ulting Confederates ; a Confederate camp was established near
St. Louis, under the auspices of Governor Jackson, and men
openly enlisted and drilled there for the work in prospect ;
the South was closed to Northern travel and commerce, and
everything portended a formidable, bloody, devastating war.
Yet President Lincoln persisted in what seems to me his
second grave mistake, ā that of underestimating the spirit
and power of the PiebeUion. He had called for but 75,000
men when apprised that Fort Sumter had fallen ; he called ,
for no more when assured that Virginia and North Carolina j
had been swept into the vortex of Secession by that open
* April 19, 1861.
26
402 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
defiance of the National authority and assault on the National
integrity ; that Arkansas and Tennessee were on the point
of following their bad example ; and that even Maryland and
Missouri were, at least for the moment, in the hands of those
who fully shared the animus and sympathized with the aims
of the Disunionists. It was now plain that the Slave Power
was the Nation's assailant, and that its motto was, " War to
the knife ! " I tliink the President should have changed his
tactics in view of the added gravity of the public danger. I
think he should have invited the people to assemble on a des-
ignated early day in their several wards and townships, then
and there to solemnly swear to uphold the Government and
Union, and to enroll themselves as volunteers for tlie war,
subject to be called out at his discretion. Each man's age, as
well as name, should have been recorded ; and then he should
have called them out in classes as they should be wanted, ā
say, first, those of 20 to 25 years old ; secondly, those between
25 and 30 ; and so on. I judge that not less than One Mil-
lion able-bodied men would have thus enrolled themselves ;
that the first two calls would have provided a force of not
less than two hundred thousand men ; and that subsequent
calls, though less productive, would have supplied all the men
from time to time required, without cost and without material
delay.
The Confederate Congress had met at Montgomery, Ala-
bama, held a brief session, and adjourned to reconvene at
Eichmond on the 4th of July. I hold tliat it should not
have been allowed so to meet, but that a Union army. One
Hundred Thousand strong, should have occupied that city
early in June, ā certainly before the close of that month.
Richmond was not yet fortified ; it was accessible by land
and by water ; we firmly held Fortress Monroe ; the desig-
nated capital of the Confederacy should never have received
its Congress, but should have witnessed such a celebration of
the anniversary of American Independence as had never yet
thrilled its heart. The war-cry, " Forward to Richmond ! "
did not originate with me ; but it is just what sliould have
OUR CIVIL WAR,ā ACTUAL AND POSSIBLE 403
been uttered, and the words should have been translated into
deeds.
Instead of energy, vigor, promptness, daring, decision, we
had in our councils weakness, irresolution, hesitation, delay ;
and, when at last our hastily collected forces, after being de-
moralized by weeks of idleness and dissipation, were sent
forward, they advanced on separate lines, under different com-
manders ; thus enabling the enemy to concentrate all his
forces in Virginia against a single corps of ours, defeating and
stampediag it at Bull Eun, while other Union volunteers,
aggregating nearly twice its strength, lay idle and useless near
Harper's Ferry, in and about AVashington, and at Fortress
Monroe. Thus what should have been a short, sharp struggle
was expanded into a long, desultory one ; while those whose
blundering incapacity or lack of purpose was responsible for
those ills united in throwing the blame on the faithful few
who had counselled justly, but whose urgent remonstrances
they had never heeded. " Forward to Eichmond ! " was exe-
crated as the impulse to disaster, even by some who had lus-
tily echoed it ; and weary months of halting, timid, nerveless,
yet costly warfare, naturally followed. Men talk reproach-
fully of the heavy losses incurred by Grant in taking Eich-
mond, forgetting that his predecessors had lost yet more in
not taking it. In war, energy ā prompt and vigorous action
ā is the true economizer of suffering, of devastation, and of
life. Had Napoleon or Jackson been in Scott's place in 1861,
the Eebellion would have been stamped out ere the close of
that year ; but Slavery would have remained to scourge us
still. Thus disaster is overruled to subserve the ends of
beneficence ; thus the evil of the moment contains the germ
of good that is enduring ; and thus is freshly exemplified the
great truth proclaimed by Pope : ā
" In spite of pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, ā Whatever is, is right."
