LINCOLN 
 
 and 
 
 MEN of WAR TIMES 
 
 Alexander Kelly MoClure 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 Earl Schenck Miers 
 
$4.50 
 
 LINCOLN 
 
 AND 
 
 MEN OF WAR-TIMES 
 
 By: A. K. McClure 
 
 Much has been written about the most 
 critical moment of all American history, 
 the time of the Civil War. Yet few 
 authors have shown more insight and 
 understanding in portraying Lincoln 
 and his circle than A. K. McClure, his 
 friend and, at times, his confidant. The 
 two men often sat in the dimly lighted 
 White House, seeking a solution to the 
 problem of a divided Union, while the 
 city of Washington slept. 
 
 Lincoln, surrounded by friends and 
 enemies alike, is pictured as a man of 
 wisdom and strength, but also as a 
 highly political being, carefully manip- 
 ulating the strings as he pulled his 
 party together and sought, first, to 
 attain the Presidency and then, later, 
 to keep it. 
 
 Those around Lincoln — Stanton, 
 Hamlin, Cameron, Chase, Stevens, and 
 the generals, McClellan, Grant and 
 Sherman — all played vital roles in the 
 Washington drama against the larger 
 canvas of the Civil War. 
 
 Here are the lustful, greedy, self- 
 seeking politicians and also those dedi- 
 cated men who fought them — the men 
 who loved Lincoln pitted against those 
 who only sought to use him. Here is 
 turbulence of the capital at war, the 
 quiet midnights when Lincoln paced 
 his study alone except for McClure. 
 These are the men who helped Lincoln 
 write history. 
 
 Earl Schenck Miers, in his brilliant 
 introduction, writes: 
 
 ''Lincoln and Men of War-Times is a 
 'pattern' book, belonging to that period 
 in our national historical literature when 
 interpretations of the tragic years from 
 1861 to 1865 were purely personal and 
 sectional; it was a period, whether the 
 {continued on back flap) 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 ■ 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 

Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lincolnmenofwartOOmccl 
 
LINCOLN AND 
 MEN OF WAR TIMES 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1864 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 AND 
 
 MEN OF WAR 
 TIMES 
 
 A. K. McCLURE 
 
 Edited by 
 J. STUART TORREY 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 EARL SCHENCK MIERS 
 
 6B 
 
 Philadelphia 
 
 ROLLEY & REYNOLDS, INC 
 
First printing, 1962 
 
 All rights reserved. No part of this book 
 may be reproduced in any form without 
 the permission of Rolley & Reynolds, Inc. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 Copyright © 1961 by 
 Rolley Sc Reynolds, Inc. 
 
 Library of Congress Catalog Card 
 Number 61-17416 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 1 
 
 Preface 8 
 
 1. An Episode of John Brown's Raid 11 
 
 2. Lincoln and Buchanan 28 
 
 3. Lincoln in 1860 43 
 
 4. A Visit to Lincoln 57 
 
 5. Lincoln's Sore Trials 70 
 
 6. Lincoln's Characteristics 81 
 
 7. Lincoln in Politics 92 
 
 8. Lincoln and Emancipation 102 
 
 9. Lincoln and Hamlin 116 
 
 10. Lincoln and Chase 129 
 
 11. Lincoln and Cameron 142 
 
 12. Lincoln and Stanton 157 
 
 13. Lincoln and McClellan 173 
 
 14. Lincoln and Grant 188 
 
 15. Lincoln and Sherman 204 
 
 16. Lincoln and Curtin 220 
 
 17. Lincoln and Stevens 240 
 
 18. Lincoln and Greeley 256 
 
 Index 273 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 I. 
 
 Alexander Kelly McClure lived to the ripe old age of 
 eighty-one. When on a beautiful June day in 1909 death 
 stilled his stalwart heart, one of the most passionate love af- 
 fairs in the nation's history ended. The unfailing mistress of 
 the old Colonel's affection through all those years had been 
 his country; its steady growth, the sturdiness of national spirit 
 that had carried it through the trials of Civil War and Re- 
 construction and set it at last upon the high road to Manifest 
 Destiny, were the marvel of his life. He was an incurable 
 sentimentalist about America, a lover who cherished mem- 
 ories; and he enjoyed recalling what the country had been 
 like when he had been born in Sherman's Valley, in Pennsyl- 
 vania's Perry County, on January 9, 1828: 
 
 "When I first saw the light of day there was not a single 
 steamship on any of the seas of the world; there was not a 
 train of cars drawn by a locomotive; the magnetic telegraph 
 was not even noted in the wildest of dreams; there was not a 
 single State west of the Father of Waters with the exception 
 of Missouri and part of Louisiana; the great Northwest, now 
 [1902] presenting an unbroken galaxy of mighty and pros- 
 perous commonwealths, was then an unexplored wilderness, 
 and a large portion of the Western country now possessing a 
 thriving population and clothed with Statehood, appeared on 
 our school atlas as the Great American Desert. The boundless 
 wealth of the Rocky Mountains was unknown, even to the 
 dusky sons of the forest, who peopled that region from pre- 
 historic times, and the now rich slopes of the Pacific, with its 
 
 [1] 
 
golden gate, had only a straggling semi-barbaric race. Ohio 
 was known as the 'backwoods,' where the sturdy pioneers 
 were yet struggling with the Indians, and ordinary letter 
 postage between the East and the remote regions of the Buck- 
 eye State was 37i/4 cents." 
 
 The Scotch-Irish in McClure came out in the fierceness of 
 his pride, his tenacity of purpose. During his early boyhood 
 years, which were divided between his father s farm and the 
 village school, his love affair with America began. Here he 
 learned how a country of 3,000,000 had grown to 12,000,000 
 and was still bounding ahead. He was caught up, too, in the 
 heady excitement of politics, which was then the national 
 pastime; and he thrived on the political ferment that domi- 
 nated his lifetime: "I have witnessed the creation of four 
 political parties which have risen to national prominence, 
 two of which have elected Presidents and three of which 
 have elected Governors of Pennsylvania." 
 
 At the age of twelve he had his introduction into the world 
 of marvelous delirium that politics could become in the con- 
 test between Harrison and Van Buren. He tagged along with 
 the crowd, hurrahing for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" and 
 watching the older men reel down the road from drinking 
 fulsome toasts to the "Hard Cider" candidate. In those times 
 of depression the Whig chant of "$2 a day and roast beef" had 
 a powerful appeal to the working classes; and young McClure, 
 a Harrison devotee, raced off to the post office for the local 
 papers announcing the result. With delight, he opened the 
 Whig sheet for there was the wonderful news— Pennsylvania 
 had gone for Harrison by a majority of 1,0001 Then he 
 opened the Democratic paper and saw the same claim— Van 
 Buren had won the state by 1,000. 
 
 If Alexander Kelly McClure trudged home that day baf- 
 fled by the hocus-pocus of partisan politics, let the record show 
 that truth was on his side— Harrison won the state by 305 
 votes. Perhaps the greater lesson of the occasion, and one that 
 would be reflected in the lad's own character, was the simple 
 
 [2] 
 
realization that his father was "one of the few liberal men 
 of that day" willing to read the newspapers of both parties. 
 And although shortly thereafter, at the age of fourteen, young 
 McClure was apprenticed to a tanner, the other bug had 
 bitten; at the first chance he began writing for the Perry 
 Freeman, for as he later recalled, "daily newspapers were un- 
 known in the country, and the people had to depend solely 
 upon their local newspapers for their news." 
 
 McClure had begun to find his niche now. His old friend, 
 the editor of the Freeman, urged him to begin a Whig Jour- 
 nal and in 1846 the Mifflin Sentinel appeared with McClure 
 editing the paper, setting up the type and running the ancient 
 press (when it would run) with the help of a single appren- 
 tice. Within four years he had sold the Sentinel and moved on 
 to Chambersburg where he bought an interest in the Reposi- 
 tory. Here the future cut of McClure emerged, for as editor 
 he quickly made the Repository one of the best known anti- 
 slavery journals in Pennsylvania. He loved his work, yet he 
 would also have his regrets: "I never saw Clay or Webster, 
 although I was six years an editor before their death. A visit 
 to Washington by a village editor was usually beyond the 
 range of his time and means, and of the many who shouted 
 their hosannas to Clay and Webster and Calhoun, only one 
 in many, many thousands ever saw his heroes face to face." 
 
 II. 
 
 Clearly, for Alexander Kelly McClure, the lure of politics 
 was irresistible; and only eight years from the time when as 
 a tag-a-long boy he had marched down the road shouting for 
 "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" he attended the Philadelphia 
 convention that nominated Taylor and Fillmore. So in 1851, 
 when at last he visited Washington, he pulled strings and had 
 his first audience in the White House. He knew what he was 
 doing: "In those days, in a little village nestling in the spurs 
 of the Alleghenies and guiltless of railroads and telegraphs 
 ... a personal visit to the President was a most inspiring 
 
 [3] 
 
theme for discussion, not only in curb-stone and corner 
 store-box gatherings but in social circles as well." The im- 
 pressions he carried back to Chambersburg of Millard Fill- 
 more were of a "finely chiseled face," a ''luxuriant crown of 
 gray hair," and of "a man of magnificent proportions and 
 severe dignity, without a trace of the genial qualities which 
 distinguished some of the later Presidents." 
 
 And in time McClure would know them all— most, rather 
 intimately. His own political career began in 1853 when the 
 Whigs of Pennsylvania nominated him for auditor-general. 
 He was then twenty-five, the youngest man ever nominated 
 for a state office— he was a comer. In 1855— the year when he 
 was named superintendent of public printing— he attended 
 the convention in Pittsburgh that organized the Republican 
 Party in Pennsylvania; and in 1856— the year he was a dele- 
 gate to the convention that nominated Fremont as the first 
 Republican presidential candidate— he sold the Repository 
 and was admitted to the bar. His political advancement there- 
 after was rapid: to the state legislature in 1857-58, to the 
 state senate in '59, and of course in '60 he was off to Chicago 
 for the convention that found in Abraham Lincoln a presi- 
 dential candidate who could help Andrew G. Curtin carry 
 the governorship of Pennsylvania. 
 
 So in two decades Alexander Kelly McClure witnessed the 
 profound change in a country that needed a great deal more 
 than "$2 a day and roast beef" in order to survive. The dif- 
 ference now was that he was an "insider," who could get into 
 the White House without pulling strings. The awe of the 
 hero seen from afar, if ever seen, was gone; he was face to 
 face now with the men who made national policies and ran 
 a war and muddled from one crisis to the next, and he met 
 them and talked to them with an involvement of temper and 
 temperament which often matched their own. The enduring 
 fascination and validity of his book, Lincoln and Men of War 
 Times, arises from this very fact; it is filled with passions and 
 prejudices and half-realized subjective feelings that give to 
 
 [4] 
 
these pages the dimensions of immediacy and verisimilitude. 
 No man in that age knew all the facts, including McClure; 
 but then, as today, men were willing to die for what they 
 believed was true, and documentation of this type is the very 
 breath and heartbeat of history. 
 
 Lincoln and Men of War Times is a "pattern" book, be- 
 longing to that period in our national historical literature 
 when interpretations of the tragic years from 1861 to 1865 
 were purely personal and sectional; it was a period, whether 
 the author was a Pennsylvanian like McClure or a Mississip- 
 pian like Jefferson Davis, when the underlying theme of the 
 brothers' conflict was moral drama. There was, however, an 
 exception in McClure's case that no Southerner could claim; 
 the Northerner of that age had not— and would never— recover 
 from the emotional shock of the assassin's bullet that had cut 
 down Lincoln. Not by accident is this a book of a world that 
 revolved around the axis of Lincoln, and the reason why 
 was explained in a brilliant lecture by David Potter of Yale: 
 
 "He [Lincoln] became the object of fabulous tales as had 
 hardly been told since the days of the monastic chroniclers. 
 ... In epic terms such as Homer might have used, this legend 
 stressed his great physical strength, coupled with the tender- 
 est compassion of the weak, his brooding wisdom, his infinite 
 patience and humility. . . . Hence emerged a figure bom in 
 a log-cabin as lowly as any manger, growing up to bear the 
 sorrows of the race and to suffer for all humanity. At last, on 
 Good Friday, 1865, his life on earth was sacrificed for the 
 redemption of the Union, and on Easter Sunday the people 
 met in churches throughout the land to mourn the Saviour 
 of the States." 
 
 Whither came this legend? It had, of course, many sources; 
 and among them is Lincoln and Men of War Times. When 
 in A Shelf of Lincoln Books (1946), Paul M. Angle selected 
 the books basic to understanding Lincoln and his age, Mc- 
 Clure's volume was included. Mr. Angle called it— and prop- 
 erly so— "an uncommonly instructive book," adding: "His 
 
 [5] 
 
appraisal of Cameron, for example, is much more convincing 
 than the all-black characterization that passes current; his 
 analysis of Lincoln as a politician is unsurpassed ..." Bias, 
 certainly, McClure possessed; but within this understandable 
 limit he was truly a superb reporter. 
 
 III. 
 
 Difficult years confronted McClure when the war ended. 
 His home, his personal papers and a fortune estimated at 
 $75,000 had been lost when McCausland's Confederates 
 raided Chambersburg; and by 1866, according to his obituary 
 in the New York Herald, McClure had been "broken in 
 health." He settled in Philadelphia, where he resumed the 
 practice of law and soon was back in politics. In 1873 he was 
 elected to the state senate, and filled with his old fire and 
 zeal ran for mayor of Philadelphia on the Citizen's-Demo- 
 cratic ticket. This was a no-holds-barred campaign, with 
 McClure, as a crusader for reform, slashing out at the gross 
 corruption in the municipality's government. He came within 
 900 votes of carrying the election. 
 
 By far the more important event of that year was McClure's 
 association with Frank McLaughlin in the establishment of 
 the Philadelphia Times. As editor, McClure struck hard and 
 constantly at the machine power in party management and at 
 official incompetency and dishonesty in Philadelphia. But it 
 was not alone in this area that the Times gained renown; 
 McClure's passionate interest in the Civil War was reflected 
 in a series of articles by leading participants of those years of 
 strife which later published in book form as Annals of the 
 PTar— with an introduction signed by "A. K. M."— remains a 
 classic of its kind. His editorship of the Times continued 
 until 1901, when his retirement was the occasion for a dinner 
 in his honor at the Clover Club; and that year he was ap- 
 pointed prothonotary of the Supreme and Superior Courts. 
 
 The present volume, Lincoln and Men of War Times, had 
 appeared in 1892; now other books of equal charm and in- 
 
 [6] 
 
sight followed— books that readers of this work will want 
 to seek out for the pleasure of knowing more about that 
 thoroughly lively and influential man of war times whose 
 name was Alexander Kelly McClure. Old Time Notes of 
 Pennsylvania and Col. A. K. McClure' s Recollections of Half 
 a Century are especially delightful; and so, too, is Our Presi- 
 dents and How We Make Them. His fascination for the 
 miracle of the country that had grown up around him never 
 wavered, and thus we find him writing in 1902: "At that time 
 [1861] the entire circulation [of money] was about $435,000,- 
 000, or less than $14 per capita, as compared with the present 
 circulation of over two billions, giving nearly $30 of money to 
 every man, woman and child in the land"— which is precisely 
 the kind of statistic you would expect to find absorbing the 
 mind of a man who could list among his published works The 
 Authentic Life of William McKinley! Indeed, America had 
 passed far beyond the age of "$2 a day and roast beef" I 
 
 Known widely for his own matchless gifts of oratory, Mc- 
 Clure had only one possible regret about his country— "the 
 universal advent of the newspaper" had buried popular ora- 
 tory under "the mastery of forceful disputation." Yet even 
 this change he accepted philosophically: "Intelligence has 
 become too universal for leadership to make successful battle 
 by rhetorical appeals to prejudice or passion, and therein is 
 the greatest safety to the noblest republic of the world." In 
 this comforting conviction, he spent a pleasant afternoon on 
 June 6, 1909, talking to old friends on his front porch before 
 he retired for the quiet nap that would be his final sleep. But 
 he should have known; America was too vibrant, too restless; 
 nothing was fixed and other changes would come— radio, tele- 
 vision. Ah, to a man of the crusading mind, the political fever, 
 the golden voice that Alexander Kelly McClure possessed, 
 what might he not have accomplished in this modem agel 
 
 EARL SCHENCK MIERS 
 Edison^ New Jersey 
 July, 1961 
 
 [7] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The chapters in this volume make no pretensions to give 
 either a biography of Abraham Lincoln or a history of his 
 memorable administration. They were written amidst the 
 constant pressure of editorial duties simply to correct some 
 popular errors as to Lincoln's character and actions. So much 
 has been written of him by persons assuming to possess in- 
 formation obtained in the inner circle of his confidence, and 
 such conflicting presentations of his personal attributes and 
 private and public acts have been given to the public, that I 
 have deemed it a duty to contribute what little I could from 
 personal knowledge, to correct some common errors in esti- 
 mating his character, ability, and eflforts. 
 
 The closest men to Abraham Lincoln, both before and after 
 his election to the Presidency, were David Davis, Leonard 
 Swett, Ward H. Lamon, and William H. Herndon. Davis and 
 Swett were his close personal and political counselors; Lamon 
 was his Marshal for Washington and Herndon had been his 
 law-partner for twenty years. These men, who knew Mr. 
 Lincoln better than all others, unite in testifying that his ex- 
 treme caution prevented him from making a personal confi- 
 dant of any one; and my own more limited intercourse with 
 him taught me, in the early period of our acquaintance, that 
 those who assumed that they enjoyed Lincoln's confidence 
 had little knowledge of the man. It is the generally honest but 
 mistaken belief of confidential relations with Lincoln on the 
 part of biographers and magazine and newspaper writers that 
 
 [8] 
 
has presented him to the public in such a confusion of atti- 
 tudes and as possessing such strangely contradictory individ- 
 ual qualities. 
 
 I saw Mr. Lincoln many times during his Presidential term, 
 and, like all of the many others who had intimate relations 
 with him, I enjoyed his confidence only within the limitations 
 of the necessities of the occasion. I do not therefore write these 
 chapters assuming to have been the confidant of Mr. Lincoln; 
 but in some things I did see him as he was, and, from neces- 
 sity, knew what he did and why he did it. What thus hap- 
 pened to come under my own observation and within my own 
 hearing often related to men or measures of moment then and 
 quite as momentous now, when the events of the war are 
 about to be finally crystallized into history. 
 
 My personal knowledge of occurrences in which Mr. Lin- 
 coln and other great actors in the bloody drama of our Civil 
 War were directly involved enables me to present some of the 
 chief characteristics of Mr. Lincoln, and to support them by 
 facts and circumstances which are conclusive. I have, there- 
 fore, written only of Lincoln and his relations with the promi- 
 nent chieftains and civilians with whom I had more or less 
 intimate personal acquaintance. The facts herein given re- 
 lating to leading generals and statesmen are presented to illus- 
 trate in the clearest manner possible the dominating charac- 
 teristics of Mr. Lincoln. They may or may not be accepted 
 by the public as important, but they have the one merit of 
 absolute truthfulness. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln achieved more in American statesman- 
 ship than any other President, legislator, or diplomat in the 
 history of the Republic; and what he achieved brought no 
 borrowed plumes to his crown. Compelled to meet and solve 
 the most momentous problems of our government, and beset 
 by confused counsels and intensified jealousies, he has writ- 
 ten the most lustrous records of American history; and his 
 name and fame must be immortal while liberty shall have 
 worshipers in any land. To aid to a better understanding of 
 
 [9] 
 
this "noblest Roman of them all" is the purpose of these 
 chapters; and if they shall, in the humblest degree, accomplish 
 that end, I shall be more than content. 
 
 The frontispiece portrait of Lincoln is the only perfect 
 copy of his face that I have ever seen in any picture. It was 
 taken in March, 1864, on the occasion when he handed Grant 
 his commission as lieutenant-general. Two negatives were 
 taken by the artist, and only one of them "touched up" and 
 copies printed therefrom at the time. The other negative 
 remained untouched until a few months ago, when it was 
 discovered and copies printed from it without a single change 
 in the Imes or features of Lincoln's face. It therefore presents 
 Lincoln true to life. The other portraits of Lincoln present 
 him as he appeared when he delivered his speech in Cooper 
 Institute, New York, in 1860, with the cleanly-shaven face 
 that was always maintained until after his election to the 
 Presidency, and as he appeared when studying with his son 
 "Tad" at his side. These portraits I have selected because they 
 give the most accurate presentations of the man and to them 
 is added a facsimile of his letter of acceptance in 1860. 
 
 I am greatly indebted to the Lives of Lincoln given by 
 Nicolay and Hay— the most complete and accurate record of 
 dates and events, military and civil, relating to Lincoln— by 
 Mr. Hemdon, by Mr. Lamon, by Mr. Arnold, and by Mr. 
 Brooks, and to Mr. Blaine's "Twenty Years in Congress," for 
 valuable information on many points referred to in these 
 chapters. 
 
 A. K. McCLURE. 
 Philadelphia^ 1892. 
 
 [10] 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 
 AN EPISODE OF JOHN BROWN'S RAID 
 
 Far down in the beautiful Cumberland Valley, the old-time 
 heartsome village of Chambersburg was one of the chief at- 
 tractions a generation ago. It was founded by the sturdy 
 Scotch-Irish pioneers, who carried their severe religion and 
 not less severe detestation of despotism with them, and min- 
 gled their prayers with their warfare against the savage and 
 the soldiers of King George. The memorable pioneer whose 
 name the village bears chose a lovely spot as his home and 
 the heritage of his children, where the soft murmurs of the 
 crystal waters of Falling Spring are lost in the Conococheague, 
 and the united waters course through the centre of the town 
 on their journey to the sea. Here more than a century had 
 been devoted to the genial civilization that made Chambers- 
 burg first in the affections of its people; and its homes, pala- 
 tial for that day; its grand elms and lindens which arched the 
 walks with their shades; its cultured people, with just pride 
 of ancestry and equal pride of present character and useful- 
 ness,— made it one of the most delightful of Pennsylvania 
 towns for citizen or visitor. It had none of the paralysis that 
 comes when "wealth accumulates and men decay;" large 
 fortunes were unknown, but plenty, thrift, and comfort 
 stamped their impress upon the community. 
 
 In the summer of 1859 a man of rather rude aspect, but of 
 grave and quiet demeanor, was noticed by the village crowd 
 that usually gathered in social converse about the post-office 
 while the evening mail was being distributed. He attracted 
 
 [11] 
 
little attention, as he seldom spoke save when spoken to, and 
 then only in the briefest way. He was known as "Dr. Smith," 
 and was reputed to be engaged in the development of iron- 
 mines on the Potomac, some twenty-five miles distant. He 
 lodged at a private boarding-house off from the centre of the 
 town, and there was nothing in his sayings or doings to excite 
 any apprehension that his mission was anything else than a 
 peaceful one. This man was John Brown, then of Kansas 
 fame, and later immortalized in song and story throughout 
 every civilized land. The supposed mining-implements which 
 he was storing in Chambersburg were the rude pikes with 
 which the Negroes of Virginia were to be armed in their ex- 
 pected insurrection against their masters. There was not a 
 man, woman, or child in Chambersburg who then dreamed 
 that "Dr. Smith" was John Brown— not one who knew or 
 suspected his real purpose. None of the many who then saw 
 him casually from day to day could have dreamed that the 
 harmless-looking and acting "Dr. Smith" was engaged in a 
 drama the sequel of which would be enacted when the van- 
 dals' torch left the beautiful old village in ashes only five 
 years later. The South ever believed that John Brown made 
 Chambersburg the base for his mad raid on Harper's Ferry 
 because he had many sympathizing confidants and abetters 
 there; and that unjust prejudice resolved all doubts as to 
 dooming the town when McCausland rioted in its destruction 
 on the 30th of July, 1864. 
 
 In the early part of October, 1859, two men, unknown to 
 me, entered my office and asked to submit some legal matters 
 in private. We retired to the private office, when the younger 
 of the two, an intelligent and evidently positive man, gave 
 his name as Francis Jackson Meriam of Boston, and his com- 
 panion gave his name as John Henry. Meriam said that he 
 was going on a journey South; that he had some property at 
 home; that accidents often happened to travelers; and that 
 he desired me to draw his will. I did so, and was not surprised 
 that a young Boston traveler, after making a few special be- 
 
 [12] 
 
quests, gave his property to the Abolition Society of his na- 
 tive state. There was nothing in his appearance, manner, or 
 conversation to attract any special attention to his proceed- 
 ing, and his will was duly executed, witnessed, and, in obe- 
 dience to his orders, mailed to the executor in Boston. When 
 I asked Meriam's companion to witness the will, he declined, 
 saying that he was a traveler also, and that both the witnesses 
 had better be in the same town. His real reasons for declining 
 to witness the will of his friend were— first, that "J^^"^ Henry" 
 was none other than John Henry Kagi, and, second, because 
 he presumed his life to be as much in peril as was that of his 
 friend. The sequel proved that he judged well, for Kagi was 
 killed in the attack on Harper's Ferry, while Meriam escaped. 
 When the two visitors left they were no more thought of in 
 the village lawyer's office until the startling news came of 
 Brown's attempt to capture Harper's Ferry and to arm the 
 slaves of Virginia in general insurrection. Then, to my sur- 
 prise, I read the name of the testator in the will I had written 
 a short time before, and the name and description of another 
 assured me that his fellow-visitor in my office was the then 
 fallen John Henry Kagi. 
 
 It may be remembered that of the twenty-one who com- 
 posed John Brown's army of invasion, Watson Brown, Oliver 
 Brown, John Henry Kagi, Adolphus Thompson, and Stewart 
 Taylor, whites, and Sherrard Lewis Leary, Dangerfield 
 Newby, and Jeremiah Anderson, colored, were killed in the 
 battle, and that William H. Leeman and William Thompson 
 were killed in attempting to retreat. Owen Brown, Barclay 
 Coppoch, Charles P. Tidd, and Francis Jackson Meriam, 
 whites, and Osborne P. Anderson, colored,, escaped. They 
 made their way through the forests of the South Mountain 
 to Chambersburg, traveling only by night; were concealed 
 in a retired grove near Chambersburg for several days to 
 enable the wounded men of the party to recruit their strength, 
 and then went on by short night-marches across the North 
 Mountain to the Juniata Valley, near Bell's Mills, where they 
 
 [13] 
 
were taken in charge by a prominent citizen of Harrisburg, 
 whose dust has long mouldered with that of John Brown. 
 Meriam left the party at Chambersburg, took the cars, and 
 went through to Boston without detection. Only two resi- 
 dents of Chambersburg knew of the presence of the fugitives, 
 and they are no longer numbered among the citizens of the 
 town whose history forms such an important chapter in the 
 annals of our terrible civil war. John E. Cook, Edwin Cop- 
 poch, Aaron Dwight Stevens, and Albert Hazlitt, whites, and 
 John Copeland and Shields Green, colored, were captured, 
 and, with John Brown their leader, convicted of murder at 
 Charlestown, Virginia, and executed in December, 1859. 
 Hazlitt was the first of the fugitives captured in Pennsylvania. 
 He was arrested while walking along the Cumberland Valley 
 Railroad near Shippensburg, and lodged in the jail at Car- 
 lisle. His captors supposed him to be Captain Cook, and that 
 error cost Cook his life on the gibbet. A requisition was 
 quietly obtained from Richmond for the rendition of Cook. 
 When it arrived the identity of Hazlitt had been established, 
 but the requisition remained within thirty miles of Cham- 
 bersburg, to surprise Cook and return him to Virginia just 
 when he had perfected his plans for escape. Cook was the last 
 of the fugitives to be captured, and the circumstances and 
 manner of his arrest, the strange miscarriage of his apparently 
 certain opportunities of escape, and his heroism in the law- 
 less cause that so blindly misguided him make a truthful 
 story before which the fascinating inventions of romance pale. 
 I was the counsel of John E. Cook in Chambersburg, and 
 the only person entirely familiar with the inner history of his 
 capture and the plans of escape. The community of which 
 Chambersburg was the centre of business and sentiment was 
 nearly equally divided on the political issues of that day; but 
 the undertow of anti-slavery conviction was stronger than 
 the partisan dogmas which made one-half the people declare 
 slavery a lawful and therefore a defensible institution. Fer- 
 vent and eloquent speeches would be made on the stump in 
 
 [14] 
 
every campaign against interference with slavery and in favor 
 of the faithful observance of the mandates of the Constitu- 
 tion, and glittering resolves would emanate from party con- 
 ventions in favor of the Union, the Constitution, and the 
 laws; but the practical division of the community on the is- 
 sues of obedience to the Constitution and the laws which 
 commanded the rendition of fugitive slaves left here and there 
 a despised Negro-catcher on the one side and all the people 
 on the other side. There was no Democrat in Franklin County 
 to accept a commissionership under the Fugitive Slave Law. 
 I have seen two Democratic president judges administer the 
 laws with a singleness of purpose to hold the scales of justice 
 in even balance; and I have known a prominent Democratic 
 candidate for the same position, once a member of Congress, 
 who publicly demanded justice to the South by the rendition 
 of slaves; but all of them would feed the trembling fugitive, 
 hide him from his pursuers, and bid him Godspeed on his 
 journey toward the North Star. The Democratic president 
 judge who personally remanded Captain Cook to the custody 
 of the Virginia authorities for execution would have assented 
 to and aided his escape had they met simply as man and man 
 outside the sacred obligations of the law. There was no senti- 
 ment in Franklin County or elsewhere in the North to give 
 any practical enforcement to the Fugitive Slave Law; and in 
 every contest between slave and master and in every issue 
 relating to slavery the people were profoundly anti-slavery, 
 however they resolved in convention or spoke in the forum 
 or voted at the polls. This statement of the public sentiment 
 that prevailed a quarter of a century ago in Southern Penn- 
 sylvania, hard by the slave border, and which was but a reflex 
 of the sentiment of the North that gave practical effect to its 
 teachings, will make the story of Captain Cook's apparently 
 certain but singularly-defeated opportunities of escape better 
 understood. 
 
 It had been known for some days after the Brown raid on 
 Harper's Ferry that Captain Cook was at large, and, as a lib- 
 
 [15] 
 
eral reward for his capture had been offered by Governor 
 Wise of Virginia, and a minute description of his person 
 published throughout the country, the whole skilled and 
 amateur detective force of the land was watching every prom- 
 ising point to effect his capture. The Northern cities. East 
 and West, were on the watch to discover his hiding-place, but 
 the forest-schooled and nature-taught detective of the South 
 Mountain knew that some of its fastnesses must be his retreat. 
 The broken ranges of the mountain on the southern border 
 of Franklin embraced the line between Pennsylvania and 
 Maryland, between the free and the slave States. It was the 
 favorite retreat of the fugitive slave, and its nearness to Har- 
 per's Ferry, and its solitude where only the hunter or the 
 chopper wandered, made it the most inviting refuge for the 
 fleeing insurrectionist. Cook was known as a man of desperate 
 courage, as a rare expert in the use of pistol and rifle, as a 
 reckless desperado in the anti-slavery crusade; and his capture 
 alive was not expected. He had braved assassination in Kan- 
 sas, and all believed that he would resist to the death any 
 attempt to capture him for Virginia vengeance on the gallows. 
 He had been concealed in the mountain-recesses for some 
 days with his companions, who subsequently escaped through 
 Chambersburg to the North, when he decided to seek out 
 some woodman's home and obtain provisions. They were 
 afraid to shoot game, lest the reports of their guns might in- 
 dicate their retreat and lead to their capture. Cook was of a 
 nervous, restless, reckless disposition, and he started out 
 alone, going he knew not whither, to obtain food. He rea- 
 soned plausibly that he could not be captured by any one or 
 two men, as he was well armed and thoroughly skilled in the 
 use of his weapons. He took no thought of arrest, as, had a 
 score of armed men confronted him, he would have sold his 
 life as dearly as possible and died in the battle for his liberty. 
 He understood that he might die any day or hour, but to be 
 made a prisoner and be rendered up to Virginia justice to 
 die on the gibbet he meant to escape. He felt safe, therefore, 
 
 [16] 
 
in his venture out in the pathless mountains to claim the 
 hospitality of some humble home in the wilderness. And his 
 judgment would have been justified had he not walked into 
 the hands of the only man in Franklin County who combined 
 with the courage and the skill the purpose to capture him. 
 Among the sturdy population of the mountaineers on the 
 southern Pennsylvania border was a family of Logans. There 
 were two brothers, both shrewd, quiet, resolute men, both 
 strongly Southern in their sympathies, both natural detec- 
 tives, and both trained in the summary rendition of fugitive 
 slaves without process of law. It was common for slaves to 
 escape from Maryland and Virginia into the South Mountain, 
 whose broken spurs and extended wings of dense forest gave 
 them reasonably safe retreat. Their escape would be followed 
 by handbills describing the fugitives and offering rewards for 
 their capture and return. These offers of rewards always found 
 their way into the hands of Daniel and Hugh Logan, and 
 many fleeing sons of bondage were arrested by them and 
 quietly returned to their masters. Hugh followed his natural 
 bent and went South as soon as the war began. He at once 
 enlisted in the Confederate service, rose to the rank of cap- 
 tain, and was the guide in General Stuart's raid to Chambers- 
 burg in October, 1862. He then saved me from identification 
 and capture, although my arrest was specially ordered, with 
 that of a dozen others, in retaliation of Pope's arrest of Vir- 
 ginia citizens; and I was glad at a later period of the war to 
 save him from summary execution as a supposed bushwhacker 
 by General Kelley. Whatever may be said or thought of his 
 convictions and actions, he sealed them with his life, as he fell 
 mortally wounded in one of the last skirmishes of the war. 
 His brother Daniel was less impulsive, and he did not believe 
 that either slavery or freedom was worth dying for. He was 
 then just in early manhood and a man of rare qualities. He 
 possessed the highest measure of courage, but never sought 
 and seldom shared in a quarrel. He was a complete picture 
 of physical strength, compactly and symmetrically formed, 
 
 [17] 
 
and with a face whose clear-cut features unmistakably indi- 
 cated his positive qualities. He was a born detective. Silent, 
 cunning, tireless, and resolute, he ever exhausted strategy in 
 his many campaigns against fugitives, and he seldom failed. 
 Had he been city-born, with opportunities for culture in the 
 profession, Logan would have made one of the best chiefs 
 of a detective bureau to be found in the country. But, moun- 
 tain-born, unschooled save by himself, and trained only in 
 the rude contests with fugitive slaves and an occasional crim- 
 inal in the border wilderness, he finally wearied of his trade, 
 and his arrest of Captain Cook was his last exploit in the de- 
 tective line. He subsequently removed to Lancaster, where 
 a very quiet, well-to-do, well behaved, and respected dealer 
 in horses answered to the name of Daniel Logan. 
 
 In a mountain-ravine near Mont Alto Furnace, Cleggett 
 Fitzhugh, manager of the works, and a man of Southern birth 
 and strong Southern sympathies, was overseeing a number of 
 men at work, and Daniel Logan had happened to come that 
 way and was engaged in casual conversation with him. The 
 ravine is so hidden by the surrounding forest that one un- 
 acquainted with the locality would not know of its existence 
 until he entered it. Captain Cook, in his wanderings in search 
 of food, was surprised to find himself suddenly emerge from 
 the mountain-thicket into an open space and within less than 
 fifty yards of a number of workmen. He was clad and armed as 
 a hunter, and he at once decided to evade suspicion by boldly 
 meeting the men he could not hope to escape by flight. The 
 moment he appeared the keen eye of Logan scanned him, 
 and, without betraying his discovery in any way, he quietly 
 said to Fitzhugh, "That's Captain Cook; we must arrest him; 
 the reward is one thousand dollars." Fitzhugh heartily sym- 
 pathized with Logan alike in hatred of the John Brown raid- 
 ers and in desire for the reward, and he knew enough about 
 Logan to say nothing and obey. Cook advanced in a careless 
 manner to Logan and Fitzhugh, and told them that he was 
 hunting on the mountains and wanted to replenish his stock 
 
 [18] 
 
of bread and bacon. Logan at once disarmed suspicion on the 
 part of Cook by his well-affected hospitality, as he proposed to 
 go at once with Cook to Logan's store— which had no exist- 
 ence, by the way— and supply the hunter's wants. Cook was 
 so completely thrown off guard by the kind professions of 
 Logan and Fitzhugh that he fell in between them without 
 noticing how he was being flanked. His gun rested carelessly 
 on his shoulder, and the hand that could grasp his pistol and 
 fire with unerring aim in the twinkling of an eye was loosely 
 swinging by his side. None but a Daniel Logan could have 
 thus deceived John E. Cook, who had studied men of every 
 grade in many perils; but there was not the trace of excite- 
 ment or the faintest betrayal of his desperate purpose on the 
 face of Logan. Thus completely disarmed by strategy, the 
 little blue-eyed blonde, the most sympathetic and the fiercest 
 of all John Brown's lieutenants, was instantly made power- 
 less, as two rugged mountaineers, at a signal from Logan, 
 grasped his arms and held him as in a vice. Cook was bewil- 
 dered for a moment, and when the truth flashed upon him 
 he struggled desperately; but it was one small, starved man 
 against two strong mountaineers, and he soon discovered that 
 resistance was vain. 
 
 "Why do you arrest me?" was his inquiry, when he per- 
 ceived that violence was useless. 
 
 "Because you are Captain Cook," was the cool reply of 
 Logan. 
 
 Cook neither affirmed nor denied the impeachment, and 
 the speedy search of his person settled the question, as his 
 captain's commission in John Brown's army was found in 
 an inner pocket. Cook was taken to Fitzhugh's house and 
 stripped of his weapons, consisting of gun, revolver, and 
 knife. He was allowed to eat a hasty meal, and was then 
 placed, unbound, in an open buggy with Logan, to be taken 
 to Chambersburg. He was informed that if he attempted to 
 escape he would be shot; and it did not need an extended 
 acquaintance with his captor to assure him that what he 
 
 [19] 
 
threatened he would certainly perform. He then gave up all 
 hope of escape by either fight or flight. As they were journey- 
 ing along the eighteen miles Cook found that his captor was 
 less bloodthirsty than mercenary; and the following conver- 
 sation, subsequently repeated to me by both parties, passed 
 substantially between them: 
 
 "You will get a reward of one thousand dollars for me, you 
 say?" queried Cook. 
 
 "Yes, a thousand dollars," answered the sententious Logan. 
 
 "They will hang me in Virginia, won't they?" was Cook's 
 next inquiry. 
 
 "Yes, they will hang you," was the chilling answer. 
 
 "Do you want to have me hung?" was Cook's first venture 
 upon the humane side of his captor. 
 
 "No," was the prompt but unimpassioned answer of Logan. 
 
 "Then you want only the reward?" was Cook's half-hopeful 
 appeal to Logan. 
 
 "Yes; that's all," was Logan's reply. 
 
 Cook's naturally bright face beamed at once with hope as 
 he enthusiastically entered into various plans for the pay- 
 ment of the sum that would ransom his life. He told Logan 
 how a thousand dollars, or five times that sum, would not 
 be a matter of a moment's consideration to his brother-in- 
 law, Governor Willard of Indiana, or his other brother-in- 
 law, a man of large fortune residing in Brooklyn; but Logan 
 distrusted this story of high dignitaries and large fortunes, 
 and no practical way seemed open to make Cook's credit good 
 enough to assure his discharge. Finally, he inquired of Logan 
 whether there was no one in Chambersburg who would be 
 likely to take an interest in him, and who could act as his 
 counsel and assure Logan of the payment of the reward. 
 Logan named me as a Republican senator just elected, who 
 might agree to act as his counsel. He proposed to take Cook 
 to my office without revealing his identity to any others, and 
 if I assured him of the payment of the reward he would walk 
 away and leave Cook with me. With this truce between 
 
 [20} 
 
captor and captive they arrived in Chambersburg a little 
 before sunset, put up at a hotel, and Logan sent for me. I had 
 walked out to the southern suburbs of the town that evening 
 after tea to look at some lots, and on my way back had stopped 
 with a circle of men gathered about a small outskirt store. We 
 had just closed one of the most desperate local contests of the 
 state, and only those who know the sunny side of village 
 politics can appreciate how an evening hour or more could 
 thus be pleasantly spent. It was an out-of-the-way place, and 
 among the last that would be thought of in deciding to look 
 for me. Meantime, Logan had me searched for in every place 
 where I was accustomed to stroll in the evening, until, as it 
 grew late, his evident concern attracted attention, and he 
 feared the discovery or suspicion of the identity of his pris- 
 oner. When darkness began to gather and all efforts to find 
 me had been unsuccessful, he sent for an officer and started 
 with his prisoner for the office of Justice Reisher, to deliver 
 Cook to the custody of the law. The office of the justice was 
 on the main street, about midway between the hotel and the 
 suburban store where I had tarried, and as I walked leisurely 
 homeward I noticed a crowd about the door of the little 
 temple of justice. As I came up to the door Logan first noticed 
 me from the inside, and hurried out to meet me, exclaiming 
 in a whisper, with a betrayal of excitement that I had never 
 before seen in him, "My God, Colonel McClure! where have 
 you been? I have been hunting you for more than an hour. 
 That's Captain Cook, and I had agreed to bring him to you. 
 Can't you get him yet?" 
 
 I was greatly surprised, of course, and equally perplexed at 
 the grave results likely to follow. I quietly pressed my way 
 into the office until the justice noticed me, and he at once 
 addressed Cook, saying, "Here's your counsel now." 
 
 Cook beckoned me to his side in the corner, and said, in a 
 tone of visible despair, "I had expected to meet you at your 
 office and escape this misfortune." He added, "I am Cook: 
 there's no use in denying it. What's to be done?" 
 
 [21] 
 
I turned to the justice, and said, "There is no dispute as to 
 the identity of the prisoner: a hearing is needless. Let him 
 be committed to await the demand for his rendition." 
 
 The justice would have been quite content had Cook been 
 able to bounce through a window and escape, but that was 
 not possible, and Cook was committed to prison. Logan re- 
 pented of his work when he saw that he had surrendered a 
 life for a price, and his last direction to me as we passed out 
 of the office was, "Get Cook away, reward or no reward." 
 
 Cook was conducted to the old jail, accompanied by the 
 officer and myself; and I shall never forget the tremulous 
 voice in which the sheriff inquired of me what precautions 
 he should take to secure the prisoner. I was in the doubly 
 unpleasant position of being counsel for a prisoner whose 
 life depended upon his escape from prison, and also counsel 
 for the sheriff, who was more than ready to obey any instruc- 
 tions I might give him to facilitate Cook's escape without 
 legal responsibility for the act. The sheriff was one of a class 
 of simple countrymen who are as rugged in their political 
 convictions and prejudices as in their physical organization. 
 He ill concealed his willingness to let Cook get away if it 
 could be done without official responsibility for the escape; 
 and this he was more than willing to leave me to decide. 
 I told him to take Cook and myself to a cell, leave us together, 
 and admit no others. When the lawless little captive had got 
 comfortably seated in his cell, I had my first opportunity to 
 note his appearance and qualities. His long, silken, blonde 
 hair curled carelessly about his neck; his deep-blue eyes were 
 gentle in expression as a woman's; and his slightly bronzed 
 complexion did not conceal the soft, effeminate skin that 
 would have well befitted the gentler sex. He was small in 
 stature, barely five feet five, and his active life on the Western 
 theatre of war had left him without superfluous flesh. He was 
 nervous and impatient; he spoke in quick, impulsive sen- 
 tences, but with little directness, save in repeating that he 
 must escape from prison. I reminded him that he could not 
 
 [22] 
 
walk out of jail, and that his escape that night, under any 
 circumstances, would be specially dangerous to himself and 
 dangerous to the sheriff. My presence with him in the jail 
 until a late hour and my professional relations as counsel of 
 the sheriff forbade any needless haste. We carefully con- 
 sidered every possible method of getting a requisition for 
 him from Richmond; and, assuming that Cook's arrest was 
 telegraphed to Richmond that evening, a requisition by mail 
 or special messenger could not possibly reach Chambersburg 
 the next day or night. It was decided, therefore, that he 
 should not attempt to escape that night, but that the next 
 night he should have the necessary instructions and facilities 
 to regain his liberty. How or by whom he was to be aided 
 need not be told. The two men who took upon themselves 
 the work of ascertaining just where and by what means Cook 
 could best break out of the old jail were never known or 
 suspected as actively aiding the prisoner. One is now dead 
 and the other is largely interested in Southern enterprises. 
 They did their part well, and, had Cook remained in Cham- 
 bersburg over the next day, he would have been following the 
 North Star before the midnight hour. 
 
 I had spent half an hour with Cook when he first entered 
 the prison, and then left him for an hour to confer with my 
 law-partner about the possibility of a legal contest to delay 
 or defeat the requisition in case it should be necessary. I 
 returned to the jail about ten o'clock, and had my last inter- 
 view with Cook. As he never dreamed of a requisition reach- 
 ing him before the second day, and as he was entirely con- 
 fident of his escape the following night, he threw off the cloud 
 of despair that shadowed him in the early part of the evening, 
 and startled me with the eloquence and elegance of his con- 
 versation. His familiar discussion of poetry, painting, and 
 everything pertaining to the beautiful would have made any 
 one forget that he was in a chilly prison-cell, and imagine 
 that he was in the library of some romantic lover of literature 
 and the fine arts. I became strangely interested in the culture 
 
 [23] 
 
that was blended with the mad desperation of the Virginia 
 insurgent. He was evidently a man of much more than com- 
 mon intellectual qualities and thoroughly poetic in taste and 
 temperament, with a jarring mixture of wild, romantic love 
 of the heroic. He told me of his hairbreadth escapes in Kansas, 
 of the price set upon his head; and his whole soul seemed to 
 be absorbed in avenging the Kansas slavery crusades by revo- 
 lutionary emancipation in the Slave States. When I asked 
 him whether he would not abandon his lawless and hopeless 
 scheme when he escaped, his large, soft eyes flashed with the 
 fire of defiance as he answered, with an emphasis that un- 
 strung every nerve in his body: "No! the battle must be 
 fought to the bitter end; and we must triumph, or God is 
 not just." 
 
 It was vain to argue with him the utter madness of attempt- 
 ing such a revolution, and its absolute lawlessness: he re- 
 jected all law and logic and believed in his cause. And more: 
 he fully, fanatically, believed in its justice: he believed in it 
 as a duty— as the rule of patriotism that had the sanction of a 
 higher law than that of man. In short, John E. Cook was 
 a wild fanatic on the slavery question, and he regarded any 
 and every means to precipitate emancipation as justified by 
 the end. He did not want to kill or to desolate homes with 
 worse than death by the brutal fury of slave insurrection; but 
 if such appalling evils attended the struggle for the sudden 
 and absolute overthrow of slavery, he was ready to accept the 
 responsibility and believe that he was simply performing his 
 duty. I do not thus present Cook in apology for his crime; 
 I present him as he was— a sincere fanatic, with mingled 
 humanity and atrocity strangely unbalancing each other, and 
 his mad purposes intensified by the barbarities which crim- 
 soned the early history of Kansas. 
 
 After half an hour thus spent almost wholly as a listener to 
 the always brilliant and often erratic conversation of the pris- 
 oner, I rose to leave him. He bade me good-night with hope 
 beaming in every feature of his attractive face. I engaged to 
 
 [24] 
 
call again the next afternoon, and left him to meet never- 
 more. He could have made his escape in thirty minutes that 
 night, but it would have compromised both the sheriff and 
 myself, and the second opportunity for his flight was lost. 
 I reached my home before eleven o'clock, and was surprised 
 to find Mrs. McClure and her devoted companion. Miss 
 Virginia Reilly, awaiting me in the library, dressed to face 
 the storm that had begun to rage without. They stated that 
 they were about to proceed to the jail, ask to see Cook- 
 which they knew would not be refused them by the sheriff 
 -dress him in the extra female apparel they had in a bundle, 
 and one of them walk out with him while the other remained 
 in the cell. It was entirely practicable, and it required more 
 than mere protestation on my part to prevent it. Even when 
 assured that Cook would certainly escape the following night 
 without embarrassment to the sheriff or any one else, the 
 woman's intuition rejected the reason it could not answer, 
 and only when it was peremptorily forbidden as foolish and 
 needless did they reluctantly consent to abandon the last 
 chance Cook could then have to escape. They were both 
 strongly anti-slavery by conviction, and their lives were lus- 
 trous in the offices of kindness. Miss Reilly, better known in 
 Philadelphia as the late accomplished wife of Rev. Thomas 
 X. Orr, was the daughter of a Democratic member of Con- 
 gress, and was positive in her party faith in all save slavery; 
 and both women were of heroic mould. They many times 
 reproached themselves for not acting upon their woman's 
 intuition without waiting to reason with man on the subject. 
 Had they done so. Cook would have been out of prison, fleetly 
 mounted, and the morning sun would have greeted him in 
 the northern mountains. Their mission failed because forbid- 
 den when the escape of the prisoner by other means seemed 
 as certain as anything could be in the future, and the ill- 
 fated Cook lost his third chance for liberty. 
 
 About noon on the following day the sheriff rushed into my 
 office, wild with excitement and his eyes dimmed by tears, 
 
 [25] 
 
and exclaimed, "Cook's taken away!" A thunderbolt from a 
 cloudless sky could not have startled me more, but the painful 
 distress of the sheriff left no doubt in my mind that he had 
 stated the truth. He soon calmed down sufficiently to tell me 
 how a requisition for Cook had been lying in Carlisle, only 
 thirty miles distant by railroad, where it had been brought 
 some days before when Hazlitt had been arrested and was 
 believed to be Cook. The error had been corrected when the 
 identity of Hazlitt had been discovered, and another requisi- 
 tion forwarded, on which he had been returned to Virginia; 
 but the Cook requisition remained with the sheriff of Cum- 
 berland. When Cook's arrest was announced the requisition 
 was brought on to Chambersburg in the morning train, and 
 the officer, fearing delay by the sheriff sending for his counsel, 
 called on the president judge, who happened to be in the 
 town, and demanded his approval of the regularity of his 
 papers and his command for the prompt rendition of the 
 prisoner. The judge repaired to the prison with the officer, 
 and performed his plain duty under the law by declaring the 
 officer entitled to the custody of Cook. The noon train bore 
 the strangely ill-fated prisoner on his way to Virginia and to 
 death. No man in like peril ever seemed to have had so many 
 entirely practicable opportunities for escape; but all failed, 
 even with the exercise of what would be judged as the sound- 
 est discretion for his safety. 
 
 His return to the Charlestown jail, his memorable trial, his 
 inevitable conviction, his only cowardly act of submitting to 
 recapture when he had broken out of his cell a few hours 
 before his execution, and his final execution with his captive 
 comrades,— are familiar to all. His trial attracted more atten- 
 tion than that of any of the others, because of the prominent 
 men enlisted in his cause and of the special interest felt in 
 him by the community in and about Harper's Ferry. He had 
 taught school there some years before, had married there, and 
 his return as one of John Brown's raiders to kindle the flame 
 of slave insurrection intensified the bitterness of the people 
 
 [26] 
 
against him. From the 28th day of October, 1859, when he 
 was lodged in the Charlestown jail, until the last act of the 
 tragedy, when he was executed, Cook attracted the larger 
 share of public interest in Harper's Ferry, much as Brown 
 outstripped him in national or worldwide fame. Governor 
 Willard, the Democratic executive of Indiana, appeared in 
 person on the scene, and made exhaustive efforts to save his 
 wayward but beloved brother-in-law. Daniel W. Voorhees, 
 later United States Senator from Indiana, was then United 
 States District Attorney of his state, and his devotion to his 
 party chief made him excel every previous or later effort of 
 his life in pleading the utterly hopeless cause of the brilliant 
 little Virginia insurgent. It was a grand legal and forensic 
 battle, but there was not an atom of law to aid the defense, 
 and public sentiment was vehement for the atonement. 
 
 Viewed in the clearer light and calmer judgment of the 
 experience of more than thirty years, it would have been 
 wiser and better had Virginia treated John Brown and his 
 corporal's guard of madmen as hopeless lunatics by impris- 
 onment for life, as was strongly advised by confidential coun- 
 sels from some prominent men of the land whose judgment 
 was entitled to respect; but Governor Wise, always a lover 
 of the theatrical, made a dress-parade burlesque of justice, 
 and on the 16th day of December, 1859, amidst the pomp 
 and show of the concentrated power of the Mother of Presi- 
 dents, John E. Cook paid the penalty of his crime on the 
 gallows. No demand was ever made for the rendition of 
 Cook's companions who had escaped from Harper's Ferry 
 into the South Mountain with him. Some of them lived in 
 Northern Pennsylvania without concealment, but no one 
 thought of arresting them. A few months thereafter the long- 
 threatening clouds of fraternal war broke in fury upon the 
 country; the song of John Brown inspired great armies as 
 they swept through the terrible flame of battle. 
 
 [27] 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 LINCOLN AND BUCHANAN 
 
 It is now more than thirty years since James Buchanan re- 
 tired from the office of President of the United States, but I 
 doubt whether there is any one of our great national char- 
 acters whose relations to our civil war are so widely and so 
 flagrantly misunderstood. It will surprise many at this day 
 when I say that Abraham Lincoln took up the reins of gov- 
 ernment just where James Buchanan left them, and con- 
 tinued precisely the same policy toward the South that 
 Buchanan had inaugurated, until the Southern leaders com- 
 mitted the suicidal act of firing upon Fort Sumter. From the 
 time that Buchanan's original Cabinet was disrupted on the 
 sectional issues that culminated in armed rebellion, the 
 administration of Buchanan was not only thoroughly loyal 
 to the preservation of the Union, but it fixed the policy that 
 Lincoln accepted, and from which he took no marked de- 
 parture until actual war came upon him. This is not the 
 common appreciation of Buchanan among the American 
 people, but it is the truth of history. He retired from his high 
 office in the very flood-tide of sectional and partisan passion. 
 The loyal people were frenzied to madness by what was re- 
 garded as the perfidy of Buchanan's war minister, John B. 
 Floyd, in shipping valuable arms and munitions to the South; 
 by the insolent treason of his Secretary of the Treasury, 
 Howell Cobb; by the boldly-asserted and generally-believed 
 treachery of his Secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey, in scat- 
 tering our navy throughout the world; and it is now accepted 
 
 [28] 
 
by many, amongst even intelligent people of this country, 
 that Buchanan was faithless to his duty in failing to reinforce 
 Major Anderson at Sumter. In addition to these deeply-seated 
 unjust convictions in regard to Buchanan, he is commonly 
 believed to have been in hostility to the Lincoln administra- 
 tion and to the war, and his sympathies to have been with the 
 South in the bloody struggle for the preservation of the 
 Union. It is certainly time that these utterly erroneous and 
 most unjust impressions as to Buchanan should be dissipated; 
 and, fortunately for his own good name, he has left on record 
 the most positive evidence of his devotion to the Union and 
 his earnest support of the government in the most vigorous 
 prosecution of the war that had been, as he always held, 
 wantonly precipitated upon the nation by the South. I never 
 was in political sympathy with Buchanan while he was in 
 public life, excepting the few closing months of his adminis- 
 tration, when, as I then knew, both he and his Cabinet were 
 estranged from their ultra-Democratic friends North and 
 South, and were in daily intercourse with the leading friends 
 of Lincoln as the incoming President. My personal acquaint- 
 ance with him was of the most casual character, and I have 
 therefore neither lingering personal nor political affection to 
 inspire me to any strained attempt to vindicate his memory. 
 Buchanan as President should be judged by the circum- 
 stances under which he reached that position, by his long- 
 cherished and conscientious convictions, and by his peculiar 
 political environment, that led him into the most sympathetic 
 relations with the South. It should be remembered that he 
 was elected President over General Fremont, a distinctly sec- 
 tional candidate who was not thought of with any degree of 
 favor in any state south of Mason and Dixon's line. It was 
 an earnest battle against what was assailed as the ultra-section- 
 alism of the North, and it consolidated the South in support 
 of Buchanan. It naturally intensified the sober judgment of 
 his life against political Abolitionism, and he entered the 
 Presidency owing his election to the solid vote of the slave 
 
 [29] 
 
states. To these facts, which could not fail to profoundly im- 
 press Buchanan, it should be added that he was naturally a 
 most conservative and strict-constructionist statesman. Born 
 and reared in the Federal school, acting with the Federal 
 party until he had become noted as a leader in Congress, and 
 gravitating thence into the Democratic school when strict 
 constructionists had settled upon state rights as the jewel of 
 their faith, it is not surprising that Buchanan sympathized 
 with the South in all the preliminary disputes which finally 
 ended in sanguinary war. That he was radically wrong on the 
 fundamental issues relating to the war when he entered the 
 Presidency cannot be doubted. He foreshadowed the Dred 
 Scott decision in his inaugural address, and evidently believed 
 that it was to come as a final solution of the slavery dispute, 
 as it greatly enlarged the constitutional protection of slave- 
 holders; and his support of the lawless and revolutionary 
 Lecompton policy, into which he and his party were dra- 
 gooned by the Southern leaders, engulfed him and his ad- 
 ministration in the maelstrom of secession. Thus was he 
 drifting, step by step, insensibly into the hands of those who, 
 however fair in declaration or promise, were treasonable in 
 purpose, and sought through him to wield the power of the 
 government to aid rather than hinder the disruption of the 
 Republic. It is only just to Buchanan, however, to say that 
 whenever he was brought face to face with the true purposes 
 of the Southern leaders he reversed his own policy, revised 
 his Cabinet, and made his administration quite as aggressive 
 as was wise under the circumstances in asserting the para- 
 mount authority of the Union. I 
 The crisis that changed Buchanan's whole policy on the I 
 question of Secession was initiated on the 12th of December, | 
 1860, when General Cass resigned his position as Secretary 
 of State because he could not harmonize with Buchanan's 
 views in meeting the question. Cass was greatly enfeebled by 
 age, and Buchanan left a private record on Cass' resignation 
 in which he stated that until that time the only difference 
 
 [30] 
 
 
between them that he had knowledge of was on the ground 
 that Buchanan had failed to assert with sufficient clearness 
 that there was no power in Congress or the government to 
 make war upon a state to hinder it in separating from the 
 Union. The retirement of Cass was speedily followed by the 
 enforced resignations of Floyd from the War Department 
 and Cobb from the Treasury. Philip Thomas of Maryland 
 succeeded Cobb; Joseph Holt of Kentucky succeeded Floyd; 
 Attorney-General Jeremiah Black was promoted to Secretary 
 of State; and Edwin M. Stanton made his successor as Attor- 
 ney-General. Thomas remained in office only a month, when 
 he was succeeded by General Dix, an aggressive loyalist. Stan- 
 ton, Dix, and Holt were aggressively against every form of 
 treasonable rebellion, and they gave a visibly altered tone to 
 everything about the administration in the preliminary dis- 
 putes with the leading Secessionists. One of the first acts of 
 South Carolina after her formal withdrawal from the Union 
 was to appoint Commissioners to proceed to Washington to 
 treat with the government of the United States for peaceable 
 separation and the recognition of the independence of the Pal- 
 metto State. These Commissioners proceeded to Washington, 
 and were courteously received by Buchanan as citizens of 
 South Carolina, without any recognition of their official 
 capacity, and several misunderstandings arose between them 
 as to what was accepted or agreed upon in relation to the 
 military status in Charleston. 
 
 It finally became necessary for Buchanan to give a formal 
 answer to the South Carolina Commissioners as to the atti- 
 tude of the government and his purposes as its executive. He 
 prepared an answer without consulting any of the members 
 of his Cabinet, in which he said: "I have declined for the 
 present to reinforce these forts (in Charleston harbor), rely- 
 ing upon the honor of South Carolinians that they will not be 
 assaulted while they remain in their present condition, but 
 that Commissioners will be sent by the convention to treat 
 with Congress on the subject." In this paper Buchanan 
 
 [31] 
 
assumed that he had no power to take any action as President 
 —that the whole dispute was one to be submitted to Congress. 
 He added, however, that "if South Carolina should take any 
 of these forts, she will then become the assailant in a war 
 against the United States." In the many interesting conversa- 
 tions I had with the late Judge Black on the subject of the 
 difficulties in Buchanan's Cabinet, I received from his own 
 lips detailed accounts of almost every incident of importance 
 that occurred, and what I state in regard to the answer of 
 Buchanan to the South Carolina Commissioners I give from 
 distinct recollection on his authority. On the 29th of Decem- 
 ber, soon after Buchanan had written the original draft of 
 his answer to the Commissioners, he submitted it to his Cab- 
 inet. It was little criticised at the Cabinet meeting by any of 
 the President's constitutional advisers, and Black was omi- 
 nously silent. He was profoundly grieved at the attitude the 
 President had assumed, and his strong personal devotion to 
 Buchanan made his position one of extreme delicacy. He was 
 the one man of the Cabinet whom Buchanan regarded as his 
 close personal and political friend. He did not express his 
 views to any of his Cabinet associates until he had spent an 
 entire night in anxious reflection as to his duty. On the fol- 
 lowing day he called upon Buchanan and told him frankly 
 that if he sent the answer to the South Carolina Commis- 
 sioners as originally prepared he (Black) must resign from the 
 Cabinet, because he could not assent to the government being 
 placed in such an attitude. It was seldom that Buchanan ever 
 betrayed emotion, but when Black informed him that they 
 must separate Buchanan was moved even to tears. Few words 
 passed between them, and Buchanan handed Black the orig- 
 inal paper with the request to modify it in accordance with 
 his own views^ and return it as speedily as possible. Black 
 then wrote the paper that went into history as the answer of 
 Buchanan to the Commissioners. Before he presented it to 
 the President it was carefully considered and revised by 
 Black, Holt, and Stanton, who then were, and thereafter con- 
 
 [32] 
 
tinued to be, with Dix, the aggressively loyal members of the 
 Buchanan Cabinet; and in their actions they had the hearty 
 sympathy and support of the President. 
 
