CHAPTER VII

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

The winter of 1862-63 was for the Rebellion much what the winter of Valley Forge was for the Revolution. It passed, however, and the nation still clung fast to its purpose. The weak brethren who had become dismayed were many, but the people as a whole was steadfast. This being so, ultimate success became assured. Wise and cool-headed men, in a frame of mind to contemplate the situation as it really was, saw that the tide was about at its turning, and that the Union would not drift away to destruction in this storm at any rate. They saw that the North _could_ whip the South, if it chose; and it was now sufficiently evident that it would choose,--that it would endure, and would finish its task. It was only the superficial observers who were deceived by the Virginian disasters, which rose so big in the foreground as partially to conceal the real fact,--that the Confederacy was being at once strangled and starved to death. The waters of the Atlantic Ocean and of the Gulf of Mexico were being steadily made more and more inaccessible, as one position after another along the coast gradually passed into Federal hands. The Mississippi River, at last a Union stream from its source to its mouth, now made a Chinese wall for the Confederacy on the west. Upon the north the line of conflict had been pushed down to the northern borders of Mississippi and Georgia, and the superincumbent weight of the vast Northwest lay with a deadly pressure upon these two States.

It was, therefore, only in Virginia that the Confederates had held their own, and here, with all their victories, they had done no more than just hold their own. They had to recognize, also, that from such battlefields as Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville they gathered no sustenance, however much they might reap in the way of glory. Neither had they gained even any ground, for the armies were still manoeuvring along the same roads over which they had been tramping and swaying to and fro for more than two years. By degrees the Southern resources in the way of men, money, food, and supplies generally, were being depleted. The Confederacy was like a lake, artificially inclosed, which was fed by no influx from outside, while it was tapped and drained at many points.

On the other hand, within the North, affairs were coming into a more satisfactory condition. It was true that all the military successes of July had not discouraged the malcontents; and during the summer they had been busily preparing for the various state elections of the autumn, which they hoped would strongly corroborate their congressional triumphs of 1862. But when the time came they were exceedingly disappointed. The law now, fairly enough, permitted soldiers in the field to vote, and this was, of course, a reinforcement for the Republican party; but even among the voters at home the Democratic reaction of the preceding year had spent its force. In October Pennsylvania gave Governor Curtin, the Republican candidate for reëlection, a majority of 15,000. In the same month, under the circumstances described in the preceding chapter, Ohio buried Vallandigham under a hostile majority of more than 100,000. The lead thus given by the "October States" was followed by the "November States." In New York no governor was to be elected; but the Republican state ticket showed a majority of 30,000, whereas the year before Seymour had polled a majority of 10,000. The Northwest fell into the procession, though after a hard fight. A noteworthy feature of the struggle, which was fierce and for a time doubtful in Illinois, was a letter from Mr. Lincoln. He was invited to attend a mass meeting at Springfield, and with reluctance felt himself obliged to decline; but in place of a speech, which might not have been preserved, the good fortune of posterity caused him to write this letter:--

August 26, 1863.

HON. JAMES C. CONKLING:

_My dear Sir_,--Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the capital of Illinois, on the third day of September, has been received. It would be very agreeable for me thus to meet my old friends at my own home, but I cannot just now be absent from here as long as a visit there would require.

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union, and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those other noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life.

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say: you desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it? There are but three conceivable ways: First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly. If you are not for _force_, nor yet for _dissolution_, there only remains some imaginable _compromise_.

I do not believe that any compromise embracing the maintenance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn leads to a directly opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army. That army dominates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present; because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise, if one were made with them.

To illustrate: suppose refugees from the South and peace men of the North get together in convention, and frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union. In what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania, and, I think, can ultimately drive it out of existence. But no paper compromise, to which the controllers of Lee's army are not agreed, can at all affect that army. In an effort at such compromise we would [should] waste time, which the enemy would improve to our disadvantage, and that would be all.

A compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those who control the rebel army, or with the people, first liberated from the domination of that army by the success of our own army. Now, allow me to assure you that no word or intimation from that rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowledge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless. And I promise you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you. I freely acknowledge myself to be the servant of the people, according to the bond of service, the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am responsible to them. But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while you, I suppose, do not. Yet I have neither adopted nor proposed any measure which is not consistent with even your views, provided that you are for the Union. I suggested compensated emancipation, to which you replied: you wished not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such a way as to save you from greater taxation to save the Union exclusively by other means.

