses  have  come  to 
ions  expressed  by  me  when  they  found  few 
its  " ;  and  he  concluded  his  letter  with 
this  rash  and  mischievous  advice: 
Of  course,  if  some  prudential  consideration  did  not 
.:.  1  should  at  once,  if  1   were  in   your  place, 
holders  o\  Louisiana  that  henceforth 
■  isl   be  content  to  pay  their  laborers  wages. 
.    .     .     It  is  quite  true  that  such  an  order  could  not 
nforced    by    military    power    beyond    military 
.  but  it  would  enforce  itself  by  degrees  a  good 
way  beyond  them,   and  would  make  the  extension 
o:'  military  lines  comparatively  quite  easy.1 
Here  the  obvious  objection  presented  itself, 
that  such  a  course  would  be  in  direct  contra- 
vention to  the  President's  known  policy,  and 
would  be  immediately  repudiated  and  revoked 
by  him.  '{'he  Secretary  foresaw  this,  and  added 
a  prediction  so  reckless,  and  so  disloyal  to  his 
itutional  chief,  that  if  it  were  not  printed 
by  his  authority  it  would  be  difficult  to  believe 
he  had  written  it :  "  It  may  be  said  that  such 
an  order  would  be  annulled.  I  think  not.  It 
i>  plain  enough  that  the  annulling  of  Hunter's 
order  was  a  mistake.  It  will  not  be  repeated." 
A  volume  could  not  more  clearly  show  the  Sec- 
retary's opinion  of  the  President. 
The  surest  way  to  his  confidence  and  regard 
was  to  approach  him  with  conversation  deroga- 
I to  Mr.  Lincoln.  He  records  in  his  diary 
an  after-dinner  conversation  with  an  officer 
whom  he  seems  to  have  met  for  the  first  time  : 
sked  him  what  he  thought  of  the  Presi- 
dent.'' -  He  apparently  had  no  perception  of  the 
impropriety  of  such  a  question  coming 
from  him.    The  officer  evidently  knew  what 
sort  of  reply  was  expected.   He  said : 
A  man  irresolute,  but  of  honest  intentions  ;  born 
-  white,  in  a  slave  State,  and  of  course  among 
aristocrats;    kind   in    spirit   and   not   envious,    but 
anxious  for  approval,  especially  of  those  to  whom 
he  h  is  been  accustomed  to  look  up  —  hence  solicit- 
ed support  of   the  slaveholders  in  the  border 
,  and  unwilling  to  offend  them  ;  without  the 
mind  necessary  to  grasp  great,  questions,  un- 
certain of  himself,  and  in  many  things  ready  to  lean 
too  much  on  others. 3 
Of  course,  after  a  dictum  so  thoroughly  in 
harmony  with  his  own  opinions,  the  Secretary 
naively  records  that  he  "  found  this  gentleman 
well  read  and  extremely  intelligent."  In  reply 
n i dent,  whose  letters  were  filled 
with  the  most  violent  abuse  of  the  President 
and  other  officers  of  the  Government,  he  had 
ord  of  rebuke.    He  simply  replied  : 
:kers,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  '  h  i  '.-,':  p.  377. 
.  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase,"  p.  505. 
:;  It  is  doubtless  by  a  slip  of  the  pen  that  the  Secre- 
tary attributed  this  conversation   to  ( General   Hunter. 
It  was   evidently  General   Halpine,  who  called  with 
I  am  not  responsible  for  the  management  of  the 
war  and  have  no  voice  in  it,  except  that  I  am  not 
forbidden  to  make  suggestions  ;  and  do  so  now  and 
then  when  1  can't  help  it.4 
He  had  no  defense  for  his  colleagues  against 
the  attacks  of  his  correspondent,  except  to  say: 
Nor  should  you  forget  that  a  war  managed  by  a 
President,  a  commanding  general,  and  a  secretary, 
cannot,  especially  when  the  great  differences  of 
temperament,  wishes,  and  intellectual  characteristics 
of  these  three  are  taken  into  account,  reasonably  be 
expected  to  be  conducted  in  the  best  possible  man- 
ner. This  condition  can  only  ba  remedied  by  the 
President,  and,  as  yet,  he  fears  the  remedy  most. 
