John Hay wrote an unsigned newspaper article that anonymously but intentionally expressed Lincoln’s sentiments on this subject. If McClellan had a million men, said Hay, “he would find a place where just another regiment was absolutely essential, and say he could not fight until he got it.” The general had “an inherent vice of mind…which makes him never ready to act…. He works and toils unceasingly to bring an army to a pitch of perfection, which can never be reached.” Hay/Lincoln hit the nail on the head. After returning from his visit to McClellan and the army, the president told a colleague that the general was “a ruined man if he did not move forward, move rapidly and effectually.”12
The president made one more effort with McClellan. The general’s demand for a full logistical pipeline before he could advance, said Lincoln, “ignores the question of time,” which benefited the enemy more than the Army of the Potomac. If McClellan crossed the river quickly and got between the enemy and Richmond, said Lincoln, he could force Lee into the open for a decisive battle. “We should not so operate as to merely drive him away…. If we can not beat the enemy where he now is [near Martinsburg, west of Harpers Ferry], we never can, he again being within the entrenchments of Richmond.” McClellan should “at least, try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say ‘try’: if we never try, we shall never succeed.”13
As Lincoln was writing this letter, news came of a Confederate cavalry raid into Pennsylvania. Jeb Stuart’s horsemen rode entirely around the immobile Union army, evaded the Northern cavalry that chased them, and brought away twelve hundred horses and dozens of prisoners. McClellan blamed this embarrassing incident on his own lack of cavalry and good horses. An irritated Lincoln had Halleck telegraph to McClellan that the president “directs me to suggest that, if the enemy had more occupation south of the river, his cavalry would not be so likely to make raids north of it.” Quartermaster General Meigs was angered by McClellan’s complaint about a lack of horses and pointed out that he had shipped thirteen thousand of them to the Army of the Potomac in the past seven weeks.14
When McClellan transmitted to the War Department a report about lame and sore-tongued horses “absolutely broken down from fatigue and want of flesh,” Lincoln lost his temper. He fired back a telegram to McClellan: “Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue[s] anything.” McClellan vented his anger about this dispatch in a letter to his wife: “The good of the country requires me to submit to all of this from men whom I know to be greatly my inferior socially, intellectually & morally! There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the ‘Gorilla.’”15
In a direct reply to Lincoln, however, McClellan restrained his temper and detailed the endless picketing and scouting duties carried out by his cavalry. He concluded: “If any instance can be found where overworked Cavalry has performed more labor than mine since the battle of Antietam I am not conscious of it.” In truth, however, McClellan did not make good use of his cavalry, and Lincoln knew it. The president telegraphed McClellan a quasi apology for his sarcastic question, but added that “Stuart’s cavalry outmarched ours, having certainly done more marked service on the Peninsula, and everywhere since.”16
During this exchange of telegrams the Army of the Potomac finally began crossing the river into Virginia. Lincoln said he was “rejoiced to learn” of this movement.17 The rejoicing did not last long, however, as it took the army six days to get across a river that Lee’s forces had crossed in one night after Antietam. And the lumbering Army of the Potomac required another six days to move south forty miles to the vicinity of Warrenton. During those twelve days Lieut. Gen. James Longstreet’s corps marched almost twice as far to take up a blocking position to the south, while Jackson’s corps remained in place to threaten the Union flank. Lincoln’s patience finally snapped. He prepared an order replacing McClellan with Burnside. Francis Preston Blair tried to persuade Lincoln not to issue the order. But the president had made up his mind. He had “tried long enough to bore with an auger too dull to take hold,” the commander in chief told Blair. “I said I would remove him if he let Lee’s army get away from him, and I must do so. He has got the ‘slows,’ Mr. Blair.”18
A War Department courier with the rank of brigadier general carried this order by special train in a snowstorm to Warrenton, where he went first to Burnside’s headquarters. For the third time that general tried to refuse, but the courier told him that if he did so the command would go to Joseph Hooker (whom Burnside disliked and distrusted). So “Burn” reluctantly accepted and at midnight went with the courier to McClellan’s tent to give him the order.19
Nothing in McClellan’s tenure of command became him like the leaving of it. Despite emotional pleas from some officers to defy Lincoln’s order and “change front on Washington,” McClellan discountenanced such talk and turned the army over to his successor. “Stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me, and all will be well,” he told his soldiers as thousands yelled their continuing affection for him and others wept unashamedly. McClellan boarded a train for New Jersey, where he would sit out the rest of the war except for a run against Lincoln in the election of 1864. In that effort, as a Union naval officer wryly put it, he met “with no better success as a politician than as a general.”20
Lincoln had waited until after the fall elections to remove McClellan. The president knew that a backlash against the Emancipation Proclamation and his order authorizing military commissions to try civilians would hurt the Republicans. So would failure to make more headway in the war. He did not want to give the Democrats an opportunity to make a martyr of McClellan. As it was, the Republicans lost the governorships of New York and New Jersey, the legislatures of Illinois, Indiana, and New Jersey, and thirty-four seats in the House of Representatives. But it could have been worse. Lincoln’s party retained all the other Northern state governments, a comfortable majority in the House, and an increased majority in the Senate.
