America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (24 page)

Lincoln at Gettysburg before giving the Gettysburg Address

The Election of 1864

Failing to secure the capture of any major northern cities, or the recognition of Great Britain or France, or the complete destruction of any northern armies, the Confederacy's last chance to survive the Civil War was the election of 1864. Democrats had been pushing an anti-war stance or at least a stance calling for a negotiated peace for years, so the South hoped that if a Democrat defeated President Lincoln, or if anti-war Democrats could retake the Congress, the North might negotiate peace with the South. In the election of 1862, anti-war Democrats made some gains in Congress and won the governorship of the State of New York. Confederates were therefore hopeful that trend would continue to the election of 1864.

Lincoln’s reelection was still well in doubt during the summer of 1864. The Democrats nominated George McClellan, the former leader of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan had not been as aggressive as Lincoln hoped, but he was still exceedingly popular with Northern soldiers despite being fired twice, and the Democrats assumed that would make him a tough candidate against Lincon. But right from the start, McClellan was not on the same page with the Democrats, who were divided between those in favor of continuing the war and those who wanted to negotiate a peace with the Confederacy. The compromise was to nominate McClellan, who was in favor of the war, for president, and a vice-presidential candidate who opposed the war.

Furthermore, in the summer of 1864, radical Republicans were still unsure of their support for Lincoln, and many begun running their own campaign against Lincoln for not prosecuting the war vigorously enough, urging Lincoln to withdraw from the campaign. And Lincoln’s attempt to break the stalemate in the East by bringing Grant to face Lee only provided a deadlier stalemate during the Overland Campaign.

Instead, it would be the scourge of the South who saved the day. With Grant in the East, control of the Western theater was turned over to William Tecumseh Sherman, who beat back Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood in the Atlanta campaign, taking the important Southern city in early September. On September 3, 1864, Sherman telegrammed Lincoln, “Atlanta is ours and fairly won.”

Accordingly, the Republicans renominated Lincoln for the Presidency.  Looking forward to a reunited Union, the Party made an unprecedented move and nominated a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, for Vice President.  Senator Andrew Johnson was notable for being the only Senator to remain loyal to the Union even when his state, Tennessee, had seceded.  At the time, the Vice Presidential nomination seemed only a token of goodwill.  Little did Republicans know what would happen the following April.

Lincoln was solidly reelected in 1864, even winning the military vote against McClellan. He carried all states still loyal to the Union except Kentucky, Delaware and New Jersey.  This amounted to an Electoral College vote of 212, against McClellan's 21.  In the popular vote, Lincoln beat McClellan by over 400,000 votes.

In his second inaugural address, considered perhaps America’s greatest speech, Lincoln struck a conciliatory tone, reminding both sides that they prayed to the same God for victory and that neither side could divine God’s will. “With malice toward none and charity for all”, Lincoln called for peace and reunion, his eye clearly on Reconstruction.

With this clear mandate for governing, the Republicans in the House, with Lincoln's support, approved of the 13
^th
Amendment to the Constitution, which banned slavery in all territories and states.  To assist freed slaves, Congress also created the Freedmen's Bureau, to offer food, clothing and shelter to former slaves in the South.  Lincoln did his part as well, issuing a Proclamation for Amnesty and Reconstruction, which offered full pardons and amnesty to all Rebels, except those high level officials involved in governing the Confederacy.

Lincon about to give his Second Inaugural Address. John Wilkes Booth is in the crowd.

“Total” Victory

In early 1864, President Lincoln appointed Grant, the Union general responsible for the victory at Vicksburg, in charge of all Union armies. The appointment also marked an important shift in policy. Both Grant and Sherman shared the same theory of war: anything that might help the enemy's war effort should be considered a military target. For the first time, the governing philosophy of the Union armies would be total war.

The new strategy sought the total economic collapse of the South, as well as the ability of the South to field armies. In addition to the wholesale plundering of Southern resources, including taking them from civilians, the Union reversed its policy of swapping prisoners, realizing it had a far bigger reserve of manpower than the South. Meanwhile, in battle, Grant sought to fight the Confederacy on virtually any terms. Where McClellan refused to fight unless he judged the circumstances to be the most favorable, General Grant sought battle even on unfavorable terms. General Grant believed that repeated battles, even Union losses, would exhaust the Confederacy and its armies and eventually play to the Union's advantage.

To this end, General Grant engaged Robert E. Lee's Confederate army in a series of battles that, despite being tactical Union losses, produced tremendous casualties on both sides, a strategic benefit to the North. During the Overland Campaign, Grant was often labeled a butcher for the manner in which he used the Army of the Potomac. In just one month on the way from Northern Virginia to Petersburg, the Army of the Potomac suffered tens of thousands of casualties. However, Grant was able to use several Union armies to restrict Lee's movements, and eventually pin General Lee's forces down into a long siege of Petersburg, Virginia, an important hub of the Confederacy near Richmond.

Meanwhile, after fairly winning Atlanta in September, Sherman ordered everything of military value burned in the city, destroying much of the Confederacy's little manufacturing. Sherman then rested his army for several weeks in Atlanta, before ordering the evacuation of the entire city. Only 400 buildings were left standing.

