Lincoln Part 49

In so doing, he grievously offended New York Conservatives led by Thurlow Weed. "Distinctly and emphatically" Weed asked David Davis to tell the President "that if this Custom House is left in custody of those who have for two years sent 'aid and comfort' to the enemy, his fitness for President will be questioned." Disaffection among Conservatives became greater when Lincoln, without notice, followed the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury and named John T. Hogeboom as appraiser in the New York Customs House. "The President [had] rather appoint Chase's friends than to say no," Senator Edwin D. Morgan grieved. Weed was enraged. "After this outrage and insult," he fumed, he would cease to annoy the President with the letters and advice he had constantly showered on him since his election; he could no longer be subjected "to the mortifications of knowing that the President has no respect for my opinions." Deeply troubled, Lincoln sent his private secretary to New York to make peace with the aging boss, but Nicolay found him "quite disheartened and disappointed." Privately Weed began expressing his belief that the people had "not had the worth of their Blood and Treasure" from the Lincoln administration and his doubts about the advisability of renominating the President were so public that rumor had it that "old Weed was undoubtedly opposed to Lincoln."

If the President seemed to support the Radicals in New York, in Was.h.i.+ngton he appeared to back the Conservatives. In late April, Representative Francis P. Blair, Jr., outraged by charges, made with the apparent connivance of Treasury Department officials, that he had profited from illegal trade along the Mississippi River, took the floor to denounce Secretary Chase for fostering fraud and corruption in order to boost his chances for the presidency. In a blistering attack Blair charged that Chase had not really withdrawn from the race after the "disgraceful and disgusting" Pomeroy Circular; he simply "wanted to get down under the ground and work there in the dark as he is now doing, and running the Pomeroy machine on the public money as vigorously as ever." Chase, he continued, was using "that poor creature" Fremont as a cat's-paw, believing that the threat of an independent third party would frighten the Republicans into dropping Lincoln. Then "Chase, who has so magnanimously declined to be a candidate, will then be taken up as a compromise candidate."

What made Blair's vituperative speech the more infuriating to Radicals was his announcement immediately afterward that he was giving up his seat in Congress to resume his commission as major general commanding a corps in Sherman's army. Blair, it became known, had a "distinct verbal understanding" with Lincoln that he might resign his commission in order to serve in Congress but that he could, "at any time during the session, at his own pleasure, withdraw said resignation, and return to the field." Lincoln's enemies raged that this arrangement was both illegal and unconst.i.tutional; it proved that the President had been behind Blair's a.s.sault on the Secretary of the Treasury. Indignant, Chase planned to resign, but he allowed his friends to persuade him to delay until they could see the President.

When former Congressman Albert G. Riddle of Ohio, accompanied by Rufus P. Spalding, "the personal and confidential friend nearest the Secretary," met with Lincoln on April 25, they received a frosty reception. He melted, however, after Riddle explained that he had come not to confront the President but to hear his a.s.surance that he was "in no way a party to or responsible for a word uttered by Mr. Blair." Lincoln explained that he had not known in advance of Blair's speech; indeed, he did not learn of it until three hours after he had reinstated the general in command. Realizing "that another beehive was kicked over," he initially thought of canceling the order restoring Blair's commission but on reflection decided to let it stand. "If I was wrong in this," he told his visitors, "the injury to the service can be set right."

As the time for the Baltimore convention approached, the stress of mediating between the two Republican factions was beginning to tell on the President. Riddle, who had not seen him for five months, was shocked by the change in his appearance. Now, he reported, the President "looked like a man worn and hara.s.sed with petty faultfinding and criticisms, until he had turned at bay, like an old stag pursued and hunted by a cowardly rabble of men and dogs."