The  President  was  not  unaware  of  this  dispo- 
sition of  his  minister  of  finance  towards  him. 
Presidents  in  even  a  greater  degree  than  kings 
are  kept  informed  of  all  currents  of  favor  and 
hostility  about  them;  for  besides  being  to  an 
equal  degree  the  source  of  favors  and  of  power, 
they  are  not  surrounded  by  any  of  that  divin- 
ity which  hedges  the  hereditary  ruler,  and  they 
are  compelled  to  listen  to  the  crude  truth  from 
the  hundreds  of  statesmen  and  politicians  who 
surround  them.  And,  besides  this,  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  was  a  man  too  direct  and 
too  straightforward  to  work  in  the  darkness. 
He  records  in  his  diary  a  singular  conversation 
which  he  held  with  Mr.  Thurlow  Weed,  an  in- 
timate and  trusted  counselor  of  the  President 
and  the  bosom  friend  of  the  Secretary  of  State : 
Weed  called,  and  we  had  a  long  talk.  ...  I 
told  him  1  did  not  doubt  Mr.  Seward's  fidelity  to 
his  ideas  of  progress,  amelioration,  and  freedom,  but 
that  I  thought  he  adhered  too  tenaciously  to  men 
who  proved  themselves  unworthy  and  dangerous, 
such  as  McQellan  ;  that  he  resisted  too  persistently 
decided  measures;  that  his  influence  encouraged 
the  irresolution  and  inaction  of  the  President  in  re- 
spect to  men  and  measures,  although  personally  he 
was  as  decided  as  anybody  in  favor  of  vigorous  prose- 
cution of  the  war,  and  as  active  as  anybody  in  con- 
certing plans  of  action  against  the  rebels.5 
It  is  altogether  probable  that  Mr.  Weed 
would  consider  it  his  duty  to  communicate  to 
his  friends  this  disparaging  view  entertained 
of  them  by  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury ;  and 
when  we  consider  that  Mr.  Chase  talked  and 
wrote  in  this  strain  to  hundreds  of  people  in 
regard  to  his  associates,  it  is  likely  that  they 
were  as  thoroughly  aware  of  his  opinions  and 
utterances  as  if  he  had  made  them  in  Cabinet 
meeting.  But  Seward  was,  as  the  President 
once  said  of  him,  "  a  man  without  gall  " ;  and 
it  was  the  lifelong  habit  of  Mr.  Lincoln  to  dis- 
regard slights  that  were  personal  to  himself. 
General  Hunter,  that  gave  him  this  highly  satisfactory 
view  of  the  President's  character. 
4  Warden,  p.  549. 
5  Ibid.,  p.  475.
A    HISTORY. 
5r'.3 
He  had  the  greatest  respect  and  admiration 
for  Mr.  Chase's  capacity;  he  believed  thor- 
oughly in  his  devotion  to  the  national  cause ; 
and  seeing  every  day  the  proof  of  his  pure  and 
able  management  of  the  finances  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, he  steadily  refused  to  consider  the 
question  of  the  Secretary's  feelings  towards 
himself. 