The day after ordering the burning of Atlanta, Sherman began marching toward Savannah, Georgia in a bid to destroy whatever aided the South's ability to wage war. Sherman took the unprecedented step of cutting his own supply lines and communication lines, virtually leaving his army out of contact with the rest of the North. On his “March to the Sea” toward Savannah, two wings of his army left a wide swath of devastation that was nearly 50 miles long in some stretches. The march was not intended to reach a strategic point by a certain time; instead, Sherman employed scorched earth tactics to destroy the South's ability and will to fight.

During the 300 mile march, Sherman estimated he inflicted about $100 million dollars in damage, of which only 20% were supplies taken to support his army and the 10,000 freed slaves that followed him. The remainder was simply destroyed. When Sherman reached Savannah on the coast of the Atlantic, he made contact with the U.S. Navy and offered Savannah to Lincoln as a “Christmas present.”

By the end of 1864, the South still held out hope of some sort of miracle, and it even attempted to send a peace delegation to meet with Lincoln in the early months of 1865. But the South was clearly on its last legs. General George H. Thomas destroyed John Bell Hood’s Confederate army at the battles of Nashville and Franklin, leaving only two large Confederate armies still in the field. Lee's army was weakened by desertion, lack of supplies and casualties, and Joe Johnston’s army could barely resist against Sherman’s army as it was advancing north toward Virginia. In early April of 1865, the Army of the Potomac broke Lee’s lines around Petersburg, captured Richmond the following day, and forced Lee’s surrender a week later at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Johnston would surrender to Sherman a few weeks later.

After four long years, the Civil War had finally ended.

Reconstruction

With the war over, reconstructing the reunited nation was now top priority.  Congress and the President were already well underway in their work.  The 13
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, 14
^th
, and 15
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Amendments to the Constitution were being discussed, and in the case of the 13
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, had been passed by the House but needed ratification from the states.

In Lincoln's mind, because the South had never legally seceded, forgiveness was to be his top priority.  He wanted to allow states to be readmitted to the Union after only 10% of its citizens swore an oath of loyalty to the United States.  This was known as the 10% Plan.  Congress, now run by the so-called “Radical Republicans,” disagreed.  As early as the summer of 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, which required 50% of rebel states to swear an oath, not 10%.  Lincoln vetoed the bill.

Lincoln envisioned a relatively short-lived Reconstruction process in which the former Confederate states would draft constitutions and rejoin the Union.  He thought the country could effectively continue operating much as it had before the War.  Lincoln's vision, however, would remain just a dream, when his life, and thus his role in Reconstruction, was cut short just days after Appomattox.

Chapter 7: Lincoln’s Assassination

Five days after the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and on the 4
^th
anniversary of the surrender of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln headed to Ford’s Theater to watch a play. Originally, General Grant and his wife were to attend with the Lincolns, but they opted out at the last minute. A heavy burden had been lifted off Lincoln’s shoulders in the last two weeks, as he could see the end of the war in sight and even toured Richmond after it was captured. Although Appomattox is generally considered the end of the war today, the Confederacy had not yet surrendered, Jefferson Davis was on the fly, and Joseph Johnston’s army still opposed Sherman’s army in the field.

Until April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth was one of the most famous actors of his time. And while it would be a performance at a theater that would make him notorious afterward, he wasn’t acting. That night, of course, Booth became one of history’s most infamous assassins when he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

While Lincoln watched “Our American Cousin”, Booth executed part of a conspiracy that was months in the works. Booth and his team were Confederate sympathizers who hoped the decapitation of the federal government would still save the Confederacy. Booth had fancied himself a Confederate spy, but he had served no important task throughout the war. Nevertheless, he had been outraged when Ulysses S. Grant stopped the prisoner of war exchange with the Confederacy. General Grant believed that the prisoner of war exchange was helping prolong the war by returning experienced soldiers to a weakened South. In turn, Booth began to organize a plot which he hoped would force the Union to resume the prisoner of war exchange—Booth planned to kidnap President Lincoln. Booth enlisted 6 other Confederate sympathizers to the plot.

However, the plot transformed into one of murder after Booth heard that President Lincoln planned to give citizenship to the former slaves, and the conspirators realized taking the President alive would be difficult. Moreover, Booth also expanded the plot to include killing the Vice President, Andrew Johnson, and the Secretary of State, William Seward. The Vice President and the Secretary of State were the next two in line to succeed the President. And though Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four days earlier, Booth, like Jefferson Davis, believed the war was not yet over because Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston's army was still fighting.

Booth's theater connections allowed him to learn that the President and Mrs. Lincoln would be attending a production of
Our American Cousin
at Ford's theater on April 14, 1865. Booth quickly assembled the conspirators and put the assassination plan in motion. While Booth killed Lincoln, Lewis Powell, a Confederate veteran wounded at Gettysburg, was supposed to kill Secretary of State William Seward at his home in Washington, D.C. George Atzerodt was to assassinate the Vice President.

That night, John Wilkes Booth went to Ford's theater. President Lincoln did not have a bodyguard with him. Once the show began, Booth entered the hallway behind the presidential box and waited. Because Booth knew the play by heart, he waited for the moment when the audience would be laughing hardest so that the sound of the laughing would mask the gunshot.

When the moment came, John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box and shot President Lincoln in the back of the head. President Lincoln's group included an army officer, who struggled to keep Booth from escaping. Booth stabbed him before jumping from the box onto the stage, apparently breaking his foot as a result. Witnesses reported that Booth shouted “Sic semper tyrannis”, the Virginia state motto, which means “Thus always to tyrants”.