II

These days Lincoln found it easier to get along with his generals than with the politicians. In Grant he had a commander whom he liked and trusted. Everything about the unpretentious, businesslike general pleased the President. It was an advantage that Grant was from Illinois. His lack of flamboyance, his seeming inattentiveness to rank and protocol endeared him to the President. Lincoln was struck by the simplicity and directness of the language Grant used in his reports. He was even more impressed by their infrequency and brevity. "Gen. Grant," he had noted back in July 1863, "is a copious worker, and fighter, but a very meagre writer, or telegrapher." He was pleased that Grant, unlike McClellan, Buell, and some other generals, unquestioningly accepted his policies on emanc.i.p.ation and the recruitment of Negro troops. Most of all, he told another officer, he liked Grant because "he doesn't worry and bother me. He isn't shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him ... and does the best he can with what he has got."

The President wanted to give the new general-in-chief everything that he reasonably could. He approved the general's decision to reorganize and consolidate the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac into a separate corps, and he agreed to the appointment of Grant's young favorite, Philip Sheridan, to command it. He backed Grant's decision to make sharp reductions in the numbers of soldiers stationed far behind the lines maintaining civil order in the border states and guarding lines of transportation, and he accepted the general's decision to terminate profitless expeditions like the months-long siege of Charleston harbor. When Grant demanded that the quartermaster, ordnance, and commissary departments be brought under his control, Lincoln replied that, though he could not legally give him the command of these departments, "there is no one but myself that can interfere with your orders, and you can rest a.s.sured that I will not." Once Grant offended Stanton by withdrawing too many men from the fortifications of Was.h.i.+ngton, and both men took their cases to the White House. After hearing them out, Lincoln told his Secretary of War: "You and I, Mr. Stanton, have been trying to boss this job, and we have not succeeded very well with it. We have sent across the mountains for Mr. Grant, as Mrs. Grant calls him, to relieve us, and I think we had better leave him alone to do as he pleases."

In his first private interview with the general, the President a.s.sured him "that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them." In the past, "procrastination on the part of commanders, and the pressure from the people at the North and Congress, which was always with him," had forced him to play a more active role. But "all he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the a.s.sistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering such a.s.sistance." "The particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to know," he wrote Grant later. "You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you."

It was a tribute to Lincoln's skill in managing men that, even while giving the general these a.s.surances of independence, he succeeded in reshaping Grant's strategy-and that his tact and diplomacy permitted the general to think that he was conducting the war with a free hand. It was probably the President's quiet influence that caused Grant to give up his plan, ardently urged on him by Sherman, to avoid the political atmosphere in Was.h.i.+ngton by having his headquarters in the West; instead, he set up his command near the Army of the Potomac, over which he exercised strategic control while Meade remained in tactical command. It was not Grant's wish, but the President's, that Halleck became chief of staff, a position in which he performed well, acting as intermediary between the commander-in-chief, the Secretary of War, and the general-in-chief. For political reasons Lincoln picked officers for several subordinate commands who were not favored by Grant. For instance, Benjamin F. Butler, despite his well-known incompetence, remained at the head of the Army of the James because he had a powerful following among Radical Republicans, and Franz Sigel, who had minimal military skills but was a favorite of German-Americans, was chosen to head the Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley.

Much more important were the s.h.i.+fts that Lincoln, often with Halleck's a.s.sistance, brought about in Grant's strategic thinking. Grant was painfully aware that the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia for three long years had "fought more desperate battles than it probably ever before fell to the lot of two armies to fight, without materially changing the vantage ground of either." He was convinced that success would never come through more such inconclusive engagements, and he proposed "an abandonment of all previously attempted lines to Richmond." Instead he favored a series of ma.s.sive raids against the Confederacy-not just by the cavalry, which was unable to inflict permanent damage, but by small armies of 60,000 men-designed to destroy the essential railway lines. One such raid, using Banks's command at New Orleans, should move against Mobile and then proceed northward to cut the railroads in Alabama and Georgia. A second, under Sherman, should sweep through Georgia and destroy the main east-west transportation line of the Confederacy. A third, moving inland from Suffolk, Virginia, should demolish the rail lines between Weldon and Raleigh, North Carolina, on which Lee depended for supplies to his army. This, Grant concluded, "would virtually force an evacuation of Virginia and indirectly of East Tennessee."