 One of the common accusations against Buchanan is that 
 he failed to reinforce the garrisons in the Southern forts and 
 protect them from capture by the Secessionists. A careful 
 study of the facts, however, shows that Buchanan was utterly 
 without an army to protect these forts. He and General Scott 
 had a somewhat bitter dispute on this point after Buchanan's 
 retirement from office, but Scott's own statement proves that 
 he had no intelligent knowledge of the ability of the govern- 
 ment to reinforce the forts, or that he, as commander-in-chief 
 of the army, made an official suggestion to the President that 
 was impossible of execution. On the 29th of October, 1860, 
 Scott addressed Buchanan on the subject of these Southern 
 forts, and he enumerated nine of them that would be exposed 
 to easy capture unless speedily reinforced. On the day after 
 thus addressing the President, Scott pointedly illustrated the 
 absurdity of his recommendation by saying to the President, 
 "There is one regular company at Boston, one here at the 
 Narrows, one at Portsmouth, one at Augusta, Georgia, and 
 one at Baton Rouge." According to Scott's own statement, 
 there were but five companies of the army then within the 
 reach of the government to garrison or reinforce the threat- 
 ened forts. These five companies did not aggregate four 
 hundred men, and these four hundred men, scattered from 
 Boston to Baton Rouge, were presented by Scott himself as 
 the resources of the government for the protection of nine 
 forts in six Southern states. 
 
 Our little army of that day was all needed on our then 
 remote frontiers to protect settlers and emigrants from the 
 savages who ruled in those regions, and it would have re- 
 quired weeks, and in some cases months, to bring them to 
 the East for the protection of the endangered forts. Even 
 when war came and the frontiers had to be stripped of their 
 military protection wherever it was possible, there were but 
 
 [33] 
 
few regular troops at the battle of Bull Run. Scott and 
 Buchanan both agreed that there was danger of turbulence 
 at the inauguration of Lincoln, and they cordially co-oper- 
 ated with each other to take the most effective measures to 
 preserve peace on that occasion. After gathering all the troops 
 that could be marshaled from every part of the country to 
 serve at the inauguration, they finally got together six hun- 
 dred and thirty, and they made their arrangements for the 
 inauguration with that small military display because the 
 commander-in-chief of the army could not summon a larger 
 force. It was simply impossible, therefore, for President 
 Buchanan to garrison or reinforce the Southern forts, for the 
 reason that he had not the men with which to do it. There 
 was but one way to save the Southern forts, and that was to 
 garrison them so strongly, with ample provisions and muni- 
 tions of war, that they would be invulnerable to assault. To 
 have sent inadequate reinforcements to any of these forts in 
 the then inflamed condition of the public mind in the South 
 would have been to wantonly provoke attack upon forces that 
 could not protect themselves. Had Lincoln been President he 
 could not have done more without doing what would have 
 been accepted as an open declaration of war against the 
 South, and Lincoln would no more have committed that folly 
 than did Buchanan. It would have been a wise thing to do if 
 we had had an army of thirty or forty thousand men. Then all 
 the forts could have been garrisoned and reinforced, and 
 they could have had the support necessary in case of threat- 
 ened assault; but our government was entirely unprepared 
 for defense, and when we were compelled to face the peril 
 of war the army could not be increased without making the 
 North either measurably or wholly responsible for precipitat- 
 ing a civil conflict. The intelligent and dispassionate Ameri- 
 can citizen, who carefully reads the whole story of the action 
 of Buchanan and his Cabinet in co-operation with Scott, must 
 reach the conclusion that Buchanan was not in any degree 
 
 [34} 
 
at fault for the failure to garrison or reinforce the forts in the 
 Southern states. 
 
 On the important question of Buchanan's support of the 
 government after war had been commenced by the assault 
 on Sumter, he has fortunately left the most positive and mul- 
 tiplied evidence of his patriotic loyalty to the Union. He 
 was singularly reticent during the war, and his silence was 
 misconstrued into a lack of sympathy with the government. 
 After his retirement from the Presidency he was most merci- 
 lessly vilified, brutally misrepresented as deliberately disloyal, 
 and he seems to have abandoned the hope of correcting pub- 
 lic sentiment and doing himself justice until the flood-tide of 
 passion had run its course. He was, however, in constant com- 
 munication with his leading friends throughout the country, 
 and to every one of them, from the beginning of the war until 
 its close, he expressed the most patriotic convictions, and uni- 
 formly urged the earnest support of the war and its most 
 vigorous prosecution. In September, 1861, he was invited by 
 an intimate friend to deliver a public address on the condi- 
 tion of the country and the attitude of the government. In 
 his answer he said, writing in the frankness of sacred friend- 
 ship, "Every person who has conference with me knows that 
 I am in favor of sustaining the government in the vigorous 
 prosecution of the war for the restoration of the Union. But 
 occasion may offer when it may be proper for me authori- 
 tatively to express this opinion to the public. Until that time 
 shall arrive I desire to avoid any public exhibition." In a 
 private letter to James Buchanan Henry, his nephew, immedi- 
 ately after he had heard of the firing upon Sumter, he said: 
 "The Confederate States have deliberately commenced a civil 
 war, and God knows where it may end. They were repeatedly 
 warned by my administration that an assault on Fort Sumter 
 would be civil war and they would be responsible for the 
 consequences." 
 
 On the 19th of April, 1861, soon after the bombardment 
 
 [35] 
 
of Sumter, he wrote to General Dix, who had then been 
 announced as the president of a great Union meeting soon to 
 be held, at which he advised him to repeat the admonitions 
 the administration had given to South Carolina against pre- 
 cipitating war. He referred to the fact that as Dix had been 
 a member of the Cabinet at the time he could speak with 
 great propriety of the utter want of excuse on the part of 
 South Carolina for firing upon Sumter. In this letter he said: 
 "The present administration had no alternative but to accept 
 the war initiated by South Carolina or the Southern Con- 
 federacy. The North will sustain the administration to a man, 
 and it ought to be sustained at all hazards." Again, on the 
 26th of April, writing to Baker, he said: ''The attack on Fort 
 Sumter was an outrageous act. The authorities at Charleston 
 were several times warned by my administration that such an 
 attack would be civil war, and would be treated as such. If 
 it had been made in my time it should have been treated as 
 such." In a letter to Stanton, May 6, when Stanton was writ- 
 ing to Buchanan fiercely criticizing Lincoln and every act of 
 the administration, Buchanan said: "The first gun fired by 
 Beauregard aroused the indignant spirit of the North as 
 nothing else could have done, and made us an unanimous 
 people. I repeatedly warned them that this would be the 
 result." In a letter to King, July 13, he said: "The assault 
 upon Fort Sumter was the commencement of war by the Con- 
 federate States, and no alternative was left but to prosecute 
 it with vigor on our part. Up until all social and political 
 relations ceased between the Secession leaders and myself I 
 had often warned them that the North would rise to a man 
 against them if such an assault was made. ... I am glad that 
 General Scott does not underrate the strength of his enemy, 
 which would be a great fault in a commander. With all my 
 heart and soul I wish him success." In a letter to Leiper, 
 August 31, he said: "I agree with you that nothing but a 
 vigorous prosecution of the war can now determine the ques- 
 
 [36] 
 
tion between the North and the South. It is vain to think of 
 peace at the present moment." 
 
 In a letter to Dr. Blake, September 12, he said: "We must 
 prosecute the war with the utmost vigor. May God grant us 
 a safe deliverance and a restoration of the Unionl" In a letter 
 to King, September 18, he said: "I think I can perceive in the 
 public mind a more fixed, resolute, and determined purpose 
 than ever to prosecute the war to a successful termination 
 with all the men and means in our power. Enlistments are 
 now proceeding much more rapidly than a few weeks ago, 
 and I am truly glad of it. The time has passed for offering 
 compromises and terms of peace to the seceded States. . . . 
 There is a time for all things under the sun, but surely this 
 is not the moment for paralyzing the arm of the national ad- 
 ministration by a suicidal conflict among ourselves, but for 
 bold, energetic, and united action." On the 28th of Septem- 
 ber, Buchanan addressed a letter to a committee of the citi- 
 zens of Chester and Lancaster counties who had invited him 
 to address a Union meeting at Hagersville. He declined 
 because "advancing years in the present state of my health 
 render it impossible." He said: "Were it possible for me to 
 address your meeting, waiving all other topics, I should 
 confine myself to a solemn and earnest appeal to my coun- 
 trymen, and especially those without families, to volunteer 
 for the war and join the many thousands of brave and patri- 
 otic volunteers who are already in the field. This is the 
 moment for action— for prompt, energetic, and united action 
 —and not for discussion of peace propositions." In closing the 
 letter he said that until the South shall voluntarily return to 
 the Union "it will be our duty to support the President with 
 all the men and means at the command of the country in a 
 vigorous and successful prosecution of the war." 
 
 In a letter to King, January 28, 1862, he said: "I do most 
 earnestly hope that our army may be able to do something 
 before the first of April. If not, there is great danger not 
 
 [37] 
 
merely of British, but of European, interference." In a letter 
 to Mrs. Boyd, February 16, he said: "The Confederate States 
 commenced this unhappy war for the destruction of the 
 Union, and until they shall be willing to consent to its res- 
 toration there can be no hopes of peace." On the 4th of March 
 he wrote Judge Black: ''They (the South) chose to commence 
 civil war, and Mr. Lincoln had no alternative but to defend 
 the country against dismemberment. I certainly should have 
 done the same thing had they begun the war in my time, and 
 this they well knew." In a letter to Dr. Blake, July 12, he 
 speaks of the deep anxiety he felt about the safety of Mc- 
 Clellan's army, with a heavy pressure removed from his heart 
 when he learned that it was safe, and he then adds: "Without 
 doubt his change of position in the face of a superior army 
 evinced great skill in strategy; but why was the wrong posi- 
 tion originally selected? I still feel great confidence in 
 McClellan, and with all my heart wish him success. Still, 
 there is a mystery in the whole affair which time alone can 
 unravel." On February 14, 1863, in a letter to Roosevelt, he 
 expressed his great disappointment that a country so great as 
 ours "has not yet produced one great general." In a letter to 
 Leiper, March 19, he said: "I cannot entertain the idea of a 
 division of the Union; may God in His good providence 
 restore it!" In a letter to Schell, July 25, he expresses his 
 profound regret at Governor Seymour's hostility to the na- 
 tional conscription law, and said: "The conscription law, 
 though unwise and unjust in many of its provisions, is not in 
 my opinion unconstitutional." So earnest was Buchanan in 
 his efforts to have the democracy of Pennsylvania give the 
 most cordial support to Lincoln and to the war that he even 
 transgressed the lines of delicacy in a letter addressed to Judge 
 Woodward, then a Supreme Justice and candidate for Gov- 
 ernor of Pennsylvania, earnestly appealing to him to sustain 
 the national conscription law by a judicial decision. This he 
 did as early as July, 1863, when the question was first raised 
 in our courts. In a letter of September 5, also addressed to 
 
 [38] 
 
Judge Woodward, he offered an apology for having advised 
 him as to his judicial duties, and his apology was, as stated 
 by himself, "I perceived that in New York the party was fast 
 making the unconstitutionality of the conscription law the 
 leading prominent point in the canvass." 
 
 On January 27, 1864, he wrote Capen, expressing his regret 
 that "the Democrats have made no issue on which to fight 
 the Presidential battle," and on the 14th of March he wrote 
 to the same friend, expressing the belief that it would be best 
 if the Democrats would fail to succeed to power at the Presi- 
 dential election of that year. On the 25th of August he wrote 
 to the same friend, assuming that McClellan would be nomi- 
 nated, in which he said: "A general proposition for peace and 
 an armistice without reference to the restoration of the Union 
 would be, in fact, a recognition of their independence. For 
 this I confess I am far from being prepared." On the 22d of 
 September, writing to his nephew, James Buchanan Henry, 
 he said: "Peace would be a very great blessing, but it would 
 be purchased at too high a price at the expense of the Union." 
 In a letter to Capen of October 5 he declares his purpose 
 to support McClellan for President, and he denounces the 
 Chicago peace platform, and specially commends McClellan 
 for having patriotically dissented from it. In the same letter 
 he expresses some hope of McClellan's election, and frankly 
 says that "the recent victories of Grant, Sherman, and Farra- 
 gut have helped the Republicans," but he rejoiced at the 
 victories of our armies and the prospect of the South sub- 
 mitting to a restoration of the Union. In a letter to Capen, 
 December 28, he says: "I agree in opinion with General Mc- 
 Clellan that it is fortunate both for himself and the Demo- 
 cratic party that he was not elected." In a letter to Flinn, 
 April, 1865, he speaks most feelingly of the assassination of 
 Lincoln, and says: "I deeply mourn his loss from private 
 feelings, and still more deeply for the sake of the country. 
 Heaven, I trust, will not suffer the perpetrators of the deed 
 and their guilty accomplices to escape just punishment, but 
 
 [39] 
 
we must not despair of the Republic." In a letter to Capen, 
 October 19, 1867, he says: "Negro emancipation is a fixed 
 fact, and so let it remain for ever; but the high privilege of 
 voting can only be constitutionally granted by the legislatures 
 of the respective States." He heartily accepted emancipa- 
 tion, but he felt that the democracy had an issue on which 
 it could stand in a patriotic attitude opposing universal Negro 
 suffrage. 
 
 Thus from the day that civil war was precipitated upon the 
 country by the madness of secession until the last insurgent 
 gun was fired there was not an utterance from James Bu- 
 chanan that did not exhibit the most patriotic devotion to 
 the cause of the Union. 
 
 In the flood of light thrown upon the actions of Buchanan 
 and Lincoln as nearly a generation has come and passed 
 away, the intelligent and unbiased reader of the truth of 
 history will be amazed to learn how closely the policy of 
 Lincoln adhered to the policy inaugurated by Buchanan after 
 he had been compelled to face the issue of actual secession 
 and armed rebellion. From the day that Judge Black revised 
 the answer of Buchanan to the South Carolina Commissioners 
 the aims and efforts of Buchanan were uniformly and earn- 
 estly in the line of the most patriotic devotion to his responsi- 
 ble duties; and when he had such men as Black, Dix, Stanton, 
 and Holt by his side, the majority, and the absolutely 
 dominant element, of his Cabinet were aggressively loyal to 
 the government, and made heroic effort to exercise every 
 power they possessed to maintain the integrity of the Union. 
 Whatever may have been Buchanan's political errors during 
 the greater part of his administration, and however those 
 errors may have strengthened the arms of secession, it is only 
 simple justice to one of the most conscientious and patriotic 
 of all our Presidents to say that when Buchanan was brought 
 face to face with the fruits of his policy he severed all political 
 and social intercourse with the leaders who had controlled 
 his election, and cast his lot and all the power of the govern- 
 
 [40} 
 
ment on the side of unqualified loyalty. Not only did the call 
 of Lincoln for troops to prosecute the war after the firing 
 upon Sumter command the uniform and earnest support of 
 Buchanan, but he heartily sustained the government in every 
 war measure, even to the extent of assenting to emancipation. 
 Such a record demands the commendation rather than the 
 censure of our only Pennsylvania President; and I have per- 
 formed the task of attempting to present him justly to the 
 American people all the more gratefully because there are no 
 lingering bonds of special personal or political sympathy be- 
 tween us. He is entitled to justice from every honest American 
 citizen, and I have sought to give him justice— nothing more, 
 nothing less. 
 
 [41} 
 
^ a£JiJ iy>r^ f*/^-^ /{uL^xysuui^e^UZImj c^ C^ CSi^Vv^/^e^tCZZ^rw. 
 
 FACSIMILE OF LINCOLN'S LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE 
 OF HIS NOMINATION TO THE PRESIDENCY 
 
 [Copied from "Abraham Lincoln; A History," by permission of its authors] 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
 LINCOLN IN 1860 
 
 It was the unexpected that happened in Chicago on that 
 fateful 18th of May, 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was nomi- 
 nated for President of the United States. It was wholly un- 
 expected by the friends of Seward; it was hoped for, but not 
 confidently expected, by the friends of Lincoln. The conven- 
 tion was the ablest assembly of the kind ever called together 
 in this country. It was the first national deliberative body of 
 the Republican party that was to attain such illustrious 
 achievements in the history of free government. The first 
 national convention of that party, held in Philadelphia in 
 1856, was composed of a loose aggregation of political free- 
 thinkers, embracing many usually denominated as "cranks." 
 The party was without organization or cohesion; its delegates 
 were self-appointed and responsible to no regular constitu- 
 ency. It was the sudden eruption of the intense resentment of 
 the people of the North against the encroachments of slavery 
 in Northern territories, and neither in the character of its 
 leaders nor in the record of its proceedings did it rank as a 
 distinctively deliberative body. It nominated a romantic 
 adventurer for President-a man untried in statesmanship and 
 who had done little to commend him to the considerate 
 judgment of the nation as its Chief Magistrate in a period of 
 uncommon peril. The campaign that followed was one of 
 unusual brilliancy, and resulted in anchoring nearly all of 
 the old Democratic states of the West in the Republican 
 column. In 1860 the principles of the Republican party had 
 
 [43] 
 
been clearly defined; its organization had been perfected in 
 every Northern state, and each delegate to that convention at 
 Chicago was regularly chosen and represented a great party 
 inspired by a devotion to its faith that has seldom been 
 equaled and never surpassed in all our political history. The 
 halo of romance that encircled General John C. Fremont, 
 "the Pathfinder," four years before had perished, and he was 
 unthought of as a candidate. 
 
 For nearly two years before the meeting of the Chicago 
 Convention in 1860 the Republican party had one preemi- 
 nent leader who was recognized as the coming candidate for 
 President. The one man who had done most to inspire and 
 crystallize the Republican organization was William H. 
 Seward of New York. Certainly, two-thirds of the delegates 
 chosen to the convention preferred him for President, and a 
 decided majority went to Chicago expecting to vote for his 
 nomination. Had the convention been held in any other 
 place than Chicago, it is quite probable that Seward would 
 have been successful; but every circumstance seemed to con- 
 verge to his defeat when the delegates came face to face in 
 Chicago to solve the problem of a Republican national vic- 
 tory. Of the 231 men who voted for Lincoln on the third and 
 last ballot, not less than 100 of them voted reluctantly against 
 the candidate of their choice. It was a Republican-Seward 
 convention; it was not a Seward-Republican convention. 
 With all its devotion to Seward it yielded to a higher devotion 
 to Republican success, and that led to the nomination of 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 1 have read scores of magazine and newspaper articles as- 
 suming to explain how and why Lincoln was nominated at 
 Chicago in 1860. Few of them approach accuracy, and no 
 one of them that I can recall tells the true story. Lincoln was 
 not seriously thought of for President until but a few weeks 
 before the meeting of the national convention. Blaine has 
 truly said that the State Convention of Illinois, held but a 
 short time before the meeting of the national convention, 
 
 [44] 
 
was surprised at its own spontaneous and enthusiastic nomi- 
 nation of Lincoln. He had been canvassed at home and in 
 other states as a more than possible candidate for Vice-Presi- 
 dent. I well remember Lincoln mentioning the fact that his 
 own delegation from Illinois was not unitedly in earnest 
 for his nomination, but when the time came for casting their 
 votes the enthusiasm for Lincoln in Chicago, both inside and 
 outside the convention, was such that they could do no less 
 than give him the united vote of the state. Leonard Swett, 
 who was one of the most potent of the Lincoln leaders in that 
 struggle, in a letter written to Drummond on the 27th 
 of May, 1860, in which he gives a detailed account of the 
 battle made for Lincoln, states that 8 of the 22 delegates from 
 Illinois "would gladly have gone for Seward." Thus, not only 
 in many of the other states did Lincoln receive reluctant 
 votes in that convention, but even his own state furnished 
 a full share of votes which would have been gladly given to 
 Seward had he been deemed available. 
 
 The first breach made in the then apparently invincible 
 columns of Seward was made by Horace Greeley. His news- 
 paper, the Tribune, was then vastly the most influential pub- 
 lic journal on the continent, and equaled in the world only 
 by the Times of London. His battle against Seward was waged 
 with tireless energy and consummate skill. It was not then 
 known that he had separated from immediate political associ- 
 ation with Seward and Weed. Had his relations with those 
 gentlemen been fully understood then, as they were soon 
 after the convention, when Greeley's memorable letter of 
 political dissolution was given to the public, it would have 
 greatly impaired his influence in opposing Seward. But I 
 think it just to Greeley to say that, independent of all real 
 or imaginary wrongs from Seward and Weed, he was honestly 
 convinced that Seward was not an available candidate in 
 1860. He espoused the cause of Edward Bates of Missouri, 
 who was a man of most distinguished character and ability, 
 and whose record appealed very strongly to the more con- 
 
 [45] 
 
servative elements of the party. Indeed, the nomination of 
 Bates would have been within the lines of possibility, instead 
 of the nomination of Lincoln, had the convention been sur- 
 rounded by local influences in his favor as potent as were the 
 local influences for the successful candidate. The Pennsyl- 
 vania delegation in determining its final choice gave Lincoln 
 barely four majority over Bates, and but for the fact that 
 Indiana had decided to give unanimous support to Lincoln 
 at an early stage of the contest. Bates would have been a 
 much more formidable candidate than he now appears to 
 have been by the records of the convention. 
 
 The defeat of Seward and the nomination of Lincoln were 
 brought about by two men— Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsyl- 
 vania, and Henry S. Lane of Indiana, and neither accident 
 nor intrigue was a material factor in the struggle. They not 
 only defeated Seward in a Seward convention, but they de- 
 cided the contest in favor of Lincoln against Bates, his only 
 real competitor after Seward. Curtin had been nominated for 
 governor in Pennsylvania and Lane had been nominated for 
 governor in Indiana. The states in which their battles were 
 to be fought were the pivotal states of the national contest. 
 It was an accepted necessity that both Pennsylvania and In- 
 diana should elect Republican governors in October to 
 secure the election of the Republican candidate for President 
 in November. Curtin and Lane were naturally the most in- 
 terested of all the great host that attended the Chicago Con- 
 vention in 1860. Neither of their states was Republican. In 
 Pennsylvania the name of Republican could not be adopted 
 by the party that had chosen Curtin for governor. The call 
 for the convention summoned the opposition to the Demo- 
 cratic party to attend the People's State Convention, and all 
 shades of antagonism to the administration then in power 
 were invited to cordial and equal participation in the deliber- 
 ations of that body. The Republicans had made a distinct 
 battle for governor three years before, with David Wilmot 
 
 [46] 
 
as their candidate, against Isaac Hazelhurst, the American 
 candidate, and William F. Packer, the Democratic candidate. 
 The result was the election of Packer by a majority over the 
 combined votes of both the opposing nominees. The Ameri- 
 can organization was maintained in Philadelphia and in many 
 of the counties of the state. Fillmore had received a large 
 majority of the votes cast for the Fremont-Fillmore Fusion 
 Electoral ticket in 1856 in various sections. These elements 
 had been combined in what was then called the People's party 
 in Pennsylvania in the state elections of 1858 and 1859, and 
 the Democrats had been defeated by the combination, but 
 the American element remained very powerful and quite 
 intense in many localities. Without its aid the success of 
 Curtin was simply impossible. A like condition of things 
 existed in Indiana. The American element had polled over 
 22,000 votes for Fillmore in 1856, and in 1858, when the same 
 effort was made in Indiana to unite all shades of opposition 
 to the democracy, the combination was defeated by a small 
 majority. While the antislavery sentiment asserted itself by 
 the election of a majority of Republicans to Congress in 
 1858, the entire Democratic state ticket was successful by 
 majorities varying from 1534 to 2896. It was evident, there- 
 fore, that in both Pennsylvania and Indiana there would be 
 a desperate battle for the control of the October election, and 
 it was well known by all that if the Republicans failed to 
 elect either Curtin or Lane the Presidential battle would be 
 irretrievably lost. 
 
 Both of the candidates presented in these two pivotal states 
 were men of peculiar fitness for the arduous task they had 
 assumed. Both were admittedly the strongest men that could 
 have been nominated by the opposition to the democracy, 
 and both were experienced and consummate politicians. 
 Their general knowledge of politics and of the bearing of all 
 political questions likely to be felt in the contest made them 
 not only wise counselors, but all appreciated the fact that 
 
 [47] 
 
they were of all men the most certain to advise solely with 
 reference to success. Neither of them cared whether Seward, 
 Lincoln, Bates, or any of the other men named for President 
 should be nominated, if the man chosen was certain to be the 
 most available. They were looking solely to their own success 
 in October, and their success meant the success of the Repub- 
 lican party in the nation. With Lane was John D. Defrees, 
 chairman of his state committee, who had been called to that 
 position because he was regarded as best fitted to lead in the 
 desperate contest before him. I was with Curtin and inter- 
 ested as he was only in his individual success, as he had sum- 
 moned me to take charge of his October battle in Pennsyl- 
 vania. The one thing that Curtin, Lane, and their respective 
 lieutenants agreed upon was that the nomination of Seward 
 meant hopeless defeat in their respective states. Lane and 
 Defrees were positive in the assertion that the nomination 
 of Seward would lose the governorship in Indiana. Curtin 
 and I were equally positive in declaring that the nomination 
 of Seward would defeat Curtin in Pennsylvania. 
 
 There was no personal hostility to Seward in the efforts 
 made by Curtin and Lane to defeat him. They had no reason 
 whatever to hinder his nomination, excepting the settled con- 
 viction that the nomination of Seward meant their own in- 
 evitable defeat. It is not true, as has been assumed by many, 
 that the objection to Seward was because of his radical or 
 advanced position in Republican faith. It was not Seward's 
 "irrepressible conflict" or his "higher-law" declarations which 
 made Curtin and Lane oppose him as the Republican candi- 
 date. On the contrary, both of them were thoroughly anti- 
 slavery men, and they finally accepted Lincoln with the full 
 knowledge that he was even in advance of Seward in fore- 
 casting the "irrepressible conflict." Lincoln announced in his 
 memorable Springfield speech, delivered on the 17th of June, 
 1858, " 'A house divided against itself cannot stand;* I be- 
 lieve this Government cannot endure permanently half slave 
 and half free," and Seward's "irrepressible-conflict" speech 
 
 [48] 
 
was not delivered until the 25th of October.* Lincoln was not 
 only fully abreast with Seward, but in advance of him in fore- 
 casting the great battle against slavery. The single reason that 
 compelled Curtin and Lane to make aggressive resistance to 
 the nomination of Seward was his attitude on the school ques- 
 tion, that was very offensive to the many thousands of voters 
 in their respective states, who either adhered to the American 
 organization or cherished its strong prejudices against any 
 division of the school fund. It was Seward's record on that 
 single question when governor of New York that made him 
 an impossible candidate for President in 1860, unless he was 
 to be nominated simply to be defeated. Had he been nomi- 
 nated, the American element in Pennsylvania and Indiana 
 would not only have maintained its organization, but it would 
 have largely increased its strength on the direct issue of hos- 
 tility to Seward. It was not an unreasonable apprehension, 
 therefore, that inspired Curtin and Lane to protest with all 
 earnestness against the nomination of Seward. There could 
 be no question as to the sincerity of the Republican candi- 
 dates for governor in the two pivotal states when they 
 declared that a particular nomination would doom them to 
 defeat, and it was Andrew G. Curtin and Henry S. Lane 
 whose earnest admonitions to the delegates at Chicago com- 
 pelled a Seward convention to halt in its purpose and set him 
 aside, with all his pre-eminent qualifications and with all the 
 enthusiastic devotion of his party to him. 
 
 It was Curtin and Lane also who decided that Lincoln 
 should be the candidate after Seward had been practically 
 
 • It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and 
 it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either 
 entirely a slaveholding nation or entirely a free-labor miiion.— Seward's speech 
 at Rochester, October 25, 1858. 
 
 But there is a higher law than the Constitution which regulates our author- 
 ity over the domain and devotes it to the same noble purposes. The territory 
 is a part, no inconsiderable part, of the common heritage of mankind be- 
 stowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are His stewards, and 
 must so discharge our trust as to secure, in the highest obtainable degree, their 
 happiness.— 5ca;ard'5 Senate speech, March 11, 1850. 
 
 [49] 
 
overthrown. When it became known that Seward's nomina- 
 tion would defeat the party in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the 
 natural inquiry was, Who can best aid these candidates for 
 governor in their state contests? Indiana decided in favor of 
 Lincoln at an early stage of the struggle, and her action had 
 much to do in deciding Pennsylvania's support of Lincoln. 
 The Pennsylvania delegation had much less knowledge of 
 Lincoln than the men from Indiana, and there were very few 
 original supporters of Lincoln among them. Wilmot was for 
 Lincoln from the start; Stevens was for Judge John McLean; 
 Reeder was for Simon Cameron. The delegation was not a 
 harmonious one, because of the hostility of a considerable 
 number of the delegates to Cameron for President, and it was 
 not until the first day that the convention met that Pennsyl- 
 vania got into anything like a potential attitude. At a meet- 
 ing of the delegation it was proposed that the first, second, and 
 third choice of the delegates for President should be formally 
 declared. It is needless to say that this proposition did not 
 come from the earnest supporters of Cameron, but it was 
 coupled with the suggestion that Cameron should be unani- 
 mously declared the first choice of the state; which was done. 
 Stevens was stubbornly for McLean, and had a considerable 
 following. He asked that McLean be declared the second 
 choice of the state, and, as McLean was then known to be 
 practically out of the fight, he was given substantially a 
 unanimous vote as the second choice. The third choice to 
 be expressed by the delegation brought the state down to 
 practical business, as it was well known that both the first and 
 second choice were mere perfunctory declarations. The battle 
 came then between Bates and Lincoln, and but for the facts 
 that Indiana had previously declared for Lincoln, and that 
 Curtin and Lane were acting in concert, there is little reason 
 to doubt that Bates would have been preferred. Much feel- 
 ing was exhibited in deciding the third choice of the state, 
 and Lincoln finally won over Bates by four majority. When 
 it became known that Pennsylvania had indicated Lincoln 
 
 [50] 
 
as her third choice, it gave a wonderful impetus to the Lincoln 
 cause. Cameron and McLean were not seriously considered, 
 and what was nominally the third choice of the state was 
 accepted as really the first choice among possible candidates. 
 The slogan of the Lincoln workers was soon heard on every 
 side, "Pennsylvania's for Lincoln," and from the time that 
 Pennsylvania ranged herself along with Indiana in support of 
 Lincoln not only was Seward's defeat inevitable, but the 
 nomination of Lincoln was practically assured. Thus did two 
 men— Curtin and Lane^not only determine Seward's defeat, 
 but they practically determined the nomination of Lincoln. 
 Notwithstanding the substantial advantages gained by the 
 supporters of Lincoln in the preliminary struggles at Chicago, 
 the fight for Seward was maintained with desperate resolve 
 until the final ballot was taken. It was indeed a battle of 
 giants. Thurlow Weed was the Seward leader, and he was 
 simply incomparable as a master in handling a convention. 
 With him were such able lieutenants as Governor Morgan, 
 and Raymond of the New York Times, with Evarts as chair- 
 man of the delegation, whose speech nominating Seward was 
 the most impressive utterance of his life. The Bates men were 
 led by Frank Blair, the only Republican Congressman from 
 a slave state, who was nothing if not heroic, aided by his 
 brother Montgomery, who was a politician of uncommon 
 cunning. With them was Horace Greeley, who was chairman 
 of the delegation from the then almost inaccessible state of 
 Oregon. It was Lincoln's friends, however, who were the 
 "hustlers" of that battle. They had men for sober counsel like 
 David Davis; men of supreme sagacity like Leonard Swett; 
 men of tireless effort like Norman B. Judd; and they had what 
 was more important than all— a seething multitude wild with 
 enthusiasm for Abraham Lincoln. For once Thurlow Weed 
 was outgeneraled just at a critical stage of the battle. On the 
 morning of the third day, when the final struggle was to be 
 made, the friends of Seward got up an imposing demonstra- 
 tion on the streets of Chicago. They had bands and banners, 
 
 [51] 
 
immense numbers, and generous enthusiasm; but while the 
 Seward men were thus making a public display of their earn- 
 estness and strength, Swett and Judd filled the immense gal- 
 leries of the wigwam, in which the convention was held, with 
 men who were ready to shout to the echo for Lincoln when- 
 ever opportunity offered. The result was that when the 
 Seward men filed into the convention there were seats for 
 the delegates, but few for any others, and the convention was 
 encircled by an immense throng that made the wigwam trem- 
 ble with its cheers for the "rail-splitter." 
 
 Twelve names had been put in nomination for President, 
 but the first ballot developed to the comprehension of all 
 that the struggle was between Seward and Lincoln. Seward 
 had received 1731/^ votes and Lincoln 102. The other votes 
 scattered between ten candidates, the highest of whom 
 (Cameron) received 50i/4, all of which were from Pennsyl- 
 vania with the exception of 3. Cameron's name was at once 
 withdrawn, and on the second ballot Seward rose to 184i/^, 
 with Lincoln closely following at 181, but both lacking the 
 233 votes necessary to a choice. The third ballot was taken 
 amid breathless excitement, with Lincoln steadily gaining 
 and Seward now and then losing, and when the ballot ended 
 Lincoln had 2311/4 to 180 for Seward. Lincoln lacked but 
 2 1/2 votes of a majority. His nomination was now inevitable, 
 and before the result was announced there was a general 
 scramble to change from the candidates on the scattering list 
 to Lincoln. Carter of Ohio was the first to obtain recognition, 
 and he changed four Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln, which 
 settled the nomination. Maine followed, changing ten votes 
 from Seward to Lincoln. Andrew of Massachusetts and Gratz 
 Brown of Missouri next came with changes to the Lincoln 
 column, and they continued until Lincoln's vote was swelled 
 to 354. 
 
 As soon as Ohio gave the necessary number of votes to 
 Lincoln to nominate him a huge charcoal portrait of the can- 
 didate was suddenly displayed from the gallery of the wig- 
 
 [52] 
 
warn, and the whole convention, with the exception of the 
 New York delegation, was whirled to its feet by the enthusi- 
 asm that followed. It was many minutes before the convention 
 could be sufficiently calmed to proceed with business. The 
 New York delegates had kept their seats in sullen silence 
 during all this eruption of enthusiasm for Lincoln, and it 
 was long even after quiet had been restored that Evarts' tall 
 form was recognized to move that the nomination be declared 
 unanimous. He was promptly seconded by Andrew of Massa- 
 chusetts, who was also an ardent supporter of Seward, and 
 the motion was adopted with a wild hurrah that came spon- 
 taneously from every part of the convention excepting the 
 several lines of seats occupied by the seventy delegates from 
 New York. Evarts' motion for a recess was unanimously 
 carried, and the convention and its vast audience of spectators 
 hurried out to make the streets ring with shouts for the Illi- 
 nois candidate for President. 
 
 Until after the nomination of Lincoln little attention had 
 been given to the contest for Vice-President. Had Seward 
 been nominated, Lincoln would have been unanimously 
 tendered the second place on the ticket, but with Lincoln 
 nominated for the first place the leading friends of Lincoln 
 at once suggested to the friends of Seward that they should 
 name the candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Greeley was 
 sent to Governor Morgan to proffer the nomination to him if 
 he would accept it, or in case of his refusal to ask him to name 
 some man who would be acceptable to the friends of Seward. 
 Governor Morgan not only declined to accept it himself, but 
 he declined to suggest any one of Seward's friends for the 
 place. Not only Governor Morgan, but Evarts and Weed, 
 all refused to be consulted on the subject of the Vice- 
 Presidency, and they did it in a temper that indicated con- 
 tempt for the action of the convention. Hannibal Hamlin 
 was nominated, not because Seward desired it, for New York 
 gave him a bare majority on the first ballot, but because he 
 was then the most prominent of the Democratic-Republicans 
 
 [53} 
 
in the East. The contest was really between Hamlin and 
 Cassius M. Clay. Clay was supported chiefly because he was 
 a resident of a Southern state and to relieve the party from 
 the charge of presenting a sectional ticket; but as there were 
 no Southern electoral votes to be fought for, Hamlin was 
 wisely preferred, and he was nominated on the second ballot 
 by a vote of 367 to 86 for Clay. Notwithstanding Governor 
 Morgan's keen disappointment at the defeat of Seward, he 
 was easily prevailed upon to remain at the head of the Na- 
 tional Committee, thus charging him with the management of 
 the national campaign. 
 
 I called on Thurlow Weed at his headquarters during the 
 evening after the nominations had been made, expecting that, 
 with all his disappointment, he would be ready to co-operate 
 for the success of the ticket. I found him sullen, and offensive 
 in both manner and expression. He refused even to talk about 
 the contest, and intimated very broadly that Pennsylvania, 
 having defeated Seward, could now elect Curtin and Lincoln. 
 Governor Curtin also visited Weed before he left Chi- 
 cago, but received no word of encouragement from the dis- 
 appointed Seward leader.* Weed had been defeated in his 
 greatest effort, and the one great dream of his life had per- 
 ished. He never forgave Governor Curtin until the day of 
 his death, nor did Seward maintain any more than severely 
 civil relations with Curtin during the whole time that he 
 was at the head of the State Department. I called on Seward 
 but once after the organization of the Lincoln Cabinet, and 
 not for the purpose of soliciting any favors from him, but he 
 was so frigid that I never ventured to trespass upon him again. 
 Three months after the Chicago convention, when the battle 
 
 * "I called on Morgan the night after the nomination was made. He treated 
 me civilly, but with marked coolness, and I then called on Weed, who was 
 very rude indeed. He said to me, 'You have defeated the man who of all 
 others was most revered by the people and wanted as President. You and 
 Lane want to be elected, and to elect Lincoln you must elect yourselves.' That 
 was all, and I left him."— Governor Curtin's Letter to the Author, August 18, 
 1891. 
 
 [54] 
 
in Pennsylvania was raging with desperation on both sides, 
 I twice wrote to Weed giving the condition of affairs in the 
 State and urging the co-operation of himself and Chairman 
 Morgan to assure the success of the ticket in October. He 
 made no response to either letter, and it so happened that we 
 never met thereafter during his life. 
 
 The contest in Pennsylvania was really the decisive battle 
 of the national campaign. A party had to be created out of 
 inharmonious elements, and the commercial and financial 
 interests of the state were almost solidly against us. I cannot 
 recall five commercial houses of prominence in the city of 
 Philadelphia where I could have gone to solicit a subscription 
 to the Lincoln campaign with reasonable expectation that it 
 would not be resented, and of all our prominent financial 
 men I recall only Anthony J. Drexel who actively sympa- 
 thized with the Republican cause. Money would have been 
 useless for any but legitimate purposes, but the organization 
 of a great state to crystallize incongruous elements was an 
 immense task and involved great labor and expense. I visited 
 Chairman Morgan in New York, presented the situation to 
 him, but he was listless and indifferent, and not one dollar of 
 money was contributed from New York State to aid the Cur- 
 tin contest in Pennsylvania. The entire contributions for 
 the state committee for that great battle aggregated only 
 $12,000, of which $2000 were a contribution for rent of 
 headquarters and $3000 were expended in printing. Three 
 weeks before the election, when I felt reasonably confident 
 of the success of the state ticket, I again visited Governor 
 Morgan, and met with him Moses Taylor and one or two 
 others, and they were finally so much impressed with the im- 
 portance of carrying a Republican Congress that they agreed 
 to raise $4300 and send it direct to some six or seven debatable 
 Congressional districts I indicated. Beyond this aid rendered 
 to Pennsylvania from New York the friends of Seward 
 took no part whatever in the great October battle that made 
 Abraham Lincoln President. Curtin was elected by a majority 
 
 [55] 
 
of 32,164, and Lane was elected in Indiana by 9757. With 
 Curtin the Republicans carried 19 of the 25 Congressmen, 
 and with Lane the Republicans of Indiana carried 7 of the 
 11 Congressmen of that state. Thus was the election of a 
 Republican President substantially accomplished in October 
 by the success of the two men who had defeated William H. 
 Seward and nominated Abraham Lincoln at Chicago. 
 
 [56] 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 A VISIT TO LINCOLN 
 
 I NEVER met Abraham Lincoln until early in January, 1861, 
 some two months after his election to the Presidency. I had 
 been brought into very close and confidential relations with 
 him by correspondence during the Pennsylvania campaign 
 of 1860. His letters were frequent, and always eminently 
 practical, on the then supreme question of electing the Re- 
 publican state ticket in October. It was believed on all sides 
 that unless Pennsylvania could be carried in October, 
 Lincoln's defeat would be certain in November. Pennsyl- 
 vania was thus accepted as the key to Republican success, and 
 Lincoln naturally watched the struggle with intense interest. 
 In accordance with his repeated solicitations, he was advised 
 from the headquarters of the state committee, of which I 
 was chairman, of all the varied phases of the struggle. It soon 
 became evident from his inquiries and versatile suggestions 
 that he took nothing for granted. He had to win the pre- 
 liminary battle in October, and he left nothing undone 
 within his power to ascertain the exact situation and to 
 understand every peril involved in it. 
 
 The Republican party in Pennsylvania, although then but 
 freshly organized, had many different elements and bitter 
 factional feuds within its own household, and all who actively 
 participated in party efforts were more or less involved in 
 them. I did not entirely escape the bitterness that was dis- 
 played in many quarters. Had I been simply a private in the 
 ranks, it would have been of little consequence to Lincoln 
 
 [57] 
 
whether I was competent to conduct so important a cam- 
 paign or not; but when he was advised, not only from within 
 the state, but from friends outside the state as well, that the 
 party organization in Pennsylvania was not equal to the press- 
 ing necessities of the occasion, he adopted his own character- 
 istic methods to satisfy himself on the subject. 
 
 I had met David Davis and Leonard Swett for the first time 
 at the Chicago Convention, and of course we knew little of 
 each other personally. Some time toward mid-summer, when 
 the campaign in Pennsylvania was well under way, Davis and 
 Swett entered my headquarters together and handed me a 
 letter from Lincoln, in which he said that these gentlemen 
 were greatly interested in his election— that they were on 
 East looking into the contest generally, and he would be 
 pleased if I would furnish them every facility to ascertain the 
 condition of affairs in the state. I was very glad to do so, 
 and they spent two days at my headquarters, where every in- 
 formation was given them and the methods and progress of 
 the organization opened to them without reserve. They saw 
 that for the first time in the history of Pennsylvania politics 
 the new party had been organized by the state committee 
 in every election district of the state, and that everything 
 that could be done had been done to put the party in con- 
 dition for a successful battle. 
 
 After Davis and Swett had finished their work and notified 
 me of their purpose to leave during the night, they invited 
 me to a private dinner at which none were present but our- 
 selves. During the course of the dinner Swett informed me 
 that they were very happy now to be able to tell me the real 
 purpose of their mission— that had their information been less 
 satisfactory they would have returned without advising me 
 of it. He said that they had been instructed by Lincoln to 
 come to Pennsylvania and make personal examination into 
 the condition of affairs, especially as to the efficiency of the 
 party organization of the state, and that his reason for doing 
 so was that he had been admonished that the direction of the 
 
 [58] 
 
^F ^'^ f^^ 
 
 ^ / 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1860 
 [Photo by Brady, Washington] 
 
campaign by the state committee was incompetent and likely 
 to result in disaster. They added that, inasmuch as their an- 
 swer to Lincoln must be that the organization was the best 
 that they had ever known in any state, they felt entirely at 
 liberty to disclose to me why they had come and what the 
 result of their inquiry was. 
 
 After their return to Illinois letters from Lincoln were not 
 less frequent, and they were entirely confident in tone and 
 exhibited the utmost faith in the direction of the great 
 Pennsylvania battle. I twice sent him during the campaign 
 —once about the middle of August, and again in the latter 
 part of September— a carefully-prepared estimate of the vote 
 for governor by counties that had been made up by a me- 
 thodical and reasonably accurate canvass of each election 
 district of the state. The first gave Governor Curtin a majority 
 of 12,000, leaving out of the estimate a considerable doubt- 
 ful vote. The last estimate gave Curtin a majority of 17,000, 
 also omitting the doubtful contingent. The result not only 
 justified the estimates which had been sent to him in the 
 aggregate majority, but it justified the detailed estimates of 
 the vote of nearly or quite every county in the state. 
 
 Curtin's majority was nearly double the last estimate given 
 him because of the drift of the doubtful vote to our side, and, 
 being successful in what was regarded as the decisive battle of 
 the campaign, Lincoln accorded me more credit than I 
 merited. From that time until the day of his death I was one 
 of those he called into counsel in every important political 
 emergency. Much as I grieved over the loss of the many, to me, 
 precious things which I had gathered about my home in 
 Chambersburg, and serious as was the destruction of all my 
 property when the vandals of McCausland burned the town 
 in 1864, I have always felt that the greatest loss I sustained 
 was in the destruction of my entire correspondence with 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 About the 1st of January, 1861, I received a telegram from 
 Lincoln requesting me to come to Springfield. It is proper 
 
 [60} 
 
to say that this invitation was in answer to a telegram from 
 me advising him against the appointment of General Cam- 
 eron as Secretary of War. The factional feuds and bitter 
 antagonisms of that day have long since perished, and I do 
 not propose in any way to revive them. On the 31st of De- 
 cember, Lincoln had delivered to Cameron at Springfield a 
 letter notifying him that he would be nominated for a Cabi- 
 net position. This fact became known immediately upon 
 Cameron's return, and inspired very vigorous opposition to 
 his appointment, in which Governor Curtin, Thaddeus 
 Stevens, David Wilmot, and many others participated. Al- 
 though the Senate, of which I was a member, was just about 
 to organize, I hastened to Springfield and reached there at 
 seven o'clock in the evening. I had telegraphed Lincoln of 
 the hour that I should arrive and that I must return at eleven 
 the same night. I went directly from the depot to Lincoln's 
 house and rang the bell, which was answered by Lincoln him- 
 self opening the door. I doubt whether I wholly concealed 
 my disappointment at meeting him. Tall, gaunt, ungainly, ill 
 clad, with a homeliness of manner that was unique in itself, 
 I confess that my heart sank within me as I remembered that 
 this was the man chosen by a great nation to become its ruler 
 in the gravest period of its history. I remember his dress as if 
 it were but yesterday— snuff-colored and slouchy pantaloons; 
 open black vest, held by a few brass buttons; straight or even- 
 ing dress-coat, with tightly-fitting sleeves to exaggerate his 
 long, bony arms, and all supplemented by an awkwardness 
 that was uncommon among men of intelligence. Such was 
 the picture I met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. We 
 sat down in his plainly furnished parlor, and were uninter- 
 rupted during the nearly four hours that I remained with 
 him, and little by little, as his earnestness, sincerity, and 
 candor were developed in conversation, I forgot all the gro- 
 tesque qualities which so confounded me when I first greeted 
 him. Before half an hour had passed I learned not only to 
 respect, but, indeed, to reverence the man. 
 
 [61] 
 
It is needless to give any account of the special mission on 
 which I was called to Springfield, beyond the fact that the 
 tender of a Cabinet position to Pennsylvania was recalled by 
 him on the following day, although renewed and accepted 
 two months later, when the Cabinet was finally formed in 
 Washington. It was after the Pennsylvania Cabinet imbroglio 
 was disposed of that Lincoln exhibited his true self without 
 reserve. For more than two hours he discussed the gravity of 
 the situation and the appalling danger of civil war. Al- 
 though he had never been in public office outside the Illinois 
 Legislature, beyond a single session of Congress, and had little 
 intercourse with men of national prominence during the 
 twelve years after his return from Washington, he exhibited 
 remarkable knowledge of all the leading public men of the 
 country, and none could mistake the patriotic purpose that 
 inspired him in approaching the mighty responsibility that 
 had been cast upon him by the people. He discussed the 
 slavery question in all its aspects and all the various causes 
 which were used as pretexts for rebellion, and he not only 
 was master of the whole question, but thoroughly under- 
 stood his duty and was prepared to perform it. During this 
 conversation I had little to say beyond answering an occa- 
 sional question or suggestion from him, and I finally left him 
 fully satisfied that he understood the political conditions in 
 Pennsylvania nearly as well as I did myself, and entirely 
 assured that of all the public men named for the Presidency 
 at Chicago he was the most competent and the safest to take 
 the helm of the ship of state and guide it through the impend- 
 ing storm. I saw many dark days akin to despair during the 
 four years which recorded the crimsoned annals from Sumter 
 to Appomattox, but I never had reason to change or seriously 
 question that judgment. 
 
 I next met Abraham Lincoln at Harrisburg on the 22d of 
 February, 1861, when he passed through the most trying or- 
 deal of his life. He had been in Philadelphia the night be- 
 
 [62] 
 
fore, where he was advised by letters from General Winfield 
 Scott and his prospective Premier, Senator Seward, that he 
 could not pass through Baltimore on the 23d without grave 
 peril to his life. His route, as published to the world for some 
 days, was from Philadelphia to Harrisburg on the morning 
 of the 22d; to remain in Harrisburg over night as the guest 
 of Governor Curtin; and to leave for Washington the next 
 morning by the Northern Central Railway, that would take 
 him through Baltimore about midday. A number of de- 
 tectives under the direction of President Felton of the Phila- 
 delphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad, and Allan 
 Pinkerton, chief of the well-known detective agency, were 
 convinced from the information they obtained that Lincoln 
 would be assassinated if he attempted to pass through Balti- 
 more according to the published programme. A conference at 
 the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia on the night of the 
 2 1st, at which Lincoln was advised of the admonitions of Scott 
 and Seward, had not resulted in any final determination as 
 to his route to Washington. He was from the first extremely 
 reluctant about any change, but it was finally decided that 
 he should proceed to Harrisburg on the morning of the 22d 
 and be guided by events. 
 
 The two speeches made by Lincoln on the 22d of February 
 do not exhibit a single trace of mental disturbance from the 
 appalling news he had received. He hoisted the stars and 
 stripes to the pinnacle of Independence Hall early in the 
 morning and delivered a brief address that was eminently 
 characteristic of the man. He arrived at Harrisburg about 
 noon, was received in the House of Representatives by the 
 Governor and both branches of the Legislature, and there 
 spoke with the same calm deliberation and incisiveness which 
 marked all his speeches during the journey from Springfield 
 to Washington. After the reception at the House another con- 
 ference was held on the subject of his route to Washington, 
 and, while every person present, with the exception of Lin- 
 
 [63} 
 
coin, was positive in the demand that the programme should 
 be changed, he still obstinately hesitated. He did not believe 
 that the danger of assassination was serious. 
 
 The afternoon conference practically decided nothing, but 
 it was assumed by those active in directing Lincoln's journey 
 that there must be a change. Lincoln dined at the Jones House 
 about five o'clock with Governor Curtin as host of the oc- 
 casion. I recall as guests the names of Colonel Thomas A. 
 Scott, Colonel Sumner, Colonel Ward H. Lamon, Dr. Wal- 
 lace, David Davis, Secretary Slifer, Attorney-General Purvi- 
 ance, Adjutant-General Russell, and myself. There were 
 others at the table, but I do not recall them with certainty. 
 Of that dinner circle, as I remember them, only three are now 
 living— Governor Curtin, Colonel Lamon, and the writer. 
 Judd was not a guest, as he was giving personal attention to 
 Mrs. Lincoln, who was much disturbed by the suggestion to 
 separate the President from her, and she narrowly escaped 
 attracting attention to the movements which required the 
 utmost secrecy. 
 
 It was while at dinner that it was finally determined that 
 Lincoln should return to Philadelphia and go thence to 
 Washington that night, as had been arranged in Philadelphia 
 the night previous in the event of a decision to change the 
 programme previously announced. No one who heard the 
 discussion of the question could efface it from his memory. 
 The admonitions received from General Scott and Senator 
 Seward were made known to Governor Curtin at the table, 
 and the question of a change of route was discussed for some 
 time by every one with the single exception of Lincoln. He 
 was the one silent man of the party, and when he was finally 
 compelled to speak he unhesitatingly expressed his disap- 
 proval of the movement. With impressive earnestness he thus 
 answered the appeal of his friends: "What would the nation 
 think of its President stealing into the capital like a thief in 
 the night?" It was only when the other guests were unani- 
 mous in the expression that it was not a question for Lincoln 
 
 [64] 
 
to determine, but one for his friends to determine for him, 
 that he finally agreed to submit to whatever was decided by 
 those around him. 
 
 It was most fortunate that Colonel Scott was one of the 
 guests at that dinner. He was wise and keen in perception and 
 bold and swift in execution. The time was short, and if a 
 change was to be made in Lincoln's route it was necessary for 
 him to reach Philadelphia by eleven o'clock that night or 
 very soon thereafter. Scott at once became master of cere- 
 monies, and everything that was done was in obedience to his 
 directions. There was a crowd of thousands around the hotel, 
 anxious to see the new President and ready to cheer him to 
 the uttermost. It was believed to be best that only one man 
 should accompany Lincoln in his journey to Philadelphia and 
 Washington, and Lincoln decided that Lamon should be his 
 companion. Colonel Sumner, who felt that he had been 
 charged with the safety of the President-elect, and whose 
 silvered crown seemed to entitle him to precedence, earnestly 
 protested against Lincoln leaving his immediate care, but it 
 was deemed unsafe to have more than one accompany him, 
 and the veteran soldier was compelled to surrender his charge. 
 That preliminary question settled, Scott directed that Curtin, 
 Lincoln, and Lamon should at once proceed to the front 
 steps of the hotel, where there was a vast throng waiting to 
 receive them, and that Curtin should call distinctly, so that 
 the crowd could hear, for a carriage, and direct the coachman 
 to drive the party to the Executive Mansion. That was the 
 natural thing for Curtin to do— to take the President to the 
 governor's mansion as his guest, and it excited no suspicion 
 whatever. 
 
 Before leaving the dining-room Governor Curtin halted 
 Lincoln and Lamon at the door and inquired of Lamon 
 whether he was well armed. Lamon had been chosen by 
 Lincoln as his companion because of his exceptional physical 
 power and prowess, but Curtin wanted assurance that he was 
 properly equipped for defense. Lamon at once uncovered a 
 
 [65] 
 
small arsenal of deadly weapons, showing that he was literally 
 armed to the teeth. In addition to a pair of heavy revolvers, 
 he had a slung-shot and brass knuckles and a huge knife 
 nestled under his vest. The three entered the carriage, and, 
 as instructed by Scott, drove toward the Executive Mansion, 
 but when near there the driver was ordered to take a circui- 
 tous route and to reach the railroad depot within half an 
 hour. When Curtin and his party had gotten fairly away from 
 the hotel I accompanied Scott to the railway depot, where he 
 at once cleared one of his lines from Harrisburg to Philadel- 
 phia, so that there could be no obstruction upon it, as had 
 been agreed upon at Philadelphia the evening before in 
 case the change should be made. In the mean time he had 
 ordered a locomotive and a single car to be brought to the 
 eastern entrance of the depot, and at the appointed time the 
 carriage arrived. Lincoln and Lamon emerged from the 
 carriage and entered the car unnoticed by any except those 
 interested in the matter, and after a quiet but fervent "Good- 
 bye and God protect you!" the engineer quietly moved his 
 train away on its momentous mission. 
 
 As soon as the train left I accompanied Scott in the work of 
 severing all the telegraph lines which entered Harrisburg. 
 He was not content with directing that it should be done, but 
 he personally saw that every wire was cut. This was about 
 seven o'clock in the evening. It had been arranged that the 
 eleven o'clock train from Philadelphia to Washington should 
 be held until Lincoln arrived, on the pretext of delivering an 
 important package to the conductor. The train on which he 
 was to leave Philadelphia was due in Washington at six in 
 the morning, and Scott kept faithful vigil during the entire 
 night, not only to see that there should be no restoration of 
 the wires, but waiting with anxious solicitude for the time 
 when he might hope to hear the good news that Lincoln had 
 arrived in safety. To guard against every possible chance of 
 imposition a special cipher was agreed upon that could not 
 possibly be understood by any but the parties to it. It was a 
 
 [66} 
 
long, weary night of fretful anxiety to the dozen or more in 
 Harrisburg who had knowledge of the sudden departure of 
 Lincoln. No one attempted to sleep. All felt that the fate of 
 the nation hung on the safe progress of Lincoln to Washing- 
 ton without detection on his journey. Scott, who was of heroic 
 mould, several times tried to temper the severe strain of his 
 anxiety by looking up railway matters, but he would soon 
 abandon the listless effort, and thrice we strolled from the 
 depot to the Jones House and back again, in aimless struggle 
 to hasten the slowly-passing hours, only to find equally anx- 
 ious watchers there and a wife whose sobbing heart could not 
 be consoled. At last the eastern horizon was purpled with the 
 promise of day. Scott reunited the broken lines for the light- 
 ning messenger, and he was soon gladdened by an unsigned 
 dispatch from Washington, saying, "Plums delivered nuts 
 safely." He whirled his hat high in the little telegraph office 
 as he shouted, "Lincoln's in Washington," and we rushed to 
 the Jones House and hurried a messenger to the Executive 
 Mansion to spread the glad tidings that Lincoln had safely 
 made his midnight journey to the capital. 
 
 I have several times heard Lincoln refer to this journey, 
 and always with regret. Indeed, he seemed to regard it as one 
 of the grave mistakes in his public career. He was fully con- 
 vinced, as Colonel Lamon has stated it, that "he had fled from 
 a danger purely imaginary, and he felt the shame and mortifi- 
 cation natural to a brave man under such circumstances." 
 Mrs. Lincoln and her suite passed through Baltimore on the 
 23d without any sign of turbulence. The fact that there was 
 not even a curious crowd brought together when she passed 
 through the city— which then required considerable time, as 
 the cars were taken across Baltimore by horses— confirmed 
 Lincoln in his belief. It is needless now to discuss the question 
 of real or imaginary danger in Lincoln passing through Bal- 
 timore at noonday according to the original programme. It is 
 enough to know that there were reasonable grounds for ap- 
 prehension that an attempt might be made upon his life, 
 
 [67] 
 
even if there was not the organized band of assassins that the 
 detectives believed to exist. His presence in the city would 
 have called out an immense concourse of people, including 
 thousands of thoroughly disloyal roughs, who could easily 
 have been inspired to any measure of violence. He simply 
 acted the part of a prudent man in his reluctant obedience 
 to the unanimous decision of his friends in Harrisburg when 
 he was suddenly sent back to Philadelphia to take the mid- 
 night train for Washington, and there was no good reason 
 why he should have regretted it; but his naturally sensitive 
 disposition made him always feel humiliated when it recurred 
 to him. 
 
 The sensational stories published at the time of his dis- 
 guise for the journey were wholly untrue. He was reported as 
 having been dressed in a Scotch cap and cloak and as enter- 
 ing the car at the Broad and Prime station by some private 
 alley-way, but there was no truth whatever in any of these 
 statements. I saw him leave the dining-room at Harrisburg to 
 enter the carriage with Curtin and Lamon. I saw him enter 
 the car at the Harrisburg depot, and the only change in his 
 dress was the substitution of a soft slouch hat for the high one 
 he had worn during the day. He wore the same overcoat that 
 he had worn when he arrived at Harrisburg, and the only 
 extra apparel he had about him was the shawl that hung 
 over his arm. When he reached West Philadelphia he was 
 met by Superintendent Kenney, who had a carriage in wait- 
 ing with a single detective in it. Lincoln and Lamon entered 
 the carriage and Kenney mounted the box with the driver. 
 They were in advance of the time for the starting of the Bal- 
 timore train, and they were driven around on Broad street, 
 as the driver was informed, in search of some one wanted by 
 Kenney and the detective, until it was time to reach the 
 station. When there they entered by the public doorway on 
 Broad street, and passed directly along with other passengers 
 to the car, where their berths had been engaged. The journey 
 to Washington was entirely uneventful, and at six in the 
 
 [68} 
 
morning the train entered the Washington station on sched- 
 ule time. Seward had been advised, by the return of his son 
 from Philadelphia, of the probable execution of this pro- 
 gramme, and he and Washbume were in the station and met 
 the President and his party, and all drove together to Wil- 
 lard's Hotel. 
 
 [69] 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 
 LINCOLN'S SORE TRIALS 
 
 Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington on the 23d of 
 February, 1861, to accept the most appalling responsibilities 
 ever cast upon any civil ruler of modern times. If he could 
 have commanded the hearty confidence and co-operation of 
 the leaders of his own party, his task would have been greatly 
 lessened, but it is due to the truth of history to say that few, 
 very few, of the Republican leaders of national fame had 
 faith in Lincoln's ability for the trust assigned to him. I could 
 name a dozen men, now idols of the nation, whose open dis- 
 trust of Lincoln not only seriously embarrassed, but griev- 
 ously pained and humiliated, him. They felt that the wrong 
 man had been elected to the Presidency, and only their mod- 
 esty prevented them, in each case, from naming the man who 
 should have been chosen in his stead. Looking now over the 
 names most illustrious in the Republican councils, I can 
 hardly recall one who encouraged Lincoln by the confidence 
 he so much needed. Even Seward, who had been notified as 
 early as the 8th of December that he would be called as Pre- 
 mier of the new administration, and who soon thereafter had 
 signified his acceptance of the office and continued in the most 
 confidential relations with Lincoln, suddenly, on the 2d of 
 March, formally notified Lincoln of his reconsideration of his 
 acceptance. The only reason given was that circumstances had 
 occurred since his acceptance which seemed to render it his 
 duty "to ask leave to withdraw that consent." The circum- 
 stances referred to were the hopeless discord and bitter jeal- 
 
 [70] 
 
ousies among party-leaders both in and out of the Cabinet. 
 
 Lincoln found a party without a policy; the strangest con- 
 fusion and bitterest antagonisms pervading those who should 
 have been in accord, not only in purpose, but in earnest sym- 
 pathy, with him in the discharge of his great duties, and he 
 was practically like a ship tempest-tossed without compass or 
 rudder. Even the men called to his Cabinet did not give Lin- 
 coln their confidence and co-operation. No two of them 
 seemed to have the same views as to the policy the adminis- 
 tration should adopt. Seward ridiculed the idea of serious 
 civil war, and then and thereafter renewed his bond for peace 
 in sixty days, only to be protested from month to month and 
 from year to year. Chase believed in peaceable disunion as 
 altogether preferable to fraternal conflict, and urged his views 
 with earnestness upon the President. Cameron, always emi- 
 nently practical, was not misled by any sentimental ideas and 
 regarded war as inevitable. Welles was an amiable gentleman 
 without any aggressive qualities whatever, and Smith and 
 Bates were old and conservative, while Blair was a politician 
 with few of the qualities of a statesman. 
 