It  was  near  the  end  of  the  year  1862  that 
an  incident  occurred  which  threatened  for  a 
time  to  deprive  the  Government  of  the  services 
of  the  Secretaries  both  of  State  and  of  the 
Treasury.  A  strong  feeling  of  discontent,  grad- 
ually ripening  into  one  of  hostility,  had  grown 
up  in  the  Senate  against  Mr.  Seward.  It  was 
founded  principally  upon  the  ground  formu- 
lated by  Mr.  Chase  in  his  interview  with  Weed 
that  he  "  adhered  too  tenaciously  to  men  who 
proved  themselves  unworthy  and  dangerous, 
such  as  McClellan ;  that  he  resisted  too  per- 
sistently decided  measures ;  that  his  influence 
encouraged  the  irresolution  and  inaction  of  the 
President  in  respect  to  men  and  measures  " ; 
and  Mr.  Sumner,  who  had  up  to  this  time  been 
friendly  rather  than  otherwise  to  Mr.  Seward, 
was  suddenly  brought  into  sympathy  with  his 
opponents  by  discovering  in  the  diplomatic  cor- 
respondence a  phrase  bracketing  together  the 
secessionists  and  the  extreme  antislavery  men 
for  equal  condemnation  and  criticism.1 
The  feeling  against  the  Secretary  of  State 
at  last  attained  such  a  height  in  the  Senate 
that  a  caucus  was  called  to  consider  the  mat- 
ter, which  resulted  in  a  vote  being  taken  de- 
manding of  the  President  the  dismissal  of  Mr. 
Seward  from  his  Cabinet.  As  a  matter  of  taste 
and  expediency  this  resolution  later  in  the 
evening  was  withdrawn  and  another  adopted 
in  its  place  requesting  the  President  to  recon- 
struct the  Cabinet,  in  which,  although  Mr. 
Seward's  name  was  not  mentioned,  the  inten- 
tion of  the  Republican  senators  remained 
equally  clear.  A  committee  was  appointed 
to  present  the  sense  of  the  caucus  to  the 
President ;  but  before  this  was  carried  into  ef- 
fect, Senator  King  of  New  York,  meeting  the 
Secretary  of  State,  acquainted  him  with  these 
proceedings,  and  he,  with  his  son,  the  Assistant- 
Secretary  of  State,  at  once  presented  their  res- 
ignations to  the  President. 
1  Mr.  Seward,  writing  to  Mr.  Adams  on  the  5th  of 
July,  1862,  had  used  this  phrase:  "  It  seems  as  if  the 
extreme  advocates  of  African  slavery  and  its  most 
vehement  opponents  were  acting  in  concert  together 
to  precipitate  a  servile  war  —  the  former  by  making 
the  most  desperate  attempts  to  overthrow  the  Fed- 
eral Union,  the  latter  by  demanding  an  edict  of  uni- 
versal emancipation  as  a  lawful  and  necessary,  if  not, 
as  they  say,  the  only  legitimate  way  of  saving  the 
Union."  When  we  reflect  that  only  eight  days  after 
these  words  were  written  the  President  informed  Mr. 
Seward  of  his  intention  to  issue  his  emancipating  edict, 
we  may  imagine  how  far  the  Secretary  was  from  pene- 
On  the  morning  of  the  19th  of  December 
a  committee  of  nine  waited  upon  the  Presi- 
dent and  presented  him  the  resolutions  adopted 
the  day  before.  A  long  and  earnest  confer 
took  place  between  the  President  and  the  1 
mittee,  which  was  marked  on  both  sides  by  un- 
usual candor  and  moderation.  'J  hey  attacked, 
one  by  one,  the  Secretary  of  State,  not  for  any 
specific  wrong-doing,  but  for  a  supposed  luke- 
warmness  in  the  conduct  of  affairs,  and  e 
daily  for  a  lack  of  interest  in  the  antislavery 
measures  of  the  Administration,  which  they 
considered  essential  to  a  successful  prosecution 
of  the  war.  When  the  President  reported  this 
conference  to  his  Cabinet  afterwards  he  said, 
in  his  own  peculiar  imagery : 
While  they  seemed  to  believe  in  my  honesty, 
they  also  appeared  to  think  that  when  I  had  in  me 
any  good  purpose  or  intention  Seward  contrived 
to  suck  it  out  of  me  unperceived. 