This continuing political support would sustain the commander in chief in his strategy of “hard desperate fighting.”21 After the elections, Lincoln told a delegation from the Western Sanitary Commission (a soldiers’ aid society) that “the people…haven’t buckled down to the determination to fight this war through; for they have got the idea into their heads that we are going to get out of this fix by…strategy!” What the president meant by “strategy” in this context was maneuver and siege—the Buell and McClellan strategy. “The army has got the same notion. They have no idea that the war is to be carried on and put through by hard, tough fighting that will hurt somebody.”22 In his conception of military strategy Lincoln was Clausewitzian. The Prussian theorist of war had written that “the destruction of the enemy’s military force is the leading principle of war,” and it “is principally effected only by means of the engagement”—that is, by “hard, tough fighting.”23 With McClellan and Buell gone, that is what Lincoln now expected from his new commanders.
BURNSIDE DID HIS best to give the president what he wanted but seemed to get off on the wrong foot. He proposed to change the line of operations from a southward move against Longstreet’s corps using the rickety single-track Orange and Alexandria Railroad as his supply line. Instead, Burnside wanted to move east to Fredericksburg, where he could open a more secure supply line via the lower Potomac River and then the railroad through Fredericksburg toward Richmond.24 Halleck did not like this plan. On November 12 he traveled to Warrenton for consultations with Burnside. Halleck took with him Montgomery Meigs and Gen. Herman Haupt, who was in charge of railroad logistics. Haupt agreed with Burnside about the inadequacy and vulnerability of the Orange and Alexandria. Halleck finally agreed to take a modified version of Burnside’s plan to Lincoln, who had already expressed skepticism because it seemed to make Richmond rather than the enemy army the main strategic objective.
Halleck and Burnside somehow misunderstood each other on the precise nature of the modified plan. H
alleck assumed that most of the Army of the Potomac would cross the Rappahannock River at fords above Fredericksburg and seize the heights there from the rear. This was the operational plan that Halleck presented to Lincoln. On November 14 he telegraphed Burnside: “The President has just assented to your plan. He thinks it will succeed if you move very rapidly; otherwise not.”25
Burnside did move rapidly. His lead units marched forty miles in two days. But they marched to Falmouth on the north bank of the Rappahannock, across from Fredericksburg, where the river was too deep to ford. Burnside expected pontoons for bridging the river to meet him there; Halleck had understood that Burnside would already be across the river and that the pontoons would be needed only later to open the new supply line. By the time the pontoons finally arrived on the north bank, Longstreet’s corps had occupied the heights on the south bank.26
There was plenty of blame to go around for this fiasco. But Lincoln was more interested in salvaging the operation than in assigning blame. So he boarded a boat for the trip down the Potomac to consult with Burnside. In Lincoln’s summary of this discussion, he said that Burnside thought he could cross the river and drive the enemy south. Lincoln told him, however, that “I wish the enemy to be prevented from falling back, accumulating strength as he goes, into his intrenchments at Richmond.” Instead, the president outlined a complicated operational plan whereby two auxiliary forces (part of them to be drawn from Burnside’s main army) would move with gunboat support to the head of navigation on the Rappahannock and Pamunkey rivers south of Fredericksburg to catch Lee in a pincers as he retreated from Burnside’s attack at Fredericksburg. Halleck and Burnside convinced Lincoln that it would take too long to organize the auxiliary forces and get them in place, and that in any event something was bound to go wrong with such an intricate plan.27 For better or for worse Burnside was left to carry out whatever plan he could devise.
It turned out to be for the worse. Believing that Lincoln wanted him to cross the river and attack, Burnside reconnoitered possible crossing points both downriver and upriver from Fredericksburg, but decided to cross at the town itself. Except for the harassing fire of one brigade, the Confederates did not contest the crossing but awaited Burnside’s December 13 assault on the line of hills behind Fredericksburg. Gen. George G. Meade’s Union division achieved a temporary breakthrough against Jackson’s corps on the Confederate right. But Gen. William B. Franklin, commanding the Union left, failed to reinforce this potential success and also refused to renew the attack despite Burnside’s repeated orders to do so. Assaults by the Union right on Marye’s Heights directly behind the town were repulsed with heavy Union casualties. When darkness descended on this short December day, the Army of the Potomac had suffered a disastrous and demoralizing defeat.