LI.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
THEEE are those who say that Mr. Lincoln was fortu-
nate in his death as in his life : I judge otherwise. I
hold him most inapt for the leadership of a people involved
in desperate, agonizing war; while I deem few men better
fitted to guide a nation's destinies in time of peace. Espe-
cially do I deem him eminently fitted to soothe, to heal, and
to reunite in bonds of true, fraternal affection a people just
lapsing into peace after years of distracting, desolating inter-
nal strife. His true career was just opening when an assas-
sin's bullet quenched his light of life.
Mr. Lincoln entered Washington the victim of a grave de-
lusion. A genial, quiet, essentially peaceful man, trained in
the ways of the bar and the stump, he fully believed that
there would be no civil war, ā no serious effort to consum-
mate Disunion. His faith in Eeason as a moral force was so
implicit that he did not cherish a doubt that his Inaugural
Address, wliereon he had bestowed much thought and labor,
would, when read throughout the South, dissolve the Confed-
eracy as frost is dissipated by a vernal sun. I sat just behind
him as he read it, on a bright, warm, still March day, expect-
ing to hear its delivery arrested by the crack of a rifle aimed
at his lieart ; l)ut it pleased God to postpone the deed, though
there was forty times the reason for shooting him in !^860
tliat there was in '65, and at least forty times as many intent
on killing or having him killed. No shot was then fired, how-
ever ; for his hour had not yet come.
Almost every one has personal anecdotes of " Old Abe."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 405
I knew him more than sixteen years, met him often, talked
with him familiarly ; yet, while multitudes fancy that he
was always overflowing with jocular narrations or reminis-
cences, I cannot remember that I ever heard him tell an an-
ecdote or story. One, however, that he did tell while in this
city, on his way to assume the Presidency, is so characteristic
of the man and his way of regarding portents of trouble,
that I here record it.
Almost every one was asking him, with evident apprehen-
sion if not perturbation : " AMiat is to be the issue of this
Southern effervescence ? Are we really to have civil war ? "
and he once responded in substance as follows : ā
" IMany years ago, when T was a young la\v}' er, and Illinois
was little settled, except on her southern border, I, with other
la'vi^ers, used to ride the circuit ; journeying ^vith the judge
from county-seat to county-seat in quest of business. Once,
after a long speU of pouring rain, which had flooded the
whole country, transforming small creeks into rivers, we were
often stopped by these swollen streams, which we with diffi-
culty crossed. Still ahead of us was Fox Eiver, larger than
all the rest ; and we could not help saying to each other, ' If
these streams give us so much trouble, how shall we get over
Fox Eiver ? ' Darkness fell before we had reached that
stream ; and we all stopped at a log tavern, had our horses
put out, and resolved to pass the night. Here we were right
glad to fall in with the jVIethodist Presiding Elder of the cir-
cuit, who rode it in all weather, knew all its ways, and could
teU us aU about Fox Ptiver. So we aU gathered around him,
and asked him if he knew about the crossing of Fox Eiver.
' yes,' he replied, ' I know aU about Fox Eiver. I have
crossed it often, and understand it well ; but I have one fixed
rule with regard to Fox Eiver : I never cross it till I reach
it.' "
I infer that Mr. Lincoln did not fully realize that we were
to have a great civil war till the Bull Eun disaster. I cannot
otherwise explain what seemed to many of us his amazing
tameness when required by the Mayor and by the Young
406 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
Christians of Baltimore to promise not to have any more vol-
unteers marched across the State of Maryland on their way
to the defence of Washington. Had he then realized that
bloody strife had become a dire necessity, I think he would
have responded with more spirit.
When we were at length unmistakably launched on the
stormy ocean of civil war, Mr. Lincoln's tenacity of purpose
paralleled his former immobility. I believe he would have
been nearly the last, if not the very last, man in America to
recognize the Southern Confederacy, had its arms been trium-
phant. He would have much preferred death.
This firmness impelled him to wdiat seemed to me a grave
error. Because he would never consent to give up the Union,
lie dreaded to recognize in any manner the existence of the
Confederacy. Yet such recognition, after the capture of sev-
eral thousands of our soldiers, became inevitable. Had For-
tune uniformly smiled on our arms, we might have treated
the .Eebellion as a seditious riot ; but our serious loss in pris-
oners at Bull Eun rendered this thenceforth impossible. We
were virtually compelled to recognize the Confedemtes as
belligerents, by negotiating an exchange of prisoners. Thence-
forth (it seems to me) we were precluded from treating them
as felons. And I could see no objection, not merely to receiv-
ing with courtesy any overtures for peace they might see fit
to make, but even to maldng overtures to them, as Great
Britain so publicly did to our Revolutionary fathere in the
Summer of '76.