The  conference  ended  without  other  result 
than  an  appointment  for  the  committee  to 
call  again  in  the  evening.  Lincoln  at  once 
called  the  Cabinet  together  and  laid  the  en- 
tire matter  before  them.  He  gave  them  dis- 
tinctly to  understand  that  in  this  proceeding 
he  was  not  inviting  or  intimating  that  he  de- 
sired the  resignation  of  any  of  them.  He  said 
he  could  not  afford  to  lose  any  of  them;  that  he 
did  not  see  how  he  could  get  on  with  a  Cabinet 
composed  of  new  material ;  and  he  dismissed 
the  council  with  the  request  that  they  also 
should  meet  him  that  evening.  The  committee 
and  the  Cabinet  —  Seward  of  course  being  ab- 
sent—  came  together  in  accordance  with  the 
President's  instruction,  and  each  party  was 
greatly  surprised  to  find  the  other  there.  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  determined,  however,  to  have  a 
thorough  and  frank  discussion,  so  that  hereafter 
neither  in  his  government  nor  in  the  Senate 
should  it  be  possible  to  say  that  there  were  any 
points  between  them  concealed  or  unexplained. 
The  President  stated  the  case  and  read  the  reso- 
lutions of  the  senators,  commenting  upon  parts 
of  it  with  some  gentle  severity.  A  general  dis- 
cussion then  took  place,  marked  with  singular 
frankness,  both  in  the  attack  and  the  defense. 
Collamer  and  Fessenden  speaking  with  more 
mildness  than  the  others,  but  Grimes.  Sumner, 
trating  the  mind  of  his  chief —  a  fault  for  which  he 
ought  not  perhaps  to  be  blamed,  considering  the  ex- 
treme reticence  which  the  President  observed  at  that 
time  in  regard  to  his  intentions.  Still,  the  dispatch  was 
unnecessary,  and  the  critics  of  the  Secretary  contended, 
not  without  reason,  that  it  should  not  have  been  sent 
before  being  submitted  to  the  President's  approval.  He 
had  also  said,  writing  to  Mr.  Dayton  on  the  22d  of  April, 
that  "the  rights  of  the  States  and  the  condition  of  every 
human  being  in  them  will  remain  subject  to  exactly  the 
same  laws  and  forms  of  administration,  whether  the  revo- 
lution shall  succeed  or  whether  it  shall  fail."  This  also 
had  given  great  offense  to  the  radical  antislavery  men.
ecu 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN: 
Trumbull  attacking  the  Cabinet  generally, 
and   Mr.  Seward  particularly,  with  consider- 
able sharpness.     The  Cabinet  defended  them- 
selves in  general  and  their  absent  colleague 
equal  energy  but  with  unruffled  temper. 
Mr.  Chase  alone  seemed  to  feel  himself  in  a 
\    As  we  have  seen  in  his  inter- 
view with  Weed,  he  was  in  the  habit  of  using 
precisely  the  same  expressions  in  regard  to  the 
01  State  as  those  employed  by  the 
>rs.   Broughtto  bay  thus  unexpectedly  and 
summoned  to  speak  before  both  parties  to  the 
controversy,  he  naturally  felt  the  embarrass- 
ment of  the  situation.    He  could  not  join  the 
Senate  in  their  attack  upon  the  Administration 
and  he  could  not  effectively  defend  his  col- 
leagues in  the  presence  of  eight  senators,  to 
all  of  whom  he  had  probably  spoken  in  der- 
g    tioD  of  the    President    and  the  Secretary 
te.    II-  protested  with  some  heat  against 
the  attitude  in  which  he  was  placed,  and  said 
he  would  not  have  come  if  he  had  expected 
to   be   arraigned.    When  the  fire  of  the  dis- 
>n  had   burned   itself  out,  Mr.   Lincoln 
then  took  a  formal  vote.    "  Do  you,  gentle- 
l,  k;  still  think  Sewrard  ought  to 
reused?"  Grimes,  Trumbull,  Sumner,  and 
roy  said  "  Yes."     Collamer,  Fessenden, 
and  Howard  declined  to  commit  themselves. 