You dislike the emancipation proclamation, and perhaps would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I think differently. I think the Constitution invests its commander-in-chief with all the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there, has there ever been, any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever it helps us and hurts the enemy? Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property when they cannot use it, and even destroy their own to keep it from the enemy.

... But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid. If it is not valid it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life. Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favorably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than before the issue? There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation was issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinion of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most important victories, believe the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops constitute the heaviest blows yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved, when it was, but for the aid of black soldiers.

Among the commanders who hold these views are some who have never had an affinity with what is called "abolitionism," or with "Republican party politics," but who hold them purely as military opinions. I submit their opinions as entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith.

You say that you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes. I thought that, in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently?

I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept.

The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand. On the spot their part of the history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely or well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic,--for the principle it lives by and keeps alive,--for man's vast future,--thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white men unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

This was a fair statement of past facts and of the present condition; and thus the plain tokens of the time showed that the menace of disaffection had been met and sufficiently conquered. The President had let the nation see the strength of his will and the immutability of his purpose. He had faced bullying Republican politicians, a Democratic reaction, Copperheadism, and mob violence, and by none of these had he been in the least degree shaken or diverted from his course. On the contrary, from so many and so various struggles he had come out the victor, a real ruler of the country. He had shown that whenever and by whomsoever, and in whatever part of the land he was pushed to use power, he would use it. Temporarily the great republic was under a "strong government," and Mr. Lincoln was the strength. Though somewhat cloaked by forms, there was for a while in the United States a condition of "one-man power," and the people instinctively recognized it, though they would on no account admit it in plain words. In fact every malcontent knew that there was no more use in attempting to resist the American President than in attempting to resist a French emperor or a Russian czar; there was even less use, for while the President managed on one plausible ground or another to have and to exercise all the power that he needed, he was sustained by the good-will and confidence of a majority of the people, which lay as a solid substratum beneath all the disturbance on the surface. It was well that this was so, for a war conducted by a cabinet or a congress could have ended only in disaster. This peculiar character of the situation may not be readily admitted; it is often convenient to deny and ignore facts in order to assert popular theories; and that there was a real _master_ in the United States is a proposition which many will consider it highly improper to make and very patriotic to contradict. None the less, however, it is true, and by the autumn of 1863 every intelligent man in the country _felt_ that it was true. Moreover, it was because this was true, and because that master was immovably persistent in the purpose to conquer the South, that the conquest of the South could now be discerned as substantially a certainty in the future.

Some other points should also be briefly made here. The war is to be divided into two stages. The first two years were educational; subsequently the fruits of that education were attained. The men who had studied war as a profession, but had had no practical experience, found much to learn in warfare as a reality after the struggle began. But before the summer of 1863 there were in the service many generals, than whom none better could be desired. "Public men" were somewhat slow in discovering that their capacity to do pretty much everything did not include the management of campaigns. But by the summer of 1863 these "public" persons made less noise in the land than they had made in the days of McClellan; and though political considerations could never be wholly suppressed, the question of retaining or displacing a general no longer divided parties, or superseded, and threatened to wreck, the vital question of the war. Moreover, as has been remarked in another connection, the nation began to appreciate that while war was a science so far as the handling of armies in the field was concerned, it was strictly a business in its other aspects. By, and in fact before, the summer of 1863 this business had been learned and was being efficiently conducted.

Time and experience had done no less for the President than for others. A careful daily student of the topography of disputed regions, of every proposed military movement, of every manoeuvre, every failure, every success, he was making himself a skillful judge in the questions of the campaigns. He had also been studying military literature. Yet as his knowledge and his judgment grew, his modesty and his abstention from interference likewise grew. He was more and more chary of endeavoring to control his generals. The days of such contention as had thwarted the plans of McClellan without causing other plans to be heartily and fully adopted had fortunately passed, never to return. Of course, however, this was in part due to the fact that the war had now been going on long enough to enable Mr. Lincoln to know pretty well what measure of confidence he could place in the several generals. He had tried his experiments and was now using his conclusions. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Hancock, and Meade were no longer undiscovered generals; while Fremont, McClellan, Halleck--and perhaps two or three more might be named--may be described in a counter-phrase as generals who were now quite thoroughly discovered. The President and the country were about to get the advantage of this acquired knowledge.