War has become so fearfully expensive, through the pro-
gress of invention and machinery, that to protract it is to
involve all parties in bankruptcy and ruin. Belligerents are,
therefore, prone to protest their anxiety for Peace, ā in most
cases, sincerely. Napoleon, though often at war, was always
proclaiming his anxiety for peace. It seemed to me, through-
out our great struggle, that a more vigorous prosecution, alike
of War and of Peace, was desirable. Larger armies, in the
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 407
average more energetically led, more ably handled, seemed to
be the National need, down to a late stage of the contest.
And I deemed it a mistake to put aside any overture that
looked to the achievement of peace. Instead of repelling
such overtures, however unpromising, I would have openly
welcomed any and all, and so treated each as to prove that
the continuance of war was not the fault of our side. And
so, when Henry May, Colonel Jacquess, and others, solicited
permission to go to Eichmond in quest of Peace, I would
have openly granted them every facility, asking them only to
state distinctly that I had not sent nor accredited them.
And I judge that ]\Ir. Lincoln slowly came to a conclusion
not dissimilar to mine, since ]Mr. F. P. Blair's two visits to
Eichmond were made wdth his full knowledge ; while his
own visit to Fortress Monroe, there to meet Confederate Com-
missioners and discuss with them terms of pacification, was a
formal notice to all concerned of his anxiety to stay the
effusion of blood. I beheve that this conference did much to
precipitate the downfall of the tottering Confederacy. I
doubt whether any one of Sherman's nearly simultaneous
successes did more. And, while Mr. Lincoln would have
been a tenacious champion of the authority and dignity of
the Union and the rights and security of all its loyal people,
I am sure the vanquished Eebels would have found him a
generous conqueror.
Mr. Lincobi died for his country as truly as any soldier
who fell fighting in the ranks of her armies. He was not
merely killed for her sake, ā because of the high responsi-
bilities she had a second time devolved on him, and the
fidelity wherewith he fulfilled them, ā he was worn out in
her service, and would not, I judge, have lived out his official
term, had no one sought his immolation. When I last saw
him, a few weeks before his death, I was struck by his hag-
gard, care-fraught face, so different from the sunny, gladsome
countenance he first brought from Illinois. I felt that his life'j
hung by so slender a thread that any new access of trouble
or excess of effort might suddenly close his career. I had
408 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
ceased to apprehend his assassination, ā had ceased even to
think of it ; yet " the sunset of life " was plainly looking out
of his kindly eyes and gleaming from his weather-beaten
visage.
I believe I neither enjoy nor deserve the reputation of fa-
voring exorbitant allowances or lavish expenditures ; yet I
feel that my country has been meanly parsimonious in its
dealings with Mr. Lincoln's family. The head of that family
was fairly elected and inaugurated President for a second
term ; and he had scarcely entered upon that teitn when he
was murdered because he was President. I hold that this
fact entitled his family to the four years' salary which the
people had voted to pay him ; that the manner of his death
took his case entirely out of the category of mere decease
while in office ; and that they should have been paid the
$100,000 which, but for Booth's bullet, would have been
theirs, instead of the one year's salary that was allowed them.
I am quite aware that Mrs. Lincoln was and is unpopular, ā ā¢
I need not inquire with what reason, since I am not pleading
for generosity, but for naked justice. Buchanan, trembling at
the rustle of a leaf, served out his term, and was paid his full
salary ; dying, seven years later, of natural decay. To withhold
Mr. Lincoln's pay because he invoked the hatred of assassins
by his fearless fidelity, and was therefore bereft of life when
in the zenith of his career, is to discourage fidelity and foster
pusillanimity. May not the wrong be redressed even yet ?
]\Ir. Lincoln was emphatically a man of the people. Mr.
Clay was called " The Great Commoner " by those who ad-
mired and loved him ; but Clay was imperious, even haughty,
in his moods, with aristocratic tastes and faults, utterly
foreign to Lincoln's essentially plebeian nature. There never
yet was man so lowly as to feel humbled in the presence of
Abraham Lincoln ; there was no honest man who feared or
dreaded to meet liim ; there was no virtuous society so rude
that, had he casually dropped into it, he would have checked
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 409
innocent hilarity or been felt as a damper on enjoyment.