Harris  was  opposed  to  it  and  Wade  was  ab- 
sent.   The   meeting   broke  up  late   at  night, 
says  Secretary  Welles,  "  in  a  milder  spirit  than 
it  met."    The  free  talk   had   cleared  the   air 
what,  and  both  parties  to  the  controversy 
respected  each  other  more  than  before.   As  the 
senators  were  retiring,  Mr.  Trumbull  paused 
moment  at  the  door,  then,  turning,  walked 
rapidly  back  to  the  President  and  said  to  him 
privately,  but  with  great  vehemence,  that  the 
:tary  of  the  Treasury  had  held  a  very  dif- 
ferent tone  the  last  time  he  had  spoken  with 
him. 
The  news  of  this  stormy  meeting  quickly 
pired,  and  the   next  morning  there  was 
discussion  and  excitement  in  the  town. 
The  resignation  of  Seward  was  regarded  as  ir- 
.  and  nil  the  amateur  Cabinet-mak- 
ere  busy  in  the    preparation  of   a  new 
Administration.   The  hopes  of  all  the  enemies 
of  the  tnent  were  greatly  stimulated  by 
this  indication  of  divided  counsels,  and  the 
ans  of  General  McClellan  in  particular 
thought  they  saw  in  this  conjuncture  the  occa- 
turn  to  power.    In  fact,  they  felt 
ire  of  his  speedy  restoration  to  command 
they  began  to  stipulate  as  the  price  of  their 
adhesion  to  him  that  he   should  dictate   his 
own  terms  on  his  return;  that  he  must  insist 
upon  the   disposal  of  all   the  important  com- 
mands in  the  army.1  They  imagined  that  the 
1  Welles,  Diary. 
President  would  be  so  helpless  that  the  friends 
of  McClellan  might  demand  any  terms  they 
thought  good. 
The  President,  though  deeply  distressed  at 
the  turn  which  affairs  had  taken,  preserved  his 
coolness  and  kept  his  own  counsel.  On  the 
morning  of  the  20th,  in  the  presence  of  several 
other  members  of  the  Cabinet  who  had  called 
for  further  discussion  of  the  crisis,  the  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  tendered  his  resignation. 
He  held  the  written  paper  in  his  hand,  but 
did  not  advance  to  deliver  it.  The  President 
stepped  forward  and  took  it  with  an  alacrity 
that  surprised  and,  it  must  be  said,  disappointed 
Mr.  Chase.  He  then  at  once  dismissed  the 
meeting.  From  the  moment  when  he  saw  Mr. 
Chase  holding  his  resignation  in  his  hand,  his 
way  was  clear  before  him.  He  at  once  sent  an 
identical  note  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury 
and  the  Secretary  of  State,  saying : 
You  have  respectively  tendered  me  your  resigna- 
tions as  Secretary  of  State  and  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  of  the  United  States.  I  am  apprised  of  the 
circumstances  which  may  render  this  course  person- 
ally desirable  to  each  of  you  ;  but  after  most  anx- 
ious consideration  my  deliberate  judgment  is  that 
the  public  interest  does  not  admit  of  it.  I  therefore 
have  to  request  that  you  will  resume  the  duties  of 
your  Departments  respectively. 
Your  obedient  servant, 
A.  Lincoln. 
The  next  morning  Mr.  Seward  addressed  a 
brief  note  to  the  President,  dated  at  the  De- 
partment of  State,  and  saying  :  "  I  have  cheer- 
fully resumed  the  functions  of  this  Department, 
in  obedience  to  your  command";  and  inclosed 
a  copy  of  this  note  to  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  Mr.  Chase  found  his  position  not 
quite  so  simple  as  that  of  the  Secretary  of 
State.  He  did  not  follow  Mr.  Seward's  exam- 
ple in  returning  to  the  Cabinet  as  promptly  as 
he  did  in  leaving  it.  He  wrote  him  a  brief  let- 
ter, saying : 
I  have  received  your  note  and  also  a  call  from 
Mr.  Nicolay,  to  whom  1  have  promised  an  answer 
to  the  President  to-morrow  morning.  My  reflections 
strengthen  my  conviction  that  being  once  honora- 
bly out  of  the  Cabinet  no  important  public  interest 
now  requires  my  return  to  it.  If  I  yield  this  judg- 
ment, it  will  be  in  deference  to  apprehensions  which 
really  seem  to  me  unfounded.    I  will  sleep  on  it. 