Under the influence of Lincoln and Halleck, Grant abandoned nearly all of this plan. The President would not consent to weakening the force between Lee's army and the national capital; he feared that while Grant was involved in a raid through North Carolina, Lee would seize Was.h.i.+ngton and again invade the North. Apart from that, Lincoln had developed a contempt for what he scornfully called "strategy." What he thought was needed was not more maneuvering but a.s.sault after a.s.sault on the Confederate army. For months that was what he had been urging on Meade, without much success; now he expected Grant to fight.

Without even being aware that he was abandoning his original strategy, Grant developed a new plan for simultaneous ma.s.sive attacks on the Confederate heartland by all the Union armies. Banks was to advance toward Mobile, Sherman was to move toward Atlanta, Sigel was to cut the Confederate rail line in the Shenandoah, Butler was to advance up the James River against Petersburg and, ultimately, Richmond, while Meade pushed the Army of Northern Virginia back to the Confederate capital. The concerted movement was to begin on the fifth of May.

When Lincoln learned of Grant's new plan, he was, as Hay recorded, "powerfully reminded" of his "old suggestion so constantly made and as constantly neglected, to Buell and Halleck, et al., to move at once upon the enemy's whole line so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers." But he pretended to be surprised when Grant told him about it and, Grant recalled, "seemed to think it a new feature in war." When Grant explained how all the armies could contribute to victory simply by advancing even if they won no battles, the President remarked, in all apparent innocence: "Oh, yes! I see that. As we say out West, if a man can't skin he must hold a leg while somebody else does."

Even with this greatly revised strategy Grant did not succeed in having things his own way. His plan to use Banks's force for a raid on Mobile and central Alabama had to be scratched. Before Grant became general-in-chief, the War Department, at the President's urging, had dispatched Banks on a campaign up the Red River, designed in part to liberate more of Louisiana from Confederate rule-and incidentally to liberate 50,000 to 150,000 bales of cotton thought to be stored in central and western Louisiana. Equally important in the President's mind was the lesson that Banks's success would send to the French in Mexico, where the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria on April 10 accepted the throne of a puppet government protected by the troops of Napoleon III. The Red River expedition was a total disaster. Its only result was to prevent Banks's army of 40,000 men from helping in Grant's campaign.

But the other parts of Grant's plan fell into place. In the early hours of Wednesday, May 4, the Army of the Potomac moved across the Rapidan River to begin a new campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. The next day Butler landed 30,000 troops on the south side of the James River, threatening Petersburg. On May 7, Sherman launched his campaign for the capture of Atlanta.

Lincoln watched the campaign with painful interest. For the first two days as Grant's army plunged into the Wilderness, that trackless tangle of trees and undergrowth which had been the scene of Hooker's defeat, he received no news because his general-in-chief had forbidden newspaper correspondents to use the telegraph. During this time the President haunted the War Department offices; an observer thought he was "waiting for despatches and, no doubt, sickening with anxiety." Not until Friday morning did he receive even an indirect report from Grant: "Everything pus.h.i.+ng along favorably." At two o'clock the next morning he interviewed a correspondent from the New York Tribune, who had just left the army. Grant told him: "If you do see the President,... tell him that General Grant says there will be no turning back." With that much rea.s.surance Lincoln felt able to tell a Pennsylvania woman that he was "considerably cheered, just now, by favorable news" from the army, and in response to a serenade by a large crowd that a.s.sembled on the White House lawn he gave thanks to "the brave men," their "n.o.ble commanders," and "especially to our Maker" for victory.