Had he entered as a stranger a logger's camp in the great
woods, a pioneer's bark-covered cabin in some new settle-
ment, he would have soon been recognized and valued as one
whose acquaintance was to be prized and cultivated.
Mr. Lincoln was essentially a growing man. Enjoying no
advantages in youth, he had obsen'ed and reflected much
since he attained to manhood, and he was steadily increasing
his stock of knowledge to the day of his death. He was a
wiser, abler man when he entered upon his second than when
he commenced his first Presidential term. His mental pro-
cesses were slow, but sure ; if he did not acquire swiftly, he
retained all that he had once learned. Greater men our
coimtry has produced; but not another whom, humanly
speaking, she could so ill spare, when she lost him, as the
victim of Wilkes Booth's murderous aim.
Though I very heartily supported it when made, I did not
favor his re-nomination as President ; for I wanted the War
driven onward with vehemence, and this was not in his
nature. Always dreading that the National credit would
fail, or the National resolution falter, I feared that his easy
ways would allow the Eebellion to obtain European recogni-
tion and achieve ultimate success. But that " Divinity that
shapes our ends " was quietly working out for us a larger and
fuller deliverance than I had dared to hope for, leaving to
such short-sighted mortals as I no part but to wonder and
adore. We have had chieftains who would have crushed out the
Rebellion in six months, and restored " the Union as it was " ;
but God gave us the one leader whose control secured not
only the downfall of the Eebellion, but the eternal overthrow
of Human Slavery under the flag of the Great Eepublic.
T'
LII.
JEFFERSON DAVIS.
^HE President of the Southern Confederacy was chosen
by a capable, resolute aristocracy, with express refer-
ence to the arduous task directly before him. The choice
was deliberate, and apparently wise. Mr. Davis was jn the
mature prime of life ; his natural abilities were good ; his
training varied and thorough. He had been educated at
West Point, which, with all its faults, I judge the best school
yet established in our country ; he had served in our little
army in peace, and as a Colonel of volunteers in the Mexican
War ; returning to civil life, he had been conspicuous in the
politics of his State and the Nation ; had been elected to the
Senate, and there met in courteous but earnest encounter
Henry Clay and his compeers ; had been four years Secretary
of War under President Pierce ; and had, immediately on his
retiring from that post, been returned to the Senate, whereof
his admirers styled him " the Cicero," and whereof he con-
tinued a member until ā not without manifest reluctance ā
he resigned and returned to Mississippi to cast his future
fortunes into the seething caldron of Secession and Disunion.
As compared with the homely country lawyer, Abraham
Lincoln, ā reared in poverty and obscurity, with none other
than a common-school education, and precious little of that ;
whose familiarity with public affairs was confined to three
^ sessions of the Illinois Legislature and a single term in the
House of Eepresentatives, ā it would seem that the advan-
tage of chieftains was largely on the side of the Confederacy.
The contrast between them was striking, but imperfect;
JEFFERSON DAVIS. 411
for each was thoroughly in earnest, thoroughly persuaded of
the justice of the cause whereof he stood forth the foremost
champion, and signally gifted with that quality which, in the
successful, is termed tenacity, in the luckless, obstinacy. Mr.
Lincoln was remarkably devoid of that magnetic quality
which thrills the masses with enthusiasm, rendering them
heedless of sacrifice and insensible to danger ; Mr. Davis was
nowise distinguished by its possession. As the preacher of a
crusade, either of them had many superiors. But Mr. Davis
carefully improved ā as Mr. Lincoln did not ā every oppor-
tunity to proclaim his own undoubtmg faith in the justice of
his cavise, and labored to diffuse that conviction as widely as
possible. His successive messages and other manifestoes were
well calculated to dispel the doubts and inflame the zeal of
those who regarded him as their chief; while, apart from his
first Inaugural, and his brief speech at the Gettysburg cele-
bration,* Mr. Lincoln made little use of his many oppor-
tunities to demonstrate the justice and necessity of the War
for the Union.