 A reasonably correct idea of the estimate placed upon 
 Lincoln's abilities for his position may be obtained by turning 
 to the eulogy on Seward delivered by Charles Francis Adams 
 in 1873. Adams was a Republican member of Congress when 
 Lincoln was chosen President, and he was Lincoln's Minister 
 to England during the entire period of the war. In eulogizing 
 Seward as the master-spirit of the administration and as the 
 power behind the throne stronger than the throne itself, he 
 said: "I must affirm, without hesitation, that in the history 
 of our government down to this hour no experiment so rash 
 has ever been made as that of electing to the head of affairs a 
 man with so little previous preparation for his task as Mr. 
 Lincoln." Indeed, Lincoln himself seems to have been pro- 
 foundly impressed with his want of fitness for the position 
 when he was first named as a candidate from his state. In 
 1859, after he had attained national reputation by his joint 
 
 [71] 
 
discussion with Douglas in the contest for Senator, Pick- 
 ett, the editor of an Illinois Republican journal, wrote to 
 him, urging that he should permit the use of his name for 
 President. To this he answered: "I must in candor say I do 
 not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered 
 and gratified that some partial friends think of me in that 
 connection, but I really think it best for our cause that no 
 concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made." Sew- 
 ard evidently agreed with his eulogist, Charles Francis 
 Adams. That is clearly shown by the fact that in less than one 
 month after the administration had been inaugurated he 
 wrote out and submitted to the President a proposition to 
 change the national issue from slavery to foreign war, in 
 which he advised that war be at once declared against Spain 
 and France unless satisfactory explanations were promptly 
 received, and that the enforcement of the new policy should 
 be individually assumed by the President himself or devolved 
 on some member of his Cabinet. He added that while it was 
 not in his special province, ''I neither seek to evade nor as- 
 sume the responsibility." In other words, Seward boldly pro- 
 posed to change the national issue by a declaration of war 
 against some foreign power, and to have himself assigned 
 practically as dictator. He assumed that the President was 
 incompetent to his task, that his policy, if accepted, would be 
 committed to himself for execution, and that he meant to be 
 dictator is clearly proved by the fact that in his formal propo- 
 sition he provides that the policy "once adopted, the debates 
 on it must end and all agree and abide." 
 
 Outside of the Cabinet the leaders were equally discordant 
 and quite as distrustful of the ability of Lincoln to fill his 
 great office. Sumner, Trumbull, Chandler, Wade, Henry 
 Winter Davis, and the men to whom the nation then turned 
 as the great representative men of the new political power, 
 did not conceal their distrust of Lincoln, and he had little 
 support from them at any time during his administration. 
 Indeed, but for the support given him by the younger leaders 
 
 [72] 
 
of that day, among whom Blaine and Sherman were con- 
 spicuous, he would have been a President almost without a 
 party. The one man who rendered him the greatest service of 
 all at the beginning of the war was Stephen A. Douglas, his 
 old competitor of Illinois. When the Republican leaders were 
 hesitating and criticising their President, Douglas came to 
 the front with all his characteristic courage and sagacity, and 
 was probably the most trusted of all the Senators at the White 
 House. It is not surprising that there was great confusion in 
 the councils of the Republican leaders when suddenly com- 
 pelled to face civil war, but it will surprise many intelligent 
 readers at this day to learn of the general distrust and de- 
 moralization that existed among the men who should have 
 been a solid phalanx of leadership in the crisis that confronted 
 them. It must be remembered that there were no precedents 
 in history to guide the new President. The relation of the 
 states to the national government had never been defined. 
 The dispute over the sovereignty of the states had been con- 
 tinuous from the organization of the Republic until that 
 time, and men of equal intelligence and patriotism widely 
 differed as to the paramount authority of state and nation. 
 Nor were there any precedents in history of other civilizations 
 that could throw any light upon the dark path of Lincoln. 
 There have been republics and civil wars, but none that fur- 
 nish any rule that could be applied to the peculiar condition 
 of our dissevered states. The President was therefore com- 
 pelled to decide for himself in the multitude of conflicting 
 counsels what policy the administration should adopt, and 
 even a less careful and conservative man than Lincoln would 
 have been compelled, from the supreme necessities which 
 surrounded him, to move with the utmost caution. 
 
 Lincoln could formulate no policy beyond mere generali- 
 ties declaring his duty to preserve the integrity of the Union. 
 He saw forts captured and arsenals gutted and States seceding 
 with every preparation for war, and yet he could take no step 
 to prepare the nation for the defense of its own life. The 
 
 [73] 
 
border states were trembling in the balance, with a predomi- 
 nant Union sentiment in most o£ them, but ready to be driven 
 into open rebellion the moment that he should declare in 
 favor of what was called "coercion" by force of arms. Co- 
 ercion and invasion of the sacred soil of the southern states 
 were terms which made even the stoutest southern Union 
 man tremble. As the administration had no policy that it 
 could declare, every leader had a policy of his own, with every 
 invitation to seek to magnify himself by declaring it. The 
 capital was crowded with politicians of every grade. The 
 place-seekers swarmed in numbers almost equal to the locusts 
 of Egypt, and the President was pestered day and night by 
 the leading statesmen of the country, who clamored for offices 
 for their henchmen. I well remember the sad picture of 
 despair his face presented when I happened to meet him alone 
 for a few moments in the executive chamber as he spoke of 
 the heartless spoilsmen who seemed to be utterly indifferent 
 to the grave dangers which threatened the government. He 
 said: "I seem like one sitting in a palace assigning apartments 
 to importunate applicants while the structure is on fire and 
 likely soon to perish in ashes." 
 
 Turn where Lincoln might, there was hardly a silver lining 
 to the dark cloud that overshadowed him. The Senate that 
 met in Executive session when he was inaugurated contained 
 but 29 Republicans to 32 Democrats, with one bitterly hostile 
 American, and four vacancies from southern states that never 
 were filled. It was only by the midsummer madness of seces- 
 sion and the retirement of the southern senators that he was 
 given the majority in both branches of Congress, and when 
 he turned to the military arm of the government he was ap- 
 palled by the treachery of the men to whom the nation should 
 have been able to look for its preservation. If any one would 
 study the most painful and impressive object-lesson on this 
 point, let him turn to Greeley's American Conflict and learn 
 from two pictures how the stars of chieftains glittered and 
 faded until unknown men filled their places and led the 
 
 [74] 
 
Union armies to victory. In the first volume of Greeley's his- 
 tory, which was written just at the beginning of the war and 
 closed with the commencement of hostilities, there is a page 
 containing the portraits of twelve men, entitled "Union Gen- 
 erals." The central figure is the veteran Scott, and around him 
 are Fremont, Butler, McDowell, Wool, Halleck, McClellan, 
 Burnside, Hunter, Hooker, Buell, and Anderson. These were 
 the chieftains in whom the country then confided, and to 
 whom Lincoln turned as the men who could be entrusted 
 with the command of armies. In the second volume of 
 Greeley's history, published after the close of the war, there 
 is another picture entitled "Union Generals," and there is 
 not one face to be found in the last that is in the first. Grant 
 is the central figure of the Heroes of the Union at the close 
 of the war, with the faces of Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, 
 Meade, Hancock, Blair, Howard, Terry, Curtis, Banks, and 
 Gilmore around him. In short, the military chieftains who 
 saved the Union in the flame of battle had to be created by 
 the exigencies of war, while the men upon whom the Presi- 
 dent was compelled to lean when the conflict began one by 
 one faded from the list of successful generals. 
 
 The ability of the government to protect its own life when 
 wanton war was inaugurated by the southern Confederacy 
 may be well illustrated by an interview between the Presi- 
 dent, General Winfield Scott, Governor Curtin, and myself 
 immediately after the surrender of Sumter. The President 
 telegraphed to Governor Curtin and to me as Chairman of 
 the Military Committee of the Pennsylvania Senate to come 
 to Washington as speedily as possible for consultation as to 
 the attitude Pennsylvania should assume in the civil conflict 
 that had been inaugurated. Pennsylvania was the most ex- 
 posed of all the border states, and, being the second state of 
 the Union in population, wealth, and military power, it was 
 of the utmost importance that she should lead in defining 
 the attitude of the loyal states. Sumter was surrendered on 
 Sunday, April 14, 1861, and on Monday morning Governor 
 
 [75] 
 
Curtin and I were at the White House to meet the President 
 and the Commander-in-Chief of the armies at ten o'clock in 
 the morning. I had never before met General Scott. I had 
 read of him with all the enthusiasm of a boy, as he was a 
 major-general before I was born, had noted with pride his 
 brilliant campaign in Mexico, and remembered that he was 
 accepted by all Americans as the Great Captain of the Age. 
 I assumed, of course, that he was infallible in all matters per- 
 taining to war, and when I met him it was with a degree of 
 reverence that I had seldom felt for any other mortal. 
 
 Curtin and I were a few minutes in advance of the ap- 
 pointed time for the conference, and as the Cabinet was in 
 session we were seated in the reception-room. There were but 
 few there when we entered it, and a number of chairs were 
 vacant. We sat down by a window looking out upon the Po- 
 tomac, and in a few minutes the tall form of General Scott 
 entered. In the mean time a number of visitors had arrived 
 and every chair in the room was occupied. Scott advanced and 
 was cordially greeted by Governor Curtin and introduced to 
 me. He was then quite feeble, unable to mount a horse by 
 reason of a distressing spinal affection; and I well remember 
 the punctilious ideas of the old soldier, who refused to accept 
 either Curtin's chair or mine because there were not three 
 vacant chairs in the room, although he could not remain 
 standing without suffering agony. We presented the ludicrous 
 spectacle of three men standing for nearly half an hour, and 
 one of them feeble in strength and greatly the senior of the 
 others in years, simply because there were not enough chairs 
 for the entire party. With all his suffering he was too digni- 
 fied even to lean against the wall, although it was evident to 
 both of us that he was in great pain from his ceremonial ideas 
 about accepting the chair of another. When we were ushered 
 into the President's room the practical work of our mission 
 was soon determined. The question had been fully considered 
 by the President and the Secretary of War, who was a Penn- 
 sylvanian. Governor Curtin speedily perfected and heartily 
 
 [76] 
 
approved of the programme they had marked out, and we had 
 little to do beyond informing them how speedily it could be 
 executed. How quickly Pennsylvania responded to the re- 
 quest of the government will be understood when I state that 
 in a single day a bill embracing all the features desired was 
 passed by both branches and approved by Governor Curtin. 
 It was only after the work of Pennsylvania had been defined 
 and disposed of that I began to get some insight into the ut- 
 terly hopeless condition of the government. I found General 
 Scott disposed to talk rather freely about the situation, and 
 I ventured to question him as to the condition of the capital 
 and his ability to defend it in case of an attack by General 
 Beauregard. The answer to the first question I ventured was 
 very assuring, coming from one whom I supposed to know all 
 about war, and to one who knew just nothing at all about it. 
 I asked General Scott whether the capital was in danger. His 
 answer was, "No, sir, the capital is not in danger, the capital 
 is not in danger." Knowing that General Scott could not have 
 a large force at his command, knowing also that General 
 Beauregard had a formidable force at his command at 
 Charleston, and that the transportation of an army from 
 Charleston to Washington would be the work of only a few 
 days, I for the first time began to inquire in my own mind 
 whether this great chieftain was, after all, equal to the excep- 
 tional necessities of the occasion. I said to him that, if it was 
 a proper question for him to answer, I would like to know 
 how many men he had in Washington for its defense. His 
 prompt answer was, "Fifteen hundred, sir; fifteen hundred 
 men and two batteries." I then inquired whether Washington 
 was a defensible city. This inquiry cast a shadow over the old 
 veteran's face as he answered, "No, sir; Washington is not a 
 defensible city." He then seemed to consider it necessary to 
 emphasize his assertions of the safety of the capital, and he 
 pointed to the Potomac, that was visible from the President's 
 window. Said he: "You see that vessel?— a sloop of war, sir, 
 a sloop of war." I looked out and saw the vessel, but I could 
 
 [77] 
 
not help thinking, as I looked beyond to Arlington Heights, 
 that one or two batteries, even of the ineffective class of those 
 days, would knock the sloop of war to pieces in half an hour. 
 As Johnson, Cooper, and a number of other able soldiers 
 had left the army but a short time before, I felt some anxiety 
 to know who were commanding the forces under General 
 Scott in Washington. He gave me their names, and within 
 three days thereafter I saw that two of them had resigned and 
 were already in Richmond and enlisted in the Confederate 
 service. My doubts multiplied, and a great idol was shattered 
 before I left the White House that morning. I could not re- 
 sist the conviction that General Scott was past all usefulness; 
 that he had no adequate conception of the contest before us; 
 and that he rested in confidence in Washington when there 
 was not a soldier of average intelligence in that city who did 
 not know that Beauregard could capture it at any time within 
 a week. My anxiety deepened with my doubts, and I con- 
 tinued my inquiries with the old warrior by asking how many 
 men General Beauregard had at Charleston. The old chief- 
 tain's head dropped almost upon his breast at this question, 
 and a trace of despair was visible as he answered in tremulous 
 tones: ''General Beauregard commands more men at Charles- 
 ton than I command on the continent east of the frontier." 
 I asked him how long it would require Beauregard to trans- 
 port his army to Washington. He answered that it might be 
 done in three or four days. I then repeated the question, 
 "General, is not Washington in great danger?" The old war- 
 rior was at once aroused, straightened himself up in his chair 
 with a degree of dignity that was crushing, and answered— 
 "No, sir, the capital can't be taken; the capital can't be taken, 
 sir." President Lincoln listened to the conversation with evi- 
 dent interest, but said nothing. He sat intently gazing at Gen- 
 eral Scott, and whirling his spectacles around in his fingers. 
 When General Scott gave the final answer that the capital 
 could not be taken, Lincoln, in his quaint way, said to Gen- 
 eral Scott, "It does seem to me, general, that if I were Beau- 
 
 £78] 
 
regard I would take Washington." This expression from the 
 President electrified the old war-lion again, and he answered 
 with increased emphasis, "Mr. President, the capital can't be 
 taken, sir; it can't be taken." 
 
 There was but one conclusion that could be accepted as the 
 result of this interview, and that was that the great chieftain 
 of two wars and the worshiped Captain of the Age was in his 
 dotage and utterly unequal to the great duty of meeting the 
 impending conflict. Governor Curtin and I left profoundly 
 impressed with the conviction that the incompetency of Gen- 
 eral Scott was one of the most serious of the multiplied perils 
 which then confronted the Republic. I need not repeat how 
 General Scott failed in his early military movements; how he 
 divided his army and permitted the enemy to unite and de- 
 feat him at Bull Run; how General McClellan, the young 
 Napoleon of the time, was called from his victories in western 
 Virginia to take command of the army; how that change 
 reinspired the loyal people of the nation in the confidence of 
 speedy victories and the overthrow of the rebellion; how he 
 and his chief soon got to cross purposes; and how, after 
 months of quarrel, the old chieftain was prevailed upon to 
 resign his place. The inside history of his retirement has 
 never been written, and it is best that it should not. President 
 Lincoln, Secretary Cameron, and Thomas A. Scott were the 
 only men who could have written it from personal knowledge. 
 They are dead, and an interesting chapter of history has per- 
 ished with them. 
 
 Such was the condition of the government at the opening 
 of our civil war. A great soldier was at the head of our army, 
 with all his faculties weakened by the infirmities of age, and 
 we were compelled to grope in the dark day after day, week 
 after week, month after month, and even year after year, until 
 chieftains could be created to lead our armies to final vic- 
 tories. It must be remembered also that public sentiment had 
 at that time no conception of the cruel sacrifices of war. The 
 fall of a single soldier. Colonel Ellsworth, at Alexandria cast 
 
 [79} 
 
a profound gloom over the entire country, and the loss of 
 comparatively few men at Big Bethel and Ball's Bluff con- 
 vulsed the people from Maine to California. No one dreamed 
 of the sacrifice of life that a desperate war must involve. I 
 remember meeting General Burnside, General Heintzelman, 
 and one or two other officers of the Army of the Potomac at 
 Willard's Hotel in December, 1861. The weather had been 
 unusually favorable, the roads were in excellent condition, 
 and there was general impatience at McClellan's tardiness in 
 moving against Manassas and Richmond. I naturally shared 
 the impatience that was next to universal, and I inquired of 
 General Burnside why it was that the army did not move. He 
 answered that it would not be a difficult task for McClellan's 
 army to capture Manassas, march upon Richmond, and enter 
 the Confederate capital; but he added with emphasis that he 
 regarded as conclusive that *'It would cost ten thousand men 
 to do it." I was appalled to silence when compelled to con- 
 sider so great a sacrifice for the possession of the insurgents' 
 capital. Ten times ten thousand men, and even more, fell in 
 the battles between the Potomac and Richmond before the 
 stars and bars fell from the Richmond State House, but in 
 the fall of 1861 the proposition to sacrifice ten thousand lives 
 to possess the Confederate capital would have been regarded 
 by all as too appalling to contemplate. Indeed, we were not 
 only utterly unprepared for war, but we were utterly unpre- 
 pared for its sacrifices and its bereavements; and President 
 Lincoln was compelled to meet this great crisis and patiently 
 await the fullness of time to obtain chieftains and armies and 
 to school the people to the crimsoned story necessary to tell 
 of the safety of the Republic. 
 
 [80] 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 
 LINCOLN'S CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was eminently human. As the old lady 
 said about General Jackson when she had finally reached his 
 presence, "He's only a man, after all." Although much as 
 other men in the varied qualities which go to make up a sin- 
 gle character, taking him all in all, "none but himself can be 
 his parallel." Of all the public men I have met, he was the 
 most difficult to analyze. His characteristics were more origi- 
 nal, more diversified, more intense in a sober way, and yet 
 more flexible under many circumstances, than I have ever 
 seen in any other. Many have attempted to portray Lincoln's 
 characteristics, and not a few have assumed to do it with 
 great confidence. Those who have spoken most confidently of 
 their knowledge of his personal qualities are, as a rule, those 
 who saw least of them below the surface. He might have been 
 seen every day during his Presidential term without ever 
 reaching the distinctive qualities which animated and guided 
 him, and thus hundreds of writers have assumed that they 
 understood him when they had never seen the inner inspira- 
 tions of the man at all. He was a stranger to deceit, incapable 
 of dissembling; seemed to be the frankest and freest of con- 
 versationalists, and yet few understood him even reasonably 
 well, and none but Lincoln ever thoroughly understood Lin- 
 coln. If I had seen less of him I might have ventured with 
 much greater confidence to attempt a portrayal of his indi- 
 viduality, but I saw him many times when Presidential honors 
 
 [81] 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HIS SON TAD 
 
 [Photo by Gutekunst, Philadelphia] 
 
were forgotten in Presidential sorrows, and when his great 
 heart throbbed upon his sleeve. It was then that his uncom- 
 mon qualities made themselves lustrous and often startled 
 and confused his closest friends. 
 
 I regard Lincoln as very widely misunderstood in one of 
 the most important attributes of his character. It has been 
 common, during the last twenty-five years,* to see publica- 
 tions relating to Lincoln from men who assumed that they 
 enjoyed his full confidence. In most and perhaps all cases the 
 writers believed what they stated, but those who assumed to 
 speak most confidently on the subject were most mistaken. 
 Lincoln gave his confidence to no living man without reserva- 
 tion. He trusted many, but he trusted only within the care- 
 fully-studied limitations of their usefulness, and when he 
 trusted he confided, as a rule, only to the extent necessary to 
 make that trust available. He had as much faith in mankind 
 as is common amongst men, and it was not because he was of 
 a distrustful nature or because of any specially selfish attri- 
 bute of his character that he thus limited his confidence in all 
 his intercourse with men. In this view of Lincoln I am fully 
 sustained by those who knew him best. The one man who saw 
 more of him in all the varied vicissitudes of his life from early 
 manhood to his elevation to the Presidency was William H. 
 Hemdon, who was his close friend and law-partner for a full 
 score of years. In analyzing the character of Lincoln he thus 
 refers to his care as to confidants: "Mr. Lincoln never had a 
 confidant, and therefore never unbosomed himself to others. 
 He never spoke of his trials to me, or, so far as I knew, to any 
 of his friends." David Davis, in whose sober judgment Lin- 
 coln had more confidence than in that of his other friends, 
 and who held as intimate relations to him as was possible by 
 any, says: "I knew the man so well; he was the most reticent, 
 secretive man I ever saw or expect to see." 
 
 Leonard Swett is well known to have been the one whose 
 
 * The reader will remember this account was written in 1892. 
 
 [83] 
 
counsels were among the most welcome to Lincoln, and who 
 doubtless did counsel him with more freedom than any other 
 man. In a letter given in Herndon's Life of Lincoln he says: 
 "From the commencement of his life to its close I have some- 
 times doubted whether he ever asked anybody's advice about 
 anything. He would listen to everybody; he would hear 
 everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions." He 
 adds in the same letter: ''As a politician and as President he 
 arrived at all his conclusions from his own reflections, and 
 when his conclusions were once formed he never doubted but 
 what they were right." Speaking of his generally assumed 
 frankness of character, Swett says, "One great public mistake 
 of his [Lincoln's] character as generally received and ac- 
 quiesced in is that he is considered by the people of this coun- 
 try as a frank, guileless, and unsophisticated man. There 
 never was a greater mistake. Beneath a smooth surface of can- 
 dor and apparent declaration of all his thoughts and feelings 
 " he exercised the most exalted tact and wisest discrimination. 
 He handled and moved men remotely as we do pieces upon a 
 chessboard. He retained through life all the friends he ever 
 had, and he made the wrath of his enemies to praise him. 
 This was not by cunning or intrigue in the low acceptation of 
 the term, but by far-seeing reason and discernment. He always 
 told only enough of his plans and purposes to induce the be- 
 lief that he had communicated all; yet he reserved enough to 
 have communicated nothing." 
 
 Herndon, in a lecture delivered on Lincoln to a Springfield 
 audience in 1866, said: "He [Lincoln] never revealed himself 
 entirely to any one man, and therefore he will always to a 
 certain extent remain enveloped in doubt. I always believed 
 I could read him as thoroughly as any man, yet he was so dif- 
 ferent in many respects from any other one I ever met before 
 or since his time that I cannot say I comprehended him." 
 Ward Lamon, who completes the circle of the men who were 
 closest to Lincoln, the man who was chosen by Lincoln to ac- 
 company him on his midnight journey from Harrisburg to 
 
 [84] 
 
Washington, and whom he appointed Marshal of the District 
 of Columbia to have him in the closest touch with himself, 
 thus describes Lincoln in his biography: "Mr. Lincoln was a 
 man apart from the rest of his kind— unsocial, cold, impassive; 
 neither a good hater nor fond friend." And he adds that Lin- 
 coln "made simplicity and candor a mask of deep feelings 
 carefully concealed, and subtle plans studiously veiled from 
 all eyes but one." 
 
 I have seen Lincoln many times when he seemed to speak 
 with the utmost candor, I have seen him many times when he 
 spoke with mingled candor and caution, and I have seen him 
 many times when he spoke but little and with extreme cau- 
 tion. It must not be inferred, because of the testimony borne 
 to Lincoln's reticence generally and to his singular methods 
 in speaking on subjects of a confidential nature, that he was 
 ever guilty of deceit. He was certainly one of the most sincere 
 men I have ever met, and he was also one of the most saga- 
 cious men that this or any other country has ever produced. 
 He was not a man of cunning, in the ordinary acceptation of 
 the word; not a man who would mislead in any way, unless by 
 silence; and when occasion demanded he would speak with 
 entire freedom as far as it was possible for him to speak at all. 
 I regard him as one who believed that the truth was not al- 
 ways to be spoken, but who firmly believed, also, that only 
 the truth should be spoken when it was necessary to speak at 
 all. 
 
 Lincoln's want of trust in those closest to him was often a 
 great source of regret, and at times of mortification. I have 
 many times heard Swett and Lamon, and occasionally Davis, 
 speak of his persistent reticence on questions of the gravest 
 public moment which seemed to demand prompt action by 
 the President. They would confer with him, as I did myself 
 at times, earnestly advising and urging action on his part, 
 only to find him utterly impassible and incomprehensible. 
 Neither by word nor expression could any one form the remo- 
 test idea of his purpose, and when he did act in many cases he 
 
 [85] 
 
surprised both friends and foes. When he nominated Edwin 
 Stanton as Secretary of War there was not a single member of 
 his Cabinet who had knowledge of his purpose to do so until 
 it was done, and when he appointed Salmon Chase Chief-Jus- 
 tice there was not a man living, of the hundreds who had ad- 
 vised him and pressed their friends upon him, who had any 
 intimation as to even the leaning of his mind on the subject. 
 I remember on one occasion, when we were alone in the Ex- 
 ecutive Chamber, he discussed the question of the Chief- 
 Justiceship for fully half an hour; named the men who had 
 been prominently mentioned in connection with the appoint- 
 ment; spoke of all of them with apparent freedom; sought 
 and obtained my own views as to the wisdom of appointing 
 either of them,— and when the conversation ended I had no 
 more idea as to the bent of his mind than if I had been con- 
 versing with the sphinx. I suggested to him, in closing the 
 conversation, that his views on the subject were very much 
 more important than mine, and that I would be very glad to 
 have them, to which he gave this characteristic answer: ''Well, 
 McClure, the fact is I'm 'shut pan' on that question." 
 
 Lincoln's intellectual organization has been portrayed by 
 many writers, but so widely at variance as to greatly confuse 
 the general reader. Indeed, he was the most difficult of all men 
 to analyze. He did not rise above the average man by escaping 
 a common mingling of greatness and infirmities. I believe he 
 was very well described in a single sentence by Herndon when 
 he said: "The truth about Mr. Lincoln is, that he read less 
 and thought more than any man in his sphere in America."* 
 Tested by the standard of many other great men, Lincoln was 
 not great, but tested by the only true standard of his own 
 achievements, he may justly appear in history as one of the 
 greatest of American statesmen. Indeed, in some most essen- 
 tial attributes of greatness I doubt whether any of our public 
 men ever equaled him. We have had men who could take a 
 
 * The contention that Lincoln read less would be contested on solid grounds 
 by many Lincoln scholars.— Ed. 
 
 [86] 
 
higher intellectual grasp ot any abstruse problem of states- 
 manship, but few have ever equaled, and none excelled, Lin- 
 coln in the practical, common-sense, and successful solution 
 of the gravest problems ever presented in American history. 
 He possessed a peculiarly receptive and analytical mind. He 
 sought information from every attainable source. He sought 
 it persistently, weighed it earnestly, and in the end reached 
 his own conclusions. When he had once reached a conclusion 
 as to a public duty, there was no human power equal to the 
 task of changing his purpose. He was self-reliant to an un- 
 common degree, and yet as entirely free from arrogance of 
 opinion as any public man I have ever known. 
 
 Judged by the records of his administration, Lincoln is now 
 regarded as the most successful Executive the Republic has 
 ever had. When it is considered what peculiarly embarrassing 
 and momentous issues were presented to him for decision, 
 and issues for which history had no precedents, it is entirely 
 safe to say that no man has ever equaled him as a successful 
 ruler of a free people. This success was due chiefly to one 
 single quality of the man— the will of the people was his 
 guiding star. He sprang from the people and from close to 
 mother earth. He grew up with the people, and in all his 
 efforts, convictions, and inspirations he was ever in touch 
 with the people. When President he looked solely to the con- 
 siderate judgment of the American people to guide him in 
 the solution of all the vexed questions which were presented 
 to him. In all the struggles of mean ambition and all the bit- 
 ter jealousies of greatness which constantly surged around 
 him, and in all the constant and distressing discord that pre- 
 vailed in his Cabinet during the dark days which shadowed 
 him with grief, Lincoln ever turned to study with ceaseless 
 care the intelligent expression of the popular will. 
 
 Unlike all Presidents who had preceded him, he came into 
 office without a fixed and accepted policy. Civil War plunged 
 the government into new and most perplexing duties. The 
 people were unschooled to the sad necessities which had to be 
 
 [87] 
 
accepted to save the Republic. Others would have rushed in 
 to offend public sentiment by the violent acceptance of what 
 they knew must be accepted in the end. These men greatly 
 vexed and embarrassed Lincoln in his sincere efforts to ad- 
 vance the people and the government to the full measure of 
 the sacrifices which were inevitable; but Lincoln waited pa- 
 tiently—waited until in the fullness of time the judgment of 
 the people was ripened for action, and then, and then only, 
 did Lincoln act. Had he done otherwise, he would have in- 
 volved the country in fearful peril both at home and abroad, 
 and it was his constant study of, and obedience to, the honest 
 judgment of the people of the nation that saved the Repub- 
 lic and that enshrined him in history as the greatest of mod- 
 ern rulers. 
 
 If there are yet any intelligent Americans who believe that 
 Lincoln was an innocent, rural, unsophisticated character, it 
 is time that they should be undeceived. I venture the asser- 
 tion, without fear of successful contradiction, that Abraham 
 Lincoln was the most sagacious of all the public men of his 
 day in either political party. He was therefore the master- 
 politician of his time. He was not a politician as the term is 
 now commonly applied and understood; he knew nothing 
 about the countless methods which are employed in the de- 
 tails of political effort; but no man knew better— indeed, I 
 think no man knew so well as he did— how to summon and 
 dispose of political ability to attain great political results; 
 and this work he performed with unfailing wisdom and dis- 
 cretion in every contest for himself and for the country. 
 
 A pointed illustration of his sagacity and of his cautious 
 methods in preventing threatened evil or gaining promised 
 good is presented by his action in 1862 when the first army 
 draft was made in Pennsylvania. There was then no national 
 conscription law, and volunteering had ceased to fill up our 
 shattered armies. A draft under the state law was necessary to 
 fill a requisition made upon Pennsylvania for troops. The 
 need for immediate reinforcements was very pressing, and in 
 
 [88] 
 
obedience to the personal request of both Lincoln and Gov- 
 ernor Curtin I accepted the ungracious task of organizing and 
 executing the draft under the state laws. How promptly the 
 task was executed may be understood when I say that within 
 sixty days the entire state was enrolled, quotas adjusted, the 
 necessary exemptions made, the draft executed, and seven- 
 teen organized regiments sent to the front, and without a 
 dollar of cost to either the state or national governments for 
 duties performed in my office beyond the salaries of two 
 clerks. While there were mutterings of disloyalty in a very 
 few sections of Pennsylvania, and they only within a very 
 limited circle, there was one sore spot where open rebellion 
 was threatened. That was Cass township, Schuylkill county. 
 The Mollie Maguires were then just approaching the zenith 
 of their criminal power, and Cass township was the centre of 
 that lawless element. Thirteen murders had been committed 
 in that district within a few years, and not one murderer had 
 been brought to punishment. This banded criminal organi- 
 zation was as disloyal to the government as it was to law, and 
 it was with the utmost difficulty that even an imperfect enu- 
 meration had been made and the quota adjusted to be sup- 
 plied by draft. The draft was made, however, and on the day 
 fixed for the conscripts to take the cars and report at Harris- 
 burg the criminal element of the district not only refused to 
 respond to the call, but its leaders came to the station and 
 drove other conscripts violently from the depot. 
 
 It was open, defiant rebellion. I at once reported the facts 
 to Secretary Stanton, who promptly answered, directing that 
 the draft should be enforced at every hazard, and placing one 
 Philadelphia regiment and one regiment at Harrisburg sub- 
 ject to the orders of the governor, with instructions to send 
 them at once to the scene of revolt. Fearing that the Secretary 
 did not fully comprehend the peril of a conflict between the 
 military and the citizens, Governor Curtin directed me to 
 telegraph more fully to Secretary Stanton, suggesting his fur- 
 ther consideration of the subject. His answer was promptly 
 
 [89] 
 
given, repeating his order for the military to move at once to 
 Cass township and enforce the law at the point of the bayonet. 
 The regiments were given marching orders, and reached 
 Pottsville on the following day. I felt that a conflict between 
 the military and citizens in any part of the state must be very 
 disastrous to the loyal cause, and after full consultation with 
 Governor Curtin, in obedience to his directions, I telegraphed 
 to Lincoln in cipher asking him to consider the subject well. 
 This was in the early part of the day, and I was surprised and 
 distressed when evening came without any reply. When I 
 entered the breakfast-room of the hotel the next morning I 
 saw seated at the table Assistant Adjutant-General Townsend 
 of the United States Army. I knew him well, and when he saw 
 me he beckoned me to his side and asked me to breakfast with 
 him. We were out of hearing of any others at the table, and he 
 at once stated to me the purpose of his visit. He had arrived 
 at three o'clock in the morning, and was waiting to see me as 
 soon as I should appear. He said: "I have no orders to give 
 you, but I came solely to deliver a personal message from 
 President Lincoln in these words: 'Say to McClure that I am 
 very desirous to have the laws fully executed, but it might be 
 well, in an extreme emergency, to be content with the appear- 
 ance of executing the laws; I think McClure will under- 
 stand.' " To this General Townsend added: "I have now ful- 
 filled my mission; I do not know to what it relates." 
 
 I of course made no explanation to General Townsend, but 
 hurried from the breakfast-table to summon Benjamin Ban- 
 nan from Pottsville to Harrisburg as speedily as possible. He 
 was the commissioner of draft for that county, a warm friend 
 of the President, and a man of unusual intelligence and dis- 
 cretion. He reached Harrisburg the same day, and Lincoln's 
 instructions were frankly explained to him. No one had any 
 knowledge of them but ourselves and the Governor. Com- 
 missioner Bannan appreciated the necessity of avoiding a 
 collision between the military and the citizens of Cass town- 
 ship, but, said he, "How can it be done? How can the laws 
 
 [90] 
 
even appear to have been executed?" I told him that in a 
 number of cases evidence had been presented, after the quo- 
 tas had been adjusted and the draft ordered, to prove that the 
 quotas had been filled by volunteers who had enlisted in some 
 town or city outside of their townships. In all such cases, 
 where the evidence was clear, the order for the draft was re- 
 voked because the complement of men had been filled. I said 
 only by such evidence from Cass township could the order for 
 the draft be revoked and the arrest of the conscripted men for 
 service be avoided. He intuitively comprehended the gravity 
 of the situation, and took the first train home. By the next 
 evening he was back and laid before me a number of affida- 
 vits in regular form, apparently executed by citizens of Cass 
 township, which, if uncontradicted, proved that their quota 
 was entirely full. I asked no explanations, but at once in- 
 dorsed upon the testimony that as the quota of Cass township 
 had been filled by volunteers, the draft was inoperative in 
 that district and its conscripts would not be held to service. 
 I have never made inquiry into the method of obtaining 
 those affidavits, and there is none now living who could give 
 any information about it, as Bannan is dead. The Gov- 
 ernor had, in the mean time, halted the troops at Pottsville, 
 and as the laws seemed to be executed in peace, the regiments 
 were ordered back by the Governor and the conflict between 
 the military and the Mollie Maguires was averted. Stanton 
 never had knowledge of Lincoln's action in this matter, nor 
 did a single member of his administration know of his inter- 
 vention. Had Stanton been permitted to have his sway, he 
 would have ruled in the tempest, and Pennsylvania would 
 have inaugurated a rebellion of her own that might have 
 reached fearful proportions, and that certainly would have 
 greatly paralyzed the power of the loyal people of the state. I 
 am quite sure that not until after the war was ended, and 
 probably not for years thereafter, did any but Lincoln, Cur- 
 tin, Bannan, and myself have any knowledge of this important 
 adjustment of the Cass township rebellion. 
 
 [91] 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 LINCOLN IN POLITICS 
 
 If Abraham Lincoln was not a master politician, I am en- 
 tirely ignorant of the qualities which make up such a char- 
 acter. In a somewhat intimate acquaintance with the public 
 men of the country for a period of more than a generation, I 
 have never met one who made so few mistakes in politics as 
 Lincoln. The man who could call Seward as Premier of his 
 administration, with Weed the power behind the Premier, 
 often stronger than the Premier himself, and yet hold Horace 
 Greeley even within the ragged edges of the party lines, and 
 the man who could call Simon Cameron to his Cabinet in 
 Pennsylvania without alienating Governor Curtin, and who 
 could remove Cameron from his Cabinet without alienating 
 Cameron, would naturally be accepted as a man of much 
 more than ordinary political sagacity. Indeed, I have never 
 known one who approached Lincoln in the peculiar faculty 
 of holding antagonistic elements to his own support, and 
 maintaining close and often apparently confidential rela- 
 tions with each without offense to the other. This is the more 
 remarkable from the fact that Lincoln was entirely without 
 training in political management. I remember on one occa- 
 sion, when there was much concern felt about a political 
 contest in Pennsylvania, he summoned half a dozen or more 
 Pennsylvania Republicans to a conference at the White 
 House. When we had gathered there he opened the subject in 
 his quaint way by saying: "You know I never was a contriver; 
 I don't know much about how things are done in politics, 
 
 [92] 
 
but I think you gentlemen understand the situation in your 
 State, and I want to learn what may be done to ensure the 
 success we all desire." He made exhaustive inquiry of each of 
 the persons present as to the danger-signals of the contest, 
 specially directing his questions to every weak point in the 
 party lines and every strong point of the opposition. He was 
 not content with generalities; he had no respect for mere en- 
 thusiasm. What he wanted was sober facts. He had abiding 
 faith in the people, in their intelligence and their patriotism; 
 and he estimated political results by ascertaining, as far as 
 possible, the popular bearing of every vital question that was 
 likely to arise, and he formed his conclusions by his keen in- 
 tuitive perception as to how the people would be likely to 
 deal with the issues. 
 
 While Lincoln had little appreciation of himself as candi- 
 date for President as late as 1859, the dream of reaching the 
 Presidency evidently took possession of him in the early part 
 of 1860, and his first efforts to advance himself as a candidate 
 were singularly awkward and infelicitous. He had then no 
 experience whatever as a leader of leaders, and it was not 
 until he had made several discreditable blunders that he 
 learned how much he must depend upon others if he would 
 make himself President. Some Lincoln enthusiast in Kansas, 
 with much more pretensions than power, wrote him in 
 March, 1860, proposing to furnish a Lincoln delegation from 
 that state to the Chicago convention, and suggesting that 
 Lincoln should pay the legitimate expenses of organizing, 
 electing, and taking to the convention the promised Lincoln 
 delegates. To this Lincoln replied that "in the main, the use 
 of money is wrong, but for certain objects in a political con- 
 test the use of some is both right and indispensable." And he 
 added, "If you shall be appointed a delegate to Chicago I 
 will furnish $100 to bear the expenses of the trip." He heard 
 nothing further from the Kansas man until he saw an 
 announcement in the newspapers that Kansas had elected 
 delegates and instructed them for Seward. This was Lincoln's 
 
 [93] 
 
first disappointment in his effort to organize his friends to 
 attain the Presidential nomination, but his philosophy was 
 well maintained. Without waiting to hear from his friend 
 who had contracted to bring a Lincoln delegation from Kan- 
 sas he wrote him, saying, *'I see by the dispatches that since 
 you wrote Kansas has appointed delegates instructed for 
 Seward. Don't stir them up to anger, but come along to the 
 convention, and I will do as I said about expenses." It is not 
 likely that that unfortunate experience cost Lincoln his $100, 
 but is worthy of note that soon after his inauguration as Pres- 
 ident he gave the man a Federal office with a comfortable 
 salary. 
 
 When he became seriously enlisted as a candidate for the 
 Presidential nomination, he soon learned that while he could 
 be of value as an adviser and organizer, the great work had to 
 be performed by others than himself. He gathered around 
 him a number of the ablest politicians of the West, among 
 whom were Norman P. Judd, David Davis, Leonard Swett, 
 O. M. Hatch, and Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune. 
 These men had, for the first time, brought a National Conven- 
 tion to the West, and they had the advantage of fighting for 
 Lincoln on their own ground with the enthusiasm his name 
 inspired as a potent factor in their work. They went there to 
 win, and they left nothing undone within the range of polit- 
 ical effort to give him the nomination. Two positions in the 
 Cabinet, one for Pennsylvania and one for Indiana, were 
 positively promised by David Davis at an early period of the 
 contest, when they feared that there might be serious diffi- 
 culty in uniting the delegations of those states on Lincoln. 
 It is proper to say that Lincoln had no knowledge of these 
 contracts, and had given no such authority, and it is proper, 
 also, to say that the contracts were made in both cases with 
 comparatively irresponsible parties who had little power, if 
 any, in guiding the actions of their respective delegations. 
 Certainly Lane and Curtin, who were the most important 
 factors in bringing their states to the support of Lincoln, not 
 
 [94] 
 
only were not parties to these contracts, but were entirely 
 ignorant of them until their fulfillment was demanded after 
 Lincoln's election. I have good reason to know that in the 
 case of Pennsylvania that contract, while it did not of itself 
 make General Cameron Secretary of War, had much to do 
 with resolving Lincoln's doubts in favor of Cameron's ap- 
 pointment in the end. 
 
 There were no political movements of national importance 
 during Lincoln's administration in which he did not actively, 
 although often hiddenly, participate. It was Lincoln who in 
 1863 took a leading part in attaining the declination of Cur- 
 tin as a gubernatorial candidate that year. Grave apprehen- 
 sions were felt that Curtin could not be re-elected because of 
 the bitterness of the hostility of Cameron and his friends, and 
 also because there were 70,000 Pennsylvania soldiers in the 
 field who could not vote. Lincoln was Curtin's sincere friend, 
 but when Curtin's supporters suggested that his broken 
 health called for his retirement, Lincoln promptly agreed to 
 tender Curtin a first-class foreign mission if he decided to 
 decline a renomination. Curtin accepted the proffered mis- 
 sion, to be assumed at the close of his term, and he published 
 his acceptance and his purpose to withdraw from the field for 
 Governor. 
 
 Curtin's declination was responded to within a week by a 
 number of the leading counties of the state peremptorily 
 instructing their delegates to vote for his renomination for 
 Governor. It soon became evident that the party would ac- 
 cept no other leader in the desperate conflict, and that no 
 other candidate could hope to be elected. Curtin was com- 
 pelled to submit, and he was nominated on the first ballot by 
 more than a two-thirds vote, although bitterly opposed by a 
 number of prominent Federal officers in the state. Lincoln 
 was disappointed in the result— not because he was adverse to 
 Curtin, but because he feared that party divisions would lose 
 the state. Both Lincoln and Stanton made exhaustive efforts 
 to support Curtin after he had been nominated, and all the 
 
 [95] 
 
power of the government that could be wielded with effect 
 was employed to promote his election. The battle was a des- 
 perate one against the late Chief-Justice Woodward, who was 
 a giant in intellectual strength, and who commanded the un- 
 bounded confidence and enthusiastic support of his party, but 
 Curtin was elected by over 15,000 majority. 
 
 One of the shrewdest of Lincoln's great political schemes 
 was the tender, by an autograph letter, of the French mission 
 to the elder James Gordon Bennett. No one who can form 
 any intelligent judgment of the political exigencies of that 
 time can fail to understand why the venerable independent 
 journalist received this mark of favor from the President. 
 Lincoln had but one of the leading journals of New York on 
 which he could rely for positive support. That was Raymond's 
 New York Times. Greeley's Tribune was the most widely 
 read Republican journal of the country, and it was unques- 
 tionably the most potent in moulding Republican sentiment. 
 Its immense weekly edition, for that day, reached the more 
 intelligent masses of the people in every state of the Union, 
 and Greeley was not in accord with Lincoln. Lincoln knew 
 how important it was to have the support of the Herald, and 
 he carefully studied how to bring its editor into close touch 
 with himself. The outlook for Lincoln's re-election was not 
 promising. Bennett had strongly advocated the nomination 
 of General McClellan by the Democrats, and that was omi- 
 nous of hostility to Lincoln; and when McClellan was nom- 
 inated (in 1864) he was accepted on all sides as a most for- 
 midable candidate. It was in this emergency that Lincoln's 
 political sagacity served him sufficiently to win the Herald to 
 his cause, and it was done by the confidential tender of the 
 French mission. Bennett did not break over to Lincoln at 
 once, but he went by gradual approaches. His first step was 
 to declare in favor of an entirely new candidate, which was 
 an utter impossibility. He opened a leader on the subject 
 thus: "Lincoln has proved a failure; McClellan has proved a 
 failure; Fremont has proved a failure; let us have a new can- 
 
 [96] 
 
didate." Lincoln, McClellan, and Fremont were then all in 
 the field as nominated candidates, and the Fremont defection 
 was a serious threat to Lincoln. Of course, neither Lincoln 
 nor McClellan declined, and the Herald, failing to get the 
 new man it knew to be an impossibility, squarely advocated 
 Lincoln's re-election. 
 
 Without consulting any one, and without any public an- 
 nouncement whatever, Lincoln wrote to Bennett, asking him 
 to accept the mission to France. The offer was declined. Ben- 
 nett valued the offer very much more than the office, and from 
 that day until the day of his death he was one of Lincoln's 
 most appreciative friends and hearty supporters on his own 
 independent line. The tender of the French mission to Ben- 
 nett has been disputed, but I am not mistaken about it. 
 W. O. Bartlett, a prominent member of the New York bar, 
 and father of the present Judge Bartlett of the Supreme 
 Court of that State, had personal knowledge of Lincoln's auto- 
 graph letter that was delivered to Bennett, and Judge Bart- 
 lett yet has the original letter, unless he has parted with it 
 within the last few years. Bennett was not only one of the 
 ablest and one of the most sagacious editors of his day, but he 
 was also one of the most independent, and in controversy one 
 of the most defiant. He was in a position to render greater 
 service to Lincoln and to the country in its desperate civil 
 war than any other one man in American journalism. He did 
 not pretend to be a Republican; on the contrary, he was 
 Democratic in all his personal sympathies and convictions, 
 but he gave a faithful support to the war, although often 
 freely criticising the policy of the administration. He had no 
 desire for public office, but he did desire, after he had ac- 
 quired wealth and newspaper power, just the recognition 
 that Lincoln gave him, and I doubt whether any one thing 
 during Bennett's life ever gave him more sincere gratification 
 than this voluntary offer of one of the first-class missions of 
 the country, made in Mr. Lincoln's own handwriting, and his 
 opportunity to decline the same. Looking as Lincoln did to 
 
 [97] 
 
the great battle for his re-election, this was one of the count- 
 less sagacious acts by which he strengthened himself from day 
 to day, and it did much, very much, to pave the way for his 
 overwhelming majority of 1864. 
 
 That Lincoln understood practical politics after he had 
 been nominated for a second term is very clearly illustrated in 
 the letter he wrote to General Sherman on the 19th of Sep- 
 tember, 1864. The states of Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania 
 then voted in October for state offices, and Indiana was des- 
 perately contested. Ohio was regarded as certain, and Penn- 
 sylvania had only Congressmen and local officers to elect. The 
 soldiers of Indiana could not vote in the field, and Lincoln's 
 letter to Sherman, who commanded the major portion of the 
 Indiana troops, appeals to him, in Lincoln's usual cautious 
 manner, to furlough as many of his soldiers home for the 
 October election as he could safely spare. His exact language 
 is: "Anything you can safely do to let your soldiers, or any 
 part of them, go home to vote at the state election will be 
 greatly in point." To this he adds: "This is in no sense an 
 order; it is simply intended to impress you with the impor- 
 tance to the army itself of your doing all you safely can, 
 yourself being the judge of what you can safely do." While 
 this was "in no sense an order," it was practically a command 
 that Sherman promptly and generously obeyed, and the result 
 was that Morton was elected Governor by some 22,000 ma- 
 jority. It was at Lincoln's special request that General Logan 
 left his command and missed the march to the sea, to stump 
 Indiana and Illinois in the contest of 1864. He was one of 
 the ablest and most impressive of all the campaigners of the 
 West, and it was regarded by Lincoln as more important that 
 Logan should be on the hustings than in command of his 
 corps. 
 
 I recall a pointed illustration of Lincoln's rare sagacity 
 when confronted with embarrassing political complications 
 that occurred in 1862, when I was in charge of the military 
 department of Pennsylvania pertaining to the draft for troops 
 
 [98] 
 
made under the state law. Harrisburg was an important 
 centre of military supplies, as well as the political centre of 
 the state. Immense army contracts were there awarded and 
 executed under officers assigned to duty at that place. After 
 the draft had been made the conscripts began to pour into the 
 capital by thousands, and, as the demand for reinforcements 
 in the field was very pressing, I called upon the military officer 
 of the city and urged upon him the necessity of mustering the 
 new men as promptly as possible. To my surprise, he mus- 
 tered only two companies the first day out of a thousand men. 
 On the second day, notwithstanding my earnest appeal to 
 him, he mustered no more than two companies, and on the 
 third day, when I had over 5000 men in camp, a mere mob 
 without organization or discipline, the same tedious process 
 of mustering was continued. I telegraphed Secretary Stanton 
 that I had many men in camp, and that they were arriving in 
 large numbers, but that I could not have them mustered— 
 that I could forward a regiment of troops every day if the 
 government would furnish the officers to muster and organize 
 them. A prompt answer came that it would be done. The 
 following morning a new officer appeared, of course subordi- 
 nate to the commandant of the place who had charge of the 
 mustering, and he promptly mustered an entire regiment the 
 first day. On the following morning he was relieved from duty 
 and ordered elsewhere, and the mustering again fell back to 
 two companies a day. 
 
 In the mean time over 7000 men had been gathered into 
 the camp, and it was evident that the question of supplying 
 the camp and the interests of contractors had become para- 
 mount to the reinforcement of the army. I telegraphed Lin- 
 coln that I would see him in Washington that night, and 
 hurried on to correct the evil by personal conference with 
 him. The case was a very simple one, and he readily took in 
 the situation. He knew that I had labored day and night for 
 two months, without compensation or the expectation of it, 
 to hasten the Pennsylvania troops to the aid of our soldiers in 
 
 [99] 
 
the field, and I said to him that if he would send mustering 
 officers to organize them promptly, I would return and finish 
 the work; if not, I would abandon it and go home. Lincoln 
 was greatly pained at the development, but he understood 
 that a change of military officers at Harrisburg, such as this oc- 
 casion seemed to demand, would involve serious political com- 
 plications. He was of all things most desirous to strengthen 
 our shattered armies, and it was evident very soon that he 
 meant to do so in some way, but without offense to the politi- 
 cal power that controlled the military assignments at Harris- 
 burg. Without intimating his solution of the problem, he 
 rang his bell and instructed his messenger to bring Adjutant- 
 General Thomas to the executive chamber. Soon after the 
 Adjutant-General appeared, and Lincoln said: "General, 
 what is the military rank of the senior officer at Harrisburg?" 
 To which the Adjutant-General replied: "Captain, sir," and 
 naming the officer. Lincoln promptly said in reply: "Bring 
 me a commission immediately for Alexander K. McClure as 
 Assistant Adjutant-General of the United States Volunteers, 
 with the rank of major." The Adjutant-General bowed him- 
 self out, when I immediately said to Lincoln that I could not 
 consent to be subject to arbitrary military orders— that I de- 
 sired no compensation for the work I performed, and I must 
 decline the honor he proposed to confer upon me. In his quiet 
 way he replied: "Well, McClure, try my way; I think that will 
 get the troops on without delay and without treading on any- 
 body's toes. I think if you will take your commission back to 
 Harrisburg, call upon the captain in command there to mus- 
 ter you into the service of the United States, and show him 
 your assignment to duty there, you will have no trouble what- 
 ever in getting the troops organized and forwarded as rapidly 
 as you wish. Now try it, won't you?" 
 
 I saw the wisdom of the suggestion, and well understood 
 why the President desired to avoid the offense that would 
 have been given by the removal of the military officers, and I 
 agreed to try his plan. When I returned to Harrisburg the 
 
 [100] 
 
next day I sent for the senior officer to come to my office. He 
 came in with all the dignity and arrogance of an offended 
 Caesar and spoke to me with bare civility. I quietly handed 
 him my commission, requested him to muster me into the 
 military service, and also exhibited the order assigning me for 
 duty at Harrisburg. When he saw my commission his hat was 
 immediately removed and he was as obsequious as he had 
 been insolent before. When he had finished mustering me 
 into the service I said to him, "I presume you understand 
 what this means. I don't propose to make any display of mili- 
 tary authority or to interfere with anything except that which 
 I have immediately in hand. There must be a regiment of 
 troops mustered and forwarded from this state every day until 
 the troops in camp are all sent to the field. Good-morning." 
 He immediately bowed himself out, saluting in military style 
 as he did so— a grace that I had not yet mastered sufficiently 
 to return— and from that day until the camp was emptied of 
 conscripts a regiment of troops was mustered daily and for- 
 warded to Washington. That was the only military authority 
 I ever exercised, and few knew of the military dignity I had 
 so suddenly attained. When the troops were forwarded to the 
 field and the accounts settled I resigned my commission as 
 quietly as I received it and sent my resignation to the Presi- 
 dent, who, as he had voluntarily promised, ordered its imme- 
 diate acceptance. The officer who was thus so unexpectedly 
 superseded, and who was so promptly made to render effi- 
 cient service to the coimtry by Lincoln's admirable strategy, 
 is no longer living, and I omit his name. He learned how 
 Lincoln could discipline a soldier, and he profited by the 
 lesson. 
 
 [101] 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 LINCOLN AND EMANCIPATION 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was not a sentimental Abolitionist. In- 
 deed, he was not a sentimentalist on any subject. He was a 
 man of earnest conviction and of sublime devotion to his 
 faith. In many of his public letters and state papers he was as 
 poetic as he was epigrammatic, and he was singularly felici- 
 tous in the pathos that was so often interwoven with his irre- 
 sistible logic. But he never contemplated the abolition of 
 slavery until the events of the war not only made it clearly 
 possible, but made it an imperious necessity. As the sworn 
 Executive of the nation it was his duty to obey the Constitu- 
 tion in all its provisions, and he accepted that duty without 
 reservation. He knew that slavery was the immediate cause of 
 the political disturbance that culminated in civil war, and I 
 know that he believed from the beginning that if war should 
 be persisted in, it could end only in the severance of the 
 Union or the destruction of slavery. His supreme desire was 
 peace, alike before the war, during the war, and in closing 
 the war. He exhausted every means within his power to teach 
 the Southern people that slavery could not be disturbed by 
 his administration as long as they themselves obeyed the Con- 
 stitution and laws which protected slavery, and he never ut- 
 tered a word or did an act to justify, or even excuse, the South 
 in assuming that he meant to make any warfare upon the 
 institution of slavery beyond protecting the free Territories 
 from its desolating tread. 
 
 It was not until the war had been in progress for nearly two 
 
 [102} 
 
years that Lincoln decided to proclaim the policy of Emanci- 
 pation, and then he was careful to assume the power as war- 
 ranted under the Constitution only by the supreme necessities 
 of war. There was no time from the inauguration of Lincoln 
 until the 1st of January, 1863, that the South could not have 
 returned to the Union with slavery intact in every state. His 
 preliminary proclamation, dated September 22, 1862, gave 
 notice that on the 1st of January, 1863, he would by public 
 proclamation, "warranted by the Constitution upon military 
 necessity," declare that "all persons held as slaves within any 
 State, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall 
 then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be thence- 
 forward and for ever free." Every insurgent state had thus 
 more than three months' formal notice that the war was not 
 prosecuted for the abolition of slavery, but solely for the res- 
 toration of the Union, and that they could, by returning and 
 accepting the authority of the National Government at any 
 time before the 1st of January, 1863, preserve slavery indef- 
 initely. Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley, written just one 
 month before his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, 
 presents in the clearest and most concise manner Lincoln's 
 views on the subject of slavery and the Union. After saying 
 that if he could save the Union without freeing any slaves he 
 would do it; that if he could save it by freeing all the slaves 
 he would do it; and that if he could save it by freeing some 
 and leaving others he would also do that, he adds: "What I 
 do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe 
 it helps to save this Union, and what I forbear I forbear be- 
 cause I do not believe it would help to save the Union." 
 
 As President of the Republic, Lincoln was governed at 
 every step by his paramount duty to prevent the dismember- 
 ment of the nation and to restore the Union and its people to 
 fraternal relations. The best expression of his o^vn views and 
 aims in the matter is given in a single brief sentence, uttered 
 by himself on the 13th of September, 1862, only nine days 
 before he issued the preliminary proclamation. It was in re- 
 
 [103] 
 
sponse to an appeal from a large delegation of Chicago clergy- 
 men, representing nearly or quite all the religious denomina- 
 tions of that city, urging immediate Emancipation. He heard 
 them patiently, as he always did those who were entitled to 
 be heard at all, and his answer was given in these words: "I 
 have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the 
 slaves, but hold the subject under advisement, and I can as- 
 sure you the matter is on my mind by day and night more 
 than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will 
 do." However Lincoln's religious views may be disputed, he 
 had a profound belief in God and in God's immutable justice, 
 and the sentence I have just quoted tells the whole story of 
 Lincoln's action in the abolition of slavery. He did not expect 
 miracles— indeed, he was one of the last men to believe in 
 miracles at all— but he did believe that God overruled all 
 human actions; that all individuals charged with grave re- 
 sponsibility were but the means in the hands of the Great 
 Ruler to acomplish the fulfillment of justice. Congressman 
 Isaac N. Arnold, whom Lincoln once declared to me to be the 
 one member of the House in whose personal and political 
 friendship he had absolute faith, speaking of the earnest ap- 
 peals made to Lincoln for Emancipation, says: "Mr. Lincoln 
 listened not unmoved to such appeals, and, seeking prayerful 
 guidance of Almighty God, the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion was prepared. It had been, in fact, prepared in July, 
 1862." 
 
 Thus from July until September, during which time there 
 was the greatest possible pressure on Lincoln for an Emanci- 
 pation policy, his proclamation had been formulated, but his 
 usual caution had prevented him from intimating it to any 
 outside of his Cabinet. It was the gravest step ever taken by 
 any civil ruler in this or any other land, and military success 
 was essential to maintain and execute the policy of Emanci- 
 pation after it had been declared. Had McClellan been suc- 
 cessful in his Peninsula campaign, or had Lee been defeated 
 in the second conflict of Manassas, without bringing peace, 
 
 [104] 
 
the proclamation would doubtless have been issued with the 
 prestige of such victory. Under the shivering hesitation among 
 even Republicans throughout the North, Lincoln felt that it 
 needed the prestige of a military victory to assure its cordial 
 acceptance by very many of the supporters of the government. 
 The battle of Antietam, fought by the only general of that 
 time who had publicly declared against an Emancipation pol- 
 icy, was the first victory the Army of the Potomac had 
 achieved in 1862, and five days after the Antietam victory the 
 preliminary proclamation was issued. 
 
 Only the careful student of the history of the war can have 
 any just conception of the gradual manner in which Lincoln 
 approached Emancipation. He long and earnestly sought to 
 avoid it, believing then that the Union could be best pre- 
 served without the violent destruction of slavery; and when 
 he appreciated the fact that the leaders of the rebellion were 
 unwilling to entertain any proposition for the restoration of 
 the Union, he accepted the destruction of slavery as an im- 
 perious necessity, but he sought to attain it with the least 
 possible disturbance. The first direct assault made upon 
 slavery was by Secretary Cameron's overruled annual report 
 in December, 1861, in which he advised the arming of slaves.* 
 The first Congress that sat during the war made steady strides 
 toward the destruction of slavery by the passage of five im- 
 portant laws. The first abolished slavery in the District of 
 Columbia; the second prohibited slavery in all the Terri- 
 tories of the United States; the third gave freedom to the 
 escaped slaves of all who were in rebellion; the fourth gave 
 lawful authority for the enlistment of colored men as soldiers; 
 and the fifth made a new article of war, prohibiting any one 
 in the military or naval service from aiding in the arrest or 
 return of a fugitive slave under pain of dismissal. Slavery was 
 
 * McClure here omits Fremont's military proclamation during the summer 
 of 1861, which attempted to free slaves in Missouri, but which was annulled 
 by Lincoln. See also page 151, reference to Cameron's instructions to Gen. 
 Butler, and the Fremont episode.— Ed. 
 
 [105] 
 
abolished in the District of Columbia as early as April, 1862, 
 the act having passed the Senate by 29 to 6, and the House 
 by 92 to 38. A bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories was 
 passed on the 19th of June, and a bill giving freedom to slaves 
 of rebellious masters who performed military service was 
 passed on the 17th of July. 
 
 Thus was Congress steadily advancing toward Emancipa- 
 tion, and as early as March, 1862, Lincoln had proposed his 
 plan of compensated Emancipation. On the 6th of March he 
 sent a special message to Congress recommending the adop- 
 tion of the following joint resolution: 
 
 Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any 
 State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to 
 such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, 
 to compensate for the inconvenience, public and private, pro- 
 duced by such change of system. 
 
 His message very earnestly pressed upon Congress the im- 
 portance of adopting such a policy, and upon the country the 
 importance of accepting it. North and South. His concluding 
 sentence is: "In full view of my great responsibility to my 
 God and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Con- 
 gress and the people to the subject." Again, when revoking 
 General Hunter's order of the 9th of May, 1862, declaring 
 all slaves free within his military district, Lincoln made a 
 most impressive appeal to the people of the South on the 
 subject of compensated Emancipation. He said: "I do not 
 argue; I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. 
 You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. 
 . . . The change it contemplates would come gently as the 
 dews of heaven not rending or wrecking anything. Will you 
 not embrace it? So much good has not been done by any one 
 effort in all past time as, in the providence of God, it is now 
 your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to 
 lament that you have neglected it." Soon after this Lincoln 
 had an interview with the Congressional delegations from the 
 
 [106] 
 
border slave states, at which he again earnestly urged them 
 to accept compensated Emancipation. Speaking of that inter- 
 view. Lincoln said: "I believed that the indispensable neces- 
 sity for military Emancipation and arming the blacks would 
 come unless averted by gradual and compensated Emancipa- 
 tion." Again in July, 1862, only two months before he issued 
 the preliminary proclamation, Lincoln summoned the dele- 
 gates from the border slave states to a conference with him, 
 and again most persuasively appealed to them to accept grad- 
 ual and compensated Emancipation. He said to them: "I do 
 not speak of Emancipation at once, but of a decision at once 
 to emancipate gradually." He also clearly foreshadowed to 
 them that if they refused it, more violent Emancipation must 
 come. He said: "The pressure in this direction is still upon 
 me and is increasing. By conceding what I now ask you can 
 relieve me, and much more can relieve the country, on this 
 important point." He concluded with these eloquent words: 
 "Our common country is in great peril, demanding the lofti- 
 est views and boldest action to bring a speedy relief. Once 
 relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its 
 beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and 
 its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably 
 grand. To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given 
 to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link 
 your names therewith for ever." 
 