Then the shattering real news began to come in. Grant had thrown his army of 100,000 men against Lee's much smaller force in the Wilderness, attempting to flank it, and in two days of ferocious fighting had suffered more than 14,000 casualties. Unsuccessful in turning Lee's army, Grant then moved east, only to encounter Lee again at Spotsylvania, where between May 10 and 19 more than 17,500 Union soldiers were killed or wounded. Over a period of two weeks the Army of the Potomac lost nearly 32,000 men, and thousands more were missing.

During these terrible days Lincoln tried to keep up a pretense of regular business, though his impatience and bitterness occasionally overcame him. Speaker Colfax found him pacing up and down his office, "his long arms behind his back, his dark features contracted still more with gloom," as he exclaimed: "Why do we suffer reverses after reverses! Could we have avoided this terrible, b.l.o.o.d.y war!... Is it ever to end!" He hardly slept at all these nights. One morning Francis B. Carpenter, the young artist who was painting a picture he called First Reading of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation of President Lincoln, caught sight of him in the hallway of the Executive Mansion, "clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow pa.s.sage leading to one of the windows, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast-altogether... a picture of the effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety."

Despite the hideous losses, the President did not despair, because Grant, unlike all the previous commanders of the Army of the Potomac, did not withdraw after his engagements with the enemy but continued to push against Lee's army. Lincoln took great comfort from the message that Grant sent Stanton on the seventh day of the fighting: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." "It is the dogged pertinacity of Grant that wins," the President said hopefully to John Hay.

During the weeks after the unsuccessful a.s.sault at Spotsylvania, Lincoln continued strongly to support the general. There was no alternative to Grant. Except for Sherman, whose capacity for independent command had yet to be fully tested, and George H. Thomas, who was considered too slow, there were no other generals who could be put in charge. Besides, Grant was carrying out the President's own favored plan of operations. Lincoln did his best to keep his spirits up, and he was encouraged that Grant after each engagement went on to launch a new offensive. "The great thing about Grant," Lincoln said during the battle of the Wilderness, "is his perfect coolness and persistency of purpose... . he is not easily excited ... and he has the grit of a bull-dog! Once let him get his 'teeth' in, and nothing can shake him off."

III

With a general-in-chief who shared his determination to destroy the Confederate armies, Lincoln directed his own efforts to seeing that the Union forces were adequately supplied and constantly reinforced. Manpower was a constant problem. Many of the Union soldiers had enlisted for three-year terms, which would expire in 1864. Though Congress offered special inducements in the way of bounties and furloughs to those who would reenlist, at least 100,000 decided not to. When the casualties from the Wilderness campaign were added to this number, it was obvious that more recruits were needed. Since volunteering had virtually ceased, Lincoln on May 17 felt forced to draft an order for the conscription of 300,000 additional men.

The order was never issued because on May 18 the New York World and the Journal of Commerce published a proclamation, purportedly originating in the White House, in which Lincoln announced that, "with a heavy heart, but an undiminished confidence in our cause," he was ordering an additional draft of 400,000 men. This depressing news caused a flurry of speculation on Wall Street, and the price of gold, as measured in greenbacks, rose 10 percent. That was the object of the authors of the bogus proclamation, Joseph Howard, an editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and Francis A. Mallison, a reporter for that paper, who managed a fairly skillful imitation of Lincoln's style. Doubtless Howard, who had worked for the New York Times and the New York Tribune, heard rumors of an impending draft call, and he took advantage of inside information in the hope of making a fortune in the gold market.

The Lincoln administration came down heavily on the two newspapers. In an order drafted by Stanton, Lincoln directed the army to "take possession by military force" of the premises of the two offending papers and ordered the arrest of their editors and proprietors. Shortly afterward authorities discovered that Howard and Mallison were responsible, and the two men were imprisoned in Fort Lafayette.