A consequence of these changed conditions, of the entrance upon this new stage of the war, becomes very visible in the life of Mr. Lincoln. The disputation, the hurly-burly, the tumultuous competition of men, opinions, and questions, which made the first eighteen months of his presidency confusing and exciting as a great tempest on the sea, have gone by. For the future his occupation is rather to keep a broad, general supervision, to put his controlling touch for the moment now here, now there. He ceases to appear as an individual contestant; his personality, though not less important, is less conspicuous; his influence is exerted less visibly, though not less powerfully. In short, the business-like aspect affects him and his functions as it does all else that concerns the actual conduct of the war; he too feels, though he may not formulate, the change whereby a crisis has passed into a condition. This will be seen from the character of the remainder of this narrative. There are no more controversies which call for other chapters like those which told of the campaigns of McClellan. There are no more fierce intestine dissensions like those which preceded the Proclamation of Emancipation,--at least not until the matter of reconstruction comes up, and reconstruction properly had not to do with the war, but with the later period. In a word, the country had become like the steed who has ceased fretfully to annoy the rider, while the rider, though exercising an ever-watchful control, makes less apparent exertion.

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By one of the odd arrangements of our governmental machine, it was not until December 7, 1863, that the members of the Thirty-eighth Congress met for the first time to express those political sentiments which had been in vogue more than a year before that time, that is to say during the months of October and November, 1862, when these gentlemen had been elected, at the close of the summer's campaign. It has been said and shown that a very great change in popular feeling had taken place and made considerable advance during this interval. The autumn of 1863 was very different from the autumn of 1862! A Congress coming more newly from the people would have been much more Republican in its complexion. Still, even as it was, the Republicans had an ample working majority, and moreover were disturbed by fewer and less serious dissensions among themselves than had been the case occasionally in times past. McClellan and the Emancipation Proclamation had not quite yet been succeeded by any other questions of equal potency for alienating a large section of the party from the President. Not that unanimity prevailed by any means; that was impossible under the conditions of human nature. The extremists still distrusted Mr. Lincoln, and regarded him as an obstruction to sound policies. Senator Chandler of Michigan, a fine sample of the radical Republican, instructed him that, by the elections, Conservatives and traitors had been buried together, and begged him not to exhume them, since they would "smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days." Apparently he ranked Seward among these defunct and decaying Conservatives; certainly he regarded the secretary as a "millstone about the neck" of the President.[52] Still, in spite of such denunciations, times were not in this respect so bad as they had been, and the danger that the uncompromising Radicals would make wreck of the war was no longer great.

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Another event, occurring in this autumn of 1863, was noteworthy because through it the literature of our tongue received one of its most distinguished acquisitions. On November 19 the national military cemetery at Gettysburg was to be consecrated; Edward Everett was to deliver the oration, and the President was of course invited as a guest. Mr. Arnold says that it was actually while Mr. Lincoln was "in the cars on his way from the White House to the battlefield" that he was told that he also would be expected to say something on the occasion; that thereupon he jotted down in pencil the brief address which he delivered a few hours later.[53] But that the composition was quite so extemporaneous seems doubtful, for Messrs. Nicolay and Hay transcribe the note of invitation, written to the President on November 2 by the master of the ceremonies, and in it occurs this sentence: "It is the desire that, after the oration, you, as Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use, by a few appropriate remarks." Probably, therefore, some forethought went to the preparation of this beautiful and famous "Gettysburg speech." When Mr. Everett sat down, the President arose and spoke as follows:[54]--

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us;--that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion;--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

FOOTNOTES:

[52] N. and H. vii. 389.

[53] Arnold, _Lincoln_, 328. This writer gives a very vivid description of the delivery of the speech, derived in part from Governor Dennison, afterward the postmaster-general, who was present on the occasion.

[54] Mr. Arnold says that in an unconscious and absorbed manner, Mr. Lincoln "adjusted his spectacles" and read his address.

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