 Strange as it may now seem, in view of the inevitable tend- 
 ency of events at that time, these appeals of Lincoln were not 
 only treated with contempt by those in rebellion, but the 
 border state congressmen, who had everything at stake, and 
 who in the end were compelled to accept forcible Emancipa- 
 tion without compensation, although themselves not directly 
 involved in rebellion, made no substantial response to Lin- 
 coln's efforts to save their states and people. Thus did the 
 states in rebellion disregard repeated importunities from 
 Lincoln to accept Emancipation with payment for their slaves. 
 During long weary months he had made temperate utterance 
 
 [107] 
 
on every possible occasion, and by every official act that could 
 direct the attention of the country he sought to attain the 
 least violent solution of the slavery problem, only to learn the 
 bitter lesson that slavery would make no terms with the gov- 
 ernment, and that it was the inspiration of rebellious armies 
 seeking the destruction of the Republic. Soon after his appeal 
 to the Congressmen of the border states in July, 1862, Lincoln 
 prepared his Emancipation Proclamation, and quietly and pa- 
 tiently waited the fullness of time for proclaiming it, still hop- 
 ing that peace might come without resort to the extreme meas- 
 ure of military and uncompensated Emancipation, Seeing that 
 the last hope of any other method of peace had failed, he is- 
 sued the preliminary proclamation on the 22d of September, 
 1862, and his final proclamation on the 1st of January follow- 
 ing; and there never was a day from that time until Lincoln's 
 death that he ever entertained, even for a moment, the ques- 
 tion of receding from the freedom he had proclaimed to the 
 slaves. But while he was compelled to accept the issue of revo- 
 lutionary Emancipation, he never abandoned the idea of 
 compensated Emancipation until the final overthrow of Lee's 
 army in 1865. He proposed it to his Cabinet in February of 
 that year, only to be unanimously rejected, and I personally 
 know that he would have suggested it to Stephens, Campbell, 
 and Hunter at the Hampton Roads Conference in February, 
 1865, had not Vice-President Stephens, as the immediate rep- 
 resentative of Jefferson Davis, frankly stated at the outset that 
 he was instructed not to entertain or discuss any proposition 
 that did not recognize the perpetuity of the Confederacy. 
 That statement from Stephens precluded the possibility of 
 Lincoln making any proposition, or even suggestion, what- 
 ever on the subject. In a personal interview with Jefferson 
 Davis when I was a visitor in his house at Bevoir, Mississippi, 
 fifteen years after the close of the war, I asked him whether 
 he had ever received any intimation about Lincoln's desire 
 to close the war by the payment of $400,000,000 for emanci- 
 pated slaves. He said that he had not heard of it. I asked him 
 
 [108] 
 
whether he would have given such instructions to Stephens if 
 he had possessed knowledge of the fact. He answered that he 
 could not have given Stephens any other instructions than he 
 did under the circumstances, because as President of the Con- 
 federacy he could not entertain any question involving its 
 dissolution, that being a subject entirely for the states them- 
 selves. 
 
 Lincoln treated the Emancipation question from the be- 
 ginning as a very grave matter-of-fact problem to be solved 
 for or against the destruction of slavery as the safety of the 
 Union might dictate. He refrained from Emancipation for 
 eighteen months after the war had begun, simply because he 
 believed during that time that he might best save the Union 
 by saving slavery, and had the development of events proved 
 that belief to be correct he would have permitted slavery to 
 live with the Union. When he became fully convinced that 
 the safety of the government demanded the destruction of 
 slavery, he decided, after the most patient and exhaustive 
 consideration of the subject, to proclaim his Emancipation 
 policy. It was not founded solely or even chiefly on the senti- 
 ment of hostility to slavery. If it had been, the proclamation 
 would have declared slavery abolished in every state of the 
 Union; but he excluded the slave states of Delaware, Mary- 
 land, and Tennessee, and certain parishes in Louisiana, and 
 certain counties in Virginia, from the operation of the proc- 
 lamation, declaring, in the instrument that has now become 
 immortal, that "which excepted parts are for the present left 
 precisely as if this proclamation were not issued." Thus if 
 only military Emancipation had been achieved by the Presi- 
 dent's proclamation, it would have presented the singular 
 spectacle of Tennessee in the heart of the South, Maryland 
 and Delaware north of the Potomac, and nearly one-half of 
 Louisiana and one-half of Virginia with slavery protected, 
 while freedom was accorded to the slaves of all the other slave- 
 holding states. Lincoln evidently regarded the Emancipation 
 policy as the most momentous in the history of American 
 
 [109] 
 
statesmanship, and as justified only by the extreme necessity 
 of weakening the rebellion that then threatened the severance 
 of the Union. 
 
 From the very day of his inauguration until he issued his 
 Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln was constantly impor- 
 tuned by the more radical element of his supporters to declare 
 his purpose to abolish slavery. Among them were a number 
 of the ablest leaders of his party in the Senate and House, and 
 some of them as impracticable in their methods as they were 
 imperious in their demands. That he was glad of the oppor- 
 tunity to destroy slavery none can doubt who knew him, but 
 he patiently bore the often irritating complaints of many of 
 his friends until he saw that slavery and the Union could not 
 survive together, and that the country was at least measurably 
 prepared to accept and support the new policy. He was many 
 times threatened with open rebellion against his administra- 
 tion by some of the most potent Republicans because of his 
 delay in declaring the Emancipation policy, but he waited 
 until the time had come in the fall of 1862, when he felt that 
 it was not only a necessity of war, but a political necessity as 
 well. Another very grave consideration that led him to accept 
 Emancipation when he did was the peril of England and 
 France recognizing the Confederacy and thereby involving us 
 in war with two of the greatest powers of Europe. The pretext 
 on which was based the opposition of England to the Union 
 cause in the early part of the war was the maintenance of 
 slavery by the government while prosecuting a war against 
 a slaveholders' rebellion, and it seemed to be an absolute 
 necessity that our government should accept the Emancipa- 
 tion policy to impair the force of the public sentiment in 
 England that demanded the recognition of the South as an 
 independent government. These three weighty considera- 
 tions, each in itself sufficient to have decided Lincoln's ac- 
 tion, combined to dictate his Emancipation policy in the early 
 fall of 1862. The proclamation did not in itself abolish slav- 
 ery, but the positive declaration in the proclamation "that 
 
 [110] 
 
the Executive government of the United States, including the 
 military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and 
 maintain the freedom of said persons," gave notice to every 
 slaveholder and promise to every slave that every bondman 
 brought within the lines of the Union army would there- 
 after be for ever free. 
 
 While the Emancipation Proclamation inflicted a mortal 
 wound upon slavery and assured its absolute extinction, 
 sooner or later, throughout the entire country, Lincoln fully 
 appreciated the fact that much was yet to be done, even be- 
 yond victories in the field, to efface the blot of slavery from 
 the Republic. As early as the 14th of January, 1863, Repre- 
 sentative Wilson of Iowa, then chairman of the Judiciary 
 Committee, and now a United States Senator, reported a pro- 
 posed amendment to the Constitution declaring slavery "for 
 ever prohibited in the United States." On the 10th of Febru- 
 ary, 1864, Senator Trumbull reported from the Judiciary 
 Committee of that body a proposed amendment that was 
 finally adopted in 1865, and is now part of the fundamental 
 law of the nation. It was passed in the Senate on the 18th 
 of April by a vote of 38 to 6. It was defeated in the House by 
 a vote of 93 in its favor and 65 against it, lacking the requisite 
 two-thirds. Seeing that the amendment was lost, Ashley of 
 Ohio changed his vote from the affirmative to the negative 
 with a view of entering a motion to reconsider, and the sub- 
 ject went over until the next session. On the 6th of January, 
 1865, Ashley made his motion to reconsider and called up 
 the proposed amendment for another vote. One of the most 
 interesting and able debates of that time was precipitated by 
 Ashley's motion, and the notable speech of the occasion was 
 made by Rollins of Missouri, who had been a large slave- 
 holder, and who declared that "the rebellion instigated and 
 carried on by slaveholders has been the death-knell of the 
 institution." Stevens, the great apostle of freedom from Penn- 
 sylvania and the Great Commoner of the war, closed the de- 
 bate, and probably on no other occasion in the history of 
 
 [111] 
 
Congress was such intense anxiety exhibited as when the roll 
 was called on the adoption or rejection of the amendment. 
 The Republicans did not have two-thirds of the House, but 
 several Democrats openly favored the amendment and a num- 
 ber of others were known to be uncertain. The first break in 
 the Democratic line was when the name of Coffroth of Penn- 
 sylvania was called, who promptly answered ay, and was 
 greeted with thunders of applause in the House and galleries. 
 He was followed by Ganson, Herrick, Nelson, Odell, Rad- 
 ford, and Steele, Democrats from New York, by English from 
 Connecticut, and by McAlister from Pennsylvania, and when 
 the Speaker declared that the amendment had been adopted 
 by 119 yeas to 56 nays, being more than the requisite con- 
 stitutional majority, the great battle of Emancipation was 
 substantially won, and Lincoln hailed it with a measure of 
 joy second only to his delight at the announcement of Lee's 
 surrender. Before the members left their seats salvos of artil- 
 lery announced to the people of the capital that the Consti- 
 tutional amendment abolishing slavery had been adopted by 
 Congress, and the victorious leaders rushed to the White 
 House to congratulate Lincoln on the final achievement of 
 Emancipation.* 
 
 Lincoln had thus dealt the deathblow to slavery by his 
 proclamation, but it was not until after he had sealed his 
 devotion to free government by giving his life to the assassin's 
 hate that the great work was consummated and the Republic 
 was entirely free from the stain of human bondage. 
 
 The most earnest discussions I ever had with Lincoln were 
 on the subject of his Emancipation Proclamation. I knew the 
 extraordinary pressure that came from the more radical ele- 
 ment of the Republican party, embracing a number of its 
 ablest leaders, such as Sumner, Chase, Wade, Chandler, and 
 others, but I did not know, and few were permitted to know, 
 the importance of an Emancipation policy in restraining the 
 
 * After ratification by the requisite number of states, the amendment be- 
 came law in December, 1865.— Ed. 
 
 [112] 
 
recognition of the Confederacy by France and England. I 
 was earnestly opposed to an Emancipation Proclamation by 
 the President. For some weeks before it was issued I saw 
 Lincoln frequently, and in several instances sat with him for 
 hours at a time after the routine business of the day had been 
 disposed of and the doors of the White House were closed. 
 I viewed the issue solely from a political standpoint, and cer- 
 tainly had the best of reasons for the views I pressed upon Lin- 
 coln, assuming that political expediency should control his 
 action. I reminded him that the proclamation would not 
 liberate a single slave— that the Southern armies must be over- 
 thrown, and that the territory held by them must be con- 
 quered by military success, before it could be made effective. 
 To this Lincoln answered: "It does seem like the Pope's bull 
 against the comet;" but that was the most he ever said in any 
 of his conversations to indicate that he might not issue it. I 
 appealed to him to issue a military order as Commander-in- 
 chief of the Army and Navy, proclaiming that every slave of 
 a rebellious owner should be for ever free when brought 
 within our lines. Looking simply to practical results, that 
 would have accomplished everything that the Emancipation 
 Proclamation achieved; but it was evident during all these 
 discussions that Lincoln viewed the question from a very 
 much higher standpoint than I did, although, as usual, he 
 said but little and gave no clue to the bent of his mind on 
 the subject. 
 
 I reminded Lincoln that political defeat would be inevita- 
 ble in the great states of the Union in the elections soon to 
 follow if he issued the Emancipation Proclamation— that New 
 York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 
 would undoubtedly vote Democratic and elect Democratic 
 delegations to the next Congress. He did not dispute my 
 judgment as to the political effect of the proclamation, but I 
 never left him with any reasonable hope that I had seriously 
 impressed him on the subject. Every political prediction I 
 made was fearfully fulfilled in the succeeding October and 
 
 [113] 
 
November elections. New York elected Seymour Governor by 
 10,700 majority, and chose 17 Democratic and 14 Republican 
 Congressmen. New Jersey elected a Democratic Governor by 
 14,500, and 4 Democrats and 1 Republican to Congress. 
 Pennsylvania elected the Democratic state ticket by 3500 ma- 
 jority and 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans to Congress, 
 with a Democratic Legislature that chose Buckalew to the 
 United States Senate. Ohio elected the Democratic state ticket 
 by 5500 majority and 14 Democrats and 2 Republicans to 
 Congress, Ashley and Schenck being the only two who es- 
 caped in the political Waterloo. Indiana elected the Demo- 
 cratic state ticket by 9500 majority and 7 Democrats and 4 
 Republicans to Congress, with 30 Democratic majority in the 
 Legislature. Illinois elected the Democratic state ticket by 
 16,500 majority and 9 Democrats and 5 Republicans to Con- 
 gress, and 28 Democratic majority in the Legislature. Confi- 
 dently anticipating these disastrous political results, I could 
 not conceive it possible for Lincoln to successfully administer 
 the government and prosecute the war with the six most im- 
 portant loyal states of the Union declaring against him at the 
 polls; but Lincoln knew that the majority in Congress would 
 be safe, as the rebellious states were excluded, and the far 
 West and New England were ready to sustain the Emancipa- 
 tion policy; and he appreciated, as I did not, that the magni- 
 tude of his act cast all mere considerations of expediency 
 into nothingness. He dared to do the right for the sake of the 
 right. I speak of this the more freely because, in the light of 
 events as they appear today, he rose to the sublimest duty of 
 his life, while I was pleading the mere expedient of a day 
 against a record for human freedom that must be immortal 
 while liberty has worshipers in any land or clime. 
 
 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation because it 
 was an imperious duty, and because the time had come when 
 any temporizing with the question would have been more 
 fatal than could possibly be any temporary revolt against the 
 manly declaration of right. He felt strong enough to main- 
 
 [114] 
 
tain the freedom he proclaimed by the military and naval 
 power of the government. He believed it to be the most mor- 
 tal wound that could be inflicted upon the Confederacy. He 
 believed that it would disarm the strong anti-Union senti- 
 ment that seemed to be fast pressing the English government 
 to the recognition of the South, and he believed that, however 
 public sentiment might falter for a time, like the disturbed 
 and quivering needle it would surely settle to the pole. He 
 did not issue it for the mere sentiment of unshackling four 
 millions of slaves, nor did he then dream of universal citizen- 
 ship and suffrage to freedmen. In the last public address that 
 he ever delivered, on the 11th of April, 1865, speaking of 
 Negro suffrage, he said: *'I would myself prefer that suffrage 
 were now conferred upon the very intelligent and on those 
 who served our cause as soldiers." He believed it to be simply 
 an act of justice that every colored man who had fought for 
 his freedom and for the maintenance of the Union, and was 
 honorably discharged from the military service, should be 
 clothed with the right of franchise; and he believed that ''the 
 very intelligent" should also be enfranchised as exemplars of 
 their race and an inspiration to them for advancement. He 
 was always stubbornly for justice, stubbornly for the right, 
 and it was his sublime devotion to the right in the face of the 
 most appalling opposition that made the name of Abraham 
 Lincoln immortal as the author of the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, on which he justly invoked "the considerate judg- 
 ment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." 
 
 [115] 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 
 LINCOLN AND HAMLIN 
 
 The fact that Abraham Lincoln conceived and executed the 
 scheme to nominate Andrew Johnson for Vice-President in 
 1864 has been feebly disputed, but is now accepted as the 
 truth of history. It was not an arbitrary exercise of political 
 power on the part of Lincoln. He had no prejudice against 
 Hannibal Hamlin to inspire him to compass Hamlin's defeat. 
 He had no special love for Andrew Johnson to lead him to 
 overthrow his old associate of 1860 and make the Military 
 Governor of an insurgent state his fellow-candidate for 1864. 
 Hamlin was not in close sympathy with Lincoln; on the con- 
 trary, he was known as one who passively rather than actively 
 strengthened a powerful cabal of Republican leaders in their 
 aggressive hostility to Lincoln and his general policy; but 
 Lincoln was incapable of yielding to prejudice, however 
 strong, in planning his great campaign for re-election in 1864. 
 Had Hamlin been ten times more offensive than he was to 
 Lincoln, it would not have halted Lincoln for a moment in 
 favoring Hamlin's renomination if he believed it good poli- 
 tics to do so. He rejected Hamlin not because he hated him; 
 he accepted Johnson not because he loved him. He was 
 guided in what he did, or what he did not, in planning the 
 great campaign of his life, that he believed involved the des- 
 tiny of the country itself, by the single purpose of making 
 success as nearly certain as possible. 
 
 Hamlin was nominated for the Vice-Presidency in 1860 
 simply because he was a representative Republican fresh from 
 
 [116] 
 
the Democratic party. Another consideration that favored his 
 selection was the fact that his state had been carried into the 
 Republican party under his leadership, and that its state elec- 
 tion in September would be the finger-board of success or 
 defeat in the national contest. His position as Representative, 
 Senator, and Governor, and his admitted ability and high 
 character, fully justified his nomination as the candidate for 
 Vice-President; but when elected there was the usual steadily 
 widening chasm between him and the Executive, and, like 
 nearly or quite all Vice-Presidents, he drifted into the em- 
 brace of the opposition to his chief. It was this opposition, 
 led by men of such consummate ability as Wade of Ohio and 
 Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, that admonished Lincoln 
 of the necessity of putting himself in the strongest possible 
 attitude for the then admittedly doubtful battle of 1864. 
 While the defeat of Lee at Gettysburg and the surrender of 
 Vicksburg the year before had done much to inspire faith in 
 the success of the war, the Confederacy was stubbornly main- 
 taining its armies. The opening of the new year of 1864 called 
 for large drafts of men to fill the thinned ranks of the Union 
 forces, and there was a powerful undertow of despondency 
 among the loyal people of the North. The war was costing 
 $3,000,000 a day, and after three years of bloody conflict the 
 end was not in view. The Republican leaders in the early part 
 of 1864 were divided in councils, distracted by the conflicts 
 of ambition, and very many of the ablest of them regarded 
 the defeat of the party as not only possible, but more than 
 probable. The one man who fully understood the peril and 
 who studied carefully how to avert it was Abraham Lincoln. 
 Lincoln, as was his usual custom, consulted with all who 
 came within his reach, and developed his views from time to 
 time with extreme caution. In the early part of the year he 
 reached the conclusion that it would be eminently wise to 
 nominate a conspicuous War Democrat for Vice-President 
 along with himself for President. A number of prominent 
 men who acted with the Democratic party in 1860 against 
 
 [117] 
 
Lincoln's election, but who patriotically entered the military 
 service and won distinction by their heroism, represented a 
 very large class of Democratic voters upon whom Lincoln 
 felt he must rely for his re-election. Hamlin had been a 
 Democrat, but he did not come under the class of War Demo- 
 crats, while Butler, Dix, Dickinson, Johnson, Holt, and 
 others represented a distinctive and very formidable class of 
 citizens who, while yet professing to be Democrats, were 
 ready to support the war under Lincoln until it should be 
 successfully terminated by the restoration of the Union. Lin- 
 coln's first selection for Vice-President was General Butler. 
 I believe he reached that conclusion without specially con- 
 sulting with any of his friends. As early as March, 1864, he 
 sent for General Cameron, to whom he proposed the nomi- 
 nation of Butler, and that, I assume, was his first declaration 
 of his purpose to any one on the subject. He confided to 
 Cameron the mission to Fortress Monroe to confer confiden- 
 tially with Butler. On that journey Cameron was accom- 
 panied by ex-Congressman William H. Armstrong of 
 Pennsylvania, who was first informed of the real object of 
 Cameron's visit when they were returning home, and after 
 Butler had declined to permit his name to be considered. But- 
 ler was at that time a strong man in the loyal states. He had 
 not achieved great military success, but his administration in 
 New Orleans had made him universally popular throughout 
 the North, in which the vindictive vituperation of the South- 
 ern people heaped upon him was an important factor. Butler's 
 declination was peremptory, and Cameron returned home 
 without learning in what direction Lincoln would be likely 
 to look for a candidate for Vice-President. 
 
 In a later conference with Cameron, in which the names 
 of Johnson, Dickinson, and Dix were seriously discussed, 
 Lincoln expressed his preference for Johnson, to which Cam- 
 eron, with unconcealed reluctance, finally assented. While 
 Lincoln at that time decided in favor of Johnson, he did not 
 himself regard it as final. His extreme caution and excep- 
 
 [118] 
 
tional sagacity made him carefully consider all possible weak 
 points in Johnson's candidacy before he launched the move- 
 ment for his nomination. He summoned General Sickles to 
 Washington, and sent him to Tennessee on a confidential 
 mission to examine and make report to him of the success of 
 Johnson's administration as military governor. That state 
 was in a revolutionary condition; Johnson was charged with 
 violent and despotic official acts, and Lincoln meant to know 
 fully whether Johnson might, by reason of his administration, 
 be vulnerable as a national candidate. Sickles had no knowl- 
 edge of the real purpose of his mission. The question of 
 nominating Johnson for the Vice-Presidency was never sug- 
 gested or even intimated to Sickles, and he fulfilled his trust 
 and reported favorably on Johnson's administration, without 
 even a suspicion that he was to determine the destiny of An- 
 drew Johnson, make him Vice-President of the United States, 
 and thus President. 
 
 Lincoln's purpose in seeking Johnson as his associate on 
 the national ticket in 1864 was much more far reaching than 
 any but himself at the time supposed. He meant to guard 
 against possible defeat by getting a number of the insurgent 
 states in some sort of line to enable their Electoral votes to be 
 counted if needed. His most promising experiment was in 
 Tennessee under the guidance of Johnson, but he obviously 
 intended that the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, and West 
 Virginia with Tennessee should be organized with the sem- 
 blance of full statehood to make their Electoral votes avail- 
 able should the national contest be close. Had he developed 
 this policy to his party or to Congress, it would have been met 
 with positive and aggressive opposition, but he developed it 
 in the quietest way possible. His first movement in that line 
 was to have delegations elected to the national convention 
 from the Southern states named, and when they appeared at 
 the Baltimore convention on the 7th of June the battle for 
 their admission was led with consummate skill by the few 
 who understood Lincoln's policy. Tennessee being in the 
 
 [119] 
 
strongest attitude, the delegation trom that state was selected 
 on which to make the fight. It was desperately contested, be- 
 cause it was then well understood to mean the nomination 
 of Johnson for Vice-President; but the Tennessee delegates 
 were admitted by more than a two-thirds vote. With Ten- 
 nessee accepted as entitled to representation, the contest was 
 ended, and Louisiana and Arkansas were given the right of 
 representation without a serious struggle. 
 
 When Congress met again after the election in November, 
 and when Lincoln's election by an overwhelming popular as 
 well as Electoral vote was assured, the question of counting 
 the Electoral votes of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas 
 was raised and elaborately discussed in both branches. As 
 Lincoln had 212 Electoral votes to 21 for McClellan, exclu- 
 sive of the votes of the three insurgent states referred to, there 
 was no political necessity to induce Congress to strain a point 
 for the acceptance of these votes; and a joint resolution was 
 finally passed declaring "that no valid election for Electors of 
 President and Vice-President of the United States" had been 
 held in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Lincoln ap- 
 proved the resolution, but took occasion by special message to 
 disclaim approval of the recital of the preamble. Had the 
 votes of these three states been needed to elect a Republican 
 President, I hazard little in saying that they would have been 
 treated as regular and lawful and counted with the approval 
 of both the Senate and House; as they were not needed and 
 as the development of these states was Lincoln's own concep- 
 tion, those who were not specially friendly scored an empty 
 victory against him. 
 
 He moved with masterly sagacity at every step in his efforts 
 to nominate Johnson, and his selection of General Cameron 
 as early as March to be his first ambassador in search of a 
 War Democrat for Vice-President was not one of the least 
 of his many shrewd conceptions. The relations between Lin- 
 coln and Cameron had been somewhat strained by Cameron's 
 retirement from the Cabinet in 1862. At least Lincoln as- 
 
 [120] 
 
sumed that they might be somewhat strained on the part of 
 Cameron, and he took early caution to enlist Cameron in his 
 renomination. He knew the power of Cameron in the manip- 
 ulation of discordant political elements, and he fully appre- 
 ciated the fact that Cameron's skill made him a dangerous 
 opponent. He bound Cameron to himself by making him one 
 of his trusted leaders in the selection of a candidate for Vice- 
 President. The man who was probably closest to Lincoln in 
 this movement was Henry J. Raymond, but in this as in all 
 Lincoln's movements his confidence was limited with each 
 of his trusted agents. Raymond was then editor of the only 
 prominent New York journal that heartily supported Lin- 
 coln; and he, with the aid of Seward and Weed, who early 
 entered into the movement for the nomination of Johnson, 
 overthrew Dickinson in his own state and was the confessed 
 Lincoln leader in the Baltimore convention of 1864. With 
 Dickinson beaten in New York and with Hamlin's forces 
 demoralized early in the contest, the nomination of Johnson 
 was easily accomplished, chiefly because it was what Lincoln 
 desired. 
 
 Neither Swett nor Lamon had any knowledge of Lincoln's 
 positive movement for the nomination of Johnson until 
 within a day or two of the meeting of the convention. Colonel 
 Lamon has recently given a description of the scene between 
 Lincoln, Swett, and himself a day or two before they went 
 to Baltimore to aid in Lincoln's renomination. Swett earn- 
 estly and even passionately protested against the overthrow 
 of Hamlin, but after hearing Lincoln fully on the subject 
 he consented to go to the convention, in which he was a dele- 
 gate from Illinois, and support the nomination of Johnson; 
 but he wisely declared Holt to be his candidate, as a foil to 
 protect Lincoln. Swett naturally felt uncertain as to how the 
 suggestion of Johnson's name would be received at Baltimore, 
 as he had no knowledge of the extent to which Lincoln had 
 progressed in the Johnson movement. In answer to his in- 
 quiry whether he was at liberty to say that Lincoln desired 
 
 [121] 
 
Johnson's nomination, Lincoln answered in the negative, and, 
 as quoted by Colonel Lamon in a recent public letter, said: 
 "No, I will address a letter to Lamon here embodying my 
 views, which you, McClure, and other friends may use if it 
 be found absolutely necessary; otherwise it may be better that 
 I shall not appear actively on the stage of this theatre." The 
 letter was written by Lincoln and delivered to Lamon, who 
 had it with him at Baltimore, but, as there was no occasion 
 for using it, it was never shown to any one and was returned 
 to Lincoln after the convention at his request. 
 
 How shrewdly Lincoln moved, and with what extreme 
 caution he guarded his confidence, is well illustrated by the 
 fact that while he consulted Cameron confidentially about 
 the nomination of Johnson some months before the conven- 
 tion, and consulted me on the same subject the day before the 
 convention met, neither of us supposed that the other was 
 acting in the special confidence of Lincoln. On the contrary, 
 I supposed that Cameron was sincerely friendly to Hamlin 
 and would battle for his renomination, until he finally pro- 
 posed to me the night before the convention met that we give 
 a solid complimentary vote to Hamlin, and follow it with a 
 solid vote for Johnson. Another evidence of his extreme cau- 
 tion in politics is given by the fact that while he carefully 
 concealed from both Cameron and myself the fact that the 
 other was in his confidence in the same movement, he sur- 
 prised me a few weeks before the convention by sending for 
 me and requesting me to come to the convention as a dele- 
 gate-at-large. I had already been unanimously chosen as a 
 delegate from my own Congressional district, and was amazed, 
 when I informed Lincoln of that fact, to find that he still 
 insisted upon me going before the state convention and hav- 
 ing myself elected as a delegate-at-large. To all my explana- 
 tions that a man in the delegation was good for just what he 
 was worth, whether he represented the district or the state, 
 Lincoln persisted in the request that I should come as a 
 delegate-at-large. When I finally pressed him for an explana- 
 
 [122} 
 
tion of what seemed to me to be a needless request involving 
 great embarrassment to me, he finally with evident reluctance 
 answered: "General Cameron has assured me that he will be 
 a delegate-at-large from your state, and while I have no reason 
 to question his sincerity as my friend, if he is to be a delegate- 
 at-large from Pennsylvania I would much prefer that you be 
 one with him." Had he been willing to tell me the whole 
 truth, he would have informed me that Cameron was enlisted 
 in the Johnson movement, and that he specially desired at 
 least two of the delegates-at-large, representing opposing fac- 
 tions, to be active supporters of Johnson's nomination. There 
 could be no other reasonable explanation of his earnest re- 
 quest to me to accept the embarrassing position of seeking an 
 election from the state convention when I was already an 
 elected delegate from my district. A fortunate combination 
 of circumstances made it possible for me to be elected without 
 a serious contest, Cameron and I receiving nearly a unani- 
 mous vote. 
 
 Lincoln realized the fact that the chances were greatly 
 against his re-election unless he should be saved by the suc- 
 cess of the Union army. There was no period from January, 
 1864, until the 3d of September of the same year when Mc- 
 Clellan would not have defeated Lincoln for President. The 
 two speeches of that campaign which turned the tide and gave 
 Lincoln his overwhelming victory were Sherman's dispatch 
 from Atlanta on the 3d of September, saying: "Atlanta is 
 ours and fairly won;" and Sheridan's dispatch of the 19th 
 of September from the Valley, saying: "We have just sent 
 them (the enemy) whirling through Winchester, and we are 
 after them tomorrow." From the opening of the military 
 campaign in the spring of 1864 until Sherman announced 
 the capture of Atlanta, there was not a single important vic- 
 tory of the Union army to inspire the loyal people of the 
 country with confidence in the success of the war. Grant's 
 campaign from the Rapidan to the James was the bloodiest 
 in the history of the struggle. He had lost as many men in 
 
 [123] 
 
killed, wounded, and missing as Lee ever had in front of him, 
 and there was no substantial victory in all the sacrifice made 
 by the gallant Army of the Potomac. Sherman had been fight- 
 ing continuously for four months without a decisive success. 
 The people of the North had become heartsick at the fearful 
 sacrifices which brought no visible achievement. Democratic 
 sentiment had drifted to McClellan as the opposing candi- 
 date, and so profoundly was Lincoln impressed by the gloomy 
 situation that confronted him that on the 23d of August, 
 seven days before the nomination of McClellan and ten days 
 before the capture of Atlanta, he wrote the following memo- 
 randa, sealed it in an envelope, and had it endorsed by several 
 members of the Cabinet, including Secretary Welles, with 
 written instructions that it was not to be opened until after 
 the election: 
 
 Executive Mansion, 
 Washington, August 23, 1864. 
 This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly 
 probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it 
 will be my duty to co-operate with the President-elect so as to save 
 the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will 
 have secured his election on such grounds that he cannot possibly 
 save it afterward. A. Lincoln. 
 
 Nor was Lincoln alone in his apprehension of defeat. Dis- 
 trust and disintegration were common throughout the entire 
 Republican organization, and nearly all of the sincere sup- 
 porters of Lincoln were in next to utter despair of political 
 success. I spent an hour with him in the Executive Chamber 
 some ten days before he wrote the memoranda before given, 
 and I never saw him more dejected in my life. His face, al- 
 ways sad in repose, was then saddened until it became a 
 picture of despair, and he spoke of the want of sincere and 
 earnest support from the Republican leaders with unusual 
 freedom. I distinctly remember his reference to the fact that 
 of all the Republican members of the House he could name 
 but one in whose personal and political friendship he could 
 
 [124] 
 
absolutely confide. That one man was Isaac N. Arnold of 
 Illinois. Stevens, the Great Commoner of the war, while 
 sincerely desiring Lincoln's re-election because he hated 
 McClellan worse than he hated Lincoln, and because he felt 
 that the election of Lincoln was necessary to the safety of 
 the Union, was intensely bitter against Lincoln personally, 
 and rarely missed an opportunity to thrust his keenest in- 
 vectives upon him. New York had a Democratic governor of 
 matchless ability, and that great state was regarded as almost 
 hopelessly lost. Pennsylvania was trembling in the balance, 
 as was confirmed by the failure of the Republicans to carry 
 the state at the October election, and Indiana would have 
 been almost in rebellion but for the victories of Sherman and 
 Sheridan during the month of September. 
 
 At this interview Lincoln seemed to have but one over- 
 mastering desire, and that was to attain peace on the basis 
 of a restored Union. He took from a corner of his desk a 
 paper written out in his own handwriting, proposing to pay 
 to the South $400,000,000 as compensation for their slaves, 
 on condition that the states should return to their allegiance 
 to the government and accept Emancipation. I shall never 
 forget the emotion exhibited by Lincoln when, after reading 
 this paper to me, he said: "If I could only get this proposition 
 before the Southern people, I believe they would accept it, 
 and I have faith that the Northern people, however startled 
 at first, would soon appreciate the wisdom of such a settle- 
 ment of the war. One hundred days of war would cost us the 
 $400,000,000 I would propose to give for Emancipation and a 
 restored Republic, not to speak of the priceless sacrifice of life 
 and the additional sacrifice of property; but were I to make 
 this offer now it would defeat me inevitably and probably 
 defeat Emancipation." I had seen him many times when army 
 disasters shadowed the land and oppressed him with sorrow, 
 but I never saw him so profoundly moved by grief as he was 
 on that day, when there seemed to be not even a silvery lining 
 to the political cloud that hung over him. Few now recall the 
 
 [125] 
 
grave perils to Lincoln's re-election which thickened almost at 
 every turn in 1864 until the country was electrified by Sher- 
 man's inspiring dispatch from Atlanta, followed by Sheridan's 
 brilliant victories in the Valley and Sherman's memorable 
 march to the sea; and it was these grave perils and these 
 supreme necessities, long understood by Lincoln, which made 
 him, in his broad and sagacious way, carefully view the field 
 for the strongest candidate for Vice-President, and finally led 
 him to nominate Andrew Johnson. To Lincoln, and to Lin- 
 coln alone, Johnson owed his nomination. 
 
 I had no personal knowledge of Lincoln's purpose to nomi- 
 nate Johnson for Vice-President until the day before the 
 Baltimore convention met. He telegraphed me to visit Wash- 
 ington before attending the convention, and I did so. He 
 opened the conversation by advising me to give my vote and 
 active support to Johnson as his associate on the ticket. It was 
 evident that he confidently relied on my willingness to ac- 
 cept his judgment in the matter. I had expected to support 
 the renomination of Hamlin. I had little respect for Andrew 
 Johnson, and of all the men named for the position he was 
 the last I would have chosen if I had been left to the exercise 
 of my own judgment. It is more than probable that I would 
 have obeyed the wishes of Lincoln even if he had not pre- 
 sented the very strong and, indeed, conclusive reasons for his 
 request; but after hearing the arguments which had led him 
 to the conclusion that Johnson should be nominated as his 
 associate, I was quite as ready to accept the wisdom of the 
 proposition as to obey the wishes of the President. 
 
 There was not a trace of bitterness, prejudice, or even un- 
 friendliness toward Hamlin in all that Lincoln said about the 
 Vice-Presidency, and he was careful to say that he did not 
 desire the nomination of Johnson to gratify any personal 
 preference of his own. He naturally preferred a new man, as 
 Hamlin was not in sympathy with Lincoln personally or with 
 the general policy of his administration, but he preferred 
 Johnson for two reasons, which he presented with unanswer- 
 
 [126] 
 
able clearness: First, he was the most conspicuous, most ag- 
 gressive, and the most able of all the War Democrats of that 
 time, and was just in the position to command the largest 
 measure of sympathy and support from that very important 
 political element. Dix, Dickinson, Butler, and Holt had made 
 no such impressive exhibition of their loyalty as had John- 
 son in Tennessee. He was then just in the midst of his great 
 work of rehabilitating his rebellious state and restoring it 
 to the Union, and his loyal achievements were therefore fresh 
 before the people and certain to continue so during the cam- 
 paign. There was really no answer to Lincoln's argument on 
 this point. Second, the stronger and more imperative reason 
 for Lincoln preferring Johnson was one that I had not appre- 
 ciated fully until he had presented it. The great peril of the 
 Union at that day was the recognition of the Confederacy by 
 England and France, and every month's delay of the over- 
 throw of the rebellious armies increased the danger. Extraor- 
 dinary efiForts had been made by Lincoln to stimulate the 
 Union sentiment, especially in England, but with only 
 moderate success, and there was no safety from one day to 
 another against a war with England and France that would 
 have been fatal to the success of the Union cause. The only 
 possible way to hinder recognition was to show successful 
 results of the war in restoring the dissevered states to their 
 old allegiance, and Lincoln was firmly convinced that by no 
 other method could the Union sentiment abroad be so greatly 
 inspired and strengthened as by the nomination and election 
 of a representative Southern man to the Vice-Presidency from 
 one of the rebellious states in the very heart of the Con- 
 federacy. These reasons decided Lincoln to prefer Johnson 
 for Vice-President, and Lincoln possessed both the power to 
 make the nomination and the wisdom to dictate it without 
 jarring the party organization. 
 
 The fact that Lincoln did not make known to Hamlin and 
 his friends his purpose to nominate another for Vice-President 
 in 1864 does not accuse him of deceit or insincerity; and the 
 
 [127] 
 
additional fact that when the convention was in session and 
 he was asked for a categorical answer as to his position on the 
 Vice-Presidency, he declined to express his wishes or to avow 
 his interference with the action of the party, cannot be justly 
 construed into political double-dealing. It was quite as much 
 a necessity for Lincoln to conceal his movements for the 
 nomination of Johnson as it was, in his judgment, a necessity 
 for him to nominate a Southern man and a War Democrat, 
 and he simply acted with rare sagacity and discretion in his 
 movements and with fidelity to the country, the safety of 
 which was paramount with him. Hamlin was profoundly 
 grieved over his defeat, as were his many friends, and had 
 they seen the hand of Lincoln in it they would have resented 
 it with bitterness; but Hamlin himself was not fully convinced 
 of Lincoln's opposition to his renomination until within two 
 years of his death. I have in my possession an autograph letter 
 from Hamlin to Judge Pettis of Pennsylvania, to whom Lin- 
 coln had expressed his desire for Johnson's nomination on the 
 morning of the day the convention met, in which he says 
 that he had seen and heard statements relating to Lincoln's 
 action in the matter, but he did not believe them until the 
 evidence had lately been made conclusive to his mind. In this 
 letter he says: "I was really sorry to be disabused." And he 
 adds: "Mr. L. [Lincoln] evidently became some alarmed 
 about his re-election, and changed his position. That is all 
 I care to say." I have thus the conclusive evidence from Ham- 
 lin himself, that in September, 1889, he had full knowledge 
 of Lincoln's direct intervention to nominate Johnson for 
 Vice-President in 1864. Hamlin gave an earnest support to 
 the ticket, believing that the supreme sentiment of Repub- 
 licanism had set him aside in the interest of the public wel- 
 fare. He maintained his high position in the party for many 
 years thereafter, filling the office of Collector of Portland and 
 subsequently returning to the Senate, where he served until 
 he had passed the patriarchal age, and then voluntarily retired 
 to enjoy the calm evening of a well-spent life. 
 
 [128] 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND CHASE 
 
 Salmon P. Chase was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln 
 ointment from the inauguration of the new administration in 
 1861 until the 29th of June, 1864, when his resignation as 
 Secretary of the Treasury was finally accepted. He was an 
 annual resigner in the Cabinet, having petulantly tendered 
 his resignation in 1862, again in 1863, and again in 1864, 
 when he was probably surprised by Lincoln's acceptance of 
 it. It was soon after Lincoln's unanimous renomination, and 
 when Chase's dream of succeeding Lincoln as President had 
 perished, at least for the time. He was one of the strongest 
 intellectual forces of the entire administration, but in politics 
 he was a theorist and a dreamer and was unbalanced by over- 
 mastering ambition. He never forgave Lincoln for the crime 
 of having been preferred for President over him, and while 
 he was a pure and conscientious man, his prejudices and dis- 
 appointments were vastly stronger than himself, and there 
 never was a day during his continuance in the Cabinet when 
 he was able to approach justice to Lincoln. Like Sumner, 
 he entered public life ten years before the war by election 
 to the Senate through a combination of Democrats and Free- 
 Soilers, and it is worthy of note that these two most brilliant 
 and tireless of the great anti-slavery leaders cast their last 
 votes for Democratic candidates for President. 
 
 From the day that Chase entered the Cabinet he seems to 
 have been consumed with the idea that he must be Lincoln's 
 successor in 1864, and to that end he systematically directed 
 
 [129] 
 
his efforts, and often sought, by flagrant abuse of the power of 
 his department, to weaken his chief. He will stand in history 
 as the great financier of the war; as the man who was able to 
 maintain the national credit in the midst of rebellion and 
 disruption, and who gave the country the best banking system 
 the world has ever known. In that one duty he was practical 
 and amenable to wholesome counsel, and his unblemished 
 personal and official integrity gave great weight to his policy 
 as Secretary of the Treasury. With all the vexation he gave 
 Lincoln, and with the many reasons he gave his chief to re- 
 gard him as perfidious, Lincoln never ceased to appreciate his 
 value as a Cabinet officer. In 1863, when Chase had become an 
 open candidate for the Presidency, and when many of his 
 political movements were personally offensive to the Presi- 
 dent, Lincoln said of Chase: "I have determined to shut my 
 eyes so far as possible to everything of the sort. Mr. Chase 
 makes a good Secretary, and I shall keep him where he is. If 
 he becomes President, all right. I hope we may never have 
 a worse man. I have observed with regret his plan of strength- 
 ening himself." This expression from Lincoln conveys a 
 very mild idea of his real feelings on the subject: In point 
 of fact, Lincoln was not only profoundly grieved at Chase's 
 candidacy, but he was constantly irritated at the methods 
 Chase employed to promote his nomination. 
 
 I never saw Lincoln unbalanced except during the fall of 
 1863, when Chase was making his most earnest efforts to 
 win the Republican nomination. The very widespread dis- 
 trust toward Lincoln cherished by Republican leaders gave 
 him good reason to apprehend the success of a combination 
 to defeat him. Scores of national leaders were at that time 
 disaffected, but when they were compelled to face the issue 
 of his renomination or Republican defeat, they finally yielded 
 with more or less ill grace, and supported him. Lincoln saw 
 that if the disaffected elements of the party should be com- 
 bined on one strong candidate, his own success would be 
 greatly endangered. It was the only subject on which I ever 
 
 [130] 
 
knew Lincoln to lose his head. I saw him many times during 
 the summer and fall of 1863, when the Chase boom was at 
 its height, and he seemed like one who had got into water 
 far beyond his depth. I happened at the White House one 
 night when he was most concerned about the Chase move- 
 ment, and he detained me until two o'clock in the morning. 
 Occasionally he would speak with great seriousness, and evi- 
 dently felt very keenly the possibility of his defeat, while at 
 other times his face would suddenly brighten up with his 
 never-ending store of humor, and he would illustrate Chase's 
 attitude by some pertinent story, at which he would laugh 
 immoderately. After reviewing the situation for an hour, 
 during which I assured him that Chase could not be the 
 Republican candidate, whoever might be, and that I regarded 
 his renomination as reasonably certain, I rose at midnight, 
 shook hands with him, and started to go. He followed me to 
 the end of the Cabinet table nearest his desk, swung one of 
 his long legs over the corner of it, and stopped me to present 
 some new phase of the Chase battle that had just occurred to 
 him. After he had gotten through with that I again bade him 
 good-night and started to the door. He followed to the other 
 end of the Cabinet table, again swung his leg over the corner 
 of it, and started in afresh to discuss the contest between Chase 
 and himself. 
 
 It was nearly one o'clock when I again bade Lincoln good- 
 night, and got as far as the door, but when just about to open 
 it he called me and with the merriest twinkling of his eye, 
 he said: "By the way, McClure, how would it do if I were to 
 decline Chase?" I was surprised of course at the novel sugges- 
 tion, and said to him, "Why, Mr. Lincoln, how could that 
 be done?" He answered, "Well, I don't know exactly how it 
 might be done, but that reminds me of a story of two Demo- 
 cratic candidates for Senator in Egypt, Illinois, in its early 
 political times. That section of Illinois was almost solidly 
 Democratic, as you know, and nobody but Democrats were 
 candidates for office. Two Democratic candidates for Senator 
 
 [131] 
 
met each other in joint debate from day to day, and gradually 
 became more and more exasperated at each other, until their 
 discussions were simply disgraceful wrangles, and they both 
 became ashamed of them. They finally agreed that either 
 should say anything he pleased about the other and it should 
 not be resented as an offense, and from that time on the 
 campaign progressed without any special display of ill temper. 
 On election night the two candidates, who lived in the same 
 town, were receiving their returns together, and the contest 
 was uncomfortably close. A distant precinct, in which one 
 of the candidates confidently expected a large majority, was 
 finally reported with a majority against him. The disap- 
 pointed candidate expressed great surprise, to which the other 
 candidate answered that he should not be surprised, as he 
 had taken the liberty of declining him in that district the 
 evening before the election. He reminded the defeated can- 
 didate that he had agreed that either was free to say anything 
 about the other without offense, and added that under that 
 authority he had gone up into that district and taken the 
 liberty of saying that his opponent had retired from the con- 
 test, and therefore the vote of the district was changed, and 
 the declined candidate was thus defeated. I think," added 
 Lincoln, with one of his heartiest laughs, "I had better decline 
 Chase." It was evident that the question of inducing Chase 
 to decline was very seriously considered by Lincoln. He did 
 not seem to know just how it could be done, but it was ob- 
 vious that he believed it might be done in one way or another, 
 and what he said in jest he meant in sober earnest. 
 
 Lincoln's anxiety for a renomination was the one thing 
 ever uppermost in his mind during the third year of his ad- 
 ministration, and, like all men in the struggles of ambition, 
 he believed that his only motive in his desire for his own 
 re-election was to save the country, rather than to achieve 
 success for himself. That he was profoundly sincere and 
 patriotic in his purpose and efforts to save the Union, and 
 that he would willingly have given his life as a sacrifice had 
 
 [132] 
 
it been necessary to accomplish that result, none can doubt 
 who knew him; but he was only human, after all, and his 
 ambition was like the ambition of other good men, often 
 stronger than himself. In this as in all political or adminis- 
 trative movements Lincoln played the waiting game. When 
 he did not know what to do, he was the safest man in the 
 world to trust to do nothing. He carefuly veiled his keen and 
 sometimes bitter resentment against Chase, and waited the 
 fullness of time when he could by some fortuitous circum- 
 stance remove Chase as a competitor, or by some shrewd 
 manipulation of politics make him a hopeless one. His inex- 
 perience in the details of politics made him naturally distrust- 
 ful and apprehensive as to his renomination. He could not, 
 at that early day, get together the political forces necessary 
 to make him feel safe in the battle, and it was not until about 
 the close of 1863 or early in 1864 that he finally formulated 
 in his mind his political policy, and began the work of con- 
 solidating his forces for action. He did this with a degree of 
 sagacity and method that would have done credit to the ripest 
 politician of the age, but there was no time until the Balti- 
 more convention met that Lincoln felt secure. Even after an 
 overwhelming majority of the delegates had been instructed 
 in his favor, and when to all but himself it was evident that 
 there could be no effective opposition to him in the conven- 
 tion, he was never entirely free from doubts as to the result. 
 Within a month of his nomination, and when his more violent 
 enemies had abandoned the effort to defeat him, as was evi- 
 denced by the Fremont Convention called at Cleveland, he 
 was yet perplexed with anxiety over the possibility of his de- 
 feat. In discussing the question as late as May, 1864, I was 
 surprised to find the apprehensions he cherished. I told him 
 that his nomination was a foregone conclusion, and that it 
 was not possible for any combination to be made that could 
 endanger his success. I presented the attitude of the various 
 states, and referred to their delegations to prove to him that 
 his nomination must be made on the first ballot by a two- 
 
 [133] 
 
thirds vote, if not with absolute unity. To this he responded: 
 "Well, McClure, what you say seems to be unanswerable, but 
 I don't quite forget that I was nominated for President in a 
 convention that was two-thirds for the other fellow." 
 
 It is needless to say that the official and personal relations 
 between Chase and Lincoln during the later part of the 
 year 1863 and the early part of 1864 were severely strained. 
 Lincoln felt it deeply, but said little to any one on the sub- 
 ject, and never permitted Chase to know how keenly he 
 grieved him. He knew that Chase sincerely desired to be hon- 
 est in the performance of his public duty, and he judged his 
 infirmities with generous charity. He fully appreciated the 
 fact, so well stated by Chase's biographer, Judge Warden, 
 that Chase "was indeed sought less by strong men and by 
 good men than by weak men and by bad men." Indeed, Chase, 
 with all his towering intellect and all his admitted devotion 
 to the country's cause, was the merest plaything of the politi- 
 cal charlatans who crossed his path, and he was thus made to 
 do many things which were unworthy of him, and which, 
 with any other than Lincoln to judge him, would have 
 brought him to absolute disgrace. He wrote many letters to 
 his friends in different parts of the country habitually com- 
 plaining of Lincoln's incompetency and of the hopeless con- 
 dition of the war. In none of the many letters which have 
 reached the light did he give Lincoln credit for capacity or 
 fitness for his responsible trust. In disposing of the patronage 
 of his department he was often fretful and generally ill-ad- 
 vised. 
 
 With all these infirmities of temper and of ambition, Lin- 
 coln bore with Chase with marvelous patience until after 
 Lincoln's unanimous renomination in 1864, when Chase sent 
 his third resignation to the President. In his letter of resig- 
 nation he said: "My position here is not altogether agreeable 
 to you, and it is certainly too full of embarrassment and dif- 
 ficulty and painful responsibility to allow in me the least 
 desire to retain it." For the first time Lincoln recognized the 
 
 [134] 
 
fact that he and Chase could not get along together, and he 
 promptly answered Chase's letter of resignation in the follow- 
 ing terse but expressive note: "Your resignation of the office 
 of Secretary of the Treasury, sent me yesterday, is accepted. 
 Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity 
 I have nothing to unsay, and yet you and I have reached 
 a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relation 
 which it seems cannot be overcome or long sustained con- 
 sistently with the public service." Like all irritable men 
 who are the prey of infirmities, Chase believed, and recorded 
 in his diary, that the embarrassments which arose between 
 him and Lincoln were not of his creation. He thus expresses 
 it in his own language: "I had found a good deal of embar- 
 rassment from him, but what he had found from me I cannot 
 imagine, unless it has been caused by my unwillingness to 
 have offices distributed as spoils or benefits." Chase retired 
 from the Cabinet believing that he had severed all political 
 relations with Lincoln for the remainder of his life, and the 
 last thing that he then could have dreamed of was that his 
 name would ever be considered by the President for the 
 office of Chief Justice of the United States. 
 
 When Chase retired from the Cabinet, in the latter part 
 of June, he did not expect to support Lincoln for re-election. 
 Within a week thereafter he recorded in his diary the fact 
 that Senator Pomeroy could not support Lincoln, and he 
 added: "I am much of the same sentiment, though not willing 
 now to decide what duty may demand next fall." But he then 
 hoped much from the revolutionary attitude of the supporters 
 of Fremont and the bold assault made upon Lincoln by Sena- 
 tor Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis. Chase 
 retired to the White Mountains to await events, and it soon 
 became evident that the revolt against Lincoln would not 
 materialize. On the contrary, every week brought wayward 
 stragglers into the Lincoln camp, until at last Fremont him- 
 self had to surrender the side-show nomination he had ac- 
 cepted and fall into line in support of the administration, and 
 
 [135] 
 
the manifesto of Wade and Davis had fallen upon listless 
 ears. It soon became evident that the sulking Republican 
 leaders must choose between Lincoln and McClellan— be- 
 tween supporting the war and opposing the war, for the Mc- 
 Clellan platform distinctly declared the war a failure and 
 demanded the restoration of the Union by some other method 
 than an appeal to arms. When Chase returned from his rest 
 in the mountains in the latter part of September, he visited 
 Washington, and of course paid his respects to the President. 
 It is evident from Chase's own report of his interview with 
 Lincoln that he was not greatly inspired by Lincoln's pro- 
 fessions of devotion. He notes the fact that Lincoln was "not 
 at all demonstrative, either in speech or manner," and he 
 adds, "I feel that I do not know him." It is evident that Chase 
 returned to Washington with the view of getting into some 
 sort of friendly relations with the President. He twice visited 
 Lincoln during his short stay in Washington, and within a 
 week thereafter he publicly declared himself in favor of 
 Lincoln's election at his home in Ohio. He voted the Re- 
 publican state ticket in October, and sent a congratulatory 
 telegram to Lincoln on the result of the election. 
 
 It was known to all about Washington during the fall of 
 1864 that Chief Justice Taney could not long survive, and 
 after the first of September he was likely to die any day. It 
 would be unjust to Chase to say that he was influenced in 
 his political action by the hope of succeeding Chief Justice 
 Taney, but the fact that his name was pressed upon Lincoln 
 simultaneously by his friends throughout the country, even 
 before the dead Chief Justice had been consigned to the tomb, 
 proves that Chase had cherished the hope of reaching that 
 exalted judicial position. Taney died on the 12th of October, 
 1864, within two weeks after Chase declared himself in 
 favor of the election of Lincoln, and on the 13th of October 
 Chase's name was on the lips of all his friends as the man for 
 Chief Justice. The movement was dignified by the active 
 and earnest efforts of Senator Sumner, who was in a position 
 
 [136] 
 
to exert considerable influence with the President, although 
 on many questions they had seriously differed. He desired a 
 Chief Justice who could be trusted on the slavery question, 
 and, believing that Chase was the safest of all on that im- 
 portant issue, he made an exhaustive struggle to win the 
 position for Chase. Secretary Stanton, who had been in general 
 harmony with Chase in the Cabinet, was also his earnest 
 friend in the struggle for the Chief Justiceship, but the op- 
 position aroused at the mention of his name came from every 
 part of the country, and from very many of the ablest and 
 most earnest of Lincoln's friends. It was argued against Chase 
 that while his ability was admitted, his practical knowledge 
 of law was limited, and that he was without legal train- 
 ing, because his life had been devoted almost exclusively to 
 politics. He was elected to the Senate a dozen years before 
 the war; he retired from the Senate to become Governor of 
 Ohio, in which position he served two terms, and he was re- 
 elected to the Senate at the close of his gubernatorial service. 
 He gave up the Senatorship to enter the Cabinet in 1861, so 
 that for many years he had given no thought or efforts to the 
 law, and he was regarded by very many as lacking in the 
 special training necessary to the first judicial office of the 
 national government. 
 
 Strong as was the hostility to Chase's appointment in every 
 section of the Union, the most intense opposition came from 
 his own state of Ohio. The suggestion that he should become 
 Chief Justice was resented by a large majority of the leading 
 Republicans of the state, and they severely tested Lincoln's 
 philosophy by the violence of their opposition, and especially 
 by the earnestness with which they insisted that it was an 
 insult to Lincoln himself to ask him to appoint Chase. 
 Pennsylvania's most prominent official connected with the 
 administration, and one of her most learned lawyers, Joseph 
 J. Lewis, then Commissioner of Internal Revenue, reflected 
 the general Republican sentiment of Pennsylvania by his un- 
 usual proceeding of sending a formal protest to Lincoln 
 
 [137] 
 
against Chase's appointment. He declared that Chase "was 
 not a man of much legal or financial knowledge; that his 
 selfishness had gradually narrowed and contracted his views 
 of things in general; that he was amazingly ignorant of men; 
 that it was the opinion in the department that he really de- 
 sired, toward the end of his term of office, to injure, and as 
 far as possible to destroy, the influence and popularity of 
 the administration." 
 
 I have, in a previous chapter, related an interview I had 
 with Lincoln a short time before he appointed Chase. It was 
 very evident from Lincoln's manner, rather than from what 
 he said, that he was much perplexed as to his duty in the 
 selection of a Chief Justice. In that conversation he discussed 
 the merits of the half dozen or more prominent men who were 
 suggested for the place. It is hardly proper to say that Lin- 
 coln discussed the matter, for the conversation was little else 
 on his part than a succession of searching inquiries to obtain 
 the fullest expression of my views as to the merits and de- 
 merits of the men he seemed to have under consideration. As 
 to his own views he was studiously reticent. I tried in various 
 ways to obtain some idea of the leaning of his mind on the 
 subject, but did not succeed. The many inquiries he made 
 about Stanton, and the earnestness he exhibited in discussing, 
 or rather having me discuss, Stanton as the possible Chief 
 Justice, impressed me with the belief that he was entertaining 
 the idea of appointing his Secretary of War; but he gave no 
 expression that could have warranted me in assuming that 
 I could correctly judge the bent of his mind on the subject. 
 The fact that he delayed the appointment for nearly two 
 months after the death of Taney proves that Lincoln gave the 
 subject not only very serious but protracted consideration, 
 and I doubt whether he had fully decided in his own mind 
 whom he would appoint until the 6th of December, the day 
 that he sent the name of Chase to the Senate for Chief Justice. 
 
 At no time during Lincoln's administration had he ever 
 submitted to an equal pressure in deciding any public ap- 
 
 [138] 
 
pointment, and, excepting the Emancipation Proclamation, 
 I doubt whether any question of policy was ever so earnestly 
 pressed and opposed by his friends as was the appointment of 
 Chase. Any other President than Lincoln would not have ap- 
 pointed Chase. His personal affronts to Lincoln had been 
 continuous and flagrant from the time he entered the Cabinet 
 until he resigned from it a little more than three years there- 
 after, and I am quite sure that at no time during that period 
 did Lincoln ever appeal to Chase for advice as his friend. 
 He had many consultations with him, of course, on matters 
 relating to the government, but that Lincoln regarded Chase 
 as his bitter and even malignant enemy during all that period 
 cannot now be doubted. The only pretense of atonement that 
 Chase had ever made was his hesitating and ungracious sup- 
 port of Lincoln's re-election, but only after the brilliant suc- 
 cess of the Union armies under Sherman and Sheridan had 
 absolutely settled the contest in Lincoln's favor. Grant over- 
 looked a malignant assault made upon him by Admiral 
 Porter when he promoted him to succeed Farragut; but in 
 that case Porter's record clearly entitled him to the distinc- 
 tion, and Grant simply yielded personal resentment to a 
 public duty. It was not pretended that Chase had any claim 
 to the Chief Justiceship on the ground of eminent legal at- 
 tainments or of political fidelity, and Lincoln's appointment 
 of Chase was simply one of the many exhibitions of the match- 
 less magnanimity that was one of the greatest attributes of 
 his character. He appointed him not because he desired Chase 
 for Chief Justice so much as because he feared that, in refus- 
 ing to appoint him, he might permit personal prejudice to 
 do injustice to the nation.* 
 
 Of course, Chase promptly and effusively thanked the 
 President when he learned that his name had been sent to 
 
 * You give a wrong impression as to Chase's legal training. He was a thor- 
 ough student of the law, and a careful, painstaking lawyer till he entered the 
 Senate at the age of forty- two.— £du;ard L. Pierce to the Author, December 7, 
 1891. 
 
 [139] 
 
the Senate for Chief Justice. In his letter to Lincoln he said: 
 "Before I sleep I must thank you for this mark of your con- 
 fidence, and especially for the manner in which the nomina- 
 tion was made." But before he was three months in the high 
 office conferred upon him by Lincoln he became one of Lin- 
 coln's most obtrusive and petulant critics, and his last letter 
 to Lincoln, written on the very day of Lincoln's assassination, 
 was a harsh criticism on the President's action in the Louisi- 
 ana case. Immediately after the death of Lincoln, writing to 
 an old political associate in Ohio, Chase said: "The schemes 
 of politicians will now adjust themselves to the new con- 
 ditions; I want no part in them." Indeed, the only specially 
 kind words from Chase to Lincoln that I have been able to 
 discover in all the publications giving Chase's views I find in 
 the one expression of hearty gratitude and friendship, written 
 on the impulse of the moment, when he was first notified of his 
 nomination to the Chief Justiceship. The new conditions of 
 which he spoke after the death of Lincoln, and in which he 
 declared he could have no part, speedily controlled the new 
 Chief Justice in his political actions. The leader of the radical 
 Republicans when he became Chief Justice, he gradually 
 gravitated against his party until he was ready to accept the 
 Democratic nomination for President in 1868, and he never 
 thereafter supported a Republican candidate for President. 
 He hoped to receive the Presidential nomination from the 
 New York convention of 1868. It had been agreed upon by 
 some who believed that they controlled the convention that 
 Chase should be nominated, and Governor Seymour retired 
 from the chair at the appointed time, as is generally believed, 
 to make the nomination to the convention; but Samuel J. 
 Tilden had no love for Chase, and it was he who inspired the 
 spontaneous movement that forced the nomination of Sey- 
 mour while he was out of the chair, and carried it like a whirl- 
 wind. Tilden did not guide the convention to the nomination 
 of Seymour because he specially desired Seymour's nomina- 
 tion; he did it because he desired to defeat the nomination of 
 
 [140] 
 
Chase. The result was the keenest disappointment to the 
 Chief Justice. He defined his political position during the 
 contest of 1868 as follows: "The action of the two parties has 
 obliged me to resume, with my old faith, my old position 
 —that of Democrat; by the grace of God free and inde- 
 pendent." 
 