Though the editors and owners of the papers were promptly released and the World and the Journal of Commerce resumed publication after two days, the episode further ill.u.s.trated the determination, amounting almost to ferocity, with which Lincoln was prosecuting the war. Offered an opportunity to disavow responsibility for the order suppressing the newspapers by blaming subordinates, he refused to do so. He was already angry at the speculators and profiteers who were making money from the war, often by betting against the success of the government. Gold speculators-and Howard planned to be one-were a special object of his wrath. Banging his clenched fist on the table for emphasis, he told Governor Curtin: "I wish every one of them had his devilish head shot off!"

Fortunately for Lincoln neither the bogus proclamation nor the news of Grant's losses in Virginia had much immediate effect on the slow political processes that were inevitably moving toward the Republican nominating convention. State after state continued to wheel into line behind the President. Support for Lincoln was strongest in the Western states, like California, Iowa, and Wisconsin, where National Union (Republican) conventions chose delegates unanimously pledged to vote for his renomination. In Illinois, one Republican wrote, the people "think that G.o.d tried his best when he made Mr Lincoln and they are all for his re election."

In the East, Cameron, as he had promised, persuaded the Pennsylvania Republican convention to reinforce the endors.e.m.e.nt already given by the state legislators, and the Keystone State sent a delegation, loaded with federal employees appointed by the President, to cast fifty-two votes for Lincoln. In Ma.s.sachusetts, despite foot-dragging by Governor John A. Andrew and angry opposition from the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, the Republican convention instructed its twenty-four delegates to support the renomination of the President. The Ohio convention, composed as a critic said of "aspirants for Congress, who expect Administration favor," echoed the earlier vote of Republicans in the legislature and strongly endorsed Lincoln, while rejecting a resolution that praised Chase's services in the Treasury Department. In New York, an even larger prize with sixty-six convention votes, Thurlow Weed momentarily forgot his disenchantment with Lincoln and procured a delegation unanimous for the President.

The only remaining obstacle to Lincoln's renomination was the convention of disaffected Republicans that a.s.sembled in Cleveland on May 31. Called to protest the "imbecile and vacillating policy of the present Administration in the conduct of the war," it initially seemed a real threat to Lincoln, who had agents on the ground to observe and report on the proceedings. But the gathering was poorly attended, with only 350 to 400 persons present, only 158 of whom were actual delegates. Most of these represented the German-American element, especially in Missouri, where hatred of Lincoln burned bright and loyalty to Fremont was fierce. To these was added a small contingent of ultra-Radical abolitionists from the Northeast, men who broke with William Lloyd Garrison, now a Lincoln supporter, and followed Wendell Phillips, who denounced the administration as "a civil and military failure" and attacked the President for supporting a reconstruction policy "more disastrous to liberty than even disunion." Most of the delegates were political unknowns. Prominent anti-Lincoln Eastern Republicans, who hoped that the convention would nominate Grant and thus provide a real challenger to Lincoln in the National Union Convention, stayed away after learning that the a.s.sembly was heavily packed in favor of Fremont. Horace Greeley, who had earlier touted the Cleveland meeting, quietly withdrew the support of the New York Tribune.

With little debate the delegates in Cleveland adopted a radical platform demanding a const.i.tutional amendment abolis.h.i.+ng slavery and guaranteeing "to all men absolute equality before the law." It also called for direct election of the President, who should serve only one term, preservation of the rights of free speech, a free press, and habeas corpus, and the confiscation of the lands of rebels. The convention, styling itself the Radical Democracy, then proceeded unanimously to nominate John C. Fremont for President.

One of Lincoln's agents on the spot reported that the convention was a "most magnificent fizzle," and administration organs like the New York Times agreed that it was "a congregation of malcontents ... representing no const.i.tuencies, and controlling no votes." It was, as John Hay remarked, "rather a small affair every way." Lincoln was amused by the proceedings. When a friend gave him a detailed report on the convention and the small number of delegates, he quietly picked up the Bible, which customarily lay on his desk, and read a pa.s.sage from I Samuel: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men."