Burnside manfully accepted responsibility, unlike McClellan, who had always found someone else to blame. In this case, however, many blamed Lincoln for having forced Burnside to fight a battle he could not win. When the president learned of the outcome, he said: “If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.” Nevertheless, as a gesture to buck up morale and show his support for both Burnside and his soldiers, Lincoln issued a congratulatory proclamation to the army (which he had not done after Antietam): “Although you were not successful, the attempt was not an error.” The “courage with which you, in an open field, maintained the contest against an entrenched foe…show[s] that you possess all the qualities of a great army, which will yet give victory to the cause of the country.”28
The Battle of Fredericksburg brought to a head a political crisis in the Republican Party that had been brewing for some time. The military defeat was a catalyst for all the rumors and discontent among Republicans, especially in the Senate. William H. Seward was the principal target of this discontent. Many Republicans, particularly radicals, considered him the “evil genius” of the cabinet—the “unseen hand” whose conservative sway over Lincoln had delayed emancipation, kept McClellan in command too long, and prevented vigorous prosecution of the war. In two long caucus meetings on December 16 and 17, an overwhelming majority of Republican senators voted to press for a reorganization of the cabinet to secure “unity of purpose and action”—mainly by getting rid of Seward. Much of the impetus for this effort had come from Chase, Seward’s cabinet rival, who resented the secretary of state’s supposed influence with Lincoln.
This affair was the greatest challenge thus far to Lincoln’s leadership. If the president “caved in” (his words) to the senators’ demand, he would lose control of his administration. His power as leader of his party, head of government, and commander in chief would be gravely weakened. When word of the senatorial caucus leaked out, rumors swept Washington that the whole cabinet—perhaps even Lincoln himself—would resign. The president was “awfully shaken” by the crisis. Branding the charge of Seward’s “malign influence” an “absurd lie,” Lincoln unburdened himself to Senator Orville Browning (who had voted against the caucus resolution). “What do these men want?” Lincoln asked Browning, and answered his own question. “They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them…. Since I heard last night of the proceedings of the caucus I have been more distressed than by any event of my life…. We are now on the brink of destruction. It appears to me that the Almighty is against us, and I can hardly see a ray of hope.”29
Lincoln pulled himself together and met with a delegation of nine senators on the evening of December 18. He did not tell them that Seward had submitted his resignation in order to take the pressure off the president (who had not accepted it). Lincoln listened quietly to the senators’ speeches “attributing to Mr. Seward a lukewarmness in the conduct of the war, and seeming to consider him the real cause of our failures.” Without committing himself the president invited them back for further discussion the next day. When they arrived, the senators were surprised to find the entire cabinet present except Seward. In a brief speech Lincoln said that whenever possible he consulted the cabinet about important decisions but that he alone made the decisions, especially on matters concerning slavery and on questions of military strategy and command; that members of the cabinet sometimes disagreed but they all supported a policy when it was decided upon; and that Seward was a valuable member of the administration. Then Lincoln turned to the cabinet for confirmation. All eyes looked to Chase, who was neatly put on the spot. He had told the senators that Seward was a marplot; if he now agreed with Lincoln he would lose face with them; if he did not he would lose the confidence of the president. Chase mumbled a brief endorsement of Lincoln’s statement but tried to save face by expressing regret that major decisions were not more fully discussed by the cabinet. Deflated by the whole experience and no doubt impressed by Lincoln’s political skills, the senators quietly left.
Much embarrassed, Chase came to the White House the next morning to offer his resignation. “Let me have it,” said Lincoln as he extended his long arm to receive the letter of resignation from the reluctant treasury secretary. “This cuts the Gordian knot.” Mixing his metaphors, Lincoln added: “Now I can ride; I have a pumpkin in each end of my bag.” The senators could not have Seward’s head without losing Chase as well. The president refused both resignations; the cabinet remained unchanged; the political fallout from the Battle of Fredericksburg was contained.30
But not the military fallout. On the same day that Lincoln solved his cabinet crisis by declining both resignations, two generals in the Army of the Potomac wrote him a long letter criticizing Burnside and urging a change of strategy to take the army again to the Peninsula. They were Maj. Gens. William B. Franklin and William F. Smith, commanders of the army’s left wing and Sixth Corps. Both were McClellan protégés who had never really accepted his removal. Lincoln saw their recommendation as a thinly veiled move to get McClellan restored to command. He rejected the suggestion of a return to the Peninsula.31
This exchange did not end the matter. On December 30 Brig. Gens. John Newton and John Cochrane, co
mmanders of a division and a brigade in Smith’s corps, appeared at the White House and told Lincoln that the army was demoralized, that Burnside was preparing to cross the Rappahannock again, and that disaster would result if he did so. Lincoln saw through this affair as another ploy by the pro-McClellan cabal. But he wired Burnside: “I have good reason for saying you must not make a general movement of the army without letting me know.” Burnside obligingly canceled his orders for a movement and telegraphed that he would come to Washington to see the president.32
Burnside arrived at the White House early on the morning of January 1. It would be an eventful day for the commander in chief. He put the finishing touches on the Emancipation Proclamation. At eleven he would take his stand to shake hands for three hours in the traditional New Year’s Day reception, after which he gathered with a small group to sign the proclamation. Bad news was coming from Union armies in Mississippi and Tennessee. But the meeting with Burnside, who was soon joined by Stanton and Halleck, was undoubtedly the worst part of Lincoln’s day. The general acknowledged that his senior commanders lacked confidence in him and offered to resign. Before Stanton and Halleck arrived, Burnside had also suggested that they ought to resign as well because they lacked the confidence of the army and the country. When those two men arrived, all four discussed Burnside’s proposed move across the Rappahannock but came to no conclusion.33