Mr. Davis, after the fortunes of his Confederacy waned,
was loudly accused of favoritism in the allotment of Military
trusts. He is said to have distrusted and undervalued Joseph
Johnston, which, if so, was a grave error ; for Johnston proved
himself an able and trustworthy commander, if not a great
military genius, ā never a blunderer, and never intoxicated
by success nor paralyzed by disaster. His displacement in
1864 by Hood, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Georgia,
was proved a mistake ; but it was more defensible than the
appointment of Halleck as General-in-Chief of our armies,
directly after his failure on the Tennessee. Bragg is named as
first of Davis's pets ; but Bragg seems to me to have proved
himself a good soldier, and to have shown decided capacity at
the Battle of Stone Eiver, though he was ultimately obliged
to leave the field (and little else) to Rosecrans. Pemberton
was accounted another of Davis's overrated favorites ; but
Pemberton, being of Northern birth, was never fully trusted,
* November 19, 1863.
412 RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.
nor fairly judged, by his compatriots. On a full survey of the
ground, I judge that Davis evinced respectable, not brilliant,
capacities, in his stormy and trying Presidential career ; and
that his qualifications for the post were equal to, while his
faults were no greater than, Mr. Lincoln's.
This, however, was not the judgment of his compatriots,
who extravagantly exaggerated his merits while their cause
seemed to prosper, and as unjustly magnified his faults and
short-comings from the moment wherein their star first visibly
waned. They were ready to make him Emperor in 1862;
they regarded him as their evil genius in 1865. Having
rushed into war in undoubting confidence that their success
was inevitable, they were astounded at their defeat, and im-
pelled to believe that their resources had been dissipated and
their armies overwhelmed through mismanagement. They
were like the idolater, who adores his god after a victory, but
flogs him when smarting imder defeat.
A baleful mischance saved Mr. Davis from the fate of a
scapegoat. After even he had given up the Confederacy as
lost, and realized that he was no longer a President, but a
fugitive and outlaw, he was surprised and assailed, while
making his way through Georgia to the Florida coast with
intent to escape from the country, by two regiments of Union
cavalry, and captured. I am confident that this would not
have occurred had Mr. Lincoln s\irvived, ā certainly not, if
our shrewd and kind-hearted President could have prevented
it. But his murder had temporarily maddened the millions
who loved and trusted him ; and his successor, sharing and
inflaming the popular frenzy, had put forth a Proclamation
charging Davis, among others, with conspiracy to procure
that murder, and oftering large rewards for their arrest as
traitors and assassins. Captured in full view of that Procla-
mation, he might have been forthwith tried by a drum-head
Court-Martial, " organized to convict," found guilty, sentenced,
and put to death.
This, however, was not done ; but he was escorted to Sa-
vannah, thence shipped to Fortress Monroe, and there closely
JEFFERSON DAVIS. 413
imprisoned, Avith aggravations of harsh and (it seems) need-
less indionity. An indictment for treason was found against
him ; but he remained a military prisoner in close jail for
nearly two years, before even a pretence was made of arraign-
ing him for trial.
Meantime, public sentiment had become more rational and
discriminating. Davis was still intensely and widely de-
tested as the visible embodiment, the responsible head, of the
Eebellion ; but no one now seriously urged that he be tried
by Court-Martial and shot off-hand ; nor was it certain that
a respectable body of officers could be found to subserve such
an end. To send him .before a ci^dl tribunal, and allow him
a fair trial, was morally certain to result in a defeat of the
prosecution, through disagreement of the jury, or otherwise ;
for no opponent of the Eepublican party, whether North or
South, would agree to find him guilty. And there was grave
doubt whether he coidd be legally convicted, now that the
charge of inciting Wilkes Booth's crime had been tacitly
abandoned. Mr. Webster * had only given clearer expression
to the general American doctrine, that, after a revolt has levied
a regular army, and fought therewith a pitched battle, its
champions, even though utterly defeated, cannot be tried and
convicted as traitors. This may be an extreme statement ;
but surely a rebellion which has for years maintained great
armies, levied taxes and conscriptions, negotiated loans, fought
scores of sanguinary battles with alternate successes and
reverses, and exchanged tens of thousands of prisoners of war,
can hardly fail to have achieved thereby the position and the
rights of a lawful belligerent. Just suppose the case (nowise
improbable) of two Commissioners for the exchange of pris-
oners, ā hke Mulford and Ould, for example, ā who had for