During the week before the National Union Convention in Baltimore many of the delegates came first to Was.h.i.+ngton, some to confer with their congressmen, but most, as Hay remarked, "to pay their respects and engrave on the expectant mind of the Tyc.o.o.n, their images, in view of future contingencies." Most of the delegations were legitimate, but some were bogus and irregular. Lincoln cordially welcomed them all. Warned that the delegation from South Carolina was a swindle, consisting of a few sutlers, cotton dealers, and Negroes, the President grandly remarked, "They won't swindle me."

With Lincoln's renomination already a.s.sured, many of the delegates tried to learn the President's wishes about the vice presidential nominee. He took pains to be noncommittal, remarking that he did not want to take sides since all the men mentioned for that office-the inc.u.mbent, Hannibal Hamlin, Benjamin F. Butler, Andrew Johnson, and others-were all personal and professional friends of his. One of his private secretaries was convinced that he favored renominating Hamlin; the other, that he wanted Johnson. When anyone interrogated him on the subject, he would say something vague, like "Mr. Hamlin is a very good man." As a result of Lincoln's evasiveness, more than one self-important delegate went on to Baltimore confident that he, and he alone, was the repository of the President's secret preference for a running mate.

The Baltimore convention, which met on June 78, was a fairly tame affair. Count Gurowski, who witnessed the proceedings in the Front Street Theater, found the convention "a crowd of sharp-faced, keen, greedy politicians," and he saw "everywhere shoddy, contractors, schemers, pap-journalists, expectants." Nicolay, whom Lincoln permitted to attend, thought it "almost too pa.s.sive to be interesting-certainly... not at all exciting as it was at Chicago" in 1860. With the presidential nomination already decided, there was little suspense, and what little enthusiasm the delegates had was quieted by the news that 7,000 men in the Army of the Potomac had just been killed or wounded in Grant's ill-conceived charge on the Confederate lines at Cold Harbor. "This Convention hasn't the enthusiasm of a decent town meeting," one Illinois delegate grumbled.

The retiring chairman of the National Union Executive Committee, Senator E. D. Morgan of New York, opened the proceedings by urging, at Lincoln's suggestion, that the convention "declare for such an amendment of the Const.i.tution as will positively prohibit African slavery in the United States." The prolonged applause that greeted this recommendation indicated that from the very outset the Republicans were prepared to seize a central plank of the platform of the Radical Democracy and claim it for their own.

Speeches frequently emphasized that this was not just the third national convention of the Republican party but the first convention of the National Union party. In his opening address, Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the temporary president of the convention, sounded the key note: "As a Union party I will follow you to the ends of the... . earth But as an Abolition party-as a Republican party-as a Whig party-as a Democratic party-as an American party, I will not follow you one foot." The permanent president of the convention, former Governor William Dennison of Ohio, echoed this sentiment. The delegates, he said, were not "representatives of either of the old political parties"; the only test of members.h.i.+p in the Union party-"if party it can be called"-was "an unreserved, unconditional loyalty to the Government and the Union." Clearly the strategy was to avoid divisive factional issues among Republicans and to woo the support of the War Democrats. Naming Lincoln for a second term was the best way of doing that.

Lincoln's supporters completely dominated the convention. Their control was so a.s.sured that Justice David Davis, again one of Lincoln's princ.i.p.al managers, did not even bother to attend. "The opposition is so utterly beaten," he wrote the President, "that the fight is not even interesting." There were few issues, and all were decided as the President wished. Despite the growling of Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens against representation from "d.a.m.ned secessionist provinces," the convention admitted delegations from Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, states that were undergoing reconstruction under Lincoln's 10 percent plan. A contest arose over the representation of Missouri, because both the Claybanks (Conservatives) and the Charcoals (Radicals) sent delegations, but a fight was averted when Lincoln's men agreed to seat the Radicals and they, in turn, promised not to bolt but to abide by the action of the convention.