He  had  seen  in  the  face  of  the  President  the 
gratification  which  the  tender  of  his  resigna- 
tion had  imparted,  and  returning  to  his  house, 
while  not  entirely  comprehending  what  had 
happened,  he  seemed  conscious  that  he  had 
made  a  misstep.  He  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Presi- 
dent, from  which  we  take  a  fewr  paragraphs  : 
Will  you  allow  me  to  say  that  something  you 
said  or  looked  when  I  handed  you  my  resignation 
this  morning  made   on   my  mind   the   impression
A  HISTORY. 
;65 
that  having  received  the  resignations  both  of  Gov- 
ernor Seward  and  myself  you  felt  that  you  could  re- 
lieve yourself  from  trouble  by  declining  to  accept 
either,  and  that  this  feeling  was  one  of  gratification. 
He  then  went  on  to  say  that  he  was  glad  of 
any  opportunity  to  promote  the  eomfort  of  the 
President,  but  that  he  did  not  desire  him  to  de- 
cline accepting  his  resignation.    He  said : 
Recent  events  have  too  rudely  jostled  the  unity  of 
your  Cabinet  and  disclosed  an  opinion  too  deeply 
seated,  and  too  generally  received  in  Congress  and 
in  the  country,  to  be  safely  disregarded,  that  the 
concord  in  judgment  and  action  essential  to  success- 
ful administration  does  not  prevail  among  its  mem- 
bers. By  some  the  embarrassment  of  Administration 
is  attributed  to  me  ;  by  others,  to  Mr.  Seward  ;  by 
others  still,  to  other  heads  of  Departments.  Now 
neither  Mr.  Seward  nor  myself  is  essential  to  you 
or  to  the  country.  We  both  earnestly  wish  to  be 
relieved  from  the  oppressive  charge  of  our  respec- 
tive Departments,  and  we  have  both  placed  our  resig- 
nations in  your  hands. 
He  concluded  by  saying  he  thought  both 
himself  and  Mr.  Seward  could  better  serve 
the  country  at  that  time  as  private  citizens 
ceptions,  and,  as  usually  happens  when  Loth 
parties  are  men  of  intelligence  and  good-will, 
brought  about  a  friendlier  and  more  consid- 
erate feeling  between  his  government  and  the 
Republican  leaders  than  had  ever  b 
isted.  By  placing  Mr.  Chase  in  such  an  atti- 
tude that  his  resignation  became  neces  ary  to 
his  own  sense  of  dignity  he  made  himsell 
absolute  master  of  the  situation  ;  by  treating 
the  resignations  and  the  return  to  the  Cabinet 
of  both  ministers  as  one  and  the  same  trail 
tion  he  saved  for  the  nation  the  invaluable- 
ices  of  both,  and  preserved  his  our; 
of  entire  impartiality  between  the  two  win  \ 
the  Union  party.  The  results  of  this  achieve- 
ment were  not  merely  temporary.  From  that 
hour  there  was  a  certain  loosening  of  the  h  itherto 
close  alliance  between  Mr.  Chase  and  the  Re- 
publican opposition  to  the  President,  while  a 
kind  of  comradeship,  born  of  their  joint  sortie 
and  reentrance  into  the  Government,  gave 
thereafter  a  greater  semblance  of  cordiality  to 
the  relations  between  the  Secretaries  of  State 
and  of  the  Treasury.  But  above  all,  the  inci- 
dent left  the  President  seated  more  firmly  than 
ever  in  the  saddle.  When  the  Cabinet  had  re- 
thanm  the  Cabinet.  He  did  not  immediately  tired  and  left  the  President  with  the  resigna- 
transmit  this  letter  to  the  President,  and  after  tion  of  Mr>  Chase  in  his  hands?  he  said  t0  a  friend 
hearing  from  Mr.  Seward  that  he  had  gone    who  entered  soon  after,  in  one  of  those  graphic 
back  to  the  Cabinet  his  suggestion  that  both 
would  better  retire  was  no  longer  practicable. 