 After 1868, Chase was unknown as a factor in politics. 
 In June, 1870, he was attacked by paralysis, and from that 
 time until his death, on the 7th of May, 1873, he was a hope- 
 less invalid. His last political deliverance was a feeble declara- 
 tion in favor of Greeley's election in 1872, when he was 
 shattered in mind and body. It may truthfully be said of him 
 that from 1861 until his death his public life was one con- 
 tinued and consuming disappointment, and the constant 
 training of his mind to politics doubtless greatly hindered 
 him in winning the distinction as Chief Justice that he might 
 have achieved had he given up political ambition and de- 
 voted himself to the high judicial duties he had accepted. 
 While one of the greatest intellects among all the Republi- 
 can leaders, he was an absolute failure as a politician, and his 
 persistence in political effort made him fail to improve other 
 opportunities. His life may be summed up in the single 
 sentence: He was an eminently great, a strangely unbalanced, 
 and a sadly disappointed man. 
 
 [141] 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND CAMERON 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had more varied and complicated rela- 
 tions with Simon Cameron than with any other Pennsyl- 
 vanian during his Presidential term. Indeed, Cameron fills 
 more pages in the annals of Pennsylvania politics than any 
 citizen of the state since the organization of our government. 
 He is the only man who was four times elected to the United 
 States Senate by the Pennsylvania Legislature until his son 
 attained the same distinction as his successor, and he would 
 have won a fifth election without a serious contest had he not 
 voluntarily resigned to assure the succession to his son. With- 
 out great popular following, he was the most conspicuous of 
 all our Pennsylvania politicians, measured by the single 
 standard of success in obtaining political honors and power. 
 He was first elected to the Senate in 1845 to succeed 
 Buchanan, who had been transferred to the Polk Cabinet. 
 The tariff of 1842 was then a vital issue in Pennsylvania, 
 and Cameron was known as a positive protectionist. The 
 Legislature was Democratic, and had nominated the late 
 Chief Justice Woodward with apparent unanimity to succeed 
 Buchanan; but Cameron organized a bolt from the Demo- 
 cratic party, commanded the solid Whig vote on the tariff 
 issue, and was thus elected. The Senate to which he was 
 chosen was Democratic, and he exhibited his peculiar power 
 over that body when he served in it by the rejection of Judge 
 Woodward when nominated by President Polk as Justice of 
 the Supreme Court of the United States. He made a memo- 
 
 [142] 
 
rable record during his early senatorial service by his earnest 
 appeal to Vice-President Dallas in favor of protection, when 
 it was known that the repeal of the tariff of 1842 would de- 
 pend upon the casting vote of the Vice-President. At the 
 expiration of his term, in 1849, Cameron was a candidate for 
 re-election. The balance of power in the Legislature was 
 held by Native American Representatives from Philadelphia, 
 elected on the Fusion ticket. He failed, however, to divert 
 that element from the Whigs, and abandoned the struggle, 
 giving the field to James Cooper, the regular Whig candidate, 
 who was successful. 
 
 In 1854 a strange political revolution occurred in Pennsyl- 
 vania, in which the new American or Know-Nothing party 
 elected the Whig candidate for governor and the Democratic 
 candidate for Canal Commissioner, and carried an over- 
 whelming majority of the Legislature, embracing nominees 
 of both parties. Cameron supported the Democratic ticket, 
 and made a speech in its favor the night before election, but 
 immediately after the election he associated himself with the 
 Americans and became an aggressive candidate for United 
 States Senator. This was the beginning of the factional con- 
 flict between Cameron and Curtin (then Secretary of the 
 Commonwealth) that continued as long as they were in active 
 political life. The new party was without leadership or disci- 
 pline, and was speedily broken into fragments by a dozen 
 aspirants for the Senatorship, of whom Cameron and Curtin 
 were the leading and apparently only hopeful candidates. The 
 struggle became exceptionally bitter, the joint convention 
 meeting and adjourning from time to time without succeed- 
 ing in a choice, until finally it became a matter of necessity 
 to elect Cameron or adjourn without an election; and after a 
 protracted contest over that issue the joint convention ad- 
 journed sine die by one majority. The next Legislature was 
 Democratic, and Governor Bigler was chosen. When the 
 Legislature met in 1857 the Democrats had three majority on 
 joint ballot, and confidently expected to elect a Senator. The 
 
 [143] 
 
late Colonel Forney was made the candidate by the direct 
 intervention of President-elect Buchanan, who was then just 
 on the threshold of the enormous power and patronage of 
 the Presidency. The nomination would naturally have gone 
 to Henry D. Foster, who was a member of the House, but 
 for the attitude assumed by Buchanan. Forney's nomination 
 somewhat weakened the Democratic lines by the general and 
 clamorous discontent of the several candidates who had hoped 
 to win in an open contest. The Republicans were intensely 
 embittered against Forney because they believed that he, as 
 chairman of the Democratic State Committee, had controlled 
 the October election unfairly to defeat the Republican state 
 ticket by a small majority, and thus assured the election of a 
 Democratic president. Cameron had for the first time taken 
 open ground against the Democrats in 1856, when he was 
 one of the Republican candidates for elector at large, and 
 actively supported Fremont's election. But he was not in 
 personal favor with most of the Republicans, and when his 
 name was proposed in the Republican caucus as a candidate 
 for senator, it was not seriously entertained until Senator 
 Penrose assured the caucus that Cameron could command 
 three Democratic votes if given the solid support of the Re- 
 publicans. A confidential committee was appointed to ascer- 
 tain the truth of the statement by personal assurance from 
 the Democratic members, and after a confirmative report, in 
 which the names of the Democratic members were not given, 
 the Republican caucus resolved to cast one vote for Cameron. 
 That resolution was carried out in joint convention, and three 
 Democratic Representatives (Lebo, Maneer, and Wagon- 
 seller) voted for Cameron and elected him. 
 
 Cameron was a senator when Lincoln served his single term 
 in Congress, but they did not become even acquaintances, 
 and he first became involved in Lincoln's political life in 
 1860, when both were candidates for the Republican nomi- 
 nation for President. Cameron's candidacy was not regarded 
 as a serious effort to nominate him, but the peculiar political 
 
 [144] 
 
situation in Pennsylvania greatly favored him in making him- 
 self the candidate of the state, and with his sagacity and 
 energy in political affairs he was not slow to avail himself 
 of it. Curtin was the prominent candidate for Governor, and 
 Cameron led Curtin's opponents. Curtin commanded the 
 nomination for Governor, and naturally enough desired a 
 united party to assure his election. Cameron secured a ma- 
 jority of votes in the state convention for President, and 
 reasonably claimed that he was as much entitled to the united 
 support of the party for President as Curtin was entitled to 
 it for governor. The conflict between the two elements of the 
 party led to a compromise, by which a nearly united delega- 
 tion was given to Cameron for a complimentary vote for 
 President. Cameron himself believed, in after years, that he 
 could have been nominated and elected if he had been 
 heartily pressed by Pennsylvania. He many times chided me 
 for refusing to give him an earnest support, saying that he 
 could have been made a successful candidate, and then, to 
 use his own expressive language, "We could all have had 
 everything we wanted." While Cameron had a majority of 
 the delegation, a large minority was more or less bitterly 
 opposed to him, and his name was withdrawn in the conven- 
 tion after the first ballot, because the delegation would have 
 broken. The men who immediately represented Cameron on 
 that occasion were John P. Sanderson, who was subsequently 
 appointed to the regular army, and Alexander Cummings, 
 whose confused use of military authority conferred upon him 
 in the early part of the war led to a vote of censure upon 
 Cameron by Congress. They knew before the convention met 
 that the contest was narrowed down to Seward and Lincoln, 
 and that Cameron, Chase, and Bates were not in the fight. 
 Sanderson and Cummings, with little or no control of the 
 delegation, were early in negotiation with David Davis, who 
 was specially in charge of Lincoln's interest in Chicago, and 
 obtained Davis's positive assurance that if the Pennsylvania 
 delegation would support Lincoln and Lincoln succeeded to 
 
 [145] 
 
the Presidency, Cameron would be appointed Secretary of 
 the Treasury. This agreement was not made known at the 
 time to any in the delegation, nor did it become known to 
 Lincoln, at least as a positive obligation, until after the 
 election. 
 
 The success of Lincoln at the November election left the 
 political situation in Pennsylvania without change, except 
 that the war of factions was intensified. Curtin did not give 
 even a perfunctory support to Cameron for the Presidency, 
 and Cameron gave about the same sort of support to Curtin 
 for governor; and when it was announced, about the 1st of 
 January, 1861, that Cameron had been to Springfield and had 
 returned with the proffer of a Cabinet portfolio, it immedi- 
 ately inspired the most aggressive opposition to his appoint- 
 ment. I was not in sympathy with Cameron, and promptly 
 telegraphed Lincoln, protesting against his appointment, to 
 which Lincoln answered urging me to come immediately 
 to Springfield. When I met Lincoln he frankly informed me 
 that on the last day of December he had given Cameron a 
 letter tendering to him a position in the Cabinet, reserving 
 the right to decide whether it should be that of Secretary of 
 the Treasury or Secretary of War. I explained to the Presi- 
 dent, with all the ardor of an intense partisan in the factional 
 feud, that the appointment of Cameron would be a misfor- 
 tune to the party in Pennsylvania, and a misfortune to the 
 President that he must soon realize after his inauguration. 
 It is needless now to review the causes which led to this active 
 and embittered hostility of the friends of Curtin to Cameron's 
 political advancement. It is sufficient to say that there was 
 persistent war between these elements, and the usual political 
 demoralization that ever attends such conflicts was painfully 
 visible from the factional battles of that time. I saw that 
 Lincoln was very much distressed at the situation in which 
 he had become involved, and he discussed every phase of 
 it with unusual frankness and obviously with profound feel- 
 ing. I did not then know that Lincoln had been pledged, 
 
 [146] 
 
without his knowledge, by his friends at Chicago to the ap- 
 pointment of Cameron, nor did Lincoln intimate it to me 
 during our conversation. After an hour or more of discussion 
 on the subject Lincoln dismissed it by saying that he would 
 advise me further within a very few days. 
 
 I left Lincoln conscious that I had seriously impressed 
 him with my views, but entirely unable to form any judg- 
 ment as to what might be his ultimate action. Although I 
 left him as late as eleven o'clock in the evening, he wrote 
 Cameron a private letter dated the same night, beginning 
 with this sentence: ''Since seeing you, things have developed 
 which make it impossible for me to take you into the Cabi- 
 net." He added: "You will say this comes from an interview 
 with McClure, and this is partly but not wholly true; the 
 more potent matter is wholly outside of Pennsylvania, yet I 
 am not at liberty to specify. Enough that it appears to me 
 to be sufficient." He followed with the suggestion that Came- 
 ron should write him declining the appointment, stating that 
 if the declination was forwarded he would "not object to its 
 being known that it was tendered" to him. He concluded by 
 saying: "No person living knows, or has an intimation, that 
 I write this letter," and with a postscript asking Cameron to 
 telegraph the words "All right." Lincoln also wrote me a 
 letter of a single sentence, dated the same night, asking that 
 the accusations against Cameron should be put in tangible 
 shape for his consideration. I am unable to quote literally 
 any of the correspondence with Lincoln on this subject, as 
 all of my many letters received from him, and the correspond- 
 ence relating to the campaign and the organization of the 
 administration, that I had preserved, were destroyed when 
 Chambersburg was burned by McCausland in 1864. I an- 
 swered Lincoln's very indefinite note by declining to appear 
 as an individual prosecutor of Cameron, and his request for 
 the formulation of Cameron's alleged political and personal 
 delinquencies was not complied with. 
 
 Lincoln's letter to Cameron tendering him the Cabinet 
 
 [147] 
 
appointment had been shown to some confidential friends 
 whose enthusiasm outstripped their discretion, and they made 
 public the fact that Cameron was an assured member of 
 the new Cabinet. The second letter from Lincoln to Cam- 
 eron, recalling the tender of a Cabinet office, was not made 
 public, and doubtless was never seen beyond a very small and 
 trusted circle of Cameron's associates; but it soon became 
 known that Lincoln regarded the question as unsettled, and 
 that led to exhaustive efforts on both sides to hinder and pro- 
 mote Cameron's appointment. Sanderson, who had made the 
 compact at Chicago with Davis for Cameron's appointment, 
 was sent at once to Springfield to enforce its fulfillment. He 
 reasonably complained that Lincoln's letter to Cameron re- 
 voking the appointment was offensively blunt and needed ex- 
 planation, as it gave no reason whatever for the sudden change 
 in his judgment. While Sanderson and other prominent Penn- 
 sylvanians who visited Lincoln about the same time failed to 
 obtain from him any assurance of his purpose to appoint 
 Cameron, Lincoln was prevailed upon on the 13th of Janu- 
 ary, ten days after he had written the letter revoking the 
 appointment, to write a confidential letter to Cameron apolo- 
 gizing for the unguarded terms in which he had expressed 
 himself, and giving the assurance that he ''intended no of- 
 fense." He also enclosed to Cameron a new letter, antedated 
 January 3, which he suggested that Cameron should accept as 
 the original of that date, and destroy or return the one that 
 had given offense. In this letter he said: "You have not as yet 
 signified to me whether you would accept the appointment, 
 and with much pain I now say to you that you will relieve 
 me from great embarrassment by allowing me to recall the 
 offer." The explanatory letter in which the antedated letter 
 was enclosed gave Cameron only this assurance as to Lincoln's 
 purpose: "If I should make a Cabinet appointment for Penn- 
 sylvania before I reach Washington, I will not do so without 
 consulting you and giving all the weight to your views and 
 wishes which I consistently can." None of these letters were 
 
 [148] 
 
made public by Cameron, but it was well understood that it 
 was an open fight for and against him, and Pennsylvania was 
 convulsed by that struggle from the 1st of January until the 
 Cabinet was announced after the inauguration of the Presi- 
 dent. 
 
 When Lincoln arrived in Washington the five members of 
 the Cabinet who had been positively chosen were Seward, 
 Bates, Chase, Welles, and Smith. The ten days he spent at the 
 Capital before becoming President were given up almost 
 wholly to a battle over the two remaining Cabinet portfolios. 
 The appointment of Cameron and Blair was not finally de- 
 termined until the day before the inauguration, and then the 
 Cameron issue was decided by the powerful intervention of 
 Seward and Weed. They were greatly disappointed that Cam- 
 eron had failed to deliver the Pennsylvania delegation to 
 Seward, as they had been led to expect, but they were intensely 
 embittered against Curtin because he and Lane had both 
 openly declared at Chicago that Seward's nomination would 
 mean their inevitable defeat. Looking back upon that contest 
 with the clearer insight that the lapse of thirty years must 
 give, I do not see how Lincoln could have done otherwise 
 than appoint Cameron as a member of his Cabinet, viewed 
 from the standpoint he had assumed. He desired to reconcile 
 party differences by calling his Presidential competitors 
 around him, and that opened the way for Cameron. He acted 
 with entire sincerity, and in addition to the powerful pressure 
 for Cameron's appointment made by many who were entitled 
 to respect, he felt that he was not free from the obligation 
 made in his name by Davis at Chicago to make Cameron a 
 member of his Cabinet. The appointment was not made 
 wholly for that reason, but that pledge probably resolved 
 Lincoln's doubts in Cameron's favor, and he was accepted as 
 Secretary of War. That there was some degree of mutual dis- 
 trust between Lincoln and Cameron was a necessity from the 
 circumstances surrounding the selection; but as there was no 
 very large measure of mutual trust between Lincoln and any 
 
 [149] 
 
of his Cabinet officers, Cameron's relations with the President 
 were little if any more strained than were the relations of his 
 brother constitutional advisers with their chief; and Cam- 
 eron's practical views in the grave emergency in which the 
 administration was placed were probably of more value to 
 Lincoln at times than were the counsels of most of the Cabi- 
 net. Every member had his own theory of meeting the ap- 
 palling crisis, from peaceable dismemberment of the Repub- 
 lic to aggressive war, while Lincoln had no policy but to 
 await events, and he counseled with all and trusted none. 
 Cameron entered the Cabinet, therefore, with about equal 
 opportunity among his associates to win and hold power with 
 the President, and his retirement within less than a year was 
 not due to any prejudices or apprehensions which may have 
 been created by the bitter struggle against his appointment. 
 Had the most capable, experienced, and upright man of 
 the nation been called to the head of the War Department 
 when Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861, it would have been 
 impossible for him to administer that office without flagrant 
 abuses. The government was entirely unprepared for war. It 
 was without armies, without guns, without munitions of war; 
 indeed, it had to improvise everything needed to meet an 
 already well-organized Confederate army. Contracts had to be 
 made with such haste as to forbid the exercise of sound dis- 
 cretion in obtaining what the country needed; and Cameron, 
 with his peculiar political surroundings, with a horde of 
 partisans clamoring for spoils, was compelled either to reject 
 the confident expectation of his friends or to submit to immi- 
 nent peril from the grossest abuse of his delegated authority. 
 He was soon brought under the severest criticism of leading 
 journals and statesmen of his own party, and Representative 
 Dawes led an investigation of the alleged abuses of the War 
 Department, which resulted in a scathing report against Cam- 
 eron's methods in administering the office, and a vote of 
 censure upon Cameron by the House. Lincoln promptly ex- 
 hibited the generous sense of justice that always characterized 
 
 [150] 
 
him by sending a special message to the House, exculpating 
 Cameron, because the acts for which he was criticised had not 
 been exclusively Cameron's, but were largely acts for which 
 the President and Cabinet were equally responsible. Some ten 
 years later the House expunged the resolution of censure. 
 Notwithstanding the message of Lincoln lessening the burden 
 of reproach cast upon Cameron by the House, popular dis- 
 trust was very general as to the administration of the War 
 Department, and the demands for Cameron's removal grew 
 in both power and intensity. He was not accused of individual 
 corruption, but the severe strain put upon the national credit 
 led to the severest criticisms of all manner of public prof- 
 ligacy, and it culminated in a formal appeal to the President 
 from leading financial men of the country for an immediate 
 change in the Minister of War. 
 
 I have no reason to believe that Lincoln would have ap- 
 pointed a new Secretary of War had not public considerations 
 made it imperative. His personal relations with Cameron 
 were as pleasant as his relations with any other of his Cabinet 
 officers, and in many respects Cameron was doubtless a valu- 
 able adviser because of his clear, practical, common-sense 
 views of public affairs. The one vital issue that Cameron very 
 early appreciated was that of slavery. As early as May, 1861, 
 he wrote to General Butler, instructing him to refrain from 
 surrendering to their masters any slaves who came within his 
 lines, and to employ them "in the services to which they may 
 be best adapted." That was the first step taken by the admin- 
 istration toward the overthrow of slavery. In August of the 
 same year General Fremont issued a proclamation in Missouri 
 declaring the slaves of all those in the Confederate service to 
 be for ever free, which was a substantial emancipation of all 
 slaves in Missouri. Lincoln at once revoked the Fremont 
 order, and sent Secretary Cameron and the Adjutant-General 
 to personally examine into the situation in Missouri and 
 report upon it. Cameron obviously sympathized with Fre- 
 mont's emancipation ideas, and, instead of delivering to 
 
 [151] 
 
Fremont the order for his removal prepared before he left 
 Washington, he finally decided to bring it back with him and 
 to give Fremont an opportunity to retrieve himself. Lincoln, 
 always patient, yielded to Fremont's importunities, and per- 
 mitted him to remain in command until October, when he 
 sent General Curtis in person to deliver the order of removal, 
 with the single condition that if Fremont "shall then have, 
 in personal command, fought and won a battle, or shall then 
 be actually in battle, or shall then be in the immediate pres- 
 ence of the enemy in expectation of a battle, it is not to be 
 delivered, but held for further orders." As Fremont was not 
 near a battle, he was relieved of his command. 
 
 Cameron pressed the slavery issue to the extent of a flagrant 
 outrage upon his chief by recommending the arming of slaves 
 in his first annual report without the knowledge of the Presi- 
 dent, and sending it out in printed form to the postmasters 
 of the country for delivery to the newspapers after having 
 been presented to Congress. The slavery question had then be- 
 come an important political theme, and politicians were 
 shaping their lines to get into harmony with it. In this report 
 Cameron declared in unqualified terms in favor of arming 
 the slaves for military service. Lincoln was not only shocked, 
 but greatly grieved when he learned the character of Came- 
 ron's recommendation, and he at once ordered that the 
 copies be recalled by telegraph, the report revised, and a 
 new edition printed. Cameron submitted as gracefully as 
 possible, and revised his report, limiting his recommendations 
 about slaves to the suggestion that they should not be returned 
 to their masters. While this episode did not produce un- 
 friendly personal relations between Lincoln and Cameron, it 
 certainly was a severe strain upon Lincoln's trust in the fidel- 
 ity of his War Minister; but Lincoln was too wise to put him- 
 self in open antagonism to the antislavery sentiment of the 
 country by removing Cameron for his offensive and sur- 
 reptitious antislavery report. The financial pressure for 
 Cameron's removal would probably have accomplished it 
 
 [152] 
 
under any circumstances, and Lincoln waited more than a 
 month after the flurry over Cameron's report. 
 
 There have been many and conflicting accounts given to 
 the public of Cameron's retirement from the Lincoln Cabinet, 
 no one of which is wholly correct, and most of them incorrect 
 in vital particulars. Cameron had verbally assured the Presi- 
 dent when censured by Congress, and again when the dispute 
 arose over his annual report, that his resignation was at Lin- 
 coln's disposal at any time, but he had no knowledge of Lin- 
 coln's purpose to make a change in the War Department until 
 he received Lincoln's letter in January, 1862, informing him 
 of the change. In Nicolay and Hays' life of Lincoln (volume 5, 
 page 128) is given what purports to be the letter delivered to 
 Cameron notifying him of the change. Lincoln certainly 
 wrote that letter, as his biographers have published it from 
 his manuscript, but it is not the letter that was delivered to 
 Cameron. Lincoln sent his letter to Cameron by Chase, who 
 met Cameron late in the evening after he had dined with 
 Colonel Forney, and he delivered the letter in entire igno- 
 rance of its contents. I happened to be spending the evening 
 with Colonel Thomas A. Scott, then Cameron's Assistant 
 Secretary of War, when Cameron came in near the midnight 
 hour and exhibited an extraordinary degree of emotion. He 
 laid the letter down upon Scott's table, and invited us both 
 to read it, saying that it meant personal as well as political 
 destruction, and was an irretrievable wrong committed upon 
 him by the President. We were not then, and indeed never 
 had been, in political sympathy, but our friendly personal 
 relations had never been interrupted. He appealed to me, 
 saying: "This is not a political affair; it means personal deg- 
 radation; and while we do not agree politically, you know I 
 would gladly aid you personally if it were in my power." 
 Cameron was affected even to tears, and wept bitterly over 
 what he regarded as a personal affront from Lincoln. I re- 
 member not only the substance of Lincoln's letter, but its 
 language, almost, if not quite, literally, as follows: "I have 
 
 [153] 
 
this day nominated Hon. Edwin M. Stanton to be Secretary 
 of War and you to be Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia." 
 Although the message did not go to the Senate that day, it 
 had been prepared and was sent in pursuance of that notice. 
 Colonel Scott, who was a man of great versatility of resources, 
 at once suggested that Lincoln did not intend personal offense 
 to Cameron, and in that I fully agreed; and it was then and 
 there arranged that on the following day Lincoln should be 
 asked to withdraw the offensive letter; to permit Cameron to 
 antedate a letter, of resignation, and for Lincoln to write a 
 kind acceptance of the same. The letter delivered by Chase 
 was recalled; a new correspondence was prepared, and a 
 month later given to the public. 
 
 Cameron had no knowledge or even suspicion of Stanton 
 succeeding him. Chase and Seward, as well as Cameron, have 
 claimed direct or indirect influence in the selection of Stan- 
 ton, but there was not a single member of the Cabinet who 
 knew of Stanton's appointment until Lincoln notified Cam- 
 eron of the change. Stanton had been in open, malignant 
 opposition to the administration only a few months before, 
 but he was then the closest friend and personal counselor 
 of General McClellan; was in hearty sympathy with the war; 
 was resolutely and aggressively honest; and Lincoln chose 
 him without consulting any, as far as I have ever been able 
 to learn, unless it was General McClellan. One of the many 
 good results he expected from Stanton as War Minister 
 was entire harmony between him and the general command- 
 ing the armies. 
 
 Cameron well concealed his disappointment at the manner 
 of his retirement from the Cabinet; wisely maintained per- 
 sonal relations with Lincoln; and when he returned from 
 Russia, after less than a year of service as minister, he re- 
 sumed active political life, and was one of the earliest of the 
 political leaders to foresee that the people would force the 
 renomination of Lincoln, regardless of the favor or disfavor 
 of politicians. The early movement in January, 1864, in 
 
 [154] 
 
which Curtin cordially co-operated, by which the unanimous 
 recommendation of the Republican members of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Legislature was given for Lincoln's renomination, was 
 suggested by Cameron; and Lincoln, with a sagacity that 
 never failed him, took the earliest opportunity to attach 
 Cameron so firmly to his cause that separation would be 
 impossible. His first movement in that line was the Cameron 
 mission to Fortress Monroe to ask Butler to accept the Vice- 
 Presidency. This was in March, 1864, and Cameron was one 
 of the very few whom Lincoln consulted about the Vice- 
 Presidency until he finally settled upon the nomination of 
 Johnson, in which Cameron reluctantly concurred, and he 
 went to the Baltimore convention as a delegate-at-large to 
 execute Lincoln's wishes. He became chairman of the Re- 
 publican State Committee in Pennsylvania, and doubtless 
 would have been in very close relations with the President 
 during his second term had Lincoln's life been spared. 
 
 I have written of Lincoln and Cameron with some hesi- 
 tation, because during the thirty years in which Cameron and 
 I were both more or less active in politics we never were in 
 political sympathy. He had retired from his first term of 
 senatorial service before I had become a voter, and was 
 thirty years my senior. He was then a Democrat and I a 
 Whig, and the political hostility continued when in later 
 years we were of the same political faith. He never was a 
 candidate with my support, nor was I ever a candidate with 
 his support, even when I was the unanimous nominee of our 
 party. We differed radically in political methods, and often in 
 bitterness, but our personal relations were never strained, 
 and on occasions he confided in me and received friendly 
 personal service that he warmly appreciated. We many times 
 had a truce to attain some common end, but it was never 
 misunderstood as anything more than a truce for the special 
 occasion. When he entered the Lincoln Cabinet he knew that 
 I would gladly have aided him to success, and we seldom met 
 without an hour or more of pleasant personal intercourse 
 
 [155] 
 
over a bottle of wine, the only stimulant he ever indulged in. 
 In 1873 he was elected to his fourth term to the Senate and I 
 was a State Senator. An effort was made by legislative mer- 
 cenaries to call into the field some man of large fortune as 
 his competitor. He called on me, stated the case, and appealed 
 to me to oppose the movement, as it was obviously dishonest. 
 It was expected that my opposition to Cameron would make 
 me willing to join any movement for his defeat; but I at once 
 assured him that, while I would not support his election, I 
 would earnestly oppose any effort to force him into the cor- 
 rupt conciliation of venal legislators. He thanked me, and 
 added: '*I can rely upon you, and I will now dismiss the 
 thieves without ceremony." The movement failed, and he 
 was elected by the united vote of his party, while I voted 
 for the late William D. Kelley. No man has so strongly im- 
 pressed his personality upon the politics of Pennsylvania as 
 has Simon Cameron, and the political power he organized 
 is as potent in the state to-day (1892) as at any time during 
 his life. He was one of the few men who voluntarily retired 
 from the Senate when he could have continued his service 
 during life. He survived his retirement a full dozen years; 
 his intercourse mellowed into the gentlest relations with 
 old-time friends and foes, and in the ripeness of more than 
 fourscore years and ten. 
 
 [156} 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 LINCOLN AND STANTON 
 
 Of all the men intimately connected with Abraham Lincohi 
 during our Civil War, Edwin M. Stanton presented the 
 strangest medley of individual attributes. He was a man of 
 whom two histories might be written as widely diverging as 
 night and day, portraying him as worthy of eminent praise 
 and as worthy of scorching censure, and yet both absolutely 
 true. His dominant quality was his heroic mould. He could 
 be heroic to a degree that seemed almost superhuman, and 
 yet at times submissive to the very verge of cowardice. Like 
 Lincoln, he fully trusted no man; but, unlike Lincoln, he 
 distrusted all, and I doubt whether any man prominently 
 connected with the government gave confidence to so few 
 as did Stanton. He in turn trusted and hated nearly every 
 general prominent in the early part of the war. He was Mc- 
 Clellan's closest personal friend and counselor when he en- 
 tered the Lincoln Cabinet, and later became McClellan's 
 most vindictive and vituperative foe. The one general of 
 the war who held his confidence without interruption from 
 the time he became Commander-in-Chief of the armies until 
 the close of the war was General Grant, and he literally com- 
 manded it by distinctly defining his independent attitude as 
 General-in-Chief when he accepted his commission as Lieu- 
 tenant-General. Stanton often spoke of, and to, public men, 
 military and civil, with a withering sneer. I have heard him 
 scores of times thus speak of Lincoln, and several times thus 
 speak to Lincoln. He was a man of extreme moods; often 
 
 [157] 
 
petulant, irritating, and senselessly unjust, and at times one 
 of the most amiable, genial, and delightful conversationalists 
 I have ever met. He loved antagonism, and there was hardly 
 a period during his remarkable service as war minister in 
 which he was not, on some more or less important point, in 
 positive antagonism with the President. In his antagonisms 
 he was, as a rule, offensively despotic, and often pressed them 
 upon Lincoln to the very utmost point of Lincoln's forbear- 
 ance; but he knew when to call a halt upon himself, as he 
 well knew that there never was a day or an hour during his 
 service in the Cabinet that Lincoln was not his absolute 
 master. He respected Lincoln's authority because it was 
 greater than his own, but he had little respect for Lincoln's 
 fitness for the responsible duties of the Presidency. I have 
 seen him at times as tender and gentle as a woman, his heart 
 seeming to agonize over the sorrows of the humblest; and I 
 have seen him many more times turn away with the haughti- 
 est contempt from appeals which should at least have been 
 treated with respect. He had few personal and fewer political 
 friends, and he seemed proud of the fact that he had more 
 personal and political enemies than any prominent officer of 
 the government. Senators, Representatives, and high military 
 commanders were often offended by his wanton arrogance, 
 and again thawed into cordial relations by his effusive kind- 
 ness. Taken all in all, Edwin M. Stanton was capable of the 
 grandest and the meanest actions of any great man I have 
 ever known, and he has reared imperishable monuments to 
 the opposing qualities he possessed. 
 
 Stanton had rendered an incalculable service to the nation 
 by his patriotic efforts in the Cabinet of Buchanan. Lewis 
 Cass had resigned from the Premiership (Secretary of State) 
 because he was much more aggressive in his ideas of meeting 
 rebellion than was the President. Attorney-General Jeremiah 
 S. Black was promoted to the head of the Cabinet, and Stan- 
 ton was called in as Black's successor. It was Judge Black 
 who saved Buchanan's administration from sudden and ir- 
 
 [158} 
 
retrievable wreck at the outset of the issue, and he doubtless 
 dictated the appointment of Stanton, who was his close 
 personal friend. From the time that Stanton entered the 
 Buchanan Cabinet the attitude of the administration was so 
 pointedly changed that none could mistake it. He was posi- 
 tively and aggressively loyal to the government, and as posi- 
 tively and aggressively hated rebellion. While Stanton and 
 Black generally acted in concert during the few remaining 
 months of the Buchanan administration, they became seri- 
 ously estranged before the close of the Lincoln administration 
 —so much so that Black, in an article published in the 
 Galaxy of June, 1870, said of Stanton: "Did he accept the 
 confidence of the President (Buchanan) and the Cabinet 
 with a predetermined intent to betray it?" After Stanton's 
 retirement from the Buchanan Cabinet when Lincoln was 
 inaugurated, he maintained the closest confidential relations 
 with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters expressing the 
 utmost contempt for Lincoln, the Cabinet, the Republican 
 Congress, and the general policy of the administration. These 
 letters, given to the public in Curtis's life of Buchanan, speak 
 freely of the ''painful imbecility of Lincoln," of the "venality 
 and corruption" which ran riot in the government, and ex- 
 pressed the belief that no better condition of things was pos- 
 sible "until Jeff Davis turns out the whole concern." He was 
 firmly impressed for some weeks after the battle of Bull Run 
 that the government was utterly overthrown, as he repeatedly 
 refers to the coming of Davis into the national capital. In one 
 letter he says that "in less than thirty days Davis will be in 
 possession of Washington;" and it is an open secret that Stan- 
 ton advised the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln gov- 
 ernment, to be replaced by General McClellan as military 
 dictator. 
 
 These letters published by Curtis, bad as they are, are not 
 the worst letters written by Stanton to Buchanan. Some of 
 them were so violent in their expressions against Lincoln and 
 the administration that they have been charitably withheld 
 
 [159] 
 
from the public, but they remain in the possession of the sur- 
 viving relatives of President Buchanan. Of course, Lincoln 
 had no knowledge of the bitterness exhibited by Stanton to 
 himself personally and to his administration, but if he had 
 known the worst that Stanton ever said or wrote about him, 
 I doubt not that he would have called him to the Cabinet in 
 January, 1862. The disasters the army suffered made Lincoln 
 forgetful of everything but the single duty of suppressing the 
 rebellion. From the day that McClellan was called to the 
 command of the Army of the Potomac in place of McDowell, 
 Stanton was in enthusiastic accord with the military policy of 
 the government. The constant irritation between the War 
 Department and military commanders that had vexed Lin- 
 coln in the early part of the war made him anxious to obtain 
 a war minister who was not only resolutely honest, but who 
 was in close touch with the commander of the armies. This 
 necessity, with the patriotic record that Stanton had made 
 during the closing months of the Buchanan administration, 
 obviously dictated the appointment of Stanton. It was Lin- 
 coln's own act. Stanton had been discussed as a possible suc- 
 cessor to Cameron along with many others in outside circles, 
 but no one had any reason to anticipate Stanton's appoint- 
 ment from any intimation given by the President. Lincoln 
 and Stanton had no personal intercourse whatever from the 
 time of Lincoln's inauguration until Stanton became his war 
 minister. In a letter to Buchanan, written March 1, 1862, 
 Stanton says: "My accession to my present position was quite 
 as sudden and unexpected as the confidence you bestowed 
 upon me in calling me to your Cabinet." In another letter, 
 written on the 18th of May, 1862, he said: "I hold my present 
 position at the request of the President, who knew me per- 
 sonally, but to whom I had not spoken from the 4th of March, 
 1861, until the day he handed me my commission." The ap- 
 pointment was made because Lincoln believed that Stanton's 
 loyal record in the Buchanan Cabinet and his prominence as 
 the foe of every form of jobbery would inspire the highest 
 
 [160] 
 
degree of confidence in that department throughout the entire 
 country. In that he judged correctly. From the day that he 
 entered the War Office until the surrender of the Confederate 
 armies, Stanton, with all his vagaries and infirmities, gave 
 constant inspiration to the loyal sentiment of the country, 
 and rendered a service that probably only Edwin M. Stanton 
 could have rendered at the time. 
 
 Lincoln was not long in discovering that in his new Secre- 
 tary of War he had an invaluable but most troublesome 
 Cabinet officer, but he saw only the great and good offices that 
 Stanton was performing for the imperiled Republic. Confi- 
 dence was restored in financial circles by the appointment of 
 Stanton, and his name as war minister did more to strengthen 
 the faith of the people in the government credit than would 
 have been probable from the appointment of any other man 
 of that day. He was a terror to all the hordes of jobbers and 
 speculators and camp-followers whose appetites had been 
 whetted by a great war, and he enforced the strictest discipline 
 throughout our armies. He was seldom capable of being civil 
 to any officer away from the army on leave of absence unless 
 he had been summoned by the government for conference or 
 special duty, and he issued the strictest orders from time to 
 time to drive the throng of military idlers from the capital 
 and keep them at their posts. He was stern to savagery in his 
 enforcement of military law. The wearied sentinel who slept 
 at his post found no mercy in the heart of Stanton, and many 
 times did Lincoln's humanity overrule his fiery minister. Any 
 neglect of military duty was sure of the swiftest punishment, 
 and seldom did he make even just allowance for inevitable 
 military disaster. He had profound, unfaltering faith in the 
 Union cause, and, above all, he had unfaltering faith in him- 
 self. He believed that he was in all things except in name 
 Commander-in-Chief of the armies and the navy of the na- 
 tion, and it was with unconcealed reluctance that he at times 
 deferred to the authority of the President. He was a great 
 organizer in theory, and harsh to the utmost in enforcing his 
 
 [161] 
 
theories upon military commanders. He at times conceived 
 impossible things, and peremptorily ordered them executed, 
 and woe to the man who was unfortunate enough to demon- 
 strate that Stanton was wrong. If he escaped without disgrace 
 he was more than fortunate, and many, very many, would 
 have thus fallen unjustly had it not been for Lincoln's cau- 
 tious and generous interposition to save those who were wan- 
 tonly censured. He would not throw the blame upon Stanton, 
 but he would save the victim of Stanton's injustice, and he 
 always did it so kindly that even Stanton could not complain 
 beyond a churlish growl. 
 
 Stanton understood the magnitude of the rebellion, and 
 he understood also that an army to be effective must be com- 
 pletely organized in all its departments. He had no favorites 
 to promote at the expense of the public service, and his con- 
 stant and honest aim was to secure the best men for every 
 important position. As I have said, he assumed, in his own 
 mind, that he was Commander-in-Chief, and there was noth- 
 ing in military movements, or in the quartermaster, commis- 
 sary, hospital, secret service, or any other department relating 
 to the war, that he did not claim to comprehend and seek to 
 control in his absolute way. I doubt whether his partiality 
 ever unjustly promoted a military officer, and I wish that I 
 could say that his prejudices had never hindered the promo- 
 tion or driven from the service faithful and competent mili- 
 tary commanders. His hatreds were intense, implacable, and 
 yielded to the single authority of Lincoln, and that authority 
 he knew would be exercised only in extreme emergencies. 
 The effect of such a war minister was to enforce devotion to 
 duty throughout the entire army, and it is impossible to 
 measure the beneficent results of Stanton's policy in our vast 
 military campaigns. Great as he was in the practical admin- 
 istration of his office that could be visible to the world, he 
 added immeasurably to his greatness as war minister by the 
 impress of his wonderful personality upon the whole military 
 and civil service. 
 
 [162} 
 
Stanton's intense and irrepressible hatreds were his great- 
 est infirmity and did much to deform his brilliant record as 
 war minister. A pointed illustration of his bitter and un- 
 reasonable prejudices was given in the case of Jere McKibben, 
 whom he arbitrarily confined in Old Capitol Prison without 
 even the semblance of a pretext to excuse the act. The Con- 
 stitution of Pennsylvania had been so amended during the 
 summer of 1864 as to authorize soldiers to vote in the field. 
 The Legislature was called in extra session to provide for 
 holding elections in the army. It was in the heat of the Presi- 
 dential contest and party bitterness was intensified to the 
 uttermost. Despite the earnest appeals of Governor Curtin 
 and all my personal importunities with prominent legislators 
 of our own party, an election law was passed that was obvi- 
 ously intended to give the minority no rights whatever in 
 holding army elections. The governor was empowered to 
 appoint State Commissioners, who were authorized to attend 
 the elections without any direct authority in conducting 
 them. As the law was violent in its character and liable to the 
 grossest abuses, without any means to restrain election frauds, 
 the Democrats of the state and country justly complained of 
 it with great earnestness. The governor decided, as a matter 
 of justice to the Democrats, to appoint several Democratic 
 commissioners, but it was with difficulty that any could be 
 prevailed upon to accept. He requested me to see several 
 prominent Democrats and obtain their consent to receive his 
 commission and act under it. As McKibben had three broth- 
 ers in the Army of the Potomac, I supposed it would be 
 pleasant for him to make a visit there in an official way, and 
 I suggested it to him. He promptly answered: "Why, Stanton 
 would put me in Old Capitol Prison before I was there a day. 
 He hates our family for no other reason that I know of than 
 that my father was one of his best friends in Pittsburgh when 
 he needed a friend." I assured him that Stanton would not 
 attempt any violence against a man who held the commission 
 of the governor of our state, and he finally consented to go, 
 
 [163] 
 
having first solemnly pledged me to protect him in case he 
 got into any difficulty. 
 
 McKibben and the other commissioners from Philadelphia 
 were furnished the election papers and started down to the 
 army, then quietly resting on the James River. On the second 
 day after he left I received a telegram from him dated Wash- 
 ington, saying: "Stanton has me in Old Capitol Prison; come 
 at once." I hastened to Washington, having telegraphed to 
 Lincoln to allow me to see him between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock that night, when I should arrive. I went direct to the 
 White House and told the President the exact truth. I ex- 
 plained the character of the law of our state; that I had per- 
 sonally prevailed upon McKibben to go as a commissioner to 
 give a semblance of decency to its execution; that he was not 
 only guiltless of any offense, as he knew how delicately he was 
 situated, but that he was powerless to do any wrong, and I 
 insisted upon McKibben's immediate discharge from prison. 
 Lincoln knew of Stanton's hatred for the McKibbens, as he 
 had been compelled to protect four of McKibben's brothers 
 to give them the promotion they had earned by most heroic 
 conduct in battle, and he was much distressed at Stanton's 
 act. He sent immediately to the War Department to get the 
 charge against McKibben, and it did not require five minutes 
 of examination to satisfy him that it was utterly groundless 
 and a malicious wrong committed by Stanton. He said it was 
 a "stupid blunder," and at once proposed to discharge Mc- 
 Kibben on his parole. I urged that he should be discharged 
 unconditionally, but Lincoln's caution prevented that. He 
 said: "It seems hardly fair to discharge McKibben uncondi- 
 tionally without permitting Stanton to give his explanation;" 
 and he added, "You know, McClure, McKibben is safe, parole 
 or no parole, so go and get him out of prison." I saw that it 
 would be useless to attempt to change Lincoln's purpose, but 
 I asked him to fix an hour the next morning when I could 
 meet Stanton in his presence to have McKibben discharged 
 from his parole. He fixed ten o'clock the next morning for 
 
 [164] 
 
the meeting, and then wrote, in his own hand, the order for 
 McKibben's discharge, which I hurriedly bore to Old Capitol 
 Prison and had him released. 
 
 Promptly at ten o'clock the next morning I went to the 
 White House to obtain McKibben's discharge from his parole. 
 Lincoln was alone, but Stanton came in a few minutes later. 
 He was pale with anger and his first expression was: "Well, 
 McClure, what damned rebel are you here to get out of 
 trouble this morning?" I had frequently been to Washington 
 before when arbitrary and entirely unjustifiable arrests of 
 civilians had been made in Pennsylvania, to have the prison- 
 ers discharged from military custody; and as I had never ap- 
 plied in such a case without good reason, and never without 
 success even when opposed by Stanton, he evidently meant to 
 square up some old accounts with me over McKibben. I said 
 to him and with some feeling: "Your arrest of McKibben 
 was a cowardly act; you knew McKibben was guiltless of any 
 offense, and you did it to gratify a brutal hatred." I told him 
 also that I had prevailed upon McKibben, against his judg- 
 ment, to act as a State Commissioner to give a semblance of 
 decency to what would evidently be a farcical and fraudulent 
 election in the army, and that if he had examined the com- 
 plaint soberly for one minute, he would have seen that it was 
 utterly false. I told him that I had requested his appearance 
 there with the President to have McKibben discharged from 
 his parole, and that I now asked him to assent to it. He turned 
 from me, walked hurriedly back and forth across the room 
 several times before he answered, and then he came up to me 
 and in a voice tremulous with passion said: "I decline to 
 discharge McKibben from his parole. You can make formal 
 application for it if you choose, and I will consider and de- 
 cide it." His manner was as offensive as it was possible even 
 for Stanton to make it, and I resented it by saying: "I don't 
 know what McKibben will do, but if I were Jere McKibben, 
 as sure as there is a God I would crop your ears before I left 
 Washington." He made no reply, but suddenly whirled 
 
 [165] 
 
around on his heel and walked out of the President's room. 
 Lincoln had said nothing. He was used to such ebullitions 
 from Stanton, and after the Secretary had gone he remarked 
 in a jocular way, "Well, McClure, you didn't get on very far 
 with Stanton, did you? but he'll come all right; let the matter 
 rest." Before leaving the President's room I wrote out a for- 
 mal application to Stanton for the discharge of McKibben 
 from his parole. Several days after I received a huge official 
 envelope enclosing a letter, all in Stanton's bold scrawl, say- 
 ing that the request for the discharge of Jere McKibben from 
 his parole had been duly considered, and "the application 
 could not be granted consistently with the interests of the 
 public service." McKibben outlived Stanton, but died a pris- 
 oner on parole. 
 
 After such a turbulent interview with Stanton it would 
 naturally be supposed that our intercourse thereafter would 
 be severely strained, if not wholly interrupted; but I had oc- 
 casion to call at the War Department within a few weeks, and 
 never was greeted more cordially in my life than I was by 
 Stanton. The election was over, the military power of the 
 Confederacy was obviously broken, and the Secretary was in 
 the very best of spirits. He promptly granted what I wanted 
 done, which was not a matter of much importance, and it 
 was so cheerfully and generously assented to that I carefully 
 thought of everything that I wanted from his department- all 
 of which was done in a most gracious manner. I puzzled my 
 brain to make sure I should not forget anything, and it finally 
 occurred to me that a friend I much desired to serve had lately 
 appealed to me to aid in obtaining promotion for a young 
 officer in the quartermaster's department whom I did not 
 know personally. It seemed that this was the chance for the 
 young officer. I suggested to Stanton that Quartermaster 
 
 was reputed to be a very faithful and efficient officer, 
 
 and entitled to higher promotion than he had received. Stan- 
 ton picked up his pen, saying: "It will give me great pleasure, 
 sir; what is his name?" I had to answer that I could not recall 
 
 [166] 
 
his name in full, but he took down the officer's rank and last 
 name and assured me that he would be promptly promoted. 
 I supposed that a change of mood would make him forgetful 
 of this promise; but the young quartermaster wore new 
 shoulder-straps within ten days, and won distinction as the 
 chief of his department in large independent army move- 
 ments in Virginia. I never had the pleasure of meeting the 
 worthy officer who thus unexpectedly secured his promotion, 
 and he is doubtless ignorant to this day of the peculiar way 
 in which it was accomplished. 
 
 Stanton's hatred for McClellan became a consuming pas- 
 sion before the close of the Peninsular campaign. When 
 McClellan was before Yorktown and complaining of his in- 
 adequate forces to march upon Richmond, Stanton summed 
 him up in the following expression: "If he (McClellan) had 
 a million men, he would swear the enemy had two millions, 
 and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three." 
 He was impatient and often fearfully petulant in his impa- 
 tience. He was disappointed in McClellan not marching di- 
 rectly upon Richmond by Manassas, and he was greatly dis- 
 appointed again when McClellan laid siege to Yorktown, but 
 he was ever ready to congratulate, in his blunt way, when 
 anything was accomplished. When General "Baldy" Smith 
 made a reconnoissance at Yorktown that produced the first 
 successful results of that campaign, Stanton answered Mc- 
 Clellan's announcement of the movement: "Good for the first 
 lick; hurrah for Smith and the one-gun battery!" but from 
 that time until the withdrawal of the army from the Penin- 
 sula, Stanton never found occasion to commend McClellan, 
 and McClellan was a constant bone of contention between 
 Stanton and Lincoln. Lincoln's patience and forbearance were 
 marked in contrast with Stanton's violence of temper and 
 intensity of hatred. McClellan so far forgot himself as to tele- 
 graph to Stanton after the retreat to the James River: "If I 
 save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks 
 to you or to any other person in Washington. You have done 
 
 [167] 
 
your best to sacrifice this army." Any other President than 
 Lincoln would have immediately relieved McClellan of his 
 command, and Stanton not only would have relieved him, but 
 would have dismissed him from the service. Lincoln exhibited 
 no resentment whatever for the ill-advised and insubordinate 
 telegram from McClellan. On the contrary, he seemed in- 
 clined to continue McClellan in command, and certainly 
 exhibited every desire to sustain him to the utmost. In a letter 
 addressed to the Secretary of State on the same day that Mc- 
 Clellan's telegram was received he expressed his purpose to 
 call for additional troops, and said: "I expect to maintain 
 this contest until successful, or till I die, or I am conquered, 
 or my term expires, or Congress or the country forsakes me." 
 This was one of the most perplexing situations in which 
 Lincoln was ever placed. The defeat of the army would not, 
 in itself, have been so serious had Lincoln been able to turn 
 to commanders in whom he could implicitly confide. He had 
 abundant resources and could supply all needed additional 
 troops, but where could he turn for safe advice? He had, to 
 a very large extent, lost faith in McClellan. When he coun- 
 seled with Stanton he encountered insuperable hatreds, and 
 he finally, as was his custom, decided upon his own course of 
 action and hurried off to West Point to confer with General 
 Scott. His visit to West Point startled the country and quite 
 as much startled the Cabinet, as not a single member of it had 
 any intimation of his intended journey. What passed at the 
 interview between Lincoln and Scott was never known to 
 any, so far as I have been able to learn, and I believe that no 
 one has pretended to have had knowledge of it. It is enough 
 to know that Pope was summoned to the command of a new 
 army, called the Army of Virginia, embracing the commands 
 of Fremont, Banks, and McDowell, and that Halleck was 
 made General-in-Chief. The aggressive campaign of Lee, re- 
 sulting in the second battle of Bull Run and the utter defeat 
 of Pope, brought the army back into the Washington in- 
 trenchments in a most demoralized condition. It was here that 
 
 [168] 
 
Lincoln and Stanton came into conflict again on the question 
 of the restoration of McClellan to command. Without con- 
 sulting either the General-in-Chief or his war minister, Lin- 
 coln assigned McClellan to the command of the defenses of 
 Washington, and as the various commands of Pope's broken 
 and demoralized army came back into the intrenchments in 
 utter confusion they thereby came again under the command 
 of McClellan. 
 
 When it was discovered that McClellan was thus practically 
 in command of the Army of the Potomac again, Stanton was 
 aroused to the fiercest hostility. He went so far as to prepare 
 a remonstrance to the President in writing against McClel- 
 lan's continuance in the command of that army or of any 
 army of the Union. This remonstrance was not only signed 
 by Stanton, but by Chase, Bates, and Smith, with the concur- 
 rence of Welles, who thought it indelicate for him to sign it. 
 After the paper had been prepared under Stanton's impetu- 
 ous lead, some of the more considerate members of the Cabi- 
 net who had joined him took pause to reflect that Lincoln 
 was in the habit not only of having his own way, but of having 
 his own way of having his own way, and the protest was never 
 presented. Lincoln knew McClellan's great organizing pow- 
 ers, and he knew the army needed first of all a commander 
 who was capable of restoring it to discipline. To use his own 
 expressive language about the emergency, he believed that 
 "there is no one in the army who can command the fortifica- 
 tions and lick those troops of ours into shape one-half as well 
 as he could." It was this conviction that made Lincoln forget 
 all of McClellan's failings and restore him to command, and 
 Stanton was compelled to submit in sullen silence. 
 
 Lincoln's restoration of McClellan to command in disre- 
 gard of the most violent opposition of Stanton was only one 
 of the many instances in which he and his war minister 
 came into direct and positive conflict, and always with the 
 same result; but many times as Stanton was vanquished in his 
 conflicts with Lincoln, it was not in his nature to be any the 
 
 [169] 
 
less Edwin M. Stanton. As late as 1864 he had one of his most 
 serious disputes with Lincoln, in which he peremptorily re- 
 fused to obey an order from the President directing that cer- 
 tain prisoners of war, who expressed a desire to take the oath 
 of allegiance and enter the Union army, should be mustered 
 into the service and credited to the quotas of certain districts. 
 An exact account of this dispute is preserved by Provost- 
 Marshal General Fry, who was charged with the execution of 
 the order, and who was present when Lincoln and Stanton 
 discussed it. Stanton positively refused to obey the order, and 
 said to Lincoln: *'You must see that your order cannot be 
 executed." Lincoln answered with an unusually peremptory 
 tone for him: "Mr. Secretary, I reckon you'll have to execute 
 the order." Stanton replied in his imperious way: "Mr. Presi- 
 dent, I cannot do it; the order is an improper one, and I can- 
 not execute it." To this Lincoln replied in a manner that 
 forbade all further dispute: "Mr. Secretary, it will have to 
 be done." A few minutes thereafter, as stated by Provost- 
 Marshal General Fry in a communication to the New York 
 Tribune several years later, Stanton issued instructions to him 
 for the execution of the President's order. 
 
 Notwithstanding the many and often irritating conflicts 
 that Lincoln had with Stanton, there never was an hour 
 during Stanton's term as war minister that Lincoln thought 
 of removing him. Indeed, I believe that at no period during 
 the war, after Stanton had entered the Cabinet, did Lincoln 
 feel that any other man could fill Stanton's place with equal 
 usefulness to the country. He had the most unbounded faith 
 in Stanton's loyalty and in his public and private integrity. 
 He was in hearty sympathy with Stanton's aggressive earnest- 
 ness for the prosecution of the war, and at times hesitated, 
 even to the extent of what he feared was individual injustice, 
 to restrain Stanton's violent assaults upon others. It will be 
 regretted by the impartial historian of the future that Stanton 
 was capable of impressing his intense hatred so conspicuously 
 upon the annals of the country, and that Lincoln, in several 
 
 [170] 
 
memorable instances, failed to reverse his war minister when 
 he had grave doubts as to the wisdom or justice of his methods. 
 It was Stanton's fierce resentment that made just verdicts 
 impossible in some military trials which will ever be historic 
 —notably, the unjust verdict depriving Fitz John Porter at 
 once of his commission and citizenship, and the now admit- 
 tedly unjust verdict that sent Mrs. Surratt to the gallows. 
 Lincoln long hesitated before giving his assent to the judg- 
 ment against Porter, as is clearly shown by the fact that, with 
 Pope's accusations against Porter fresh before him, he assented 
 to McClellan's request and assigned Porter to active com- 
 mand in the Antietam campaign, and personally thanked 
 Porter on the Antietam field, after the battle, for his services. 
 Another enduring monument of Stanton's resentment is the 
 Arlington National Cemetery. The home of Lee was taken 
 under the feeblest color of law that Stanton well knew could 
 not be maintained, and the buildings surrounded with graves 
 even to the very door of the venerable mansion, so that it 
 might never be reclaimed as the home of the Confederate 
 chieftain. The government made restitution to the Lees in 
 obedience to the decision of its highest court, but the monu- 
 ment of hate is imperishable. 
 
 Soon after the surrender of Lee, Stanton, severely broken 
 in health by the exacting duties he had performed, tendered 
 his resignation, believing that his great work was finished. 
 Lincoln earnestly desired him to remain, and he did so. The 
 assassination of Lincoln called him to even graver duties than 
 had before confronted him. His bitter conflict with Johnson 
 and his violent issue with Sherman stand out as exceptionally 
 interesting chapters of the history of the war. It was President 
 Johnson's attempted removal of Stanton in violation of the 
 Tenure-of-Office Act that led to the President's impeachment, 
 and Stanton persisted in holding his Cabinet office until 
 Johnson was acquitted by the Senate, when he resigned and 
 was succeeded by General Schofield on the 2d of June, 1868. 
 After his retirement Stanton never exhibited any great de- 
 
 [171] 
 
gree of either physical or mental vigor. I last saw him in Phila- 
 delphia in the fall of 1868, where he came in answer to a spe- 
 cial invitation from the Union League to deliver a political 
 address in the Academy of Music in favor of Grant's election 
 to the Presidency. I called on him at his hotel and found him 
 very feeble, suffering greatly from asthmatic disorders, and in 
 his public address he was often strangely forgetful of facts 
 and names, and had to be prompted by gentlemen on the 
 stage. It may be said of Stanton that he sacrificed the vigor of 
 his life to the service of his country in the sorest trial of its 
 history, and when President Grant nominated him as Justice 
 of the Supreme Court, on the 20th of December, 1869, all 
 knew that it was an empty honor, as he was both physically 
 and mentally unequal to the new duties assigned to him. Four 
 days thereafter Edwin M. Stanton died. 
 
 [172] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND McCLELLAN 
 
 Not until all the lingering personal, political, and military 
 passions of the war shall have perished can the impartial 
 historian tell the true story of Abraham Lincoln's relations 
 to George B. McClellan, nor will the just estimate of Mc- 
 Clellan as a military chieftain be recorded until the future 
 historian comes to his task entirely free from the prejudices of 
 the present. Although more than a quarter of a century has 
 elapsed since the close of the war, and countless contributions 
 have been given to the history of that conflict from every 
 shade of conviction that survived it, McClellan's ability as a 
 military commander and the correctness of Lincoln's action 
 in calling him to command and in dismissing him from com- 
 mand, are as earnestly disputed to-day as they were in the 
 white heat of the personal and political conflicts of the time. 
 Notwithstanding the bitter partisan assaults which have been 
 made upon McClellan in the violence of party struggles, at 
 times impugning his skill, his courage, and his patriotism, it 
 is safe to say that fair-minded men of every political faith now 
 testify to the absolute purity of his patriotism, to his excep- 
 tional skill as a military organizer, and to his courage as a 
 commander. I knew McClellan well, and I believe that no 
 reasonable just man could have known him without yielding 
 to him the highest measure of personal respect. He was one 
 of the most excellent and lovable characters I have ever met, 
 and that he was patriotic in everything that he did, however 
 he may have erred, and that he would have given his life as 
 
 [173] 
 
a sacrifice to his army or his country had duty required it, 
 will not be doubted within the circle of his personal asso- 
 ciations. I saw him frequently after he came to Washington 
 heralded as the "Young Napoleon," to perform the herculean 
 task of organizing the best army that ever was organized in 
 any country within the same period of time. I saw him when 
 he started upon his Peninsula campaign with the hope of 
 victory beaming from his bright young face, and I stood close 
 by his side most of the day when he fought his last battle at 
 Antietam. Only a few months thereafter he was finally re- 
 lieved from his command, and his military career ended on 
 November 5, 1862, when, by order of the President, he trans- 
 ferred his army to General Burnside and went to Trenton, 
 New Jersey, "for further orders." The "further orders" never 
 came until Presidential election day, 1864, when McClellan 
 resigned his commission as major-general in the army and 
 Sheridan was appointed to his place. 
 
 Both Lincoln and McClellan now live only in history, 
 and history will judge them by their achievements as it has 
 judged all mankind. Lincoln was a successful President, and, 
 like the great Roman Germanicus, "fortunate in the oppor- 
 tunity of his death." McClellan was an unsuccessful general 
 and a defeated politician. Such will be the imperishable 
 records of history as to these two men; but even the next 
 generation will see continued disputation as to McClellan's 
 capabilities as a commander, and Lincoln will be censured 
 alike for having maintained and supported McClellan as a 
 military leader, and for having failed to appreciate and sup- 
 port him after having called him to responsible command. 
 None the less, however, will be the irrevocable judgment of 
 history that Lincoln succeeded and that McClellan failed. But 
 why did McClellan fail as a military commander? The an- 
 swer of his devoted partisans is that he was deliberately 
 hindered and embarrassed in every military movement, and 
 that he would have achieved great success had he been sup- 
 ported as the more successful generals later in the war were 
 
 [174] 
 
supported by the government. To this comes the response 
 from the friends of Lincoln that he earnestly and heartily 
 seconded McClellan to the utmost of his resources; that he 
 long confided in him when the confidence of his friends had 
 been greatly shattered; that he reappointed him to command 
 against his Cabinet and against the general sentiment of his 
 party leaders; and that whatever failures were suffered by 
 McClellan were the result of his own incompetency or of the 
 inability of the government to meet his wants. 
 
 It is unjust to McClellan to judge him by the same standard 
 that is applied to the successful generals who succeeded him. 
 I believe that it was McClellan's greatest misfortune that he 
 was suddenly called to the dazzling position of Commander- 
 in-Chief when he was a comparative novice in great war 
 operations and without the experience necessary to make a 
 great commander. I believe that the 23d of April, 1861, was 
 the fateful day that dated the beginning of McClellan's mis- 
 fortunes. He was then in Cincinnati, in charge of one of the 
 railroads connected with that city. Pennsylvania troops were 
 then being organized by Governor Curtin, and he was in 
 search of a Pennsylvanian of military education and attain- 
 ments to be placed in command. He first offered the position 
 to McClellan, who promptly arranged his business to go to 
 Harrisburg in person with the view of accepting it. By special 
 request he stopped at Columbus on his way to Harrisburg to 
 confer with Governor Dennison on some military problems 
 which were vexing the governor of Ohio. He expected to re- 
 main at Columbus only a few hours and then proceed to 
 Pennsylvania. While in conference with Governor Dennison 
 he was tendered the commission of major-general command- 
 ing the volunteers of Ohio, although ineligible because of 
 his want of residence in that state. The difficulty was ob- 
 viated by both branches of the Legislature passing, in a few 
 hours, a bill making him eligible, and on the same 23d of 
 April, 1861, he was commissioned as major-general and 
 assigned to the command of the Ohio State troops. This led 
 
 [175] 
 
to his skirmishes in West Virginia, which in that day were 
 magnified into great battles and great victories, and, when it 
 became necessary to select a successor to Scott as Commander- 
 in-Chief, McClellan was the only general whose victories had 
 attracted the attention of the nation. He was thus called to 
 the responsible position of Commander-in-Chief when a little 
 over thirty years of age, with no experience in war beyond a 
 brief campaign in Mexico, and without the training necessary 
 to enable him to comprehend the most colossal war of modern 
 times. Had he accepted the command of the Pennsylvania 
 troops he would doubtless have made them the best disci- 
 plined and most effective division of the Army of the 
 Potomac, would have fought them wisely and gallantly in 
 every conflict, and would have won distinction as a com- 
 mander with the experience that would have enabled him to 
 maintain it. Instead of floundering along in untrodden paths 
 and committing errors for others to profit by, he would have 
 seen others charged with the gravest responsibility that could 
 be assigned to any military man, would have seen them 
 blunder and fall, and would have been ripened, by his own 
 experience and by the misfortunes of his superiors, for the 
 command that he won so suddenly and twice lost by order of 
 a President who sincerely desired to be McClellan's friend 
 and to give him success. 
 