The platform endorsed Lincoln for "the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism and unswerving fidelity to the Const.i.tution" he had exhibited. Masterminded by Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, it was throughout a strongly proadministration doc.u.ment. It insisted on the integrity of the United States, demanded an unconditional surrender of the Confederates, and endorsed a const.i.tutional amendment abolis.h.i.+ng slavery. An effort on the part of "all the malignants and malcontents" to include a plank censuring Seward, Blair, and other Conservative members in the cabinet was watered down to an ambiguous resolution deeming it "essential to the general welfare that harmony should prevail in the National Councils" and that "those only who cordially endorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions" were worthy of public trust.

The only real excitement at the convention came from an unseemly squabble over who should have the privilege of placing the President's name in nomination. Once the roll call began, state after state unanimously cast its votes for Lincoln, but Missouri, acting on instructions from its state convention, gave 22 votes for Grant. After the chair announced that Lincoln had received 484 of the 506 votes, the chairman of the Missouri delegation moved to change the vote of his state and Lincoln was unanimously renominated.

When the convention next turned to selecting a running mate, the President's advisers gave no guidance. Initially it was generally a.s.sumed that Hamlin would be renominated, though there had been some talk about selecting a War Democrat, like Johnson, Butler, or Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson, a former United States senator from New York, whose loyal support of the Lincoln administration had led to his election as attorney general of that state in 1861. Delegates pressed Nicolay so hard to learn the President's preference that he wrote John Hay at the White House for instruction. Lincoln endorsed his letter: "Wish not to interfere about V.P. Can not interfere about platform. Convention must judge for itself." Hay pa.s.sed the message on to Baltimore.

Left to make their own selection, the delegates floundered in a sea of politics. Quite early Whitelaw Reid, correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, judged that "Hamlin had lost his hold. Men seemed to consider it their duty to support him; but there was no enthusiasm about it." The New England delegations failed to give him unanimous support and cast many votes for Johnson and d.i.c.kinson. New Yorkers realized that Seward would probably have to resign as Secretary of State if d.i.c.kinson was nominated, because one state could not claim two of the highest offices in the administration, and they threw their weight behind Johnson, who was already strong in the Southern and Western states. After much last-minute s.h.i.+fting of ballots, Johnson was nominated.

Lincoln never explained his stand on the vice presidential nomination. Years later Alexander K. McClure, a prominent Pennsylvania Republican, claimed that just before the Baltimore convention the President had urged him to work for the selection of Johnson, and he rounded up a number of other contemporaries who claimed they had received the same instructions. These charges outraged both Nicolay, who believed the President incapable of deceit, and Charles E. Hamlin, who thought his grandfather's defeat resulted from machinations of Charles Sumner; and they collected a large number of statements to prove that the President had really preferred Hamlin. The evidence was evenly balanced and inconclusive.

All that could be stated positively was that if Lincoln had really wanted Hamlin renominated the convention would have followed his wish. His failure to name Hamlin may have reflected his awareness that Hamlin was very radical on questions relating to slavery and the South. Lincoln jokingly remarked that he did not fear the Confederates would a.s.sa.s.sinate him, because they knew Hamlin would take his place. Lincoln also thought that there was something to be said for choosing a War Democrat to symbolize the broad coalition on which the National Union party hoped to rest and for picking a Southerner to stress that all the states still remained in the Union. He admired Johnson for his courage in sticking to the Union after his state seceded, and he was gratified that, as military governor of Tennessee, Johnson heartily endorsed his reconstruction program. But at bottom he simply did not think much about the office of the Vice President. Like most American presidents, he saw little of his second-in-command and never thought of giving the Vice President duties that would make him a kind of coexecutive. Consequently it did not make a great deal of difference whom the convention selected. And, finally, Lincoln recognized that the delegates to the Baltimore convention, held under strict control by his managers, needed a chance to blow off steam, to a.s.sert their independence, and to prove that they were not presidential puppets by choosing their own vice presidential nominee.