by W. Scott Smoot
By the end of 1863, Lincoln could be confident of victory in the field, though Confederate troops still defeated larger union forces in battle. But he saw two dangers ahead. In the short term, he had to keep the war effort going until the southern states re-submitted to the Constitution. In the long term, he would have to reconstruct a nation over the lingering hatred and resentment that the enemies would feel for each other. If the war ended in mere conquest and not in reunion, then it would have been fought for nothing.
For
the first part of his task, Lincoln’s words could make the
difference. Daily, he had to defend
this war in letters and speeches. The
stout language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible had long influenced his
style; but finding ways to make unwilling audiences understand his abstract
reasoning had taught Lincoln to sharpen his rhetoric. By the end of his life, Lincoln had
become one of the greatest writers in the English language.
He
met his hardest rhetorical challenge with his most famous composition. An invitation to speak a few words at
Gettysburg’s new national cemetery was that challenge, an invitation to
the lions’ den. Here, a crowd
would gather to see a preacher bless blasted grounds. In full view would be the
graves of tens of thousands of young men who had died in a battle that had
achieved no final victory. War
dragged on. Doubtless, everyone in
the crowd would have lost loved ones in the war, if not in that battle. Lincoln would stand before them, the man whose election had sparked secession, whose
war against the rebel states seemed unconstitutional to many, whose stubborn
refusal to negotiate peace with Davis was prolonging the nation’s
agony. In the train, on this way to
face this crowd, Lincoln wrote nine sentences:
Four score 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.
In nine sentences, Lincoln took his audience from the ideals of America’s past, through the present agony, toward the future struggle that must continue if the world’s Great Experiment begun in 1776 was to last. Before Lincoln spoke, the day’s featured speaker had performed the entire battle of Gettysburg as a dramatic one – man show. He later told Lincoln, “How gladly would I exchange my hundred pages for your twenty lines!” (Boller 129)
Meanwhile,
the war became more horrible to behold than ever. Already the war had brought to action
the first automatic weapons, the most accurate artillery with the most
explosive shells to date, high range rifles that made old-fashioned attacks
suicidal, iron clad ships run by steam and difficult to sink, and even an
“air force” of hot air balloons to survey fields of battle. (Catton
128ff.) Lincoln had encouraged the
development of new weapons, and the Confederacy was able to purchase some of
the new technology from Europe early in the war.
But
it was Grant’s attitude, more than his weaponry, that
gave gentleman-warriors like Lee a glimpse of the horrors coming in the
twentieth century. If a policy
worked, Grant would do it, whether civilians were hurt or whether his own men
would die. Most infamous was General
William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” his burning a
scar into the face of the South from Nashville to Savannah, Georgia, and then
northward into South Carolina, laying waste to the state where secession and
the war had both started. Sherman
certainly achieved Grant’s objective, to kill the sickly Confederate
economy, but at a tremendous moral cost.
Grant
himself, in pursuit of Lee, lost tens of thousands of men, but kept pressing
on, using the men themselves as his weapon against the weary enemy. Most infamous is the battle of Cold
Harbor in Virginia. Grant had
already lost 18,000 men just to reach a stalemate against Lee’s strong position
there. Then, in one hour, Grant
lost 7000 men in useless charge after charge. Historian and statesman Winston
Churchill writes,
“The Union dead and wounded lay between the lines; the dead
soon began to stink in the broiling sun, the living screamed for
water.” After three days, Lee
sent a messenger to Grant offering to cease fire so that the wounded could be
removed from the field, and the dead could be taken away for burial. Lee showed gentlemanly concern; Grant
apparently never thought to ask for it.
By the time of World War I, nearly fifty years later, when gentlemen on
horseback rode to their deaths against machine guns, land mines, and poison
gas, war had grown along the lines that Grant first traced.
Grant’s
right hand man Sherman famously remarked, “War is hell.” Churchill adds, “He certainly made
it so” (Churchill 199).
Lincoln
Up For Re-Election
The Confederacy had one last chance to survive, the Union’s presidential election of November 1864. The war’s popularity had fallen, as measured by the election of more anti-war Democrats during elections for Congress in 1862 (Boorstin 350). Volunteering for the army had fallen by then to such a low level that state and federal government were paying “bounties” fo up to $1000 for people to volunteer, though “bounty jumpers” abused the system by enlisting, deserting, and re-enlisting for another bounty (351). To get more men, Secretary of War Stanton had instituted the military draft, also known as “conscription,” by which young men were signed up or “conscripted” for military service. But it seemed very unfair that men could pay others to fight in their places, and did. When the draft started in New York, working men in Irish neighborhoods rioted four days in anger (Boorstin), feeling that they were being unfairly sacrificed to emancipate slaves.
Lincoln feared he would lose. Lincoln’s former general
McClellan, a democrat, was gaining support as a peace candidate. Lincoln’s own treasurer ran
against him, claiming to be the more forceful leader who could end the war with
a quick victory. Some Republicans asked him not to run
again, and some suggested that he simply call off the elections until the
national emergency had ended. But
he did not take that bait, for reasons he explained later: “We
cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force
us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have
already conquered and ruined us” (Weber).
By early Fall of 1864, Lincoln had little success to show an impatient public for all their sacrifices: Grant was losing thousands of men in combat against Lee in Virginia while Sherman on his march through the South hadn’t been heard from in weeks. If the Confederacy could hang on just a few more weeks, Lincoln might lose the election to someone who would make peace with the South.