 McClellan's fundamental error, and the one that I believe 
 was the fountain of most, if not all, his misfortunes, was in 
 his assumption not only that Lincoln and the government 
 generally were unfriendly to him when he started out on his 
 spring campaign of 1862, but that they deliberately conspired 
 to prevent him from achieving military success.* This was a 
 fatal error, and it was certainly most unjust to Lincoln. If Mc- 
 
 * Don't worry about the wretches in Washington. They have done nearly 
 their worst, and can't do much more. I am sure that I will win in the end, in 
 spite of all their rascality. History will present a sad record of these traitors, 
 who are willing to sacrifice the country and its army for personal spite and 
 personal aims. The people will soon understand the whole matter.— Gen. Mc- 
 Clellan's Letter to his wife, dated Yorktown, April 11, 1862, in McClellan's 
 Own Story, page 310. 
 
 [176] 
 
Clellan really believed that the government had pre- 
 determined his military failure or if he seriously doubted its 
 fidelity, it exhibited moral cowardice on his part to march 
 an army into hopeless battle. He might have believed the 
 President, the Secretary of War, and the administration 
 generally to have been unfriendly to him, and yet, relying 
 upon his ability to win their confidence by winning victory, 
 he could have retained his command with justice to himself 
 and to the country; but his own statements show that he be- 
 lieved then that he would not be permitted to win a victory 
 or to capture Richmond; and, thus believing, he owed it to 
 himself, to the great army he had organized as none other 
 could have organized it, and to the country to whose cause he 
 was undoubtedly loyal, to resign the command and put the 
 responsibility upon those he believed to be conspirators for 
 the destruction of himself and his army. 
 
 McClellan has not left this question open to dispute. In 
 McClellan's Own Story, written by himself, on page 150, he 
 says: "They (the President and others) determined to ruin 
 me in any event and by any means. First, by endeavoring to 
 force me into premature movements, knowing that a failure 
 would end my military career; afterward by withholding the 
 means necessary to achieve success." On the same page he 
 says: "They determined that I should not succeed, and car- 
 ried out their determinations only too well, at a fearful 
 sacrifice of blood, time, and treasure." On page 151 in the 
 same book McClellan says: "From the light that has since 
 been thrown on Stanton's character I am satisfied that from 
 an early day he was in this treasonable conspiracy."* It will 
 thus be seen that McClellan started on his Peninsula cam- 
 paign not merely believing that the President and the ad- 
 
 * From the light that has since been thrown on Stanton's character I am 
 satisfied that from an early date he was in this treasonable conspiracy, and 
 that his course in ingratiating himself with me, and pretending to be my 
 friend before he was in office, was only a part of his long system of treach- 
 ery. . . . 
 
 I had never seen Mr. Stanton, and probably had not even heard of him, 
 before reaching Washington in 1861. Not many weeks after arriving I was 
 introduced to him as a safe adviser on legal points. From that moment he did 
 
 [177] 
 
ministration generally were unfriendly to him, but really be- 
 lieving that they had formed a treasonable conspiracy by 
 which his military movements should be made disastrous and 
 the blood of thousands of brave soldiers sacrificed to accom- 
 plish McClellan's overthrow. This is a monstrous accusation 
 against Lincoln, and but for the fact that McClellan presents 
 it so clearly in language from his own pen that none can 
 mistake, it would seem incredible that he could have believed 
 such a conspiracy to exist, and yet led a great army to defeat 
 that treachery on the part of the government would make 
 inevitable. In this I am sure that McClellan does both him- 
 self and Lincoln the gravest injustice. Lincoln was the one 
 man of all who was utterly incapable of deliberately hinder- 
 ing military success under any circumstances. There were 
 those who believed it best to protract the war in order to ac- 
 complish the overthrow of slavery, but Lincoln was not of 
 that number. On the contrary, he offended many when he 
 distinctly declared in his letter to Greeley, August 22, 1862: 
 "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 it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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 
 
 his best to ingratiate himself with me, and professed the warmest friendship 
 and devotion. I had no reason to suspect his sincerity, and therefore believed 
 him to be what he professed. The most disagreeable thing about him was the 
 extreme virulence with which he abused the President, the administration, 
 and the Republican party. He carried this to such an extent that I was often 
 shocked by it. 
 
 He never spoke of the President in any other way than as the "original 
 gorilla," and often said that Du Chaillu was a fool to wander all the way to 
 Africa in search of what he could so easily have found at Springfield, Illinois. 
 Nothing could be more bitter than his words and manner always were when 
 speaking of the administration and the Republican party. He never gave them 
 credit for honesty or patriotism, and very seldom for any ability. 
 
 At some time during the autumn of 1861, Secretary Cameron made quite 
 an abolition speech to some newly-arrived regiment. Next day Stanton urged 
 me to arrest him for inciting to insubordination. He often advocated the 
 propriety of my seizing the government and taking affairs into my own hands. 
 —Gen. McClellan in McClellan's Own Story, pages 151, 152. 
 
 [178] 
 
I would also do that." What Lincoln wanted was the speediest 
 overthrow of the rebellion and the restoration of the Union, 
 with or without the destruction of slavery; and the assump- 
 tion that he could have been capable of such a treasonable 
 conspiracy as to deliberately send a general to the field with 
 a great army solely to have that army sacrificed and its com- 
 mander dishonored is at war with every attribute of Lincoln's 
 character. There never was the blood of a soldier shed in 
 battle that did not bring grief to the heart of Abraham Lin- 
 coln, and there never was a disaster of the Union troops that 
 did not shadow his face with sorrow, no matter whether he 
 loved or distrusted the commander. I am quite sure that the 
 two men of all the nation who most desired McClellan's 
 success in the field were Lincoln and McClellan themselves. 
 I have said that it is unjust to McClellan to compare his 
 achievements in the first great campaign of the war with the 
 achievements of Grant and Sherman in the later campaigns 
 which culminated in the overthrow of the rebellion. All the 
 generals of the early part of the war were making object- 
 lessons to guide themselves and those who succeeded them in 
 later conflicts. In this work the many failed, and many of the 
 most promising among them. The few succeeded and made 
 their names immortal. One of the greatest wars of history 
 produced but one Grant and one Lee; but one Joe Johnston 
 and one Tecumseh Sherman; but one Phil Sheridan and one 
 Stonewall Jackson. Scores of generals on both sides had op- 
 portunities of winning the laurels of these great chieftains, 
 but none was equal to the task. It is no reproach to McClellan 
 to say that Grant fought few battles which McClellan would 
 have fought under precisely similar circumstances. McClellan 
 was an organizer, a disciplinarian, and the best defensive 
 general in all the armies of the late war. He would have made 
 a greater Confederate leader than Lee himself. He would 
 never have made the exhaustive and fruitless campaigns of 
 the second Bull Run and Antietam which cost Lee one-fourth 
 of his army when he had feeble means to replace his losses. 
 He never would have made an aggressive campaign to Gettys- 
 
 [179] 
 
burg when the resources of the Confederacy were so nearly 
 exhausted, and Pickett's charge would never have been 
 dreamed of by McClellan. He was the greatest organizer and 
 defensive officer of the age, but the Union cause demanded 
 swift and terrible blows and countless sacrifices. It had to 
 fight on fields chosen by the enemy. It had often to give two 
 men for one in the death-lists of the struggles, but it had 
 boundless resources to fill the shattered ranks. The most 
 aggressive warfare was certain to bring the speediest victory 
 and with the least sacrifice of life and treasure in the end. 
 Grant met this want. He was the great aggressive general of 
 the war. He always fought when he should have fought, and 
 sometimes fought when it would have been wiser to have 
 refrained. Had he been a Southern general, he would have 
 been an utter failure, for the Southern general had to study 
 how to husband his resources; how to protect the life of every 
 soldier; how to fight only when a thousand men could with- 
 stand two thousand; and to that system of warfare Grant 
 was an entire stranger. He was the embodiment of aggressive 
 warfare; McClellan was the embodiment of defensive war- 
 fare, and McClellan was as great as Grant in his line, and 
 with no greater limitations upon his military genius. 
 
 Grant fought one defensive battle at Shiloh and lost it and 
 lost his command. McClellan fought only one pitched battle 
 as the aggressor at Antietam, and then he was strategically 
 defensive, while tactically aggressive, but his military genius 
 shone resplendent in his defensive battles when retreating to 
 the James River.* Thus a condition confronted McClellan 
 to which his great military genius and attainments were not 
 
 * The movement from Washington into Maryland, which culminated in the 
 battles of South Mountain and Antietam, was not a part of an offensive cam- 
 paign, with the object of the invasion of the enemy's territory and an attack 
 upon his capital, but was defensive in its purposes, although offensive in its 
 character, and would be technically called a "defensive-offensive campaign." 
 It was undertaken at a time when our army had experienced severe defeats, 
 and its object was to preserve the national capital and Baltimore, to protect 
 Pennsylvania from invasion, and to drive the enemy out of Maryland.— Gen. 
 McClellan in McClellan's Own Story, page 642. 
 
 [180} 
 
best adapted, and Grant's star rose and brightened as Mc- 
 Clellan's faded, because Grant possessed, in the fullest 
 measure, the qualities needed to win peace and restore the 
 Republic. 
 
 No man ever commanded the Army of the Potomac for 
 whom the soldiers had so much affection as they had for Mc- 
 Clellan. They knew that he was a soldier and a great soldier. 
 They knew that he would never put them into action unless 
 good generalship dictated it. They knew they were safe from 
 wanton sacrifice while under his command. They knew that 
 he valued the life of every man with the tenderness of a 
 parent, and they loved him because they revered and trusted 
 him. Lincoln fully appreciated and greatly valued the devo- 
 tion of the army to McClellan. He believed that no other 
 general could have so quickly organized and disciplined a 
 great army out of entirely raw materials as McClellan had 
 done, and he never gave up faith in McClellan until he felt 
 that he could no longer trust the destiny of the war to his 
 direction. He was many times justly fretted at McClellan's 
 complaints about military matters, at his obtrusive criticism 
 about political matters, and especially at his insulting declara- 
 tion to the Secretary of War, in a letter dated at army head- 
 quarters on the Peninsula, June 28, 1862, just after his retreat 
 to the James River, in which he said: "If I save this army 
 now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to 
 any other person in Washington. You have done your best 
 to sacrifice this army." This letter, although addressed to the 
 Secretary of War, distinctly embraced the President in the 
 grave charge of conspiracy to defeat McClellan's army and 
 sacrifice thousands of the lives of his soldiers. None but a 
 man of Lincoln's exceptional forbearance and patience would 
 have tolerated McClellan in command for a day after such 
 a declaration, written from the headquarters of a defeated 
 army, but Lincoln neither dismissed nor reproached him, 
 nor, as far as I can learn, did he ever allude to it.* 
 
 * See pages 167-168. 
 
 [181] 
 
Ten days after the offensive and insubordinate letter was 
 written Lincoln visited McClellan at his headquarters on the 
 James River. While Lincoln was there McClellan personally 
 handed him a letter dated July 7, 1862, that was a caustic 
 criticism of the political and military policy of the administra- 
 tion, and assumed to define not only the military action of the 
 government, but the civil and political policy of the govern- 
 ment on all important questions relating to the war. McClel- 
 lan himself records the fact that Lincoln read the letter in 
 McClellan's presence without comment, and that he never 
 alluded to the subject again. McClellan vigorously protested 
 against the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula, but 
 the order was peremptory, and he obeyed it with obvious 
 reluctance. His personal feeling toward Lincoln and the ad- 
 ministration is clearly exhibited in a letter to his wife written 
 on the 31st of August and published in McClellan's Own 
 Story, p. 532. Speaking of Washington, he says: "As a matter 
 of self-respect I cannot go there." On the 1st of September, 
 however, he was called to Washington and given a verbal 
 order by General Halleck, then Commander-in-Chief, to take 
 charge of the defenses of Washington. On the following 
 morning Lincoln and Halleck called on General McClellan 
 at his house and asked him to take command. McClellan 
 states that Lincoln asked him as a favor to the President to 
 "resume command and do the best that could be done." The 
 same day an order was issued from the War Department by 
 Halleck stating that "Major-General McClellan will have 
 command of the fortifications of Washington and all the 
 troops for the defense of the capital." The manner of the 
 restoration of McClellan to command has given rise to latitu- 
 dinous dispute, but the short story is that most of the Army 
 of the Potomac had been put under command of General 
 Pope in his disastrous battles of the second Bull Run cam- 
 paign, and both the armies of McClellan and Pope were com- 
 pelled to retreat into the Washington defenses in a very 
 demoralized condition. 
 
 [182] 
 
No man better understood McClellan's value as an 
 organizer and as a defensive commander than Lincoln, and he 
 solved the problem himself by calling McClellan to the new 
 command because he believed the capital to be in danger 
 and McClellan the best man to protect it. If he ever con- 
 sulted any one on the subject, the fact has never been given 
 to the public in any authentic form. Had he consulted his 
 Cabinet, it would have been next to unanimous against 
 giving McClellan any command whatever, and the adminis- 
 tration leaders in both branches of Congress would also have 
 been nearly unanimous in demanding McClellan's dismissal 
 from command. Lincoln acted in this case, as was his custom 
 in all severe trials, on his own personal responsibility, and 
 Lincoln, and Lincoln alone, is responsible for calling Mc- 
 Clellan to command the defenses of Washington and for 
 permitting McClellan, under that assignment, to take the 
 field for the Antietam campaign without any special orders 
 from the government. The assumption that Lincoln simply 
 consulted his fears in restoring McClellan to command is an 
 absurdity. There were twenty generals in the Army of the 
 Potomac and in Pope's army who could have taken command 
 of the complete defenses of Washington, constructed under 
 McClellan's faultless engineering skill, and protected the 
 capital against double the number of men Lee had in his 
 entire army. That McClellan handled the demoralized army 
 better than any other could have done I do not doubt, but 
 that he was a necessity to save the capital is not to be con- 
 sidered for a moment. It is obvious also that Lincoln believed 
 McClellan to be the best man to command the army in the 
 campaign in pursuit of Lee, but he was prudent enough to 
 avoid any specific order to McClellan assigning him to the 
 command. He put McClellan in position to take the com- 
 mand to move against Lee, and McClellan, always obedient 
 to what he believed to be his duty, availed himself of it 
 and fought the battle of Antietam. 
 
 So far from Lincoln being unfriendly to McClellan when 
 
 [183] 
 
he started on his spring campaign of 1862, there is the 
 strongest evidence in support of the belief that Lincoln hoped 
 for McClellan's success and earnestly desired him to win his 
 way back as Commander-in-Chief of the armies. It was on 
 March 11, 1862, that Lincoln relieved McClellan from his 
 position of Commander-in-Chief and limited him to the com- 
 mand of his own immediate army, but no Commander-in- 
 Chief was appointed until July 11, 1862. Had Lincoln 
 intended that McClellan should never return to the com- 
 mand of all the armies, he certainly would have appointed 
 Halleck Commander-in-Chief before the 11th of July. It is 
 known that General Scott, when he retired from the com- 
 mand, desired the appointment of Halleck as his successor, 
 and McClellan himself was in doubt for some weeks whether 
 he or Halleck would be called to the supreme command. 
 After McClellan, Halleck was the one man to whom Lincoln 
 turned as the most competent for Commander-in-Chief, but 
 he delayed filling the position not only until after the disas- 
 trous close of the Peninsula campaign, but for two weeks after 
 McClellan's insulting letter to Stanton and four days after 
 McClellan's offensive political letter handed to the President 
 at Harrison's Landing. It was not until McClellan had pro- 
 claimed himself a political as well as a military general on the 
 7th of July, 1862, that Lincoln abandoned all hope of Mc- 
 Clellan ever regaining the position of Commander-in-Chief, 
 and four days thereafter he called Halleck to that task. I many 
 times heard Lincoln discuss McClellan. I do not mean that he 
 usually or even at any time expressed fully his views as to 
 McClellan, but I have reason to know that with all the 
 troubles he had with him about moving in the early part of 
 1862 and about the Peninsula campaign, he sincerely and 
 earnestly hoped that McClellan would capture Richmond 
 and thus reinstate himself as Commander-in-Chief of the 
 armies, with his laurels fairly won and his ability to maintain 
 them clearly demonstrated. 
 
 If Lincoln had been capable of resentment against Mc- 
 
 [184] 
 
Clellan or against any of his military leaders, many heads 
 would have fallen that were saved by Lincoln's patience and 
 generosity. He knew that McClellan and more than one other 
 general had at times listened to the whispers of a military 
 dictatorship. McClellan states, on page 152 of his own book, 
 that Stanton once urged him to arrest Secretary Cameron for 
 inciting to insubordination by making an Abolition speech 
 to a newly-arrived regiment, and he adds: "He (Stanton) 
 often advocated the propriety of my seizing the government 
 and taking affairs in my own hands." In a letter to his wife, 
 dated August 9, 1861, also published in his own volume, 
 page 85, McClellan refers to the fact that he is earnestly 
 pressed by letter after letter and conversation after conversa- 
 tion to save the nation by assuming the powers of the Presi- 
 dent as dictator. Writing in the free confidence of a devoted 
 husband to a devoted wife, he said: "As I hope one day to 
 be united with you for ever in heaven I have no such aspira- 
 tion. I would cheerfully take the dictatorship and agree to 
 lay down my life when the country is saved." Had Lincoln 
 been jealous of McClellan's power, he had ample opportunity 
 to relieve him from command long before he did, but he 
 never feared those who prattled about the dictatorship, 
 although well informed of the many, including some promi- 
 nent generals, who had advised it. His generosity to military 
 men who committed such follies is clearly exhibited in his 
 letter of January 26, 1863, to General Hooker, notifying him 
 of his assignment to the command of the Army of the 
 Potomac. Hooker was one of those who had believed in a 
 military dictatorship, and Lincoln believed that Hooker had 
 not given cordial support to General Burnside when he was in 
 command of the army. To use Lincoln's own plain language, 
 he told Hooker that he had done "a great wrong to the coun- 
 try and to a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer." 
 He then said to Hooker: "I have heard, in such a way as to 
 believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the 
 government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, 
 
 [185] 
 
but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only 
 those generals who gain successes can be dictators. What I 
 now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictator- 
 ship." Thus did Lincoln assign Hooker to the command of 
 the Army of the Potomac when he knew that Hooker had 
 been guilty of the failure to support his commanding officer 
 in important military movements, and that he had advised a 
 dictator to usurp the prerogatives of the President. He be- 
 lieved McClellan to be in political sympathy with the men 
 who were most implacably hostile to his administration, but 
 he was sagacious enough to know that military success under 
 any general of his appointment would give political success to 
 the administration; and I am certain that he would have 
 preferred McClellan as the conqueror of Richmond in 1862, 
 and would gladly have restored him to the command of all 
 the armies, knowing that the victory would have been as 
 much the victory of Lincoln as the victory of McClellan. 
 
 I saw Lincoln many times during the campaign of 1864, 
 when McClellan was his competitor for the Presidency. I 
 never heard him speak of McClellan in any other than terms 
 of the highest personal respect and kindness. He never 
 doubted McClellan's loyalty to the government or to the 
 cause that called him to high military command. But he did 
 believe, until after the capture of Atlanta by Sherman and 
 Sheridan's victories in the Valley, which settled the political 
 campaign in favor of Lincoln, that McClellan was quite 
 likely to be elected over him, and that if elected, with all 
 his patriotism and loyalty to the Union, he would be power- 
 less to prevent the dissolution of the Republic. The conven- 
 tion that nominated McClellan for President met only a 
 few days before Sherman captured Atlanta. There had been 
 no important victories for any of the Union armies until that 
 time during the year 1864, and there had been great sacrifice 
 of life in both Sherman's and Grant's campaigns. The con- 
 vention that nominated McClellan voiced the sentiment that 
 regarded the war as a failure, and it was so declared in the 
 
 [186] 
 
platform in the clearest terms, with the call for a suspension 
 of hostilities because of the failure to obtain peace by force 
 of arms. Lincoln believed that McClellan, if elected, would 
 be coerced into a policy of humiliating peace and the loss of 
 all the great issues for which so much blood and treasure had 
 been sacrificed. But that he ever cherished the semblance of 
 resentment against McClellan, even when McClellan was 
 offensively insubordinate as a military man and equally offen- 
 sive in assuming to define the political policy of the adminis- 
 tration, I do not for a moment believe. Had McClellan under- 
 stood Lincoln half as well as Lincoln understood McClellan, 
 there never would have been serious discord between them. 
 It was the creation of what I believe to be McClellan's 
 entirely unwarranted distrust of Lincoln's personal and of- 
 ficial fidelity to him as a military commander, and that single 
 error became a seething cauldron of woe to both of them and 
 a consuming misfortune to McClellan. 
 
 Lincoln's position in history is secure, but it is doubtful 
 whether the impartial historian of the future will give Mc- 
 Clellan his full measure of justice. History records results- 
 only achievements and failures. It will tell of McClellan that 
 he was an unsuccessful military chieftain, and that on his own 
 record in an appeal to the country he was the most over- 
 whelmingly defeated candidate for President in the history 
 of the present great parties of the nation; but no truthful 
 historian can fail to say of him that he was one of the great 
 military geniuses of his day, one of the purest of patriots, and 
 one of the most loyal of men in the great battle for the pres- 
 ervation of the Union. 
 
 [187] 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND GRANT 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant were entire strangers 
 to each other personally until the 9th of March, 1864, when 
 Lincoln handed Grant his commission as Lieutenant-General, 
 which made him three days later Commander-in-Chief of all 
 the armies of the Union. Although Grant entered the army as 
 a citizen of Lincoln's own state, he had resided there only a 
 little more than a year. When he retired from the army by 
 resignation on the 31st of July, 1854, as a captain, he selected 
 Missouri as his home and settled on a farm near St. Louis. 
 He had won promotion at the battles of Molino del Rey and 
 Chapultepec in the Mexican War, and was brevetted for spe- 
 cial gallantry. During the nearly seven years between his re- 
 tirement from the army and re-entering the military service 
 at the beginning of the civil war he had done little or nothing 
 to make himself known to fame. He had moved from Mis- 
 souri to Galena early in 1860 to improve his worldly condi- 
 tion by accepting a salary of $600 from his two brothers, 
 who were then engaged in the leather business. After re- 
 maining with them for a year his salary was advanced to $800, 
 and in a letter to a friend he exhibited his gratification at his 
 business success and expressed the hope of reaching what 
 then seemed to be his highest ambition— a partnership in the 
 firm. His life in Galena was quiet and unobtrusive as was 
 Grant's habit under all circumstances; and when the first call 
 for troops was issued and Grant brought a company from 
 Galena to Springfield without any friends to press his promo- 
 
 [188} 
 
tion, it is not surprising that, while political colonels were 
 turned out with great rapidity, Grant remained without a 
 command. He served on the staff of Governor Yates for sev- 
 eral weeks, giving him the benefit of his military experience 
 in organizing new troops, but it does not seem to have oc- 
 curred to Grant to suggest his own appointment to a com- 
 mand or to Governor Yates to tender him one. He returned 
 to Galena, and on the 24th of May, 1861, sent a formal request 
 to the Adjutant-General of the army at Washington for an 
 assignment to military duty * 'until the close of the war in 
 such capacity as may be offered." To this no reply was ever 
 received, and a month later he made a personal visit to the 
 headquarters of General McClellan, then in command of the 
 Ohio volunteers at Cincinnati, hoping that McClellan would 
 tender him a position on his staff; but he failed to meet Mc- 
 Clellan, and returned home without suggesting to any one a 
 desire to enter the service under the Cincinnati commander. 
 It was a wayward and insubordinate regiment at Spring- 
 field that called Grant back to the military service and started 
 him on his matchless career. The Twenty-first Illinois defied 
 the efforts of Governor Yates to reduce it to discipline, and 
 in despair he telegraphed to the modest Captain Grant at 
 Galena, asking him to come and accept the colonelcy. The 
 prompt answer came: '*I accept the regiment and will start 
 immediately." It is needless to say that the appearance of a 
 plain, ununiformed, and modest man like Grant made little 
 impression at first upon his insubordinate command, but in 
 a very short time he made it the best disciplined regiment 
 from the state, and the men as proud of their commander as 
 he was of them. The story of Grant's military achievements 
 from Belmont to Shiloh is familiar to every reader of Ameri- 
 can history. It was Grant's capture of Fort Henry, soon fol- 
 lowed by the capture of Fort Donelson and Nashville, that 
 opened the second year of the war with such brilliant promise 
 of an early overthrow of the Confederate armies. It was his 
 sententious answer to General Buckner at Fort Donelson that 
 
 [189] 
 
proclaimed to the nation his heroic qualities as a military 
 commander. He said: "No terms except unconditional and 
 immediate surrender can be accepted; I propose to move im- 
 mediately upon your works." He soon became popularly 
 known as "Unconditional Surrender Grant," and while his 
 superior officers, including General-in-Chief McClellan and 
 his (Grant's) immediate commander Halleck, seemed to agree 
 only in hindering Grant in his military movements, the coun- 
 try profoundly appreciated his victories. Soon after the cap- 
 ture of Nashville he was ordered by Halleck to make a new 
 military movement that was rendered impossible by immense 
 floods which prevailed in the western waters. Halleck re- 
 ported him to McClellan, complaining that he had left his 
 post without leave and had failed to make reports, etc., to 
 which McClellan replied: "Do not hesitate to arrest him at 
 once if the good of the service requires it, and place C. F. 
 Smith in command." Halleck immediately relieved Grant and 
 placed Smith in command of the proposed expedition. Grant 
 gave a temperate explanation of the injustice done to him, 
 but as the wrong was continued he asked to be relieved from 
 duty. In the mean time Halleck had discovered his error, 
 and atoned for it by answering to Grant: "Instead of reliev- 
 ing you, I wish you, as soon as your new army is in the field, 
 to assume the immediate command and lead it on to new 
 victories." 
 
 It was not until after the battle of Shiloh, fought on the 
 6th and 7th of April, 1862, that Lincoln was placed in a posi- 
 tion to exercise a controlling influence in shaping the destiny 
 of Grant. The first day's battle at Shiloh was a serious disaster 
 to the Union army commanded by Grant, who was driven 
 from his position, which seems to have been selected without 
 any special reference to resisting an attack from the enemy, 
 and, although his army fought most gallantly in various sep- 
 arate encounters, the day closed with the field in possession 
 of the enemy and Grant's army driven back to the river. 
 Fortunately, the advance of Buell's army formed a junction 
 
 [190] 
 
with Grant late in the evening, and that night all of Buell's 
 army arrived, consisting of three divisions. The two generals 
 arranged their plans for an offensive movement early the next 
 morning, and, after another stubborn battle, the lost field was 
 regained and the enemy compelled to retreat with the loss of 
 their commander, General Albert Sidney Johnston, who had 
 fallen early in the first day's action, and with a larger aggre- 
 gate loss of killed, wounded, and missing than Grant suffered. 
 The first reports from the Shiloh battle-field created profound 
 alarm throughout the entire country, and the wildest exag- 
 gerations were spread in a floodtide of vituperation against 
 Grant. It was freely charged that he had neglected his com- 
 mand because of dissipation, that his army had been surprised 
 and defeated, and that it was saved from annihilation only 
 by the timely arrival of Buell. 
 
 The few of to-day who can recall the inflamed condition of 
 public sentiment against Grant caused by the disastrous first 
 day's battle at Shiloh will remember that he was denounced 
 as incompetent for his command by the public journals of 
 all parties in the North, and with almost entire unanimity by 
 Senators and Congressmen without regard to political faith. 
 Not only in Washington, but throughout the loyal states, 
 public sentiment seemed to crystallize into an earnest demand 
 for Grant's dismissal from the army. His victories of Forts 
 Henry and Donelson, which had thrilled the country a short 
 time before, seemed to have been forgotten, and on every side 
 could be heard the emphatic denunciation of Grant because 
 of his alleged reckless exposure of the army, while Buell was 
 universally credited with having saved it. It is needless to say 
 that owing to the excited condition of the public mind most 
 extravagant reports gained ready credence, and it was not 
 uncommon to hear Grant denounced on the streets and in all 
 circles as unfitted by both habit and temperament for an 
 important military command. The clamor for Grant's re- 
 moval, and often for his summary dismissal, from the army 
 surged against the President from every side, and he was 
 
 [191] 
 
harshly criticized for not promptly dismissing Grant, or at 
 least relieving him from his command. I can recall but a single 
 Republican member of Congress who boldly defended Grant 
 at that time. Elihu B. Washburne, whose home was in Galena, 
 where Grant had lived before he went into the army, stood 
 nearly or quite alone among the members of the House in 
 wholly justifying Grant at Shiloh, while a large majority of 
 the Republicans of Congress were outspoken and earnest in 
 condemning him. 
 
 I did not know Grant at that time; had neither partiality 
 nor prejudice to influence my judgment, nor had I any 
 favorite general who might be benefited by Grant's over- 
 throw, but I shared the almost universal conviction of the 
 President's friends that he could not sustain himself if he 
 attempted to sustain Grant by continuing him in command. 
 Looking solely to the interests of Lincoln, feeling that the 
 tide of popular resentment was so overwhelming against 
 Grant that Lincoln must yield to it, I had repeated confer- 
 ences with some of his closest friends, including Swett and 
 Lamon, all of whom agreed that Grant must be removed from 
 his command, and complained of Lincoln for his manifest 
 injustice to himself by his failure to act promptly in Grant's 
 removal. So much was I impressed with the importance of 
 prompt action on the part of the President after spending a 
 day and evening in Washington that I called on Lincoln at 
 eleven o'clock at night and sat with him alone until after one 
 o'clock in the morning. He was, as usual, worn out with the 
 day's exacting duties, but he did not permit me to depart 
 until the Grant matter had been gone over and many other 
 things relating to the war that he wished to discuss. I pressed 
 upon him with all the earnestness I could command the 
 immediate removal of Grant as an imperious necessity to 
 sustain himself. As was his custom, he said but little, only 
 enough to make me continue the discussion until it was ex- 
 hausted. He sat before the open fire in the old Cabinet room, 
 most of the time with his feet up on the high marble mantel, 
 
 [192] 
 
and exhibited unusual distress at the complicated condition 
 of military affairs. Nearly every day brought some new and 
 perplexing military complication. He had gone through a 
 long winter of terrible strain with McClellan and the Army 
 of the Potomac; and from the day that Grant started on his 
 southern expedition until the battle of Shiloh he had had 
 little else than jarring and confusion among his generals in 
 the West. He knew that I had no ends to serve in urging 
 Grant's removal, beyond the single desire to make him be just 
 to himself, and he listened patiently. 
 
 I appealed to Lincoln for his own sake to remove Grant at 
 once, and in giving my reasons for it I simply voiced the ad- 
 mittedly overwhelming protest from the loyal people of the 
 land against Grant's continuance in command. I could form 
 no judgment during the conversation as to what effect my 
 arguments had upon him beyond the fact that he was greatly 
 distressed at this new complication. When I had said every- 
 thing that could be said from my standpoint, we lapsed into 
 silence. Lincoln remained silent for what seemed a very long 
 time. He then gathered himself up in his chair and said in a 
 tone of earnestness that I shall never forget: "I can't spare this 
 man; he fights." That was all he said, but I knew that it was 
 enough, and that Grant was safe in Lincoln's hands against 
 his countless hosts of enemies. The only man in all the nation 
 who had the power to save Grant was Lincoln, and he had de- 
 cided to do it. He was not influenced by any personal partiality 
 for Grant, for they had never met, but he believed just what 
 he said— "I can't spare this man; he fights." I knew enough of 
 Lincoln to know that his decision was final, and I knew 
 enough of him also to know that he reasoned better on the 
 subject than I did, and that it would be unwise to attempt 
 to unsettle his determination. I did not forget that Lincoln 
 was the one man who never allowed himself to appear 
 as wantonly defying public sentiment. It seemed to me im- 
 possible for him to save Grant without taking a crushing load 
 of condemnation upon himself; but Lincoln was wiser than 
 
 [193] 
 
all those around him, and he not only saved Grant, but he 
 saved him by such well-concerted effort that he soon won 
 popular applause from those who were most violent in de- 
 manding Grant's dismissal. 
 
 The method that Lincoln adopted to rescue Grant from 
 the odium into which he had, to a very large degree, unjustly 
 fallen was one of the bravest and most sagacious acts of his 
 administration. Halleck was commander of the military divi- 
 sion consisting of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and possi- 
 bly other states, but he remained at his headquarters in St. 
 Louis until after the battle of Shiloh. Lincoln's first move was 
 to bring Halleck to the field, where he at once superseded 
 Grant as commander of the army. This relieved public ap- 
 prehension and soon calmed the inflamed public sentiment 
 that was clamoring for Grant's dismissal. Lincoln knew that 
 it would require time for the violent prejudice against Grant 
 to perish, and he calmly waited until it was safe for him to 
 give some indication to the country of his abiding faith in 
 Grant as a military commander. Halleck reached the army at 
 Pittsburg Landing on the 11th of April, four days after the 
 battle had been fought, and of course his presence on the 
 field at once made him the commanding officer. On the 30th 
 of April, when the public mind was reasonably well prepared 
 to do justice to Grant, an order was issued assigning him "as 
 second in command under the major-general commanding 
 the department." 
 
 This was an entirely needless order so far as mere military 
 movements were involved, and it is one of the very rare cases 
 in the history of the war in which such an order was issued. 
 Only under very special circumstances could there be any 
 occasion for an order assigning a particular general as second 
 in command of an army. While the army is within reach of 
 orders from the commanding general there can be no second 
 in command. In case of his death or inability to take active 
 command in battle, the military laws wisely regulate the suc- 
 cession, and only in extraordinary cases is it departed from. 
 
 [194] 
 
In this case the purpose of it was obvious. Lincoln had 
 quieted public apprehension by bringing General Halleck to 
 the field and thus relieving Grant of command without the 
 semblance of reproach; but he desired to impress the country 
 with his absolute faith in Grant as a military leader, and it 
 was for that reason that the special order was issued assigning 
 him as second in command of Halleck's army. The effect of 
 that order was precisely what Lincoln anticipated. It made all 
 loyal men take pause and abate or yield their violent hostility 
 to Grant in obedience to the publicly expressed confidence 
 of Lincoln. The country knew that Lincoln best understood 
 Grant, and from the date of Grant's assignment as second 
 in command of the army the prejudice against him rap- 
 idly perished. It was thus that Lincoln saved Grant from one 
 of the most violent surges of popular prejudice that was ever 
 created against any of our leading generals, and on the 11th 
 of July, when it was entirely safe to restore Grant to his com- 
 mand for active operations, Halleck was ordered to Washing- 
 ton by Lincoln and assigned as commander-in-chief. Thus was 
 Grant restored to the command of the army that he had lost 
 at the battle of Shiloh, and it was Lincoln, and Lincoln alone, 
 who saved him from disgrace and gave to the country the 
 most lustrous record of all the heroes of the war. 
 
 I doubt whether Grant ever understood how Lincoln, sin- 
 gle and alone, protected him from dishonor in the tempest 
 of popular passion that came upon him after the disaster at 
 Shiloh. Grant never was in Washington until he was sum- 
 moned there early in 1864 to be commissioned as Lieutenant- 
 General, and he was entirely without personal acquaintance 
 with Lincoln. After he became Commander-in-Chief he made 
 his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac, 
 and was very rarely in Washington after he crossed the Rapi- 
 dan and opened the campaign by the battles of the Wilder- 
 ness. That he frequently saw Lincoln between February and 
 May while perfecting his plans for army movements is well 
 known, but Grant was one of the most silent of men and most 
 
 [195] 
 
of all reluctant to talk about himself, while Lincoln was 
 equally reserved in all things pertaining to himself person- 
 ally. Especially where he had rendered any service to another 
 he would be quite unlikely to speak of it himself. Judging 
 the two men from their chief and very marked characteristics, 
 it is entirely reasonable to assume that what Lincoln did to 
 save Grant from disgrace was never discussed or referred to by 
 them in personal conversation. Grant never, in any way 
 known to the public, recognized any such obligation to Lin- 
 coln, and no utterance ever came from him indicating any- 
 thing more than the respect for Lincoln due from a general 
 to his chief. 
 
 I never heard Lincoln allude to the subject but once, and 
 that was under very painful circumstances and when the 
 subject was forced upon him by myself. Lincoln knew that I 
 had personal knowledge of his heroic effort to rescue Grant 
 from the odium that came upon him after Shiloh, and an 
 accidental occasion arose in the latter part of October, 1864, 
 when his relations to Grant became a proper subject of con- 
 sideration. The October elections in 1864, when Lincoln was 
 a candidate for re-election, resulted favorably for the Repub- 
 licans in Ohio and Indiana, but unfavorably for them in 
 Pennsylvania. There was no state ticket to be elected in Penn- 
 sylvania that year, and the vote for Congress and local officers 
 gave a small Democratic majority on the home vote in the 
 state. McClellan, a native of Pennsylvania, was the Demo- 
 cratic candidate for President, and state pride naturally added 
 to his strength. Simon Cameron was chairman of the Re- 
 publican State Committee. He was well equipped for the 
 position, but was so entirely confident of success that he neg- 
 lected to perfect the organization necessary to gain the vic- 
 tory, and the prestige of success fell to McClellan. New York 
 was regarded as extremely doubtful, and there was much 
 concern felt about the possibility of New York and Penn- 
 sylvania both voting against Lincoln in November. It was 
 not doubted that the army vote would give Pennsylvania to 
 
 [196] 
 
Lincoln, but it was of the utmost importance, to give moral 
 force and effect to the triumph, to give Lincoln a majority on 
 the home vote. Lincoln was much concerned about the situa- 
 tion, and telegraphed me to come to Washington the day after 
 the October election. I went on at once, and after going over 
 the political situation carefully, Lincoln asked me whether I 
 would be willing to give my personal services to aid the state 
 committee during the month intervening between the Octo- 
 ber and November elections. I reminded him that Cameron 
 and I were not in political sympathy, and that he would re- 
 gard it as obtrusive for me to volunteer assistance to him in 
 the management of the campaign. To this Lincoln replied: 
 "Of course, I understand that, but if Cameron shall invite 
 you can you give your time fully to the contest?" I answered 
 that I would gladly do so. He did not suggest how he meant 
 to bring about co-operation between Cameron and myself, 
 but I knew him well enough to know that he would be very 
 likely to accomplish the desired result. Two days thereafter 
 I received a cordial letter from Cameron inviting me to join 
 him at the headquarters and assist in the November contest. 
 I at once went to Philadelphia, and found Wayne Mac- 
 Veagh already with Cameron in obedience to a like invitation 
 that had been brought about by Lincoln. MacVeagh had been 
 chairman of the state committee the previous year, when 
 Curtin was re-elected, as I had been chairman in 1860 when 
 Lincoln was first elected and both of us were at the time re- 
 garded as somewhat conspicuous among the opponents of 
 Cameron. The failure in Pennsylvania, contrasted with the 
 party successes in Ohio and Indiana, was very mortifying to 
 Cameron, and he was ready to employ every available resource 
 to redeem the state in November. There was the heartiest co- 
 operation by MacVeagh and myself, all being done under the 
 name and immediate direction of Cameron as chairman, and 
 there was not a jar during the month of desperate effort to win 
 the state for Lincoln. I took a private room at another hotel, 
 and never was at headquarters except for confidential confer- 
 
 [197] 
 
ence with Cameron himself; and, as requested by Lincoln, I 
 wrote him fully every night my impressions of the progress we 
 were making. The Democrats were highly elated by their 
 rather unexpected success in October, and they made the most 
 desperate and well-directed battle to gain the state for McClel- 
 lan. So anxious was Lincoln about the campaign that after I 
 had been a week in co-operation with the state committee, he 
 sent Postmaster-General William Dennison over to Phila- 
 delphia specially to talk over the situation more fully than 
 it could be presented in my letters, and to return the same 
 night and make report to him. It was evident that we had 
 gained nothing, and I so informed the Postmaster-General, 
 and expressed great doubts as to our ability to do more than 
 hold our own, considering the advantage the Democrats had 
 in the prestige of their October victory. I told him, however, 
 that in another week the question could be determined 
 whether we were safe on the home vote of Pennsylvania, and 
 that if there was reasonable doubt about it I would notify 
 Lincoln and visit Washington. 
 
 A week later, as I had advised Lincoln from day to day, I 
 saw nothing to warrant the belief that we had gained any ma- 
 terial advantage in the desperate battle, and I telegraphed 
 Lincoln that I would see him at ten o'clock that night. I 
 found him waiting, and he exhibited great solicitude as to 
 the battle in Pennsylvania. He knew that his election was in 
 no sense doubtful, but he knew that if he lost New York and 
 with it Pennsylvania on the home vote, the moral effect of 
 his triumph would be broken and his power to prosecute the 
 war and make peace would be greatly impaired. His usually 
 sad face was deeply shadowed with sorrow when I told him 
 that I saw no reasonable prospect of carrying Pennsylvania on 
 the home vote, although we had about held our own in the 
 hand-to-hand conflict through which we were passing. "Well, 
 what is to be done?" was Lincoln's inquiry after the whole 
 situation had been presented to him. I answered that the 
 solution of the problem was a very simple and easy one— that 
 
 [198] 
 
Grant was idle in front of Petersburg; that Sheridan had won 
 all possible victories in the Valley; and that if 5000 Penn- 
 sylvania soldiers could be furloughed home from each army 
 the election could be carried without doubt. Lincoln's face 
 brightened instantly at the suggestion, and I saw that he was 
 quite ready to execute it. I said to him: "Of course, you can 
 trust Grant to make the suggestion to him to furlough 5000 
 Pennsylvania troops for two weeks?" To my surprise, Lin- 
 coln made no answer, and the bright face of a few moments 
 before was instantly shadowed again. I was much discon- 
 certed, as I supposed that Grant was the one man to whom 
 Lincoln could turn with absolute confidence as his friend. I 
 then said with some earnestness: "Surely, Mr. President, you 
 can trust Grant with a confidential suggestion to furlough 
 Pennsylvania troops?" Lincoln remained silent and evidently 
 distressed at the proposition I was pressing upon him. After a 
 few moments, and speaking with emphasis, I said: "It can't be 
 possible that Grant is not your friend; he can't be such an 
 ingrate?" Lincoln hesitated for some time, and then an- 
 swered: "Well, McClure, I have no reason to believe that 
 Grant prefers my election to that of McClellan." 
 
 I must confess that my response to this seemingly appalling 
 statement from Lincoln was somewhat violative of the rules 
 of courteous conversation. I reminded Lincoln how, in that 
 room, when I had appealed to him to respect the almost uni- 
 versal demand of the country for Grant's dismissal, he had 
 withstood the shock alone and interposed his omnipotence to 
 save Grant when he was a personal stranger. Lincoln, as usual, 
 answered intemperance of speech by silence. I then said to 
 him: "General Meade is a soldier and a gentleman; he is the 
 commander of the Army of the Potomac; send an order to 
 him from yourself to furlough 5000 Pennsylvania soldiers 
 home for two weeks, and send that order with some trusted 
 friend from the War Department, with the suggestion to 
 Meade that your agent be permitted to bring the order back 
 with him." After a little reflection Lincoln answered: "I 
 
 [199] 
 
reckon that can be done." I then said, "What about Sheri- 
 dan?" At once his sad face brightened up, like the noonday 
 sun suddenly emerging from a dark cloud, as he answered: 
 "Oh, Phil Sheridan; he's all right." Before I left his room that 
 night he had made his arrangements to send messengers to 
 Meade and Sheridan. The order was sent to Meade, and he 
 permitted it to be returned to the President, but Sheridan 
 needed no order. The 10,000 Pennsylvania soldiers were 
 furloughed during the week, and Lincoln carried Pennsyl- 
 vania on the home vote by 5712 majority, to which the army 
 vote added 14,363 majority. It was thus that Lincoln made 
 his triumph in Pennsylvania a complete victory without what 
 was then commonly called the "bayonet vote," and Lincoln 
 carried New York by 6749, leaving McClellan the worst 
 defeated candidate ever nominated by any of the great politi- 
 cal parties of the country. 
 
 I left Lincoln fully convinced that Grant was an ingrate, 
 and Lincoln certainly knew that he permitted that conviction 
 to be formed in my mind. He did not in any way qualify his 
 remark about Grant, although it was his custom when he felt 
 compelled to disparage any one to present some charitable 
 explanation of the conduct complained of. The fact that he 
 refused to send his request to Grant, while he was willing to 
 send it to Meade, proved that he was, for some reason, dis- 
 appointed in Grant's fidelity to him; and the enthusiasm with 
 which he spoke of Sheridan proved how highly he valued the 
 particular quality that he did not credit to Grant. I confess 
 that the conviction formed that day made the name of Grant 
 leave a bad taste in my mouth for many years. I heartily sup- 
 ported his nomination for the Presidency in 1868, and was 
 chairman of the Pennsylvania delegation in the Chicago con- 
 vention that nominated him, because I believed that the 
 chivalrous victor of Appomattox would command the highest 
 measure of confidence from the southern people and hasten 
 the restoration of peace and business prosperity; but Grant 
 and his immediate friends knew that while I earnestly sup- 
 
 [200] 
 
ported his nomination and election, I did not have the con- 
 fidence in him that he generally commanded. I now believe 
 that Lincoln was mistaken in his distrust of Grant. It was not 
 until after Grant's retirement from the Presidency that I ever 
 had an opportunity to hear his explanation. I remembered 
 that on election night, when Grant was advised at his head- 
 quarters in front of Petersburg of Lincoln's election, he sent 
 Lincoln a dispatch heartily congratulating him upon his 
 triumph. I never heard Lincoln allude to the subject again, 
 and I am therefore ignorant as to whether his belief was ever 
 changed. 
 
 I never visited the White House during Grant's Presidency, 
 although twice specially invited to do so to consider what I 
 regarded as an impracticable or impossible political sug- 
 gestion, but I accidentally met him in the Continental Hotel, 
 soon after his retirement, in company with George W. Childs. 
 Grant came forward in the most cordial manner and thanked 
 me for an editorial that had appeared in The Times on the 
 day that ended his Presidental term, in which I had spoken of 
 him and his achievements as history would record them, re- 
 gardless of the political passions and prejudices of the day. 
 The meeting ended with an invitation to lunch with him that 
 afternoon at Anthony J. Drexel's office, which I accepted. 
 There were present only Drexel, Childs, and one or two oth- 
 ers connected with the Drexel house. After luncheon all dis- 
 persed but Grant, Childs, and myself, and we had a most 
 delightful conversation with Grant for an hour or more. I was 
 anxious to learn, if possible, what Grant's feelings were in the 
 Presidential battle of 1864. Without intimating to him that 
 Lincoln had doubted his fidelity, I reminded him that he had 
 maintained such a silent attitude that some of Lincoln's 
 closest friends were at a loss to know his preference in the 
 contest. He answered very promptly that he supposed none 
 could have doubted his earnest desire for the re-election of 
 Lincoln, although he studiously avoided any expression, 
 public or private, on the subject. He said: "It would have 
 
 [201} 
 
been obviously unbecoming on my part to have given a 
 public expression against a general whom I had succeeded as 
 Commander-in-Chief of the army." I do not doubt that Grant 
 declared the exact truth in that statement. Naturally silent 
 and averse to any expressions whatever on politics, he felt that 
 he could not with propriety even appear to assail a man who 
 had failed and fallen in the position that he had won and 
 maintained. Thus for twelve years I cherished a personal 
 prejudice against Grant because of his supposed want of 
 fidelity to Lincoln that I now believe to have been wholly 
 unjust. One revelation to me at the meeting with Grant at 
 the Drexel luncheon was his remarkable and attractive 
 powers as a conversationalist. He discussed politics during his 
 term and the politics of the future, public men and public 
 events, with great freedom and in a manner so genial as to 
 amaze me. I had shared the common impression that Grant 
 was always reticent, even in the circle of his closest friends, 
 but the three hours spent with him on that day proved that 
 when he chose he could be one of the most entertaining of 
 men in the social circle. 
 
 It is evident that from the day that Grant became Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, Lincoln had abiding faith in him. He 
 yielded implicitly to Grant's judgment in all matters purely 
 military; Grant, like all great soldiers, yielded as implicitly 
 to Lincoln in all matters relating to civil administration, and 
 the annals of history will testify that Grant fulfilled every ex- 
 pectation of the government and of the loyal people of the 
 nation as military chieftain. Many have criticised some of his 
 military movements, such as his assaults at Vicksburg and 
 Cold Harbor and his battles in the Wilderness, but he met 
 the great need of the country and was as heroic in peace as in 
 war. When President Johnson attempted to punish Lee for 
 treason. Grant not only admonished the President, but noti- 
 fied him that "the officers and men paroled at Appomattox 
 Court-House, and since upon the same terms given to Lee, 
 cannot be tried for treason so long as they preserve the terms 
 
 [202] 
 
of their parole"; and he went so far as to declare that he 
 would resign his commission if the government violated the 
 faith he had given when Lee surrendered to him. He fought 
 more battles and won more victories than any general of any 
 country during his generation, until his death on the 23rd 
 of July, 1885. ^ 
 
 [203] 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND SHERMAN 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and William T. Sherman had never met 
 until Sherman came to Washington to visit his brother, the 
 present Senator John Sherman, ten days after Lincoln's in- 
 auguration. Sherman's mission to the capital was not to ob- 
 tain a command. He had resigned as president of a military 
 institute in Louisiana, because, as he frankly said to the state 
 officials who controlled the institution, he could not remain 
 and owe allegiance to a state that had withdrawn from the 
 Union. In his letter of resignation, dated January 18, 1861, 
 he said: "Should Louisiana withdraw from the Federal 
 Union, I prefer to maintain my allegiance to the Constitu- 
 tion as long as a fragment of it survives, and my longer stay 
 here would be a wrong in every sense of the word." He left 
 New Orleans about the 1st of March to make his home in the 
 North. Like Grant, he tendered his services to the govern- 
 ment, but, again like Grant, his offer was not answered. His 
 first meeting with Lincoln was in company with his Senator 
 brother to pay a brief visit of courtesy to the President. After 
 the Senator had transacted some political business with Lin- 
 coln, he turned to his brother and said: "Mr. President, this 
 is my brother, Colonel Sherman, who is just up from Loui- 
 siana; he may give you some information you want." To this 
 Lincoln replied, as reported by Sherman himself: "Ah! How 
 are they getting along down there?" Sherman answered: 
 "They think they are getting along swimmingly; they are 
 prepared for war." To which Lincoln responded: "Oh, well, 
 
 [204] 
 
I guess we'll manage to keep house." Sherman records in his 
 Memoirs that he was "sadly disappointed," and that he "broke 
 out on John, damning the politicians generally," saying: 
 "You have got things in a hell of a fix; you may get them out 
 as best you can." Sherman then, as ever, was ruggedly honest 
 and patriotic, and often more impressive than elegant in his 
 manner of speech. Some old St. Louis friends had obtained 
 for him the presidency of a street-railway of that city at a 
 salary of |2500. Speaking of this position, he says: "This 
 suited me exactly, and I answered Turner that I would accept 
 with thanks." 
 
 Before Sherman was comfortably installed in his position 
 as a street-railway president, Postmaster-General Montgomery 
 Blair telegraphed him, on the 6th of April, asking him to ac- 
 cept a chief clerkship in the War Department, with the assur- 
 ance that he would be made Assistant Secretary of War when 
 Congress met. Sherman answered with the laconic dispatch: 
 "I cannot accept." In a letter written at the same time to Blair 
 he says that after his visit to Washington, where he saw no 
 chance of employment, he had gone to St. Louis, accepted an 
 official position and established his home, and that he was not 
 at liberty to change. He added that he was thankful for the 
 compliment, and that he wished "the administration all suc- 
 cess in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted 
 and anarchical people." A few days thereafter General Frank 
 Blair called on Sherman and said that he was authorized to 
 select a brigadier-general to command the Department of 
 Missouri, and he tendered the position to Sherman, who 
 declined it, and General Lyon was then appointed. Feeling, 
 however, as the clouds of war darkened upon the country, 
 that his services might be needed, on the 8th of May Sherman 
 addressed a formal letter to the Secretary of War, again 
 tendering his services to the government, and on the 14th of 
 the same month he was appointed colonel of the Thirteenth 
 regiment of regulars. On the 20th of June he reported at 
 
 [205] 
 
Washington in obedience to orders from General Scott, who 
 assigned him to inspection duty; and before the movement 
 was made to Manassas, Sherman was ordered to the command 
 or a brigade of Hunter's division, and in that position was in 
 the first battle of the war. 
 
 Sherman was one of the very few generals who seldom 
 grieved Lincoln. While he was one of the most voluminous 
 of writers on every phase of the war and every question aris- 
 ing from it, he never assumed to be wiser than the govern- 
 ment, and he never committed a serious blunder. He had the 
 most profound contempt for politicians in and out of the 
 army, and for political methods generally, and his bluntness 
 of both manner and expression emphasized his views and 
 purposes so that none could misunderstand them. Naturally 
 impulsive, he often felt keenly the many complications which 
 surrounded all great generals, and he spoke and wrote with 
 unusual freedom, but always within the clearest lines of 
 military subordination. He was an earnest, ardent, outspoken 
 patriot, and had more controversy than any other general 
 with the single exception of McClellan; biu I doubt whether 
 there is a single important utterance of Sherman's during the 
 four long years of war, when new and grave problems had to 
 be met and solved from time to time, that he would have re- 
 called in the later years of his life. He had learned to cherish 
 the most profound respect for Lincoln, although they never 
 met after his first introduction to the President during the 
 early period of the war, until the spring of 1865 at City Point, 
 Va., after Sherman had made his march to the sea and his 
 great campaign had practically ended at Raleigh, North 
 Carolina. 
 
 There is no doubt that Lincoln's earliest impressions of 
 Sherman were quite as unfavorable to Sherman as were Sher- 
 man's early impressions of Lincoln. It was not imtil Sherman 
 had been assigned to Kentucky, along with General Ander- 
 son, that he attracted the attention of the country. Along 
 with a number of others he had won his star at Bull Run, and 
 
 [206] 
 
on the 24th of August he was sent with Anderson to Louis- 
 ville. Anderson's feeble health soon demanded that he should 
 be relieved, and Sherman was thus left in command. The po- 
 sition of Kentucky was a most delicate and important one. 
 Sherman succeeded to the command on the 8th of October, 
 and within a few weeks thereafter it was whispered through- 
 out Washington that he was a lunatic. This belief was ac- 
 cepted in most if not all military circles at the capital, and was 
 doubtless shared by Lincoln himself, as in little more than 
 two months after Sherman had assumed command in Ken- 
 tucky he was ordered to report at Benton Barracks, St. Louis, 
 and General Buell was assigned as his successor. The attitude 
 of Kentucky attracted very general interest throughout the 
 country, and the repeated changes of commanders caused 
 great solicitude. I remember calling on Colonel Thomas A. 
 Scott, Assistant Secretary of War, on the day that the an- 
 nouncement was made of Sherman's transfer to Missouri and 
 Buell's appointment to Kentucky, and asking him what it 
 meant. Scott answered: "Sherman's gone in the head"; and 
 upon inquiry I found that Scott simply voiced the general be- 
 lief of those who should have been best informed on the sub- 
 ject. Reports were published in all the leading newspapers of 
 the country speaking of Sherman as mentally unbalanced, and 
 it naturally mortified the blunt, straightforward soldier to the 
 last degree. General Halleck, in a letter to McClellan asking 
 for more officers, said: "I am satisfied that General Sherman's 
 physical and mental system is so completely broken by labor 
 and care as to render him, for the present, unfit for duty. Per- 
 haps a few weeks' rest may restore him." But it is only just to 
 Sherman, to say that the chief reason for the military authori- 
 ties in Washington assuming that he was a lunatic was his 
 report soon after assuming command in Kentucky, stating 
 that it would require an army of 60,000 men to hold Ken- 
 tucky and 200,000 men to open the Mississippi and conquer 
 the rebellion in the Southwest. This was at that time re- 
 garded as conclusive evidence of his insanity, and his mental 
 
 [207] 
 
condition was a matter of almost daily discussion in the public 
 journals, with Halstead's Cincinnati Commercial, published 
 in Sherman's own state, leading the attack against his mental 
 capacity. 
 
 When Secretary Cameron and Adjutant-General Thomas 
 were returning from their investigation of General Fremont's 
 department, soon after Sherman had assumed command of 
 Kentucky, Sherman took special measures to prevail upon 
 Cameron to stop over in Louisville and personally inquire 
 into the condition of that state. Cameron did so, and had a 
 confidential conference with Sherman at the Gait House, in 
 which Sherman said to Cameron that for the purpose of de- 
 fense in Kentucky he should have 60,000 men, and for offen- 
 sive movements 200,000 would be necessary. Cameron's an- 
 swer, as reported by Sherman himself, was: ''Great God! 
 ^vhere are they to come from?" That demand of Sherman's 
 convinced Cameron that Sherman was mentally unbalanced, 
 and on his return to Washington he united with all the mili- 
 tary authorities of that day in ridiculing Sherman's demand. 
 Those who have distinct recollections of the war, as well as 
 every intelligent reader of its history, need not now be re- 
 minded that Sherman was the only military man of that day 
 \vho thoroughly and accurately appreciated the situation in 
 the Southwest, and that his original estimate of the forces 
 necessary to overthrow the rebellion in that section of the 
 country is proved to have been substantially correct. Buell, 
 who succeeded Sherman in command of Kentucky, had nearly 
 60,000* men when he was ordered to Grant at Shiloh, and 
 fully 200,000 men were reapers in the harvest of death be- 
 fore the rebellion was conquered in the Southwest and the 
 Father of Waters again "went unvexed to the sea." 
 
 Sherman Avas not permitted to take the field until after 
 the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson and the city of 
 Nashville. From December 23, 1861, to the 13th of February, 
 
 * Buell's army actually numbered about 71,000.— Ed. 
 
 [208] 
 
1862, he was in charge of the St. Louis barracks as military 
 instructor. He was first ordered from St. Louis to take com- 
 mand of the post at Paducah, Kentucky, where he remained 
 until the 10th of March, when he was placed in command 
 of a division and ordered to join Grant for the Shiloh cam- 
 paign. It will be remembered that he exhibited great skill 
 and courage as a general during the disastrous first day at 
 Shiloh. That was the first action in which Sherman had an 
 opportunity to prove his ability as a military commander, and 
 it is safe to say that from that day until the close of the war 
 Grant regarded him as the best lieutenant in his entire army. 
 He was with Grant at Vicksburg, shared Grant's victory at 
 Missionary Ridge, and when the Atlanta campaign was de- 
 termined upon in the spring of 1864 there was no question 
 in military circles as to the pre-eminent fitness of Sherman 
 to take the command. His campaign from Chattanooga to 
 Atlanta was one of the most brilliant of all the campaigns 
 of the war. It exhibited the most accomplished military 
 strategy coupled with the wisest direction of an army that had 
 to contend with an enemy always intrenched and to fight 
 every battle under the greatest disadvantages. Many even of 
 our successful military campaigns have been severely criti- 
 cised, but I doubt whether any intelligent military man at 
 home or abroad has ever found fault with Sherman's general- 
 ship in his Atlanta campaign. With all his natural impetu- 
 osity of temper, he was always clear-headed and abundant in 
 caution when charged with the command of an army. In his 
 march to Atlanta he was passing through a country that was, 
 to use his own language, ''one vast fort," and with "at least 
 fifty miles of connected trenches with abatis and finished bat- 
 teries." With the single exception of his assault upon John- 
 ston's lines at Kenesaw he did not meet with a serious reverse 
 until he entered Atlanta, and it was his dispatch to Lincoln, 
 annoimcing the capture of that city, that reversed the politi- 
 cal tide of the country and assured Lincoln's re-election. 
 Sherman's march to the sea, that furnished the most roman- 
 
 [209] 
 
tic story of the Civil War, was really a holiday picnic as com- 
 pared with the march from Chattanooga to Atlanta. On the 
 12th of November, 1864, Sherman severed communications 
 with the North, and started for Savannah with a picked 
 army full 60,000 strong, and on the 10th of December he 
 was in front of the Confederate defenses of Savannah. On 
 the 13 th, after the capture of Fort McAllister, he had opened 
 communications with the Union squadron and was enabled 
 to obtain the supplies his army so much needed. Thus fbr 
 more than one entire month the country had no word what- 
 ever from General Sherman except in the vague and often 
 greatly exaggerated reports which came from the Southern 
 newspapers. I saw Lincoln several times during Sherman's 
 march, and while he did not conceal his anxiety concerning 
 him, he always frankly expressed his unbounded confidence 
 in Sherman's ability to execute what he had undertaken. He 
 had the strongest faith in Sherman as a military commander. 
 On one occasion during Sherman's march, when he had been 
 out for two or three weeks, I called at the War Department 
 and ascertained that no word had been received from him, 
 and that none need be expected for some days to come. I 
 went from the War Department to the White House, and 
 after a brief conference with Lincoln, in which Sherman was 
 not alluded to at all, I bade him good-day and started to leave 
 the room. Just as I reached the door he turned round and 
 with a merry twinkling of the eye he said: "McClure, 
 wouldn't you like to hear something from Sherman?" The 
 inquiry electrified me at the instant, as it seemed to imply 
 that Lincoln had some information on the subject. I imme- 
 diately answered: "Yes, most of all I should like to hear from 
 Sherman." To this Lincoln answered with a hearty laugh: 
 "Well, I'll be hanged if I wouldn't myself." When Sherman 
 reached Savannah, Lincoln overflowed with gratitude to him 
 and his army. He then felt fully assured that the military 
 power of the rebellion was hopelessly broken. 
 