After  a  Sunday  passed  in  very  serious  con- 
sideration, he  resolved  to  withdraw  his  resigna- 
tion. He  was  unable,  even  then,  to  imitate 
the  brevity  of  Mr.  Seward's  note.  He  sent  to 
the  President  his  note  of  the  20th  inclosed  in 
another,  in  which  he  said  that  reflection  had 
not  much,  if  at  all,  changed  his  original  im- 
pression, but  that  it  had  led  him  to  the  con- 
clusion that  he  had  in  this  matter  to  conform 
his  action  to  the  President's  judgment.  He 
would  therefore  resume  his  post  as  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  ready,  however,  to  retire  at 
any  moment  if,  in  the  President's  judgment, 
the  success  of  the  Administration  might  be  in 
the  slightest  degree  promoted  thereby. 
The  untrained  diplomatist  of  Illinois  had 
thus  met  and  conjured  away,  with  unsurpassed 
courage  and  skill,  one  of  the  severest  crises 
that  ever  threatened  the  integrity  of  his  Ad- 
ministration. He  had  to  meet  it  absolutely 
unaided :  from  the  nature  of  the  case  he  could 
take  no  advice  from  those  who  were  nearest 
him  in  the  Government.  By  his  bold  and 
original  expedient  of  confronting  the  senators 
with  the  Cabinet,  and  having  them  discuss 
their  mutual  misunderstandings  under  his  own 
eye,  he  cleared  up  many  dangerous  miscon- 
metaphors  so  often  suggested  to  him  by  the 
memories  of  his  pioneer  childhood,  and  which 
revealed  his  careless  greatness  perhaps  more 
clearly  than  his  most  labored  official  utter- 
ances, "  Now  I  can  ride ;  I  have  got  a  pumpkin 
in  each  end  of  my  bag."  1 
Nearly  a  year  later  he  said  in  a  conversa- 
tion relating  to  this  matter : 
I  do  not  see  how  it  could  have  been  done  better. 
I  am  sure  it  was  right.  If  I  had  yielded  to  that 
storm  and  dismissed  Seward  the  thing  would  all 
have  slumped  over  one  way,  and  we  should  have 
been  left  with  a  scanty  handful  of  supporters.  When 
Chase  gave  in  his  resignation  I  saw  that  the  gam? 
was  in  my  hands,  and  I  put  it  through. 
Though  the  opposition  to  Mr.  Seward  did 
not  immediately  come  to  an  end.2  it  never  ex- 
hibited such  vitality  again,  and  its  later  man- 
ifestations were  treated  far  more  cavalierly  by 
Mr.  Lincoln.  He  had  even  before  this  dis- 
missed one  very  respectable  committee  from 
New  York  who  had  called  to  express  an  un- 
favorable opinion  of  the  premier,  by  saying 
with  unwonted  harshness.  "  You  would  be  will- 
ing to  see  the  country  ruined  if  you  could  turn 
out  Seward  "  ;  3  and  after  this  incident  he  never 
again  allowed  the  Secretary  of  State  to  be  at- 
tacked in  his  presence. 
1  J.  H.,  Diary.  "Tribune"  and  "Times,"  in  regard  to  the  culpability 
2  There  was  a  long  and  heated  discussion  between     of  the  Secretary  of  State  in  the  matter  of  his  dispatches. 
Mr.  Greeley  and  Mr.  Raymond,  in  the  columns  of  the         3  Warden,  "  Life  of  S.  P.  Chase."  p.  46S. 
iu~  rr?