Then Jefferson Davis made a mistake that saved Lincoln’s political life. As Sherman approached Atlanta, Confederate General Joe Johnston stalled him with evasions and attacks in the area north of the city, around Kennesaw Mountain. But Davis, himself under criticism for failures, and for instituting a draft in the South, impatiently replaced Johnston with General John B. Hood who did what Johnston had been too wise to do: he attacked Sherman head on, and lost Atlanta. Sherman could use telegraph lines from Atlanta to communicate his victory to northern papers. Davis’s mistake gave Lincoln a big victory to show the voters, and Lincoln’s opponents lost their appeal to voters, and Lincoln won by a landslide. Sherman continued his March to the Sea, sending a telegraph message to Lincoln on December 22, 1864, that he was giving the President Savannah for a Christmas present (Nevins 225).
Senseless End
Surrender was at hand. Lincoln turned down a desperate offer from Davis for two nations to live in peace. Lincoln offered instead to pay high prices for freedom of slaves if the states re-united, but Davis refused (Nevins 228). On April 2, Lee evacuated Richmond. Davis, notified as he sat in a church service, fled. Later, he was captured, jailed, but released when authorities decided against putting him on trial for treason. He was considered, not a traitor, but a “misguided patriot” (Catton 152). At Grant’s invitation, Lee met him on April 9, 1865, at the courthouse at Appomattox, Virginia, to sign a declaration of surrender.
Lincoln’s determination and faith had brought him the short – term victory, but, ahead of him lay the more difficult task of reconstructing the South. How soon, and how, would the states be readmitted to participation in the government of the Union? How could the South be rebuilt? What would happen to the emancipated slaves, now free, but without property, without education, without experience off the farms where they’d lived?
As early as 1863, Lincoln had issued proclamations of amnesty for rebel soldiers. In his second inaugural address, given in March just before the war ended, he told his fellow countrymen that there would be “malice towards none, charity towards all” as the nation cared for those on both sides who had fought the battle, and their families.
At Appomattox Court House, Grant explained Lincoln’s terms for surrender, which were gracious: Lee’s men would surrender their weapons, but could keep horses and mules. “They’ll need them for spring planting,” Grant explained. Lee and his officers were allowed to keep their swords, symbols of their honor ( Churchill 202). Lincoln urged mercy concerning Jefferson Davis. On April 11, Lincoln made a speech to answer angry critics who objected to Louisiana’s being re-admitted to the Union. Lincoln said he would be flexible working with Congress on details, but he repeated that the sooner states could be re-admitted with full rights to representation in Congress, the better (Lincoln in Fehrenbacher 282). At a cabinet meeting on April 14, Good Friday, Lincoln emphasized reconciliation.
That night, an assassin destroyed the clearest hope for peaceful
reconstruction. Lincoln, at Ford’s
Theatre in Washington, watched a comedy, “Our American Cousin” from
a box seat above the stage. A
nationally famous actor, John Wilkes Booth, had arranged to get into the
President’s box. At the
moment of the play’s biggest laugh line, he shot Lincoln point –
blank in the back of the head.
Booth leaped to the stage, yelling “Sic Semper
Tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants,”
Virginia’s motto), but caught his spur on the American flag draping the
balcony, and landed wrong, breaking his ankle. In full view of the confused audience,
he limped across the stage and escaped out the back with his co-conspirators,
but, days later, cornered in a burning barn, he was shot by an over-eager
soldier. All the conspirators were
hanged, but the damage was done:
Lincoln’s crusade for Union would be rendered all but meaningless
by the bitter era of Reconstruction that followed.
Sources Cited
Boller, Paul F., Jr. Presidential Anecdotes. Harrisonburg: R.R. Donneley and Sons Co., 1986.
Boorstin, Daniel J., and Brooks Mather Kelley. A History of the United States. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Catton, Bruce. Reflections on the Civil War. John Leekley, ed. New York: Berkley Books, 1983.
Churchill, Winston Spencer. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Four volumes. New York: Bantam, 1980. Vol. 4: The Great Democracies.
Clinton, Catherine. Mrs. Lincoln: A Life. New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
Eastern National Park and Monument Association. Abraham Lincoln. Harrisburg: Eastern Acorn Press, 1984.
Lincoln, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln: A Documentary Portrait Through his Speeches and Writings. Don E. Fehrenbacher, ed. New York: Signet Classics, 1964.
______________. Abraham Lincoln: His Own Story in His Own Words. Ralph Geoffrey Newman, ed. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1975.
Mellon, James. The Face of Lincoln. New York: Bonanza Books, 1982.
Mitchell, Joseph B. Decisive Battles of the Civile War. New York: Facett Premier, 1983.
Nevins, Alan, and Henry Steel Commager. A Pocket History of the United States. New York: Washington Square Press, 1986.
“Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations.” Bartleby.com. 1989. Accessed 12 March 2010.
< http://www.bartleby.com/73/609.html>
Weber, Karen. “Abraham Lincoln and
the Election of 1864.” Summary of Weber’s book, The Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s
Opponents in the North at web site The Lincoln
Classroom. Lincoln Institute. 2010. Accessed April 14, 2010.
< http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=112&CRLI=160 >
Will, George F. Statecraft as Soulcraft. New York: Touchstone, 1983.