 The names of Lincoln and Sherman are indissolubly linked 
 
 [210] 
 
together in the yet continued dispute over Lincoln's original 
 views on reconstruction, as Sherman claimed to represent 
 them in the terms of the first surrender of Johnston to Sher- 
 man at Durham Station, North Carolina. On the 18th of 
 April, 1865, Sherman and Johnston met at the house of Mr. 
 Bennet to agree upon the terms for the surrender of John- 
 ston's army. On the 12th of April Sherman had announced 
 to his army the surrender of Lee. Two days later a flag of 
 truce was received from Johnston proposing ''to stop the 
 further effusion of blood and devastation of property," and 
 suggesting that the civil authorities of the states be permitted 
 "to enter into the needful arrangements to terminate the 
 existing war." Sherman's answer of the same date said: "I am 
 fully empowered to arrange with you any terms for the sus- 
 pension of further hostilities between the armies commanded 
 by you and those commanded by myself." An interview with 
 Johnston having been arranged by a staff officer, Sherman 
 started from Raleigh on the 17th to fill the appointment with 
 Johnston. When he was about to enter the car he was stopped 
 by a telegraph-operator, who gave him the startling informa- 
 tion of the assassination of Lincoln on the 14th. He gave 
 orders that no publicity should be given to the death of Lin- 
 coln, and he did not even inform the staff officers accompany- 
 ing him. As soon as he was alone with Johnston he commu- 
 nicated to him the fact of Lincoln's assassination, and he adds 
 that "the perspiration came out in large drops on his (John- 
 ston's) forehead, and he did not attempt to conceal his dis- 
 tress." This conference with Johnston did not result in 
 formulating the terms of surrender. Johnston did not assume 
 to possess authority to surrender all the various armies yet in 
 the field, but as Jefferson Davis, with Breckenridge, his Sec- 
 retary of War, and Reagan, his Postmaster-General, was 
 within reach of Johnston, he proposed to meet Sherman on 
 the following day, when he hoped to have authority to sur- 
 render the entire Confederate armies remaining in the serv- 
 ice. When they met again Breckenridge was with Johnston 
 
 [211] 
 
without assuming to act in any official capacity, and the terms 
 of surrender were formulated and signed by Sherman and 
 Johnston. So far as the purely military terms were involved, 
 they were practically the same as those agreed to by Grant 
 and Lee at Appomattox. The third article of the basis of 
 agreement provided for ''the recognition by the Executive of 
 the United States of the several State governments on their 
 officers and legislatures taking the oath prescribed by the 
 Constitution of the United States." The fifth article provided 
 for substantial amnesty, so far as in the power of the Presi- 
 dent, to all who accepted the terms of surrender, who should 
 be protected in "their political rights and franchise as well as 
 their rights of person and property." It was provided also that 
 the armies of Sherman and Johnston should refrain from all 
 warlike movements until the terms of surrender were finally 
 accepted, and in the event of failure forty-eight hours' notice 
 should be given by either side for the resumption of hostili- 
 ties. Sherman transmitted the agreement to the government 
 through Grant, and Stanton published the disapproval by 
 the administration with most offensive reflections upon 
 Sherman. 
 
 But for the dispute that arose over Sherman's original terms 
 of surrender with Johnston, Lincoln's views as to reconstruc- 
 tion would never have been crystallized in history. The fact 
 that Sherman claimed to act under the direct authority of 
 Lincoln in the terms he gave to Johnston and to the civil 
 governments of the insurgent states brings up the question 
 directly as to Lincoln's contemplated method of closing the 
 war; and it is notable that many of Lincoln's biographers have 
 injected partisan prejudice into history and have studiously 
 attempted to conceal Lincoln's ideas as to the restoration of 
 the Union. Whether he was right or wrong, it is due to the 
 truth of history that his convictions be honestly presented. 
 The plain question to be considered is this: Did or did not 
 Lincoln expressly suggest to Sherman the terms he gave to 
 Johnston in his original agreement of surrender? If he did, 
 
 [212] 
 
it clearly portrays Lincoln's purposes as to reconstruction and 
 fully vindicates Sherman. If he did not thus suggest and in- 
 struct Sherman, then Sherman is a diliberate falsifier; and 
 who is prepared to doubt the integrity of any positive state- 
 ment made by William T. Sherman? There were four per- 
 sons present at the conference held at City Point on the 
 28th of March, 1865. They were Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, 
 and Admiral Porter. It was before these men that Lincoln 
 freely discussed the question of ending the war, and in Sher- 
 man's Memoirs he says: "Mr. Lincoln was full and frank in 
 his conversation, assuring me that in his mind he was all ready 
 for the civil reorganization of affairs at the South as soon as 
 the war was over." Had Lincoln stopped with the general as- 
 surance of his purpose to restore the South to civil govern- 
 ment, it might be plausible to assume that Sherman misin- 
 terpreted his expressions, but Sherman adds the following 
 positive statement: "He (Lincoln) distinctly authorized me 
 to assure Governor Vance and the people of North Carolina 
 that as soon as the rebel armies laid down their arms and re- 
 sumed their civil pursuits they would at once be guaranteed 
 all their rights as citizens of a common country; and that to 
 avoid anarchy the State governments then in existence, with 
 their civil functionaries, would be recognized by him as 
 the governments de facto till Congress could provide others." 
 There was no possibility for Sherman to mistake this ex- 
 pression of Lincoln. He was distinctly instructed to assure 
 the governor of North Carolina, the state in which Sher- 
 man's army was then operating, that upon the surrender of 
 the insurgent forces all would be guaranteed their rights as 
 citizens, and the civil governments then in existence would 
 be recognized by Lincoln. There was no chance for misun- 
 derstanding on this point. Either Lincoln thus instructed 
 Sherman or Sherman states what is deliberately untrue. 
 
 These were the last instructions that Sherman received 
 from Lincoln or from the government until the surrender 
 of Johnston. In a little more than two weeks thereafter 
 
 [213} 
 
Lincoln was assassinated, and the only event that could have 
 been regarded as an additional guide for Sherman was the 
 surrender of Lee, in which all the rights that Sherman ac- 
 corded to Johnston's army were given to Lee's army by 
 Grant. The testimony of Lincoln could not be had after 
 the issue was raised with Sherman, as Lincoln was then dead; 
 but Sherman knew that on the 6th of April, Lincoln had 
 authorized the reconvening of the Virginia Legislature, and 
 thus felt sure that Lincoln was doing in Virginia precisely 
 what he had instructed Sherman to do in North Carolina. 
 Grant, always reticent in matters of dispute except when 
 testimony was a necessity, was not called upon to express any 
 opinion as to the correctness of Sherman's understanding of 
 Lincoln's instructions. General Badeau, who was with Grant 
 at the time he received Stanton's offensive revocation of the 
 agreement between Sherman and Johnston, says that Grant 
 pronounced Stanton's ten reasons for rejecting the terms of 
 surrender to be ''infamous." An entirely new condition had 
 been produced by the murder of Lincoln and the succession 
 of Johnson, and had Sherman been advised of the frenzy of 
 public sentiment that followed the assassination of the Presi- 
 dent, he probably would not have obeyed Lincoln's instruc- 
 tions by giving the promise that the government would 
 recognize the Confederate civil authorities of the states. 
 
 The tragic death of Lincoln aroused public sentiment to 
 the highest point of resentment. The new President was 
 ostentatious in his demand for vengeance upon the Southern 
 leaders. Stanton was most violent in his cry for the swiftest 
 retribution, and it was in this changed condition of sentiment 
 and of authority that Sherman's terms, accorded to Johnston 
 in obedience to the peaceful purposes of Lincoln, were sent 
 to the government for approval or rejection. Stanton immedi- 
 ately proclaimed the rejection of the terms of surrender in 
 a dispatch given to the public press, in which he denounced 
 Sherman with unmingled ferocity as having acted without 
 authority and surrendered almost every issue for which the 
 
 [214] 
 
war had been fought. So violent was this assault upon Sher- 
 man from Stanton that soon after, when Sherman's victorious 
 army was reviewed in Washington by the President and Sec- 
 retary of War, Sherman refused the proffered hand of Stanton 
 before the multitude. President Johnson subsequently as- 
 sured Sherman that Stanton's public reflection upon him had 
 not been seen by the President nor any of Stanton's associates 
 of the Cabinet until it had been published. Admiral Porter, 
 who was the remaining witness to the instructions received 
 by Sherman, took down notes immediately after the confer- 
 ence ended, and within a year thereafter he furnished Sher- 
 man a statement of what had occurred, in which he fully and 
 broadly sustained Sherman as to Lincoln's instructions. I 
 assume, therefore, that it is true beyond all reasonable dispute 
 that Sherman in his original terms of Johnston's surrender in 
 North Carolina implicitly obeyed the directions of Lincoln, 
 and was therefore not only fully justified in what he did, but 
 would have been false to his trust had he insisted upon any 
 other terms than those he accepted. 
 
 This issue made with General Sherman and feebly sus- 
 tained by a few partisan historians of the time has led in- 
 telligent students to study carefully Lincoln's ideas of re- 
 construction, and they should be correctly understood to 
 correctly estimate Lincoln's character. I frequently saw 
 Lincoln during the summer and fall of 1864 and winter of 
 1865. Some time in August, 1864, I spent several hours with 
 him alone in the White House, when he spoke most earnestly 
 about the closing of the war. He had but a single purpose, 
 and that was the speedy and cordial restoration of the dis- 
 severed states. He cherished no resentment against the South, 
 and every theory of reconstruction that he ever conceived or 
 presented was eminently peaceful and looking solely to re- 
 attaching the estranged people to the government. I was 
 startled when he first suggested that it would be wise to pay 
 the South $400,000,000 as compensation for the abolition of 
 slavery, but he had reasoned well on the subject, and none 
 
 [215] 
 
could answer the arguments he advanced in favor of such a 
 settlement of the war. He knew that he could not then pro- 
 pose it to Congress or to the country, but he clung to it until 
 the very last. He repeatedly renewed the subject in conver- 
 sations when I was present, and on the 5th of February, 1865, 
 he went so far as to formulate a message to Congress, proposing 
 the payment of $400,000,000 for emancipation, and submitted 
 it to his Cabinet, only to be unanimously rejected. Lincoln 
 sadly accepted the decision of his Cabinet, and filed away 
 the manuscript message with this indorsement thereon, to 
 which his signature was added: "February 5, 1865. To-day 
 these papers, which explain themselves, were drawn up and 
 submitted to the Cabinet and unanimously disapproved by 
 them." When the proposed message was disapproved Lincoln 
 soberly asked: "How long will the war last?" To this none 
 could make answer, and he added: "We are spending now 
 in carrying on the war $3,000,000 a day, which will amount 
 to all this money, besides all the lives." 
 
 At Lincoln's conference with Sherman and Grant at City 
 Point on the 28th of March he exhibited profound sorrow 
 at the statement of these generals that another great battle 
 would probably have to be fought before closing the war. 
 Sherman says that "Lincoln exclaimed more than once that 
 there had been blood enough shed, and asked us if another 
 battle could not be avoided." His great desire was to attain 
 peace without the sacrifice of a single life that could be 
 saved, and he certainly desired that there should be no policy 
 of retribution upon the Southern people. He intimated to 
 Sherman very broadly that he desired Jefferson Davis to 
 escape from the country. Sherman in his Memoirs repeats a 
 story told by Lincoln to him illustrative of his wish that Davis 
 should escape "unbeknown to him"; and in discussing the 
 same subject in the White House in the presence of Governor 
 Curtin, Colonel Forney, several others, and myself, he told 
 the same story to illustrate the same point, obviously intend- 
 ing to convey very clearly his wish that the Southern leaders 
 
 [216] 
 
should escape from the land and save him the grave com- 
 plications which must follow their arrest. Secretary Welles, in 
 an article in the Galaxy, quotes Lincoln as saying on this 
 subject: "No one need expect he would take any part in 
 hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. 
 Frighten them out of the country; open the gates; let down 
 the bars, scare them off. Enough lives have been sacrificed; 
 we must extinguish pur resentments if we expect harmony 
 and union." 
 
 Lincoln's greatest apprehension during the last six months 
 of the war was that the South would not return to the Union 
 and recognize the authority of the government. He knew that 
 the military power of the rebellion was broken, but he knew 
 that the bitterness that prevailed among the Southern people 
 would be an almost insuperable barrier to anything like 
 cordial reconstruction. He knew that they were impoverished, 
 and he feared almost universal anarchy in the South when the 
 shattered armies of the Confederacy should be broken up, 
 and, instead of a restoration of peace and industry or anything 
 approaching friendly relations between the Southern people 
 and the government, he anticipated guerilla warfare, general 
 disorder, and utter hopelessness of tranquility throughout 
 the rebellious states. It was this grave apprehension that 
 made Lincoln desire to close the war upon such terms as 
 would make the Southern people and Southern soldiers 
 think somewhat kindly of the Union to which they were 
 brought back by force of arms. It was this apprehension that 
 made him instruct Sherman to recognize the civil govern- 
 ments of the South until Congress should take action on the 
 subject, and that made him personally authorize General 
 Weitzel to permit the Virginia state government to recon- 
 vene, as he himself stated it, to "take measures to withdraw 
 the Virginia troops and their support from resistance to the 
 general government." He meant to do precisely what Sher- 
 man agreed to do in his terms with Johnston. On Lincoln's 
 return to Washington from Weitzel's headquarters in Rich- 
 
 [217] 
 
mond he was surprised to find that his consent to the reas- 
 sembling of the Virginia state government, like his proposed 
 message offering $400,000,000 as compensation for slavery, 
 was disapproved by the Cabinet, and that it was likely to be 
 disapproved by the country. He was greatly distressed, and 
 hesitated some time before he attempted to extricate himself 
 from the complication. Secretary Welles, in the Galaxy of 
 April, 1872, page 524, speaking of the question in the Cabinet, 
 says: "The subject had caused general surprise, and on the 
 part of some dissatisfaction and irritation." Stanton and Speed 
 were especially disturbed about it, and Secretary Welles 
 quotes Lincoln as finally saying that he "was surprised that 
 his object and the movement had been so generally miscon- 
 strued, and under the circumstances perhaps it was best the 
 proceeding should be abandoned." 
 
 In the meantime Lee's army had surrendered, and Lin- 
 coln was given a reasonable opportunity to stop the proposed 
 meeting of the Virginia Legislature; and on the 12th of 
 April he wrote to General Weitzel that as the proposed meet- 
 ing had been misconstrued, and that as Grant had since cap- 
 tured the Virginia troops, so that they could not be with- 
 drawn by the Virginia Legislature, his letter to Judge Camp- 
 bell should be recalled and the legislature not allowed to 
 assemble; but if any had come in pursuance of the order to 
 allow them a safe return to their homes. In his interview 
 with Judge Campbell and others in relation to the proposed 
 assembling of the Virginia Legislature, Lincoln had dis- 
 tinctly agreed that if Virginia could be peaceably restored 
 to the Union, confiscation should be remitted to the people. 
 The evidence is multiplied on every side that Lincoln in- 
 tended to give the Virginians exemption from all the retribu- 
 tory laws of war, including amnesty to all who obeyed the 
 government, just as Sherman provided in his terms of sur- 
 render with Johnston; but he was halted in his purpose, as he 
 was halted in his proposed compensated emancipation, by 
 the bitter resentments of the time, which prevailed not only 
 
 [218] 
 
in his Cabinet, but throughout the country. Had he been able 
 to see Sherman after he had revoked the authority for the 
 Virginia Legislature to assemble, he would doubtless have 
 modified his instructions to him, but Lincoln never again 
 communicated with Sherman. Two days after his revocation 
 of the Weitzel order he was assassinated, and four days after 
 Lincoln's assassination Sherman made his terms of surrender 
 with Johnston. Had Lincoln been alive when Sherman's first 
 report of Johnston's surrender was received in Washington, 
 his experience in assenting to the reassembling of the Vir- 
 ginia state government would doubtless have made him 
 disapprove the terms given to Johnston in obedience to 
 Lincoln's instructions to Sherman; but he would have cast 
 no reproach upon the heroic victor of Atlanta and Savannah, 
 and would have manfully assumed his full share of respon- 
 sibility for Sherman's action. What policy of reconstruction 
 Lincoln would have adopted had he lived to complete his 
 great work cannot now be known; but it is entirely safe to 
 assume that, while he would have yielded to the mandatory 
 sentiment of the nation, he would in the end have taught the 
 country that "with malice toward none, with charity for all," 
 he could assure the world that "government of the people 
 by the people and for the people shall not perish from the 
 earth." 
 
 [219] 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND CURTIN 
 
 Andrew G. Curtin has written the most brilliant chapters in 
 the annals of our great civil conflict by his official record as 
 Governor of Pennsylvania. I am not unmindful, in paying 
 this high tribute to the great war governor of the Union, 
 that there are many Pennsylvania names that have become 
 memorable for their heroism in the struggle for the preserva- 
 tion of our free institutions. Nor am I unmindful that 
 Pennsylvania has within her borders the great battle-field of 
 the war, and that the names of such Pennsylvania heroes as 
 Meade, Reynolds, and Hancock are inseparably linked with 
 the decisive victory that gave assured safety and unsullied free- 
 dom to the Union. While Pennsylvania heroism was making 
 itself immortal on every battle-field of the war, the civil ad- 
 ministration of the state was more intimately involved with 
 every issue growing out of the war than that of any other 
 state of the Republic. Pennsylvania was second only to New 
 York in population and physical power, and first of all in the 
 importance of her position and in moulding the policy of the 
 states and their relations to the parent government. Bordered 
 by slave commonwealths from her eastern to her western lines, 
 and more exposed to the perils of war than any of the other 
 loyal states, her people were conservative to the utmost lim- 
 its of positive loyalty to the Union. In January, 1861, when 
 Curtin was inaugurated as governor, not a single northern 
 state had officially defined its relations to the Union or its 
 attitude as to the threatened civil war, and any utterance from 
 
 [220] 
 
a state of such pre-eminent physical and political power could 
 not but make its impression on every state of the Union, 
 North and South. 
 
 Few of the present day can have any just appreciation of 
 the exceptional delicacy and grave responsibility of the posi- 
 tion of the new governor of Pennsylvania. An ill-advised 
 utterance from him might have wantonly inflamed the war 
 spirit of the South or chilled the loyal devotion of the North. 
 He was called upon to define, in advance of all the other 
 states, the position of the North when confronted by armed 
 treason, and there were no precedents in our history to guide 
 him. His inaugural address was prepared entirely by himself 
 before he came to the capital to assume his most responsible 
 trust. Before he delivered it he summoned to his council a 
 number of the most intelligent and considerate men of both 
 parties in the state, but after careful and dispassionate re- 
 flection upon every sentence of the document it was not sub- 
 stantially changed in any particular, and the highest tribute 
 that history could pay to his statesmanship is in the fact that 
 the position of his great state, and its relations with the gen- 
 eral government as defined in that address, were accepted by 
 every loyal state and vindicated alike by the loyal judgment 
 of the nation and by the arbitrament of the sword. 
 
 Curtin stood single among the public men of Pennsylvania 
 in 1860 as a popular leader. His strength was with the people 
 rather than in political invention. He had made himself con- 
 spicuously known by his services as Secretary of the Common- 
 wealth when that officer was charged with the control of the 
 school system. It was he who first organized a distinct depart- 
 ment to extend and elevate our schools, and he succeeded in 
 greatly liberalizing our educational system and starting it on 
 the high way to its present matchless advancement. As early 
 as 1844 he had made himself known as one of the most elo- 
 quent stump-speakers of the state, and from that time until 
 his nomination for governor in 1860 he was in the forefront 
 of every political contest, and was greeted with boundless en- 
 
 [221] 
 
thusiasm by his political followers wherever he appeared. 
 When the great battle of 1860 was to be fought Pennsylvania 
 was accepted by all as a doubtful state, and as her vote in 
 October would be the unerring finger-board of national vic- 
 tory or defeat in November, it became not only a state but 
 a national necessity for the Republicans to nominate their 
 most available candidate to lead in that pivotal contest. The 
 Republican people, almost as with one voice, demanded the 
 nomination of Curtin, and there would have been no other 
 name presented to the convention but for the peculiar politi- 
 cal complications arising from Cameron being a candidate 
 for President before the same convention, and bitterly hos- 
 tile to Curtin. But despite the peculiar power of Cameron 
 as an organizer and manager of political conventions, he was 
 finally compelled to assent to Curtin's nomination without 
 being able to obtain an earnestly united delegation in his 
 favor for President. When Curtin was called before the con- 
 vention to accept the leadership conferred upon him, he 
 aroused the enthusiasm of that body and of his party friends 
 throughout the state by declaring that he accepted the flag 
 of the convention and would carry it in the front of battle 
 from Lake Erie to the Delaware; and he grandly fulfilled his 
 promise. He was one of the most magnetic popular speakers 
 Pennsylvania has ever known, combining matchless wit, keen 
 invective, and persuasive argument with singular felicity, and 
 his towering and symmetrical form and his genial face and 
 manner made him the most effective of all our men on the 
 hustings. He was aggressive from the day he entered the battle 
 until it closed with his magnificent victory that declared him 
 governor by a majority of over thirty-two thousand. 
 
 Many circumstances combined to bring Lincoln and Cur- 
 tin into the closest official and personal relations from Lin- 
 coln's nomination until his death. As 1 have shown in a pre- 
 vious chapter, the nomination of Lincoln was made possible 
 by two men— Henry S. Lane of Indiana and Curtin of Penn- 
 sylvania. Both would have been defeated had Seward been 
 
 [222] 
 
nominated, and Curtin's first great struggle to give himself 
 even a winning chance in Pennsylvania was his effort to de- 
 feat the nomination of Seward at Chicago. After that had been 
 accomplished he united with Lane to nominate Lincoln. He 
 and Lincoln never met until Curtin received the President- 
 elect on his way to Washington on the 22d of February, 1861, 
 and it was at the dinner given to Lincoln by Curtin on the 
 evening of that day that Lincoln's route was changed and he 
 suddenly started on his memorable midnight journey to the 
 national capital. The appointment of Cameron to the Lin- 
 coln Cabinet was regarded by Curtin as unfortunate, and 
 would have made very strained relations between Lincoln 
 and Curtin had not both been singularly generous in all their 
 impulses and actions. Notwithstanding the frequent irritating 
 complications which arose between the Secretary of War and 
 the governor in the organization of troops in the early part 
 of the war, there never was a shadow upon the relations of 
 these two men. Curtin was profoundly loyal and an enthusiast 
 in everything pertaining to the war. He was proud of his great 
 state, and especially of the hundreds of thousands of heroes 
 she sent to the field, and so tireless in his great work that he 
 always commanded the sincerest affection and confidence of 
 the President. Although often disappointed in the political 
 action of the national administration, and at times keenly 
 grieved personally because of political honors unworthily 
 conferred, or withheld from those he deemed most worthy of 
 them, he never for a moment lost sight of his paramount duty 
 to give unfaltering support to the government in the great 
 struggle for the maintenance of the Union. 
 
 The two men of the country who are distinctly upon record 
 as having appreciated the magnitude of the war when it first 
 began are General Sherman and Governor Curtin. Sherman 
 was judged a lunatic and relieved of his command in Ken- 
 tucky because he told the government the exact truth as to 
 the magnitude of the rebellion in the Southwest and the 
 forces necessary to overthrow it. In a little time the country 
 
 [223] 
 
began to appreciate Sherman's military intelligence. He was 
 finally permitted to go to the front in command of a division, 
 and in his first battle he proved himself to be one of the most 
 skillful and courageous of our generals. Curtin proved his 
 appreciation of the necessities of our imperiled government 
 by issuing his proclamation on the 25th of April, 1861, calling 
 for twenty-five additional regiments of infantry and one of 
 cavalry to serve for three years or during the war, in addition 
 to the quota furnished by Pennsylvania under the President's 
 call of April 15, 1861, summoning 75,000 three months' men 
 to the field. This call of Curtin was made without the au- 
 thority of the general government, and entirely without the 
 knowledge of the President or Secretary of War. Pennsylvania 
 and the whole loyal North had been cut off from all commu- 
 nication with the national capital for several days by treason- 
 able rioters in Baltimore, who burned the railroad bridges 
 and prevented all railroad or even telegraphic communica- 
 tion with Washington. In this grave emergency, although 
 Pennsylvania had furnished every man called for by the gov- 
 ernment, and had offered many more than the quota, after 
 the most careful study of the situation with General Robert 
 Patterson and Colonel Fitz John Porter, then serving as As- 
 sistant Adjutant-General, and a number of civilians who were 
 heartily sustaining Curtin in his arduous labors, it was de- 
 cided to assume the responsibility of calling out twenty-six 
 additional regiments for service under the general govern- 
 ment, because it was believed by all that they would be needed 
 as speedily as they could be obtained. 
 
 The requisition for troops made by Pennsylvania was in 
 pursuance of the unanimous judgment of the military and 
 civil authorities then at Harrisburg, and it was not doubted 
 that the government would gratefully accept them. The re- 
 sponse to Curtin's proclamation for volunteers was unexam- 
 pled, and in the few days during which Harrisburg was with- 
 out communication with Washington thousands of patriotic 
 men were crowding the trains for the capital from every part 
 
 [ 224 ] 
 
of the state to enter the military service. To the utter surprise 
 of the Governor and the commander of the department, the 
 first communication received from Washington after notice 
 of this requisition for additional troops had been forwarded 
 was a blunt refusal to receive any of the regiments under the 
 new call; and to emphasize the attitude of the government 
 and its appreciation of the magnitude of the war, Secretary 
 Cameron stated in a dispatch to the Governor not only that 
 the troops could not be received, but ''that it was more impor- 
 tant to reduce than enlarge the number." Earnest appeals 
 were made to the President and the War Department from 
 the Governor and General Patterson to have these troops, or 
 at least part of them, accepted, but every such appeal was met 
 with a positive refusal. John Sherman, Senator from Ohio, 
 was a volunteer aide on General Patterson's staff, and he fully 
 agreed with the authorities at Harrisburg that it was of the 
 utmost importance to the government that the additional 
 Pennsylvania troops be accepted. In view of his important 
 political position and presumed influence with the President 
 and Secretary of War, he was hurried to Washington as soon 
 as communications were opened to make a personal appeal 
 for the acceptance of the troops. On the 30th of May, five 
 days after the requisition had been made, he wrote General 
 Patterson from Washington, stating that he had entirely failed 
 to persuade the government to accept any part of these new 
 regiments. It was not within the power of the government to 
 depose Governor Curtin and order him to some military bar- 
 racks as a lunatic, but it could rebuke him for proposing to 
 furnish a large number of additional troops, when, as subse- 
 quent events proved, the government had the most pressing 
 need for them. Fortunately for the government and for the 
 complete vindication of the broad sagacity and heroic fidelity 
 of Curtin, he resolved to perform his duty to his State and 
 nation regardless of the Washington authorities. 
 
 After a bitter contest, in which some prominent Repub- 
 licans opposed the Governor's recommendations, a bill had 
 
 [225] 
 
been passed by the Legislature some weeks before appropriat- 
 ing half a million of dollars to provide for the defense of the 
 State, and he had issued his call for an extraordinary session 
 of the Legislature as early as the 20th of April to meet the 
 great issue of civil war. He revoked his proclamation for ad- 
 ditional regiments called for by General Patterson's requisi- 
 tion, but much more than one-half the number called for had 
 already volunteered, and were practically in charge of the 
 state for organization. When the special session of the Leg- 
 islature met on the 30th of April he sent an earnest message 
 calling for the organization of the volunteers then in camp 
 into fifteen regiments as a state corps, but to be subject to the 
 call of the United States in any emergency. It was this brave 
 action of Curtin that gave us the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, 
 whose heroism crimsoned nearly every battle-field of the 
 Army of the Potomac. These troops were organized not only 
 without the aid of the national government, but in defiance 
 of its refusal to accept them and of its positive declarations 
 that they could not and would not be needed. It was a most 
 heroic policy on the part of Curtin. It involved a loan of 
 $3,000,000 when the credit of the state was severely strained, 
 and every partisan or factional foe was inspired to opposition 
 by the known fact that the national government declared 
 additional troops to be entirely unnecessary. The Legislature 
 and the people had faith in Curtin, had faith in his integrity, 
 his patriotism, and his judgment of the nation's peril, and 
 the bill creating a loan and organizing fifteen regiments of the 
 Reserve Corps was passed by an overwhelming majority in 
 both branches of the Legislature. He had around him a num- 
 ber of leading men of both parties who cheerfully gave their 
 time and ceaseless labor to assist him. Among those I recall 
 who sat in his councils by day and night to strengthen his 
 hands by voluntary service on his staff were such men as the 
 late Thomas A. Scott, John A. Wright, R. Biddle Roberts, 
 Reuben C. Hale, and John B. Parker, and Craig Biddle and 
 Joseph E. Potts. These men, as well as the military officers on 
 
 [ 226 ] 
 
duty in Pennsylvania with General Patterson, all heartily 
 concurred in the policy of the Governor and shared his vin- 
 dication at an early day. 
 
 Even before the disastrous battle of Bull Run was fought 
 on the 21st of July, two of the Reserve regiments were called 
 for by the government to march to Cumberland to the relief 
 of Colonel Wallace, and the regiments commanded by Col- 
 onel Charles J. Biddle and Colonel Simmons and a battery 
 of artillery were on the march the same day the order was re- 
 ceived, and soon thereafter the Tenth regiment followed. 
 Notwithstanding the refusal to entertain the question of 
 accepting these troops, Curtin again tendered the Reserve 
 Corps to the government on the 18th of July, just before the 
 battle of Bull Run, and the same day brought orders from 
 the War Department that four regiments should be sent to 
 Hagerstown and the remaining, exclusive of those in West 
 Virginia, should be sent to Baltimore. These regiments were 
 encamped at Pittsburgh, Easton, West Chester, and Harris- 
 burg, and the governor at once ordered them to march as 
 requested by the Washington authorities. His answer to the 
 request to forward the troops was in these words: "All the 
 regiments have been ordered to Harrisburg in obedience to 
 your dispatch just received, and on arrival will be immedi- 
 ately forwarded to the seat of war, as previously ordered. If 
 there is not time to muster them in at this place, mustering 
 officers can follow them into the field." Had these troops been 
 on the battle-field of Bull Run, as they could have been had 
 not the government persistently refused to accept them, it 
 would have given an overwhelming preponderance of num- 
 bers to the Union forces, and doubtless reversed the disaster 
 of that day.* On the night of July 21st, when the government 
 learned that the army had been routed at Bull Run, most 
 frantic appeals were made to Curtin from the Washington 
 authorities to hasten his troops to the front to save the na- 
 
 * This assertion is at best doubtful. What was needed at Bull Run was 
 not so much numbers, but discipline and organization.— Ed, 
 
 [227} 
 
tional capital, and within twenty-four hours after the retreat 
 of McDowell's army into the Washington fortifications the 
 welcome tread of the Pennsylvania Reserves was heard on 
 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the panic was allayed and confi- 
 dence restored by regiment after regiment of the once-rejected 
 troops hurrying to Washington. One dispatch from the War 
 Department thus appeals to Curtin: ''Get your regiments at 
 Harrisburg, Easton, and other points ready for immediate 
 shipment. Lose no time in preparing. Make things move to 
 the utmost." Another dispatch said: "To-morrow won't do for 
 your regiments; you must have them to-night. Send them to- 
 night. It is of the utmost importance." Another appeal to him 
 said: "Stop the regiment at Greencastle, and send it to Wash- 
 ington to-night. Do not fail." Thus the war authorities that 
 had treated with contempt the appeals of Curtin to accept 
 the troops he had called for when cut off from the national 
 capital, in a few months thereafter sent the most earnest ap- 
 peals to him to save them from their own folly by forwarding 
 the troops he had organized in defiance of their protest. 
 
 I speak advisedly when I say that there was not a single 
 new phase of the war at any time that did not summon Curtin 
 to the councils of Lincoln. He was the first man called to 
 Washington after the surrender of Sumter, and I accompanied 
 him in obedience to a like summons to me as chairman of 
 the Military Committee of the Senate. Pennsylvania was to 
 sound the keynote for all the loyal states of the North in the 
 utterance of her loyal governor, and her action was to be the 
 example for every other state of the Union. How grandly 
 Curtin performed that duty is proved by the fact that he 
 organized and furnished to the national government during 
 the war 367,482 soldiers, and organized, in addition to that 
 number, 87,000 for domestic defense during the same period. 
 New duties and grave responsibilities were multiplied upon 
 him every week, but he was always equal to them, and was a 
 tireless enthusiast in the performance of his labors. Three 
 times during the war was his state invaded by the enemy, 
 
 [228] 
 
and at one time 90,000 of Lee's army, with Lee himself at 
 their head, were within the borders of our state on their way 
 to their Waterloo at Gettysburg.* While responding with the 
 utmost promptness to every call of the national government, 
 whether for troops or for moral or political support, he was 
 most zealous in making provision for the defense of his ex- 
 posed people in the border counties. He had an ample force 
 within the State to .protect the border against raids by the 
 enemy, and would have saved Chambersburg from destruc- 
 tion by the vandal torch, had not his own state troops been 
 ordered away from him to save General Hunter after his dis- 
 graceful and disastrous raid into Virginia in 1864. Hunter's 
 vandalism had justly inflamed the South, and when he was 
 driven across the Potomac the Pennsylvania regiments or- 
 ganized for the special defense of the state, being subject to 
 orders from Washington because mustered into the United 
 States service, passed through Chambersburg, within forty- 
 eight hours of the period of its destruction, to join Hunter 
 in Maryland and save him from the retribution his folly had 
 invited. Had these Pennsylvania troops remained subject to 
 the orders of the state authorities, they could have been in 
 Chambersburg before McCausland reached there, and would 
 have outnumbered him nearly three to one. Chambersburg 
 was thus destroyed solely because of the grave emergency that 
 called the state troops to the support of Hunter, and they 
 were almost within sound of McCausland's guns when he 
 opened on the defenseless people of Chambersburg at day- 
 light on the 30th of July, 1864, before he entered the town 
 to destroy it. 
 
 Curtin's relations with Stanton were never entirely cordial 
 and at times embarrassing; but Lincoln always interposed 
 when necessary, and almost invariably sustained Curtin when 
 a vital issue was raised between them. The fact that Lincoln 
 supported Curtin against Stanton many times greatly irri- 
 
 * Actual strength of Lee's army was not over 80,000.— Ed. 
 
 [229} 
 
tated the Secretary of War, and doubtless intensified his bit- 
 terness against the Pennsylvania war governor. In one nota- 
 ble instance only, in which Curtin and Stanton were in bitter 
 conflict, did Lincoln hesitate to sustain Curtin, but Lincoln 
 was overruled by his military commanders and bowed to their 
 exactions with profound reluctance. In the winter or early 
 spring of 1864, Curtin, always alive to the interests of hu- 
 manity, and feeling keenly the sorrows of the Pennsylvania 
 soldiers who were in Southern prison-pens suffering from dis- 
 ease and starvation, went to Washington on three different 
 occasions and appealed to both Stanton and Lincoln for the 
 exchange of prisoners as the Southern commissioners pro- 
 posed. We then held about 30,000 Southern prisoners, and 
 the South held as many or more of Union soldiers, and Gen- 
 eral Grant, looking solely to military success, peremptorily 
 refused to permit the exchange of these men, because Lee 
 would gain nearly 30,000 effective soldiers, while most of the 
 30,000 Union prisoners would be unfit for service because of 
 illness. On Curtin's third visit to Washington on that subject 
 he was accompanied by Attorney-General William M. Mere- 
 dith, and they both earnestly pressed upon the government 
 the prompt exchange of prisoners. Stanton grew impatient 
 and even insolent, retorting to the governor's appeal: "Do 
 you come here in support of the government and ask me to 
 exchange 30,000 skeletons for 30,000 well-fed men?" To which 
 Curtin replied with all the earnestness of his humane im- 
 pulses: "Do you dare to depart from the laws of humane war- 
 fare in this enlightened age of Christian civilization?" Curtin 
 and Meredith carried their appeal to Lincoln, who shared 
 all of Curtin's sympathies for our suffering prisoners, and 
 who exerted himself to the utmost, only to effect a partial 
 exchange. In 1863, when Curtin was a candidate for re- 
 election, Stanton gave most earnest support to his cause, not- 
 withstanding he rarely spoke of Curtin personally except with 
 bitterness. Curtin keenly appreciated what Stanton had done, 
 and went to Washington soon after his election with the 
 
 [230] 
 
purpose of paying his respects to Stanton and thanking him 
 for the hearty support he had given him. A mutual acquaint- 
 ance, who knew that Curtin was in Washington to pay his 
 respects to Stanton, happened to meet Stanton during the 
 evening and spoke with much enthusiasm of Curtin's victory, 
 and of his presence there to visit and thank the Secretary of 
 War. Stanton replied in his cynical way: "Yes, Pennsylvania 
 must be a damned loyal state to give such a victory to Cur- 
 tin." This was repeated to Curtin the same evening, and the 
 result was that Curtin's visit to the War Office was indefinitely 
 postponed, and Stanton died without having received the 
 thanks that Curtin had intended for him. Soon after the war 
 was over, however, Stanton seemed to have justly appreciated 
 Curtin, as he wrote him a voluntary and most affectionate 
 letter, reviewing the great work he had done as governor of 
 Pennsylvania, thanking him for his patriotism and fidelity, 
 and offering a full apology for anything that he might have 
 done to give him unpleasant recollections. 
 
 Lincoln played a most conspicuous part in Curtin's second 
 nomination and re-election. So profoundly was Curtin im- 
 pressed with the necessity of uniting all parties in the support 
 of the war for the suppression of the rebellion that he was the 
 first man to suggest his own retirement from the office of 
 governor if the Democrats would present the name of Gen- 
 eral William B. Franklin, a gallant Pennsylvania Democratic 
 soldier. I was present when Curtin first made this suggestion 
 to a number of his friends, and he made it with a degree of 
 earnestness that impressed every one. He said that it was 
 vastly more important to thus unite the whole Democratic 
 party with the Republicans on an honest war platform than 
 that any party or any individual should win political success. 
 So earnestly did he press the matter that communication was 
 opened with a number of leading Democrats of the state, 
 many of whom regarded the suggestion with favor and sought 
 to accomplish it. Unfortunately for the democracy, the more 
 Bourbon element controlled its councils and a Supreme Judge 
 
 [231] 
 
who had declared the national conscription act unconstitu- 
 tional, thereby depriving the government of the power to fill 
 its wasted armies, was nominated for governor when the 
 thunders of Lee's guns were heard in the Cumberland Valley 
 and almost within hearing of the capital where the conven- 
 tion sat. Had Franklin been nominated by the Democrats, 
 Curtin would have publicly declared for him, and the Re- 
 publican Convention would have welcomed him as their can- 
 didate, regardless of his political faith. Failing in that move- 
 ment, there seemed to be but one hopeful loyal candidate for 
 governor— Curtin himself. He was broken in health and 
 entirely unequal to the strain of a desperate battle. In politi- 
 cal contests he was expected to be leader of leaders in Penn- 
 sylvania. In addition to his shattered health, there were over 
 70,000 of his soldiers in the field who had not then the 
 constitutional right to vote in their camps, while the bitter 
 factional feud between the Curtin and Cameron wings of the 
 party seriously threatened his defeat. Curtin's greatest desire, 
 next to the faithful fulfillment of the high responsibilities 
 cast upon him, was to retire from public office and recover 
 his physical vigor. It was believed in his own household that 
 he could not survive another political campaign in which he 
 was compelled to take the lead. His devoted and estimable 
 wife, who brightened every public honor he attained, ap- 
 pealed to me with tears in her eyes to take absolute measures 
 to retire him from the field, and the governor heartily as- 
 sented if he could be permitted to retire in any way honorable 
 to himself. 
 
 Of Curtin's renomination there was no doubt whatever if 
 he permitted his name to be used, and it became meri^ly a 
 question how he could retire gracefully. Entrusted with this 
 matter, acting entirely upon my own judgment, I went to 
 Washington, called upon Colonel John W. Forney and told 
 him my mission. I said: "Senator Cameron will desire the re- 
 tirement of Curtin because he is his enemy; I desire it because 
 I am his friend; may we not co-operate in bringing it about?" 
 
 [232] 
 
Cameron was sent for; the matter was presented to him, and 
 he at once said, with some asperity, that "Curtin should be 
 got rid of." I suggested that if Lincoln would tender to Curtin 
 a foreign mission in view of his broken health, it would solve 
 the difficulty and enable Curtin to retire. To this Cameron 
 agreed, and within half an hour thereafter we startled Lin- 
 coln by appearing before him together, accompanied by 
 Forney. It was the first time Cameron and I had appeared 
 before Lincoln to unite in asking him to perform any public 
 act. I stated the case briefly but frankly, and he promptly 
 responded that Curtin was entitled to the honor suggested, 
 and that it would be a great pleasure to him to tender him 
 the place. "But," said he, "Lm in the position of young 
 Sheridan when old Sheridan called him to task, for his rakish 
 conduct, and said to him that he must take a wife; to which 
 young Sheridan replied: 'Very well, father, but whose wife 
 shall I take?' It's all very well," he added, "to say that I will 
 give Curtin a mission, but whose mission am I to take? I 
 would not offer him anything but a first-class one." To this 
 Cameron replied that a second-class mission would answer the 
 purpose, but Forney and I resented that, and said that if a 
 second-class mission was to be discussed we had nothing fur- 
 ther to say. Lincoln closed the conference by suggesting that 
 as it seemed to be my affair I should call to see him in the 
 morning. I did so, when Lincoln handed me the following 
 autograph letter, tendering Curtin a first-class mission, to be 
 accepted at the close of his gubernatorial term: 
 
 Executive Mansion, 
 Washington, April 13, 1863. 
 Honorable Andrew G. Curtin. 
 
 My Dear Sir: If, after the expiration of your present term as 
 Governor of Pennsylvania I shall continue in office here, and you 
 shall desire to go abroad, you can do so with one of the first-class 
 missions. Yours truly, 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 This letter I delivered to Curtin. The announcement was 
 
 [233] 
 
at once made to the Associated Press that a foreign mission 
 had been tendered to Curtin, that he had signified his ac- 
 ceptance of it, and that he would not be a candidate for re- 
 nomination for governor. The popular demand for Curtin's 
 renomination came with such emphasis from every section of 
 the state that within a few weeks after his declination he was 
 compelled to accept the candidacy, and he was nominated in 
 Pittsburgh by an overwhelming majority on the first ballot, 
 and after one of the most desperate contests ever known in 
 the state was re-elected by over 15,000 majority, even with 
 his soldiers disfranchised. Lincoln exhibited unusual interest 
 in that struggle, and his congratulations to Curtin upon his 
 re-election were repeated for several days, and were often as 
 quaint as they were sincere. 
 
 The secret of Curtin's re-election in 1863 was the devotion 
 of the Pennsylvania soldiers to him and his cause. He was 
 the earliest of all the governors in the states to devise and put 
 into practical execution every measure that could lessen the 
 sorrows of war to his people. After every battle in which 
 Pennsylvania troops were engaged Curtin was always among 
 the first visitors to camp and hospital, and his sympathetic 
 hand was felt and his voice heard by the sick and wounded. 
 He had his official commissioners to visit every part of the 
 country in search of Pennsylvania troops needing kind min- 
 istrations, and early in the war he obtained legislative author- 
 ity to bring the body of every soldier who was killed or died 
 in the service home for burial at the cost of the state. Every 
 Pennsylvania soldier in the army felt that he had one friend 
 upon whom he could always rely in the war governor of his 
 state, and many hundreds of letters poured in upon Curtin 
 at the capitol every day appealing to him for redress from 
 real or imaginary grievances, every one of which was promptly 
 answered. If injustice was done to any Pennsylvania officer or 
 any hindrance of gallant men in the ranks from just promo- 
 tion, an early appeal to Curtin invariably brought him to the 
 
 [234} 
 
front to correct it. It is not surprising, therefore, that when 
 he became a candidate for re-election and was assailed on 
 every side with bitterness, nearly every soldier in the army, 
 whether Democrat or Republican, appealed to his people at 
 home to support and vote for Curtin. While the soldiers were 
 themselves unable to testify their appreciation of their pa- 
 triotic governor at the polls, every soldier at home on leave, 
 however unskilled in rhetoric, was a most eloquent advocate 
 of Curtin's re-election, and there was hardly a home in the 
 state that had a soldier in the field to which did not come 
 earnest appeals by letters to fathers and brothers to vote for 
 the Soldier's Friend. Thus was Curtin re-elected by a large 
 majority, and by the votes of Democrats who were influenced 
 solely by their sympathy with their sons and brothers in the 
 field whose gratitude to Curtin was reflected in almost every 
 family circle. 
 
 It was on Thanksgiving Day of 1863 that Curtin first con- 
 ceived the idea of state provision for the care and education 
 of the orphans of our fallen soldiers. While on his way in 
 Harrisburg to hear Dr. Robinson's Thanksgiving sermon, he 
 was met by two shivering and starving children, who piteously 
 appealed to him to relieve them of their distress, saying that 
 their father had been killed on the Peninsula and that their 
 mother was broken in health by her efforts to provide for 
 them. He was so deeply impressed and his sympathies so 
 keenly aroused by the children that he heard little of the 
 eloquent sermon. He remembered that all over Pennsylvania 
 there were such orphans without home or bread, and he re- 
 solved from that day that some provision should be made for 
 the care of these helpless little ones. Soon after he presided 
 at a meeting at which Henry Ward Beecher was the speaker. 
 Beecher had just returned from England, where he had been 
 most eloquent in his defense of the Union cause, and he was 
 welcomed in Pennsylvania with enthusiasm by the loyal peo- 
 ple. In Curtin's introductory speech he, for the first time, 
 
 [235] 
 
made public allusion to the duty of the state to provide for 
 the orphans of our soldiers who had fallen in battle, and the 
 suggestion was greeted with round after round of applause. 
 Some time before that period the Pennsylvania Railroad had 
 placed at the disposal of the state $50,000 to equip troops. 
 The money was received by Curtin, but he had no need to 
 use it for the equipment of troops, and if he had covered it 
 into the treasury, it would have merged into the general fund. 
 This money lay idle on special deposit for some months, and 
 Curtin conceived the plan of making it the basis of a fund 
 for the care of our soldiers' orphans. To this President John 
 Edgar Thomson assented, and with $50,000 already assured, 
 the governor presented the subject to the Legislature in his 
 annual message, and earnestly urged early action. There was 
 much hesitation to support such a bill, and no progress was 
 made in it until near the close of the session. The bill was 
 finally defeated, and when the next Legislature met Curtin 
 arranged with President Thomson for the transportation of a 
 large number of our soldiers' orphans to visit Harrisburg. 
 They were sent free of cost for transportation, and were re- 
 ceived into the homes of generous people, ten of them being 
 guests of Curtin in the Executive Mansion. They came bear- 
 ing the flag under which their fathers had fallen, and the 
 House received them at three o'clock, when patriotic speeches 
 were made, the little orphans sang patriotic songs, and Curtin 
 made a most eloquent appeal to the Legislature to make these 
 children the wards of the commonwealth. The Legislature 
 speedily retraced its steps, passed the bill, and the Governor 
 had the gratification of signing it the next morning. Such was 
 the beginning of the Soldiers' Orphans' Schools which have 
 lasted now for nearly thirty years, which have educated thou- 
 sands and thousands of the war orphans of the state, and are 
 still performing that humane mission to the few yet in our 
 midst. In this sublime beneficence to the helpless children of 
 our heroes Pennsylvania stands single and alone among the 
 loyal states, and there has not been a class of orphans in any 
 
 [236] 
 
school in Pennsylvania that has not lisped the name of Curtin 
 with affectionate reverence. 
 
 Some of the most momentous official acts of Curtin's public 
 career have almost passed from the recollection of the men 
 of the present who lived at that day, yet they rendered the 
 greatest service to the national government when it was in the 
 gravest peril. After the disastrous Peninsula campaign it be- 
 came a necessity to summon a large additional force to the 
 field, and it was regarded as a dangerous experiment in view 
 of the despairing condition of public sentiment in the North. 
 Volunteering had entirely ceased; there was at that time no 
 national conscription act; the appeal had to be made directly 
 to the states to raise their respective quotas of troops. As was 
 common in every serious emergency, Curtin was called into 
 the councils of Lincoln, and the subject discussed with a full 
 appreciation of the solemn responsibilities that devolved upon 
 both of them. It was Curtin's suggestion that the governors 
 of the loyal states should be conferred with and got to unite in 
 a formal demand upon the President to call out a large addi- 
 tional force. Eighteen loyal governors responded, and on the 
 28th of June, 1862, they aroused every loyal heart in the 
 country by their bold demand for the promptest measures 
 to fill up our armies and for the most vigorous prosecution of 
 the war. The address concludes with this patriotic sentence: 
 "All believe that the decisive moment is near at hand, and 
 to that end the people of the United States are desirous to 
 aid promptly in furnishing all reinforcements that you may 
 deem necessary to sustain our government." This address was 
 delivered in person by a number of the governors themselves, 
 and Lincoln replied: "Gentlemen: Fully concurring in the 
 wisdom of the views expressed to me in so patriotic a manner 
 by you in the communication of the 28th of June, I have 
 decided to call into the service an additional force of 300,000 
 men." The Altoona conference of the loyal governors was 
 originally proposed by Curtin to Lincoln and cordially ap- 
 proved by the President before the call was issued. It was a 
 
 [237] 
 
supreme necessity to crystallize the loyal sentiment of the 
 country in support of the coming and then clearly fore- 
 shadowed Emancipation policy. Curtin telegraphed Governor 
 Andrew of Massachusetts: "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?" The governors of Massachusetts, 
 Ohio, and West Virginia responded promptly, and the call 
 was issued on the 14th of September, and the Altoona con- 
 ference met on the 24th, the day after the Emancipation Proc- 
 lamation had been published to the world. There were seven- 
 teen governors in attendance, and after a full interchange of 
 views, Curtin and Andrew were charged with the duty of 
 preparing an address to the President and the country. That 
 address, coming as the united voice of the loyal states through 
 their governors, was regarded by Lincoln as of inestimable 
 service to the cause of the Union. It not only gave the keynote 
 for every loyal man to support the Emancipation policy, but 
 it suggested to the President to call out additional troops to 
 keep a reserve of 100,000 men for any emergency of the war. 
 Thus, from the day that Curtin welcomed Lincoln in the 
 hall of the House of Representatives at Harrisburg when on 
 his way to be inaugurated, until their last meeting in the same 
 hall when it was the chamber of death, and sorrowing patriots 
 passed silently through it to take their last look upon the face 
 of the martyred President, he was side by side with Lincoln in 
 every trial; and, backed by his great state, he was enabled to 
 render a service to the President and to the country unap- 
 proached by any other governor of the Union. How grate- 
 fully his public record was appreciated by the people of 
 Pennsylvania of that day is clearly shown by reference to the 
 journals of our Legislature of April 12, 1866, when a resolu- 
 tion was passed, by unanimous vote in both branches, thank- 
 ing him, in the name of Pennsylvania, "for the fidelity with 
 which, during the four years of war by which our country was 
 ravaged and its free institutions threatened, he stood by the 
 
 [238] 
 
national government and cast into the scales of loyalty and the 
 Union the honor, the wealth, and the strength of the state." 
 No Governor of any State ever received such a tribute as this 
 from all parties when about to retire from his high office after 
 six years of service during the most heated partisan and fac- 
 tional strife ever known in our political history. 
 
 [239] 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND STEVENS 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens were strangely 
 mated. Lincoln as President and Stevens as Commoner of the 
 nation during the entire period of our sectional war assumed 
 the highest civil responsibilities in the administrative and 
 legislative departments of the government. While Lincoln 
 was President of the whole people, Stevens, as Commoner, was 
 their immediate representative and oracle in the popular 
 branch of Congress when the most momentous legislative 
 measures of our history were conceived and enacted. No two 
 men were so much alike in all the sympathy of greatness for 
 the friendless and the lowly, and yet no two men could have 
 been more unlike in the methods by which they sought to 
 obtain the same great end. Lincoln's humanity was one of the 
 master attributes of his character, and it was next to impossi- 
 ble for him to punish even those most deserving of it. In 
 Stevens humanity and justice were singularly blended, and 
 while his heart was ever ready to respond to the appeal of 
 sorrow, he was one of the sternest of men in the administra- 
 tion of justice upon those who had oppressed the helpless. 
 No man pleaded so eloquently in Congress for the deliver- 
 ance of the bondmen of the South as did Stevens, and he made 
 ceaseless battle for every measure needed by ignorant freed- 
 men for the enjoyment of their rights obtained through the 
 madness of Southern rebellion; and there was no man of all 
 our statesmen whose voice was so eloquent for the swift 
 punishment of the authors of the war. He declared on the 
 
 [240] 
 
floor of Congress that if he had the power he would summon 
 a military commission to try, convict, and execute Jefferson 
 Davis and other leaders of the rebellion "for the murders at 
 Andersonville, the murders at Salisbury, and the shooting 
 down of prisoners-of-war in cold blood"; and when the whole 
 world was shocked by the relentless vengeance of Juarez in 
 the summary execution of Maximilian, he was the one man 
 of Congress who rose and boldly defended the Mexican 
 President; and his ground of defense was that Maximilian 
 had sought to usurp power from the weak. Lincoln's liuman- 
 ity was always predominant in his nature and always reflected 
 itself in his public and private acts. He never signed a death- 
 warrant unless it was absolutely unavoidable, and then always 
 with a degree of sorrow that could not be concealed. He 
 earnestly desired that Davis and all Southern leaders who 
 might be called to account after the war for precipitating the 
 nation into fraternal strife should safely escape from the 
 country; and Maximilian could not have appealed in vain 
 to Lincoln for his life had it been within his power to save 
 him. Such were the conflicting attributes of the two great 
 civil leaders of the country during the war. Each filled his 
 great trust with masterly fidelity, and the opposing qualities 
 of each were potent upon the other. 
 
 The country has almost forgotten the exceptionally re- 
 sponsible position of Stevens as the Great Commoner of our 
 civil war. It is the one high trust of a free government that 
 must be won solely by ability and merit. The Commoner of 
 a republic is the organ of the people, and he can hold his 
 place only when all confess his pre-eminent qualities for the 
 discharge of his duties. Presidents, Cabinets, Senators, and 
 Representatives may be accidents. Fortuitous circumstances 
 or sudden mutations in politics may create any of these civil 
 functionaries in a popular government to serve their brief 
 terms and pass away into forgetfulness, but the Commoner 
 of the nation must be the confessed "leader of leaders." Mere 
 popular attributes are valueless in struggling for such a place. 
 
 [241] 
 
Only he who can come to the front whenever occasion calls, 
 lead discordant elements to a common end, and maintain his 
 position in all the sudden changes of a mercurial body can 
 go into history as an American Commoner; and Stevens 
 grandly, undisputedly, met these high requirements. There 
 were those around him in Congress much riper in experience 
 in national legislation, for he had served but six years in the 
 House when the war began, and four of those were nearly a 
 decade before the rebellion; but when the great conflict came 
 before which all but the bravest-hearted quailed, Stevens' 
 supreme ability and dauntless courage made him speedily ac- 
 cepted by all as the leader of the popular branch of Congress. 
 In all the conflicts of opinion and grave doubts among even 
 the sincerest of men as to the true policy of the government in 
 meeting armed rebellion, Stevens was the one man who never 
 faltered, who never hesitated, who never temporized, but who 
 was ready to meet aggressive treason with the most aggressive 
 assaults. He and Lincoln worked substantially on the same 
 lines, earnestly striving to attain the same ends, but Stevens 
 was always in advance of public sentiment, while Lincoln 
 ever halted until assured that the considerate judgment of 
 the nation would sustain him. Stevens was the pioneer who 
 was ever in advance of the government in every movement 
 for the suppression of the rebellion, whether by military or 
 civil measures. He always wanted great armies, heroic chief- 
 tains, and relentless blows, and he was ready to follow the 
 overthrow of rebellion with the sternest retributive policy. 
 He had faith that the people would sustain the war— that they 
 would patriotically submit to any sacrifice of blood and treas- 
 ure necessary to preserve the Union and overthrow slavery 
 that was the cause of fraternal conflict, and he was always in 
 the lead in pressing every measure that promised to weaken 
 the slave power in any part of the Union. 
 
 Lincoln was inspired by the same patriotic purpose and 
 sympathies with Stevens in everything but his policy of 
 vengeance. Lincoln possessed the sagacity to await the full- 
 
 [242] 
 
ness of time for all things, and thus he failed in nothing. 
 These two great civil leaders were not in close personal re- 
 lations. Stevens was ever impatient of Lincoln's tardiness, 
 and Lincoln was always patient with Stevens' advanced and 
 often impracticable methods. Stevens was a born dictator in 
 politics; Lincoln a born follower of the people, but always 
 wisely aiding them to the safest judgment that was to be his 
 guide. When Stevens proposed the abolition of slavery in the 
 District of Columbia, and followed it with the extension of 
 the elective franchise to the liberated slaves, very many of 
 his party followers in the House faltered and threatened re- 
 volt, and only a man of Stevens' iron will and relentless 
 mastery could have commanded a solid party vote for the 
 measures which were regarded by many as political suicide. I 
 sat by him one morning in the House before the session had 
 opened when the question of Negro suffrage in the District 
 of Columbia was about to be considered, and I heard a lead- 
 ing Pennsylvania Republican approach him to protest against 
 committing the party to that policy. Stevens' grim face and 
 cold gray eye gave answer to the man before his bitter words 
 were uttered. He waved his hand to the trembling suppliant 
 and bade him go to his seat and vote for the measure or con- 
 fess himself a coward to the world. The Commoner was 
 obeyed, for had disobedience followed the offender would 
 have been proclaimed to his constituents, over the name of 
 Stevens, as a coward, and that would have doomed him to 
 defeat. 
 
 The relations between Lincoln and Stevens were always 
 friendly, but seldom cordial. Stevens did not favor the nomi- 
 nation of Lincoln in 1860, although he voted for him as a 
 second choice in preference to Seward. He was the champion 
 of John McLean for President, and presented the anomaly of 
 the most radical Republican leader of the country, Giddings 
 excepted, supporting the most conservative candidate for the 
 Presidency. He was politician enough to understand that 
 there was a large conservative element, especially in Penn- 
 
 [243] 
 
sylvania and Indiana, that had to be conciliated to elect a 
 Republican President, and he loved McLean chiefly because 
 McLean had dared to disobey the commands of Jackson when 
 in his Cabinet. He was again a delegate when Lincoln was 
 renominated in 1864, and he voted for Lincoln simply be- 
 cause it was not possible to nominate any other man more in 
 accord with his convictions; but in neither of these conven- 
 tions, in both of which he voted for Lincoln, was he enthusi- 
 astic in Lincoln's cause. He had faith in Lincoln's patriotism 
 and integrity, but he believed him weak because he kept far 
 behind Stevens in his war measures, and he was especially 
 bitter against the nomination of Johnson for Vice-President 
 instead of Hamlin, but he permitted his vote to be recorded 
 for Johnson in obedience to the obvious purpose of his own 
 delegation and of the convention to nominate him. I sat close 
 by him in the first informal meeting of the Pennsylvania 
 delegation in Baltimore in 1864, and, being a delegate-at- 
 large, I was one of the first four who voted on the choice for 
 Vice-President. When I voted for Johnson, Stevens was star- 
 tled, and turning to me he said in a tone of evident bitterness, 
 * 'Can't you find a candidate for Vice-President in the United 
 States, without going down to one of those damned rebel 
 provinces to pick one up?" I gave a kind answer and evaded 
 discussion of the subject. He had no personal love for either 
 of the candidates for whom his own vote had been finally cast, 
 but his hatred of McClellan called out his fiercest invective 
 and made him ready to do tireless battle for his defeat. He 
 harshly judged all men who pretended to prosecute the war 
 while protecting slavery, and he believed that McClellan was 
 a traitor to the cause for which he was leading his armies, and, 
 believing it, declared it. 
 
 Stevens never saw Lincoln during the war except when 
 necessity required it. It was not his custom to fawn upon 
 power or flatter authority, and his free and incisive criticism 
 of public men generally prevented him from being in sympa- 
 thetic touch with most of the officials connected with the ad- 
 
 [244] 
 
ministration. He was one of the earliest of the party leaders to 
 demand the unconditional and universal freedom of the 
 slaves, and he often grieved Lincoln sorely by his mandatory 
 appeals for an Emancipation Proclamation, and by the keen 
 satire that only he could employ against those who differed 
 from him. It was known to but few that he suffered a serious 
 disappointment from Lincoln when Cameron was appointed 
 to the Cabinet. Stevens took no part in the contest for a Penn- 
 sylvania Cabinet officer until after it became known that Lin- 
 coln had revoked his offer of a Cabinet portfolio to Cameron 
 about the 1st of January. Stevens then entered the field with 
 great earnestness as a candidate for the Cabinet himself, and 
 the position he desired was that of Secretary of the Treasury. 
 In obedience to his invitation I met him at Harrisburg, and 
 found him more interested in reaching the Cabinet than I 
 had ever known him in any of his political aspirations. Later, 
 when Cameron became again prominent as a Cabinet expec- 
 tant, Stevens bitterly protested, and when Cameron's appoint- 
 ment was announced he felt personally aggrieved, although 
 few even of his most intimate acquaintances had any knowl- 
 edge of it. It was his second disappointment in his efforts to 
 reach Cabinet honors. In December, 1839, when the Whig 
 National Convention was about to meet at Harrisburg to de- 
 cide whether Clay, Harrison, or Scott should be honored with 
 the candidacy, Harrison sent to Stevens by Mr. Purdy an 
 autograph letter voluntarily proposing that if Harrison 
 should be nominated and elected President, Stevens would 
 be made a member of his Cabinet. Stevens was one of the 
 most potent of the political leaders in that convention, and 
 he finally controlled the nomination for Harrison. He never 
 saw or heard from Harrison from that time until he was in- 
 augurated as President, and he was astounded when the Cabi- 
 net was nominated to the Senate to find his name omitted. 
 So reticent was he as to Harrison's previous proffer of the 
 position that Mr. Burroughs, who was at the head of the 
 Pennsylvanians in Washington urging Stevens' appointment, 
 
 [245] 
 
was never advised of the promise he held from Harrison for 
 the place. Harrison died too early to feel the retribution that 
 would surely have come from Stevens, but in his second dis- 
 appointment Stevens was face to face with Lincoln and side 
 by side with him until death divided them. Only once during 
 Lincoln's administration can I recall Stevens' positive and 
 enthusiastic commendation of Lincoln, and that was when 
 he issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. He then 
 believed in Lincoln, and expected a rapid advance in every 
 line of aggression against slavery and rebellion, but soon new 
 causes of dissent arose between them, as Stevens called for the 
 speedy confiscation of property of those in rebellion and for 
 the punishment of all who were responsible for the civil war. 
 Thus they continued during the whole period of Lincoln's 
 administration, both earnestly working to solve the same great 
 problems in the interest of free government, and yet seldom 
 in actual harmony in their methods and policies. 
 
 I am quite sure that Stevens respected Lincoln much more 
 than he would have respected any other man in the same po- 
 sition with Lincoln's convictions of duty. He could not but 
 appreciate Lincoln's generous forbearance even with all of 
 Stevens' irritating conflicts, and Lincoln profoundly appre- 
 ciated Stevens as one of his most valued and useful co-workers, 
 and never cherished resentment even when Stevens indulged 
 in his bitterest sallies of wit or sarcasm at Lincoln's tardiness. 
 Strange as it may seem, these two great characters, ever in 
 conflict and yet ever battling for the same great cause, ren- 
 dered invaluable service to each other, and unitedly rendered 
 incalculable service in saving the Republic. Had Stevens not 
 declared for the abolition of slavery as soon as the war began, 
 and pressed it in and out of season, Lincoln could not have 
 issued his Emancipation Proclamation as early as September, 
 1862. Stevens was ever clearing the underbrush and preparing 
 the soil, while Lincoln followed to sow the seeds that were 
 to ripen in a regenerated Union; and while Stevens was ever 
 hastening the opportunity for Lincoln to consummate great 
 
 [246] 
 
achievements in the steady advance made for the overthrow 
 of slavery, Lincoln wisely conserved the utterances and ef- 
 forts of Stevens until the time became fully ripe when the 
 harvest could be gathered. I doubt not that Stevens, had he 
 been in Lincoln's position, would have been greatly sobered 
 by the responsibility that the President must accept for him- 
 self alone, and I doubt not that if Lincoln had been a Senator 
 or Representative in Congress, he would have declared in 
 favor of Emancipation long before he did it as President. 
 Stevens as Commoner could afford to be defeated, to have his 
 aggressive measures postponed, and to take up the battle for 
 them afresh as often as he was repulsed; but the President 
 could proclaim no policy in the name of the Republic with- 
 out absolute assurance of its success. Each in his great trust 
 attained the highest possible measure of success, and the two 
 men who more than all others blended the varied currents of 
 their efforts and crystallized them in the unchangeable policy 
 of the government were Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus 
 Stevens. 
 
 After the death of Lincoln, Stevens was one of the earliest 
 of the Republican leaders to place himself in an aggressively 
 hostile attitude to Johnson, and he persisted in it with tireless 
 energy until he performed his last great task in his plea be- 
 fore the Senate for the conviction of the President under arti- 
 cles of impeachment preferred by the House. He was then 
 greatly enfeebled by broken health, but his mental powers 
 were unabated. I remember meeting him one morning in 
 acting Vice-President Wade's room of the Capitol, before the 
 meeting of the Senate, when the impeachment trial was in 
 progress. Chase had just startled some of the Republican lead- 
 ers by rulings which foreshadowed the probable acquittal of 
 Johnson. Stevens came limping into Wade's room, dropped 
 into an easy-chair, and at once opened his invective upon 
 Chase. He ended his criticism of the trial with these words: 
 "It is the meanest case, before the meanest tribunal, and on 
 the meanest subject of human history." After the acquittal 
 
 [ 247 ] 
 
of Johnson he seemed almost entirely hopeless of preserving 
 the fruits of the victory won by our armies in the overthrow 
 of the rebellion. I remember meeting him at his house some 
 three weeks before his death. He spoke of the perfidy of John- 
 son with great bitterness, and seemed clouded with gloom as 
 to the achievements of his own life. He then hoped to go to 
 Bedford Springs to recover sufficient vigor to be able to re- 
 sume his seat at the next session, but he saw little of the 
 future that promised restoration of the Union with justice 
 to the liberated slaves. Although he was the acknowledged 
 Commoner of the war, and the acknowledged leader of the 
 House as long as he was able to retain his seat after the war 
 had closed, he said, "My life has been a failure. With all this 
 great struggle of years in Washington, and the fearful sacri- 
 fice of life and treasure, I see little hope for the Republic." 
 After a moment's pause his face suddenly brightened, and 
 he said, ''After all, I may say that my life has not been en- 
 tirely vain. When I remember that I gave free schools to 
 Pennsylvania, my adopted State, I think my life may have 
 been worth the living." He had lately reprinted his speech 
 delivered in the Pennsylvania House in 1835 that changed 
 the body from its purpose to repeal the free-school law, and 
 he handed me a copy of it, saying, "That was the proudest 
 effort of my life. It gave schools to the poor and helpless 
 children of the State." Thus did the Great Commoner of the 
 nation, crowned with the greenest laurels of our statesman- 
 ship, turn back more than a generation from his greatest 
 achievements because they were incomplete, although fully 
 assured, to find the silver lining to the many disappointments 
 of his life. 
 
 Stevens, like Lincoln, had few intimate acquaintances, and 
 no one in whom he implicitly confided. That he had had 
 some untold sorrow was accepted by all who knew him well, 
 but none could venture to invade the sacred portals of his 
 inner life. He seldom spoke of himself, but his grim, cynical 
 smile and his pungent invective against the social customs 
 
 [248] 
 
of the times proclaimed his love of solitude, except when his 
 lot could be cast with the very few congenial spirits he found 
 around him. One name alone ever brightened his stern face 
 and kindled the gray eye that was so often lustreless, and that 
 name was "mother." He loved to speak of her, and when he 
 did so all the harsh lines of his countenance disappeared to 
 give place to the tenderness of a child. That one devotion 
 was like an oasis in the desert of his affections, and, regardless 
 of his individual convictions, he reverenced everything taught 
 him by his mother. In his will he provided that the sexton of 
 her little churchyard in the bleak hills of Vermont should 
 ever keep her grave green, "and plant roses and other cheer- 
 ful flowers at each of the four corners of said grave every 
 spring." He also made a devise of $1000 to aid in the building 
 of a Baptist church in Lancaster, giving in the will this rea- 
 son for it: "I do this out of respect to the memory of my 
 mother, to whom I owe what little prosperity I have had on 
 earth, which, small as it is, I desire emphatically to acknowl- 
 edge." 
 
 I need hardly say that a man of Stevens' positive and aggres- 
 sive qualities left an enduring record of his greatness in both 
 the statutes and the fundamental law of the nation. Unlike 
 his distinguished fellow-townsman. President Buchanan, who 
 with all his long experience in both branches of Congress 
 never formulated a great measure to stand as a monument of 
 his statesmanship, Stevens was the master-spirit of every ag- 
 gressive movement in Congress to overthrow the rebellion 
 and slavery. His views of the civil war and of reconstruction 
 were pointedly presented in the Confiscation Act of July 17, 
 1862. It was a radical measure, and clearly foreshadowed the 
 employment of freedmen in the military service of the Union. 
 It was practically the abolition of slavery by Congress under 
 the war powers of the government. Lincoln saw that the 
 passage of the bill was inevitable, and he took occasion to 
 make known the fact that it could not meet with his approval, 
 because it assumed that Congress had the power to abolish 
 
 [249} 
 
slavery within a state. He went so far as to prepare a veto, 
 but Stevens wisely obviated the necessity of a veto by consent- 
 ing to an explanatory joint resolution of Congress relieving 
 the bill of its acutely offensive features, and Lincoln signed 
 the bill and the explanatory resolutions together. Stevens was 
 the author of the Fourteenth Amendment to the national 
 Constitution, although it was not accepted as he would have 
 preferred it. This new article of the fundamental law, next 
 to the Thirteenth Article abolishing slavery, is the most im- 
 portant of all the actions of Congress relating to reconstruc- 
 tion. It conferred unchangeably upon the liberated slaves the 
 high right of American citizenship, and made it impossible 
 for any state to abridge the privileges of any race. It also 
 limited representation to the enfranchised voters of the states; 
 it made the validity of the public debt absolutely sacred; 
 prohibited the assumption or payment of Confederate debt 
 by any state; and it disqualified most of the Southern leaders 
 from ever again enjoying citizenship unless their disability 
 were relieved by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Stevens was 
 bitterly opposed to the provision allowing restoration to 
 citizenship of any who had taken the oath of office, military 
 or civil, to support the government and afterward engaged in 
 the rebellion, but, being unable to obtain the absolute dis- 
 qualification of those men, he accepted the gravest obstacles 
 that he could interpose against the restoration of civil rights. 
 His policy of reconstruction, exclusive of his fierce confisca- 
 tion and retributive purposes, would have been a priceless 
 blessing to the South, although at the time it would have 
 been accepted as extremely vindictive. He would have held 
 the rebellious states as provinces and governed them as Terri- 
 tories, to await the period when they might with safety be 
 restored to the Union. Had that policy been adopted the deso- 
 lation almost worse than war would have been averted in the 
 southern states. Sadly as the people of the South were im- 
 poverished by war, the greatest humiliation they ever suffered 
 was in the rule of the carpet-bagger and the adventurer who 
 
 [250] 
 
despoiled them of safety and credit and ran riot in every 
 channel of state authority. Had they been held as provinces 
 there would have been peace, their industries would have 
 been speedily revived, mutual confidence between the North 
 and South would have rapidly strengthened, and in a very few 
 years at the most they would have resumed their position in 
 the galaxy of states; and universal Negro suffrage would not 
 have been in the cup of bitterness they had to drain. Stevens 
 was bitterly denounced by many for his vindictive reconstruc- 
 tion policy; but, stripped of its utterly impracticable and im- 
 possible confiscation and retributive features, it would have 
 been the wisest policy for both North and South that could 
 have been adopted. 
 
 It is a common belief that on the question of reconstruction 
 and on many other questions relating to the war Stevens 
 planted himself entirely above the Constitution and acted in 
 utter contempt of the supreme law. I have heard thoughtless 
 and malicious people many times quote him as having said 
 "Damn the Constitution!" but Stevens never uttered or cher- 
 ished such a sentiment. He defined his views on the subject so 
 clearly that none could mistake them in his speech giving his 
 reasons for voting for the admission of West Virginia as a 
 State. He quoted the requirements of the Constitution, and 
 said that it was a mockery to assume that the provisions of 
 the Constitution had been complied with. He did not justify 
 or excuse his vote in favor of the creation of a new state be- 
 cause of his disregard of, or contempt for, the Constitution. 
 On the contrary, he presented the unanswerable argument 
 that Virginia was in rebellion against the government and the 
 Constitution, and had been conceded belligerent rights by 
 our government and by the governments of Europe, thus 
 making her subject to the rules of war governing a public 
 enemy, whereby she placed herself beyond the pale of the 
 Constitution and had no claim upon its protecting attributes. 
 He said, "We may admit West Virginia as a new State, not by 
 virtue of any provision in the Constitution, but under the 
 
 [251} 
 
absolute power which the laws of war give us under the cir- 
 cumstances in which we are placed. I shall vote for this bill 
 upon that theory, and upon that alone, for I will not stultify 
 myself by supposing that we have any warrant in the Consti- 
 tution for this proceeding." The logic that a belligerent 
 power, recognized by ourselves and by the world, was entirely 
 beyond the protecting power of our Constitution was indis- 
 putable, and in that case, as in all cases, he always maintained 
 the sanctity of the Constitution to all who had not become 
 public enemies with conceded belligerent rights. 
 
 Being outside the pale of the Constitution in war, he held 
 that the insurgent states occupied the legal status of con- 
 quered enemies when the war closed, and upon that theory 
 was based his whole policy of reconstruction, including the 
 confiscation of property and the punishment of the leaders of 
 the rebellion. That he was abstractly right in his interpreta- 
 tion of the laws of war cannot be questioned, however widely 
 others may differ from him in the expediency or justice of 
 the measures he proposed. He was one of the first to appreci- 
 ate the truth that President Johnson had adopted a policy of 
 reconstruction that the Republican party could not sustain. 
 In this I heartily agreed with him, and one of my most valued 
 mementos of the men of war-times is an autograph letter re- 
 ceived from Stevens warmly commending an editorial on 
 the subject published in the Chambersburg Repository, 
 which I then edited, in which he expressed the hope, since 
 proved gratefully prophetic, that I should one day conduct 
 a daily newspaper in Philadelphia with a hundred thousand 
 readers. I had voted for Johnson's nomination for Vice-Presi- 
 dent in disregard of Stevens' bitter complaint, but when 
 Johnson had disgraced himself before the nation and the 
 world by his exhibition of inebriety at his inauguration, I 
 had denounced him and demanded his resignation. He never 
 was permitted to return to the Senate as Vice-President, but 
 a little more than a month thereafter the assassination of Lin- 
 coln made him President. Assuming that my free criticism 
 
 [252] 
 
and demand for his resignation would preclude cordial rela- 
 tions between us, I did not visit him in the White House 
 until he had twice requested me to do so through Governor 
 Curtin, and my first and only interview with him convinced 
 me that his policy of reconstruction could not be sustained 
 by the North. 
 
 My relations with Stevens for a dozen years before his death 
 were peculiarly pleasant, and as intimate perhaps as was 
 common between him and those in the narrow circle of his 
 close acquaintances. He spent his summers at his quiet moun- 
 tain-furnace home in Franklin county, where I resided, and 
 during the few years that I was in active practice at the bar 
 in Chambersburg he attended our courts and tried one side 
 of nearly every important cause. In all my acquaintance with 
 the lawyers of Pennsylvania I regard Stevens as having more 
 nearly completed the circle of a great lawyer than any other 
 member of the Pennsylvania bar. He was perfect in practice, 
 a master of the law, exceptionally skillful in eliciting testi- 
 mony from witnesses, a most sagacious, eloquent, and per- 
 suasive advocate, and one of the strongest men before a law 
 court that I have ever heard. He was thoroughly master of 
 himself in his profession, and his withering invective and 
 crushing wit, so often employed in conversation and in politi- 
 cal speeches, were never displayed in the trial of a cause 
 unless it was eminently wise to do so; and he was one of the 
 most courteous of men at the bar whether associate or oppo- 
 nent. He was especially generous in his kindness to young 
 members of the bar unless they undertook to unduly flap 
 their fledgling wings, when they were certain to suffer speedy 
 and humiliating discomfiture. His trial of the Hanway trea- 
 son case before Judge Greer in the United States Court at 
 Philadelphia exhibited his matchless skill in the best use of 
 his matchless powers. While he conceived and directed every 
 feature of the defense, he was the silent man of the trial. He 
 knew the political prejudices which were attached to his 
 then odious attitude on the slavery question, and he put 
 
 [253] 
 
upon the late Chiet Justice, John M. Read, the laboring oars 
 of the trial, as Read was a Democrat of state and even na- 
 tional fame. It was a trial that attracted the attention not only 
 of the nation, but of the civilized world, and was the first 
 case adjudicated in Pennsylvania in our higher courts under 
 the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Mr. Gorsuch, a Virginia 
 minister, pursuing his slave into Chester county, was killed in 
 an altercation at Christiana by the friends of the hunted 
 bondman, and Hanway and others were indicted for treason 
 in inciting to rebellion and murder. Hanway was acquitted, 
 and he owed his deliverance to the legal acumen and skill of 
 Thaddeus Stevens. 
 
 The highest tribute ever paid to an American statesman 
 since the foundation of the Republic was paid to Thaddeus 
 Stevens by his bereaved constituents of Lancaster county when 
 his dead body lay in state at his home. He died on Thursday, 
 the 11th of August, 1868, and his body was brought from 
 Washington to his home on the following day, and on Satur- 
 day it was viewed by thousands of sorrowing friends. The Re- 
 publican primary elections had been called for that day, and, 
 although Stevens had died three days before and a nomina- 
 tion was to be made for his successor, no one of the several 
 candidates in the county dared to whisper his name as an 
 aspirant while Stevens' body was untombed. Acting under a 
 common inspiration, the people of the county who were 
 entitled to participate in the primary elections cast an unani- 
 mous vote for Stevens' renomination as their candidate for 
 Congress when they knew that he had passed away and his 
 body was in state in his humble house in Lancaster. There is 
 nothing in Grecian or Roman story of such a tribute to a 
 dead leader. Monuments were erected in those days to great- 
 ness which have crumbled away under the gnawing tooth 
 of time, but the dust of Thaddeus Stevens reposes under 
 a humble monument suggested by himself, located in a hum- 
 ble "City of the Silent," chosen by him because it recognized 
 "equality of man before his Creator," and admitted any of 
 
 [254} 
 
every race and color to sleep the sleep that knows no waking. 
 The inscription on his monument, dictated by himself, is in 
 these words: 
 
 THADDEUS STEVENS, 
 
 Born at Danville, Caledonia Co., Vermont, 
 
 April 4, 1792. 
 
 Died at Washington, D. C, 
 
 August 11, 1868. 
 
 I repose in this quiet and secluded spot. 
 
 Not from any natural preference for solitude, 
 
 But, finding other Cemeteries limited as to Race 
 
 By Charter Rules, 
 
 I have chosen this that I might illustrate 
 
 In my death 
 
 The Principles which I advocated 
 
 Through a long life: 
 
 Equality of Man before his Creator. 
 
 Thus passed away the Great Commoner of the war; the 
 friend of the lowly, the oppressed, and the friendless; the 
 author of our free-school system of Pennsylvania that now 
 gives education to the humblest of every township; and I 
 can fitly quote the eloquent tribute of Charles Sumner: "I 
 see him now as I have so often seen him during life; his ven- 
 erable form moves slowly with uncertain steps, but the 
 gathered strength of years in his countenance and the light 
 of victory on his path. Politician, calculator, time-server, 
 stand aside; a Hero Statesman passes to his reward." 
 
 [255] 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
 
 LINCOLN AND GREELEY 
 
 Horace Greeley was one of the earliest and most fretting of 
 the many thorns in the political pathway of Abraham Lincoln. 
 They served together in Congress in the winter of 1848-49, 
 when Greeley was chosen to a short term to fill a vacancy. 
 Speaking of Lincoln some years after his death, Greeley, 
 referring to his association with him in Congress, said that 
 Lincoln was "personally a favorite on our side," and adds: 
 "He seemed a quiet, good-natured man; did not aspire to 
 leadership, and seldom claimed the floor." For ten years after 
 these two memorable characters separated as members of 
 Congress Lincoln was little known or heard of outside of his 
 state of Illinois, and when his great contest with Douglas for 
 the Senate attracted the attention of the whole country in 
 1858, Greeley, with his powerful Republican organ, vastly 
 the most potent political journal in the country, took positive 
 grounds in favor of the return of Douglas to the Senate by the 
 Republicans of Illinois, because of Douglas' open hostility to 
 the Lecompton policy of the Buchanan administration. This 
 attitude of Greeley's Tribune was one of the most serious 
 obstacles that confronted Lincoln in his great campaign 
 against Douglas, and it is possible that the influence of the 
 Tribune may have lost Lincoln the legislature. He carried 
 the popular vote and elected the Republican state ticket, but 
 Douglas won the legislature and was re-elected to the Senate. 
 Thus did Greeley antagonize Lincoln in the first great battle 
 he made for national leadership in politics, and with the ex- 
 
 [256} 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 ception of a single act of Greeley's, in which he served Lin- 
 coln to an extent that can hardly be measured, when in the 
 early part of 1860 he opened the broadsides of the Tribune 
 against Seward's nomination for President, he was a perpetual 
 thorn in Lincoln's side, seldom agreeing with him on any 
 important measure, and almost constantly criticising him 
 boldly and often bitterly. 
 
 The first assault made on the Seward lines that attracted 
 any attention from the country was the unexpected and 
 aggressive revolt of Greeley's Tribune against Seward some 
 months before the meeting of the Chicago Convention that 
 nominated Lincoln. It attracted special attention from con- 
 siderate Republicans throughout the country, because this 
 assault came from the ablest Republican editor of the nation, 
 from Seward's own state, and from one who was presumed to 
 be Seward's personal and political friend. It was not then 
 known to the public that on the 11th of November, 1854, he 
 had written a pungent letter to Seward and formally severed 
 all political association with him, to take effect in the follow- 
 ing February, when Seward was re-elected to the United States 
 Senate. The letter was written in strict confidence, but in 
 1860, when the friends of Seward keenly felt Greeley's criti- 
 cisms on Seward's availability as a Presidential candidate, and 
 especially in the bitter disappointment of Seward's friends 
 after his defeat at Chicago, such free allusions were made to 
 the contents of this letter and to Greeley's personal animosity 
 that at Greeley's request the letter was made public. Until 
 Greeley had thus thrown his great Tribune into the con- 
 test against Seward's nomination Seward was the generally- 
 accepted Republican candidate for President in 1860, and, 
 notwithstanding the ability and influence exerted by Greeley 
 and his newspaper, the Republicans of the country elected a 
 convention overwhelmingly in favor of Seward. It was Gree- 
 ley, however, who drove the entering wedge that made it 
 possible to break the Seward column, and I shall never forget 
 the smile that played upon his countenance as he sat at the 
 
 [257] 
 
head of the Oregon delegation in the Wigwam at Chicago 
 and heard the announcement that Abraham Lincoln had 
 been nominated as the candidate of the convention for Presi- 
 dent. He had made no battle for Lincoln. His candidate was 
 Edward Bates of Missouri, whose cause he championed with 
 all his fervency and power; but it is evident that in selecting 
 Bates as his favorite he had been influenced solely to choose 
 the most available candidate to contest the honor with Seward. 
 After Bates, he was for any one to beat Seward, and when 
 Lincoln became the chief competitor of Seward he was more 
 than willing to accept him. After the nomination of Lincoln, 
 Greeley's Tribune was leader of leaders among the Republi- 
 can journals of the land in the great struggle that elected 
 Lincoln President. But his rejoicing over the success of Lin- 
 coln was speedily chilled by the announcement that Seward 
 would be called as premier of the new administration. The 
 appointment of Seward as Secretary of State meant the mas- 
 tery of Thurlow Weed in wielding the patronage and power 
 of the administration in New York, and it meant much more 
 than that to Greeley. It meant that all the power that Seward 
 and Weed could exercise would be wielded relentlessly to 
 punish Greeley for his revolt against Seward. On the very day 
 that Lincoln entered the Presidency, therefore, Greeley was 
 hopelessly embittered against him, and while no man in the 
 whole land was more conscientious than Greeley in the per- 
 formance of every patriotic and personal duty, he was also 
 human, and with all his boundless generosity and philan- 
 thropy he was one of the best haters I have ever known. 
 
 Soon after Lincoln's election Greeley put himself in an 
 attitude that he must have known at the time was an utterly 
 impossible one for Lincoln to accept. That he was influenced 
 in any degree by a desire to embarrass Lincoln I do not for 
 a moment believe, but it is none the less the truth of history 
 that, after having done much to make Lincoln's nomination 
 possible, he did more perhaps than any one man in the coun- 
 try to assure his election, and then he publicly demanded 
 
 [258] 
 
that Lincoln should be so far forgetful of his oath to main- 
 tain the Constitution as to permit the Southern states to 
 secede in peace. Only three days after Lincoln's election Gree- 
 ley published an editorial in the Tribune in which he said: 
 "If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do 
 better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them 
 go in peace. . . . The right to secede may be a revolutionary 
 one, but it exists nevertheless. We must ever resist the* right 
 of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the 
 laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another 
 matter, and whenever a considerable section of our Union 
 shall deliberately resolve to get out we shall resist all coercive 
 measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a 
 republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayo- 
 nets." Again, on the 17th of December, 1860, just after the 
 secession of South Carolina, a leading editorial in the Trib- 
 une, speaking of the Declaration of Independence, said: "If 
 it justified the secession from the British empire of three 
 million of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not 
 justify the secession of five million of Southerners from the 
 Federal Union in 1861. ... If seven or eight contiguous States 
 shall present themselves at Washington saying, *We hate the 
 Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it; we give you the 
 choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging 
 amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and at- 
 tempting to subdue us on the other,' we would not stand up 
 for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would 
 be just. We hold to the right of self-government even when 
 invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others." Less than 
 two weeks before the inauguration of Lincoln, on the 23d 
 of February, 1861, and the same day on which his paper 
 announced Lincoln's midnight journey from Harrisburg to 
 Washington, Greeley said in a leading editorial: "We have 
 repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great prin- 
 ciple embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American 
 Independence, that governments derive their just powers 
 
 [259] 
 
from the consent of the governed, is sound and just, and that 
 if the Slave States, the Cotton States, or the Gulf States only 
 choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear 
 moral right to do so. Whenever it shall be clear that the great 
 body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated 
 from the Union and anxious to escape from it, we will do our 
 best to forward their views." 
 
 Such were the pointed and earnest utterances of Greeley 
 between the period of Lincoln's election and of his inaugura- 
 tion, and it is needless to say that these utterances not only 
 grieved but embarrassed Lincoln to an extent that can hardly 
 be appreciated at this time. Had Greeley stood alone in these 
 utterances, even then his position and power would have 
 made his attitude one of peculiar trouble to Lincoln, but he 
 did not stand alone. Not only the entire Democratic party, 
 with few exceptions, but a very large proportion of the Re- 
 publican party, including some of its ablest and most trusted 
 leaders, believed that peaceable secession, that might reason- 
 ably result in early reconstruction, was preferable to civil war. 
 The constitutional right of coercion by the government upon 
 a seceded state was gravely disputed by most Democratic 
 statesmen and by many Republican statesmen; and it is 
 worthy of note that Lincoln, like Buchanan, studiously 
 avoided any attempt at coercion until the South wantonly 
 precipitated war by firing upon the starving garrison in Fort 
 Sumter. The first gun fired upon Sumter solved the problem 
 of coercion. Coercion at once ceased to be an issue. The South 
 had coerced the government into war by causelessly firing 
 upon the flag of the nation and upon a garrison that had 
 committed no overt act of war; and from that day until the 
 surrender of the Southern armies to Grant and Sherman the 
 overwhelming sentiment of every Northern state demanded 
 the prosecution of the war to conquer Secession. Had Bu- 
 chanan or Lincoln fired a single gun solely to coerce the 
 Southern states to remain in the Union, the North would 
 have been hopelessly divided, and the administration would 
 
 [260] 
 
surely have been overthrown in any attempt to prosecute the 
 war. Greeley recognized the fact that the firing upon Sumter 
 ended the issue of coercion as understood and discussed until 
 that time, and from the day that Lincoln issued his call for 
 seventy-five thousand troops to engage in the war that had 
 been so insanely precipitated against the government he 
 heartily sustained the President and his policy; but he added 
 new grief and fresh embarrassments to Lincoln by his fretful 
 impatience and his repeated and emphatic demands that the 
 army should be hurled against the Confederates as soon as it 
 was organized. "On to Richmond!" was his almost daily 
 battle-cry, and Greeley was overwhelmed with sorrow and 
 humiliation when at last his impetuous orders were obeyed 
 and McDowell's army was defeated and hurled back into the 
 intrenchments of Washington. 
 
 When war was accepted as a necessity no man in the coun- 
 try was more earnest in his support of a most vigorous and 
 comprehensive war policy than was Greeley. After the lesson 
 of the first Bull Run he appreciated the fact that a great war 
 was upon us, and every measure looking to the increase of 
 our armies and the maintenance of our severely strained 
 credit was supported by the Tribune with all of Greeley's 
 matchless ability and vigor; but he was never without some 
 disturbing issue with Lincoln and the policy of the adminis- 
 tration. Sincerely patriotic himself, he was as sincere in his 
 convictions on all questions of public policy, and he seldom 
 took pause to consider the claims of expediency when he saw 
 what he believed to be the way dictated by the right. He 
 believed Lincoln equally patriotic with himself, and equally 
 sincere in every conviction and public act, but no two men 
 were more unlike in their mental organization. Greeley was 
 honest, aggressive, impulsive, and often ill advised in attempt- 
 ing to do the right thing in the wrong way. Lincoln was hon- 
 est, patient, considerate beyond any man of his day, and 
 calmly awaited the fullness of time for accomplishing the 
 great achievements he hoped for. Writing of Lincoln some 
 
 [261} 
 
time after his death, Greeley said that after the war began 
 "Lincoln's tenacity of purpose paralleled his former im- 
 mobility; I believe he would have been nearly the last, if 
 not the very last, man in America to recognize the Southern 
 Confederacy had its armies been triumphant. He would have 
 preferred death." That two such men should differ, and 
 widely differ, and that Greeley should often differ in bitter- 
 ness from Lincoln's apparent tardiness, was most natural; and 
 with a great war constantly creating new issues of the gravest 
 magnitude Greeley was kept in constant conflict with Lincoln 
 on some great question while honestly and patriotically sup- 
 porting the government in the prosecution of the war. 
 
 The question of destroying slavery enlisted Greeley's most 
 earnest efforts when it became evident that a great civil war 
 must be fought for the preservation of the Union, and on that 
 issue he fretted Lincoln more than any other one man in the 
 United States, because he had greater ability and greater 
 power than any whose criticisms could reach either Lincoln 
 or the public. While the Cabinet had as much discord as 
 there was between Lincoln and Greeley, and while even great 
 Senators and Representatives of the same political faith with 
 the President had serious dispute with him on the subject, 
 Greeley was the most vexatious of all, for he was tireless in 
 effort and reached the very heart of the Republican party 
 in every state in the Union with his great newspaper. Not- 
 withstanding the loyal support given to Lincoln by the Re- 
 publicans throughout the country, Greeley was in closer 
 touch with the active loyal sentiment of the people than even 
 the President himself, and his journal constantly inspired not 
 only those who sincerely believed in early Emancipation, but 
 all who were inclined to factious hostility to Lincoln, to most 
 aggressive efforts to embarrass the administration by untimely 
 forcing the Emancipation policy. Finally, Greeley's patience 
 became exhausted over what he regarded as the inexcusable 
 inaction of Lincoln on the subject of Emancipation, and on 
 the 20th of August, 1862, he published in his own newspaper 
 
 [262] 
 
an open letter to Lincoln denouncing him for his failure to 
 execute the Confiscation Act in ''mistaken deference to rebel 
 slavery," for bowing to the influence of what he called "cer- 
 tain fossil politicians hailing from the Border States," and 
 because our army officers "evinced far more solicitude to up- 
 hold slavery than to put down the rebellion." Thus plainly 
 accused by one whose patriotism Lincoln did not question 
 and whose honesty of purpose he could not doubt, Lincoln 
 felt that he could no longer be silent, and on the 22d of 
 August he addressed a letter to Greeley that did more to 
 steady the loyal sentiment of the country in a very grave 
 emergency than anything that ever came from Lincoln's pen. 
 It is one of Lincoln's clearest and most incisive presentations 
 of any question. Greeley, with all his exceptional tact and 
 ability in controversy, was unable successfully to answer it. 
 It was in that letter that Lincoln said: "I would save the 
 Union; I would save it the shortest way under the Constitu- 
 tion"; and he followed these terse utterances with the state- 
 ment, several times referred to in these articles, that he would 
 save the Union either by the destruction or the maintenance 
 of slavery as might best serve the great end he had in view. 
 It should be remembered that at the time this letter was 
 written by Lincoln to Greeley his draft of the Emancipation 
 Proclamation had been prepared nearly one month, and pre- 
 cisely one month after he wrote the letter he issued his pre- 
 liminary proclamation; but the letter gives no indication 
 whatever as to his action on the issue beyond his concluding 
 sentence, in which he says: "I intend no modification of my 
 often expressed personal wish that all men for ever could be 
 free." 
 
 This constant friction between Greeley and Lincoln logi- 
 cally led Greeley into the ranks of the opposition to Lincoln's 
 renomination in 1864, and he labored most diligently to ac- 
 complish Lincoln's overthrow. His ripe experience in poli- 
 tics prevented him from falling in with the few disappointed 
 Republican leaders who nominated Fremont at Cleveland 
 
 [263] 
 
before the Baltimore Convention met. He would gladly have 
 joined in that effort had he not fully appreciated the fact that 
 the occasion was too momentous to organize a faction on 
 personal or political grievances; but, while he kept aloof from 
 the Fremont movement, he aggressively resisted the nomina- 
 tion of Lincoln, and on the day the convention met he pub- 
 lished an earnest protest and indicated very clearly that Lin- 
 coln's nomination meant Republican defeat. He had long- 
 been in intercourse with the friends of Chase, and he would 
 gladly have accepted Chase or Grant, or, indeed, almost any 
 other Republican in the country whose name had been men- 
 tioned for the Presidency, in preference to Lincoln. When 
 Lincoln was renominated by practically an unanimous vote, 
 Greeley avoided direct antagonism to the party, but earnestly 
 co-operated with Senator Wade and Representative Davis in 
 their open rebellion against Lincoln. Wade and Davis issued 
 an address to the people of the United States that appeared 
 in Greeley's journal on the 5th of August, in which Lincoln 
 was severely arraigned for usurping the authority of Con- 
 gress and for withholding his approval to a bill presented to 
 him just on the eve of adjournment, for the purpose, as they 
 assumed, of holding "the Electoral votes of the rebel States 
 at the dictation of his personal ambition." Such an appeal, 
 coming from two of the ablest of the Republican leaders, cast 
 a dark gloom over the prospects of the Republican party, and 
 to the support of this revolt Greeley added an ostentatious 
 and ill-advised effort to negotiate a peace through a plausible 
 adventurer commonly known as "Colorado" Jewett. The 
 effusive and irrepressible George N. Sanders was involved in 
 it, and through Greeley they communicated to Lincoln a 
 basis of peace that Greeley was led to believe the South would 
 accept. 
 
 The terms suggested were the restoration of the Union, the 
 abolition of slavery, universal amnesty, payment of $400,- 
 000,000 for the slaves, full representation to be given to the 
 Southern states in Congress, and a national convention to be 
 
 [264] 
 
called at once to engraft the new policy on the Constitution. 
 Instead of maintaining the secrecy necessary to the success 
 of an adjustment of the difficulty between the sections then 
 at war, the Greeley-Jewett negotiations soon became public, 
 and Lincoln was earnestly importuned by Greeley to meet 
 the emergency by opening the doors widely to the considera- 
 tion of any proposition of peace. Lincoln, in his abundant 
 caution, although entirely without hope of accomplishing 
 anything by the Greeley negotiations, transmitted a paper to 
 be delivered to the Confederates who were assuming to act 
 for the South— a statement over his signature— saying that any 
 proposition for "the restoration of peace, the integrity of the 
 whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which 
 comes by and with an authority that can control the armies 
 now at war against the United States, will be received and 
 considered by the executive government of the United States, 
 and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and 
 collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have 
 safe-conduct both ways." Greeley had become enthusiastic in 
 his efforts to accomplish peace. He was a lover of peace, an 
 earnest and inherent foe of the arbitrament of the sword 
 under all circumstances, and when he found that the whole 
 effort made to arrest fraternal war brought only a contemptu- 
 ous rejection of Lincoln's proposition from those who as- 
 sumed to represent the Confederate government, he was 
 profoundly humiliated. It is fortunate for both Greeley and 
 the country that Messrs. Clay and Holcombe, who as- 
 sumed to speak for the Confederate government, refused even 
 to consider the question of peace on the basis of a restored 
 Union and the abandonment of slavery. Had they enter- 
 tained the proposition, or even pretended to entertain it, 
 they would have misled Greeley into a violent crusade against 
 the further prosecution of the war and into as violent hos- 
 tility to the re-election of Lincoln. 
 
 The pronounced anti-war platform of the Democratic Con- 
 vention that nominated McClellan against Lincoln was even 
 
 [265} 
 
less to Greeley's liking than the attitude of the Republicans, 
 and finally, as the Wade and Davis manifesto seemed to have 
 fallen stillborn upon the country, and Greeley's negotiations 
 for peace had ended disastrously, without credit to any, 
 Greeley had no choice but to fall in with the Lincoln proces- 
 sion and advocate the success of the Republican ticket. Sher- 
 man's capture of Atlanta and Sheridan's victories in the Val- 
 ley started the tidal wave in favor of Lincoln, and Greeley 
 was quite prepared, through his sad experiences in his hos- 
 tility to the administration, to fall in with the tide and share 
 the victory his party was then certain to win. After Lincoln's 
 re-election there was little opportunity for Greeley to take 
 issue with Lincoln. During the winter of 1865 he earnestly 
 favored every suggestion looking to the termination of the 
 war upon some basis that would bring the South back into 
 cordial relations with the Union. The failure of the Hamp- 
 ton Roads conference between Lincoln and the Confederate 
 Commissioners was regretted by Greeley, but he no longer 
 criticised Lincoln with his old-time severity; and when, after 
 Lee's surrender and the final triumph of the Union cause, 
 Lincoln's life was taken by the assassin's bullet, Greeley and 
 Lincoln were more nearly in harmonious relations than they 
 had ever been at any time from the day of Lincoln's inaugu- 
 ration. When the war ended Greeley was the first prominent 
 man of the country to demand universal amnesty and impar- 
 tial suffrage. A leading editorial in the Tribune demanding 
 the forgiveness of the insurgents as the price of universal 
 suffrage to the freedmen startled the country, and cost Greeley 
 the Senatorial honors he much coveted. 
 
 While Greeley was one of the founders of the Republican 
 party, and certainly did more to make it successful than any 
 other one man of the nation, he gathered few of its honors 
 and was seldom in harmony with Republican authority in 
 state or nation. His rebellion against Seward in 1860 cost him 
 an election to the United States Senate in 1861. His universal 
 amnesty and suffrage policy, proclaimed immediately after 
 
 [266] 
 
the war, again defeated him as a Senatorial candidate in 1865, 
 and while he accepted Grant for President in 1868 and sup- 
 ported his election with apparent cordiality, he very soon 
 drifted into a hostile attitude toward the administration. 
 Grant had none of Lincoln's patience and knew little of 
 Lincoln's conciliatory methods; and when Greeley rebelled 
 Grant allowed him to indulge his rebellious ideas to his 
 heart's content. Long before the close of Grant's first admin- 
 istration Greeley was ripe for revolution, and was one of the 
 earliest of those who inaugurated the Liberal Republican 
 movement of 1872 that nominated Greeley as its candidate 
 for President. I cordially sympathized with the revolt against 
 Grant in 1872, and was chairman of the delegation from 
 Pennsylvania in the Cincinnati convention. My relations 
 with Greeley had been of the most friendly character from 
 the time I first met him when a boy-journalist at the Whig 
 Convention in Philadelphia in 1848, and I not only pro- 
 foundly respected his sincerity, his philanthropy, and his 
 masterly ability, but I cherished an affection for him that I 
 felt but for few, if any, of our public men. He was surprised 
 when he learned from me, after the delegation to the Liberal 
 Convention had been selected in Pennsylvania, that I was 
 not urging his nomination for President. He believed that all 
 my personal inclinations would make me favor him at any 
 time that it might be in my power to do so, and he made an 
 appointment by telegraph to meet me at the Colonnade Hotel 
 in Philadelphia to discuss the question of the Presidency. We 
 met at the appointed time, and I greatly pained Greeley when 
 I told him that I did not believe his nomination would be a 
 wise one, because 1 saw no possible chance for his election. 
 He believed me when I assured him that I had no candidate 
 whom I preferred to him, and that I was influenced solely by 
 my desire to protect him from a great personal disaster and 
 the country from a failure in the then promising effort 
 to overthrow the political rule that had obtained under 
 Grant. I told him that I did not believe it possible for the 
 
 [267} 
 
Democrats to support him, and without their support his elec- 
 tion would be utterly hopeless. After hearing me very fully, 
 and evidently in great sorrow because of the attitude I as- 
 sumed, he finally made this significant remark: "Well, per- 
 haps the Democrats wouldn't take me head foremost, but 
 they might take me boots foremost." I well understood that 
 Greeley meant that while he might not be an available candi- 
 date for President, he might be an acceptable candidate for 
 the second place on the ticket. I at once answered: "Yes, Mr. 
 Greeley, with a conservative Republican for President you 
 can easily be nominated for Vice-President and add great 
 strength to the ticket." I said: "There are two names which 
 seem to me to be the strongest— David Davis and Charles 
 Francis Adams: which would you prefer?" Greeley answered: 
 "The name of Adams leaves a bad taste in my mouth; I would 
 prefer Davis"; and we finally agreed that I should go to the 
 Cincinnati Convention and support the nomination of Davis 
 for President and Greeley for Vice-President. 
 
 While I knew that Greeley most reluctantly gave up the 
 idea of being nominated for President, I did not doubt that 
 his candidacy for that office was practically ended by our con- 
 ference. When I went to Cincinnati, I there met Leonard 
 Swett, John D. Defrees, Senator Fenton, and others, and we 
 started out to accomplish the nomination of Davis and 
 Greeley. Some fifteen or twenty of us met at ten o'clock in 
 the evening and decided on a programme by which we con- 
 fidently expected to nominate Davis and Greeley on the first 
 ballot. But while we were thus conferring General Frank P. 
 Blair had gotten together a conference between some of the 
 more radical supporters of Greeley and the supporters of B. 
 Gratz Brown, and their conference ended by deciding to 
 nominate Greeley for President and Brown for Vice-Presi- 
 dent. By this new combination we were deprived of the sup- 
 port of the important state of New York, and also lost a large 
 support in the West. While many of the New York delegates 
 would have preferred the nomination of Davis and Greeley, 
 when Greeley was presented as a hopeful candidate for Presi- 
 
 [268] 
 
dent the delegation naturally united in his support, and 
 Brown brought into the combination a large number of West- 
 ern delegates who would have preferred Davis had they been 
 free to exercise their own judgment in selecting a candidate. 
 Davis was thus practically out of the race, and after giving a 
 complimentary vote to Curtin a large majority of the Penn- 
 sylvania delegation united with me in supporting the nomi- 
 nation of Adams. I did not regard Adams as possessing the 
 qualities of availability presented in Davis, but Adams seemed 
 to be the only man who had a reasonable prospect of winning 
 the nomination over Greeley. I was placed in the most un- 
 pleasant attitude of supporting a man for President to whom 
 I was almost an entire stranger, and for whom I had little 
 personal sympathy, against Greeley, for whom I cherished the 
 profoundest respect and affection. 
 
 On the first ballot Adams led Greeley by a vote of 203 to 
 147, with a large scattering vote between Trumbull, Brown, 
 Davis, Curtin, and Chase. On the second ballot Adams rose to 
 243 and Greeley to 239, with Trumbull to 148. On the third 
 ballot Adams had 264, Greeley 258, and Trumbull 156. On 
 the fourth ballot Adams increased to 279, and Greeley fell 
 off to 251, with Trumbull still holding 141. On the fifth 
 ballot Adams had 309 and Greeley 258; and on the sixth and 
 final ballot, as first reported, Greeley led Adams 8 votes, hav- 
 ing 332 to Adams 324. This was the first ballot on which 
 Greeley led Adams, and it clearly indicated that the conven- 
 tion was resistlessly drifting to Greeley as its candidate. There 
 was at once a rush from different delegations to change votes 
 from Adams to Greeley. I did not participate in it, and only 
 when a majority of votes had been cast and recorded for him 
 did I announce the change of the Pennsylvania delegation to 
 Greeley. The ballot as finally announced was 482 for Greeley 
 and 187 for Adams. While the balloting was in progress 
 Greeley was sitting in his editorial room in the Tribune office 
 along with one of his editorial assistants, who informed me 
 that Greeley became intensely agitated as the sixth ballot 
 developed his growing strength; and when the telegrams an- 
 
 [269] 
 
nounced that he led Adams on that vote, he excitedly ex- 
 claimed: "Why don't McClure change the vote of Pennsyl- 
 vania?" The next bulletin he received announced his nomi- 
 nation, and he promptly telegraphed to Whitelaw Reid, then 
 his chief editorial associate, who was in attendance at the 
 convention: "Tender my grateful acknowledgments to the 
 members of the convention for the generous confidence they 
 have shown me, and assure them that I shall endeavor to de- 
 serve it." 
 
 I was greatly disappointed at the result of the convention, 
 and was deeply grieved at what I regarded as a cruel sacrifice 
 of one of the men I most loved and the surrender of a great 
 opportunity to win a national victory in the interest of better 
 government and sectional tranquility. The nomination of 
 Greeley carried with it the nomination of B. Gratz Brown 
 for Vice-President, and when the convention adjourned I re- 
 turned to my room at the hotel feeling that our work was 
 farcical, because I did not regard it as possible for the Demo- 
 crats to accept Greeley. Before midnight, however, a number 
 of leading Democrats from different parts of the country who 
 were in constant touch with the convention pulled themselves 
 together, and their utterances given to the world the next 
 morning foreshadowed the possibility that the Democrats 
 would accept Greeley and Brown; but even when the Demo- 
 cratic National Convention with substantial unanimity ac- 
 cepted both the candidates and the platform of the Liberal 
 Republicans, I saw little hope for Greeley's election, as I 
 feared that the Democratic rank and file could not be brought 
 to his support. For some time after both conventions had 
 nominated Greeley we had a Greeley tidal-wave that seemed 
 likely to sweep the country. In Pennsylvania, as chairman of 
 the Liberal State Committee, I had voluntary letters from 
 hundreds of leading Republicans in every section of the state 
 indicating their purpose to fall in with the Greeley current, 
 but the loss of North Carolina early in August not only halted 
 the Greeley tide, but made its returning ebb swift and de- 
 structive. With this obvious revulsion in the political current 
 
 [270] 
 
the great business interests of the country were speedily con- 
 solidated in opposition to any change in the national admin- 
 istration, and there never was a day after the North Carolina 
 defeat when Greeley's election seemed to be within the range 
 of possibility. 
 
 The September elections proved that Greeley's nomination 
 made no impression upon the Republicans in New England, 
 including his native state of Vermont, where it was hoped he 
 would have thousands of Republican followers, and the Octo- 
 ber elections came like an avalanche against the Liberal move- 
 ment. Greeley delivered campaign speeches in New England 
 and in the middle states which were models of statesmanlike 
 ability, but he was fighting a hopeless battle; and when the 
 October elections cast their gloom upon his political hopes 
 he was called to nurse a dying wife, where for nearly a month 
 he passed sleepless nights, and closed her eyes in death only a 
 week before his overwhelming defeat in November. Thus at 
 once broken in heart and hope, the most brilliant and forceful 
 editor the country has ever produced, and one of the sincerest 
 and most tireless of American philanthropists, pined away 
 until the 29th of November, 1872, when he died. Imme- 
 diately after the election I had written him a personal letter 
 expressing my sincere sympathy with him in his multiplied 
 misfortunes. One of the most valued of my mementos of the 
 men of the past is his reply, dated November 10th, the last 
 day on which he ever wrote anything, as follows: 
 
 (Private.) 
 
 New York, November 10, 1872. 
 My Dear Friend: 
 
 I am a man of many sorrows, and doubtless have deserved them, 
 but I beg to say that I do not forget the gallant though luckless 
 struggle you made in my behalf. I am not well. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 Horace Greeley. 
 
 Col. a. K. McClure, 
 
 144 So. Sixth St., Philada. 
 
 [271] 
 
Thus ended one of the most useful and one of the saddest 
 lives of the last generation. He was of heroic mould in his 
 matchless battles for the lowly and helpless, and was always 
 invincible in political controversy, because his integrity was 
 ever as conspicuous as his ability; but he was as impatient as 
 he was philanthropic, and he most longed for what was so 
 pointedly denied him— the generous approval of his country- 
 men. He was made heart-sore when he saw the colored voters, 
 whose cause he had championed when no political party had 
 the courage to espouse it, almost unitedly oppose his election 
 to the Presidency; and finally, smitten in his home, in his 
 ambition, and in his great newspaper, Horace Greeley, broken 
 in heart and hopelessly clouded in intellect, gave up the bat- 
 tle of life. 
 
 [272] 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 71-72, 268- 
 
 70 
 Altoona Conference, 237-38 
 Anderson, Robert, 206-7 
 Andrew, John A., 52-53, 238 
 Angle, Paul M., (quoted), 5-6 
 Arlington National Cemetery, 171 
 Armstrong, William H., 118 
 Arnold, Isaac N., 104, 125 
 Ashley, James M., Ill 
 
 Bannan, Benjamin, 90-91 
 
 Bartlett, W. O., 97 
 
 Bates, Edward, 45-46, 50, 71, 145, 
 
 169, 258 
 Beauregard, P. G. T., 77-78 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 235 
 Bennett, James Gordon, 96-97 
 Biddle, Charles J., 227 
 Biddle, Craig, 226 
 Black, Jeremiah, 31-32, 40, 158-59 
 Blaine, James G., 73 
 Blair, Frank, 51,205, 268 
 Blair, Montgomery, 51, 71, 149, 205 
 Brown, B. Gratz, 52, 268-70 
 Brown, John, 11-12, 14,27 
 Buchanan, James, 28-41, 158-59 
 Buckalew, Charles A., 114 
 Buell, Don Carlos, 190-91, 207-8 
 Burnside, Ambrose E., 80, 174 
 Butler, Benjamin F., 118, 127, 151, 
 
 155 
 
 Cameron, Simon, 6, 50-52, 61, 71, 
 79,92,95, 105, 118, 120-23, 142- 
 56, 177 n., 196-98, 208, 222-23, 
 232-33, 245 
 
 Cass, Lewis, 30-31, 158 
 
 Chambersburg, Pa., 3, 6, 11-14, 16- 
 17,21,60, 147,229 
 
 Chandler, Zach., 72, 112 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., 52, 71, 86, 112, 
 129-41, 145, 153-54, 169, 264, 269 
 
 Childs, George W., 201 
 
 Clay, Cassius, 54 
 
 Cobb, Howell, 28 
 
 CoflEroth, Alexander H., 1 12 
 
 Cook, John E., 14-27 
 
 Copeland, John, 14 
 
 Coppoch, Edwin, 14 
 
 Cummings, Alexander, 145 
 
 Curtin, Andrew G., 4, 46-51, 54-55, 
 60-61, 63-66, 75-77, 89-91, 92, 94- 
 95, 143, 145-46, 149, 155, 163. 
 175,216,220-39,269 
 
 Davis, David, 8, 51, 58, 64, 83, 94, 
 
 145. 148-49, 264, 268-69 
 Davis, Henry Winter, 72, 117, 135- 
 
 36 
 Davis, Jefferson, 108 
 Dawes, Henry L., 150 
 Defrees, John D., 48, 268 
 Dennison, William, 175, 198 
 Dickinson, Daniel S., 118, 121, 127 
 Dix, John A., 31. 33. 36, 40, 118, 
 
 127 
 
 [273] 
 
Douglas, Stephen A., 72-73, 256 
 Drexel, Anthony J., 55, 201 
 
 Ellsworth, E. E., 79 
 Emancipation Proclamation, 
 15, 125, 138, 246, 262-63 
 Evarts, William M., 51,53 
 
 103- 
 
 Fillmore, Millard, 4, 47 
 
 Fitzhugh, Cleggett, 18-19 
 
 Floyd, John B., 28, 31 
 
 Forney, John W., 144, 153, 216, 
 
 232-33 
 Franklin, William B., 231-32 
 Fremont, John C, 4, 29, 44, 96- 
 
 97, 105 n., 135, 151-52, 168 
 
 Grant, Ulysses S., 123, 139, 157, 
 172, 180-81, 188-203, 209, 213- 
 14,216,218,230,267 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 45, 51, 53, 74-75, 
 92, 96, 256-72 
 
 Green, Shields, 14 
 
 Hale, Reuben C., 226 
 
 Halleck, Henry W., 168, 182, 184, 
 
 190, 194-95, 207 
 Hamlin, Hannibal, 53-54, 116-18, 
 
 121-22, 126-28 
 Hatch, O. M., 94 
 Hazelhurst, Isaac, 47 
 Hazlitt, Albert, 14, 26 
 Herndon, William H., 8, 83-84, 86 
 Holt, Joseph, 31-32, 40, 118, 121, 
 
 127 
 Hooker, Joseph, 185-86 
 Hunter, David, 106, 229 
 
 Indiana, 46-47, 49-50 
 
 Jewett, William Cornell, 264-65 
 Johnson, Andrew, 116, 118-23, 126- 
 
 28, 155, 171, 202, 214-15, 244, 
 
 247-48, 252-53 
 Johnston, Joseph E., 21 1-12, 219 
 Judd, Norman B., 51-52, 64, 94 
 
 Kagi, John Henry, 12-13 
 
 Lamon, Ward H., 8, 64-68, 84-85, 
 
 121-22, 192 
 Lane, Henry S., 46-51, 56, 94, 149, 
 
 222-23 
 Lee, Robert E., 171, 179-80, 183, 
 
 202, 229 
 Lewis, Joseph J., 137 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 64, 67 
 Logan, Daniel, 17-22 
 Logan, Hugh, 17 
 Logan, John A., 98 
 
 McCausland, General, 12, 147, 229 
 McClellan, George B., 38-39, 79-80, 
 96, 123-25, 136, 154, 157, 159-60, 
 167-69, 171, 173-87, 190, 196, 199- 
 200, 206, 244 
 McClure, Alexander Kelly, 1-7, 14, 
 20-26, 48, 54-55, 57-62, 66, 68, 75- 
 83, 85-86, 89-91, 98-101, 108, 112- 
 15, 122, 125-26, 130-31, 133-34, 
 138, 146-47, 153-56, 163-67, 173- 
 74, 192-93, 196-202, 210, 215, 
 228, 231-33, 244-45, 252-53, 267- 
 71 
 McClure, Mrs. Alexander K., 25 
 McKibben, Jere, 163-66 
 McLaughlin, Frank, 6 
 McLean, John, 50-51, 243-44 
 MacVeagh, Wayne, 197 
 Meade, George G., 199-200 
 Medill, Joseph, 94 
 Meredith, William M., 230 
 Meriam, Francis Jackson, 12-14 
 Mollie Maguires, 89, 91 
 Morgan, Edwin D., 51, 53-55 
 Morton, Oliver P., 98 
 
 Packer, William F., 47 
 Parker, John B., 226 
 Patterson, Robert, 224-26 
 Pennsylvania, 46-47, 49-52, 55, 57- 
 
 60, 75, 77, 88-91, 125, 163, 196- 
 
 200, 220, 228 
 Pennsylvania Reserves, 224-28 
 
 [274] 
 
Pomeroy, Senator, 135 
 Pope, John, 17, 168-69, 182 
 Porter, David D., 139, 213, 215 
 Porter, Fitz John, 171,224 
 Potter, David, (quoted), 5 
 Potts, Joseph E., 226 
 
 Raymond, Henry J., 121 
 
 Reeder, Andrew H., 50 
 
 Reid, Whitelaw, 270 
 
 Reilly, Virginia, 25 
 
 Republican Party, 4, 43, 48, 57-59, 
 
 70-71, 117, 124 
 Roberts, R. Biddle, 226 
 
 Sanders, George N., 264 
 Sanderson, John P., 145, 148 
 Schofield, John M., 171 
 Scott, Thomas A., 64-67, 79, 153- 
 
 54, 207, 226 
 Scott, Winfield, 33-34, 36, 63, 75- 
 
 79, 168, 184,206 
 Seward, William H., 44-46, 48-49, 
 
 51-55, 63, 69, 70-72, 92, 121, 149, 
 
 154,257-58,266 
 Seymour, Horatio, 140 
 Sheridan, PhiHp H., 123, 126, 174, 
 
 199-200 
 Sherman, John, 73, 204-5, 225 
 Sherman, William T., 98, 123-24, 
 
 126, 171,204-19,223-24 
 Sickles, Daniel E., 119 
 Simmons, Colonel, 227 
 Slavery, 15, 102-12, 115, 151-52, 
 
 178-79,249-50 
 Smith, C. F., 190 
 Smith, Caleb B., 71, 169 
 Smith, William F., 167 
 Stanton, Edwin M., 31-32, 36, 40, 
 
 86, 89, 91, 95, 137-38, 154, 157- 
 
 72, 177, 212, 214-15, 218, 229-31 
 States' Rights, 73-74 
 
 Stephens, Alexander, 108-9 
 Stevens, Aaron Dwight, 14 
 Stevens, Thaddeus, 50, 61, 111, 
 
 240-55 
 Stuart, J. E. B., 17 
 Sumner, Charles, 72, 112, 129, 136, 
 
 255 
 Sumner, Colonel, 64-65 
 Swett, Leonard, 8, 45, 52, 58, 83- 
 
 85,94, 121, 192 
 
 Taney, Roger B., 136 
 Taylor, Moses, 55 
 Thomas, Philip, 31 
 Thomson, John Edgar, 236 
 Tilden, Samuel J., 140 
 Toucey, Isaac, 28 
 
 Townsend, Ass't Adjutant-Gen- 
 eral, 90 
 Trumbull, Lyman, 72, 111, 269 
 
 Voorhees, Daniel, 27 
 
 Wade, Benjamin F., 72, 112, 117, 
 
 135-36,264 
 Washburne, Elihu B., 69, 192 
 Washington, D.C., 77-79, 182-83, 
 
 227-28 
 Weed, Thurlow, 45, 51, 53-55, 92, 
 
 121, 149,258 
 Weitzel, Godfrey, 217 
 Welles, Gideon, 71, 124, 169, 217- 
 
 18 
 Willard, Governor, 20, 27 
 Wilmot, David, 46, 50, 61 
 Wilson, James F., Ill 
 Wise, Henry A., 16,27 
 Woodward, George W., 38-39, 96, 
 
 142 
 Wright, John A., 226 
 
 Yates, Richard, 189 
 
 [275] 
 

author was a Pennsylvanian like 
 McClure or a Mississippian like Jeffer- 
 son Davis, when the underlying theme 
 of the brothers' conflict was moral 
 drama. There was, however, an excep- 
 tion in McClure's case that no 
 Southerner could claim; the Northerner 
 of that age had not — and would never 
 — recover from the emotional shock of 
 the assassin's bullet that had cut down 
 Lincoln. Not by accident is this a book 
 of a world that revolved around the 
 axis of Lincoln, and the reason why was 
 explained in a brilliant lecture by David 
 Potter of Yale: 
 
 **'He, Lincoln, became the object of 
 fabulous tales as had hardly been told 
 since the days of the monastic chroni- 
 clers. ... In epic terms such as Homer 
 might have used, this legend stressed 
 his great physical strength, coupled 
 with the tenderest compassion of the 
 weak, his breeding wisdom, his infinite 
 
 patience and humility Hence 
 
 emerged a figure born in a log-cabin 
 as lowly as any manger, growing up to 
 bear the sorrows of the race and to 
 suffer for all humanity. At last, on 
 Good Friday, 1865, his life on earth 
 was sacrificed for the redemption of the 
 Union, and on Easter Sunday the people 
 met in churches throughout the land to 
 mourn the Savior of the States.' 
 
 "Whither came this legend? It had, 
 of course, many sources; and among 
 them is Lincoln and Men of War-Times. 
 When in A Shelf of Lincoln Books (1946), 
 Paul M. Angle selected the books basic 
 to understanding Lincoln and his age, 
 McClure's volume was included. Mr. 
 Angle called it — and properly so — 'an 
 uncommonly instructive book,' adding: 
 'His appraisal of Cameron, for example, 
 is much more convincing than the all 
 black characterization that passes cur- 
 rent; his analysis of Lincoln as a politi- 
 cian is unsurpassed. . . . Bias, certainly, 
 McClure possessed; but within this 
 understandable limit he was truly a 
 superb reporter.' " 
 
 Jacket design by Ralph D. Affleck 
 
NATIONAL ACCLAIM FROM 
 
 COAST TO COAST 
 
 for 
 
 THE NEW BEST-SELLING NOVEL 
 
 THE CHALLENGE 
 
 by Arthur C. Mangels and Albert F. Byers 
 
 "... A great idea for pulling the economy of the Free World far ahead 
 of anything the Communists could dream of. Far-fetched? Well, a 
 flight to the moon was fantasy not so long ago." 
 
 Philadelphia Inquirer 
 
 "Most of those addicted to politics will stay with THE CHALLENGE 
 until the end. At least I did." 
 
 — Lester Gorn — San Francisco Examiner 
 "An idea that makes the mind reel. It also has considerable fascination 
 . . . readers will stick with the book to the end." 
 
 — Publishers^ Weekly 
 "... this readable novel which presents a plan for the free world to 
 follow in its battle with totalitarianism . . . the ideas should be 
 considered by all." 
 
 — Library Journal 
 ", . . found it so compelling I could scarcely put it down . . . never read 
 anything like it . . . suspense from page one to page 416. This thought- 
 provoking book is a great deal more than a novel ... it is not a book 
 to forget ..." 
 
 — E. M. Chambers — Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Miss. 
 
 "One of the most unusual books ever written ... an approach by two 
 conservative Americans on how big business, small business and govern- 
 ment could cooperate to build a new capitalist society to outwit 
 Communism ... all in all it's quite a book." 
 
 — A. J. Ruttenber — Sarasota News, Sarasota, Florida 
 "... a well plotted, fast-paced novel of the world behind the facades 
 of industry, finance and government. It is also a novel of ideas, a novel 
 which presents an ideal." 
 
 — Vermont Catholic Tribune 
 
 "... a dream for America . . . bold in its reaches ... a plan of gigantic 
 proportions." 
 
 — Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 
 
 "... a solution for American economic difficulties and the threat of 
 Communism." 
 
 — Hartford Times, Hartford, Conn. 
 
 $5.95 at better bookstores 
 
 or from 
 ROLLEY & REYNOLDS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 2016 Sansom Street Philadelphia 3, Penna.