Lincoln: A Photobiography (13 page)

He found it difficult to sleep and was usually up at dawn, so he could work quietly in his office before breakfast. Afterwards he returned to his desk for another hour before opening his door to visitors. He would put them at ease with a joke or story, ask "What can I do for you?" and then lean forward to listen, stroking his chin or clasping his knee with his hands as they talked. His secretaries complained that he was wearing himself out. But Lincoln would not give up the "public opinion baths" that brought him face-to-face with the citizens who came to his office in an endless stream.

One visitor was the influential black leader, Frederick Douglass. While Douglass differed with Lincoln on many issues, he had come to respect the president and like him personally. The two men were to meet several times. "In all my interviews with Mr.
Lincoln," Douglass said later, "I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a state where there were black laws."

Lincoln wrote out six copies of the Gettysburg Address, and five are known to survive, all with slight differences. The copy shown here is on display at the Old State Capitol in Springfield.

Born a slave, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became the most influential black leader of his time.

After a quick lunch, Lincoln would read for a while, then turn to the piles of paperwork on his desk. One of his toughest jobs was reviewing court-martial sentences of Union soldiers—sleeping sentries, homesick runaways, cowards, deserters, and the like. He wanted to see that justice was done, yet he looked for excuses to pardon soldiers. He was reluctant to approve the death penalty especially when a soldier had been sentenced to die before a firing squad for running away in the face of battle.

"Do you see those papers crowded in those pigeonholes [in my desk]?" Lincoln asked a visitor to his office. "They are the cases you call by that long title, 'cowardice in the face of the enemy.' I call them, for short, my 'leg cases.' I put it to you, and I leave it to you to decide for yourself: if Almighty God gives a man a cowardly pair of legs, how can he help their running away with him?"

Lincoln became famous for his last-minute pardons and reprieves. "The generals always wanted an execution carried out before it could possibly be brought before the president," a friend observed. "He was as tenderhearted as a girl."

Lincoln referred to himself as "pigeon-hearted." Even so, he tried to perform his duty as he saw it, and he did not always intervene. Large numbers of court-martialed soldiers actually were executed during the Civil War. But when he could think of a good reason to pardon, he pardoned, saying, "It rests me, after a hard day's work, that I can find some excuse for saving some poor fellow's life."

In late afternoon, Lincoln would go for a carriage ride with Mary, taking in the fresh air as they drove through the countryside, accompanied by a cavalry escort. Sometimes they stopped to chat with soldiers at an army mess or a military hospital before returning to the White House. If there was no official function that evening, the Lincolns might attend the opera or theatre, which Mary loved. Or Lincoln might relax with a small group of close friends, becoming his old self again, "the cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest of storytellers," as one friend said.

On most evenings, Lincoln returned to his office after dinner and worked late into the night by lamplight. His last chore before going to bed was to stop at the War Department telegraph room and read the latest dispatches from the front.

Wounded Union soldiers in a Washington hospital ward. Lincoln also visited Confederate wounded when he toured a hospital. According to Dr. Jerome Walker, "...He was just as kind, his handshakings just as hearty, his interest just as real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among our own soldiers.
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On the Western front, Union armies had been winning a string of victories. On July 4, 1863—the day after the battle at Gettysburg—the fortified city of Vicksburg, the last important Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant. By the time of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Grant's armies were fighting their way through Tennessee, heading for Georgia and the heart of the Confederacy. Grant had emerged as the one commander the president could count on. Early in 1864, Lincoln called the whiskered, cigar-smoking general to Washington and appointed him as the new general in chief of all Union armies.

Ulysses S. ("Unconditional Surrender") Grant, Lincoln's favorite commander. He became general in chief in 1864.

Together, Grant and Lincoln worked out a plan to smash the Confederacy. They would launch coordinated offensives on all fronts, pounding at the rebels from every direction. In the East, Grant would personally direct a new drive against Lee's troops in Virginia, pushing toward the rebel capital at Richmond. In the West, Union forces under General William Tecumseh Sherman would advance from Tennessee into Georgia to strike at the crucial railway center of Atlanta. Then Sherman would drive north toward Virginia, squeezing the Confederacy in a pincer. Lincoln was hopeful. "Grant is the first general I have had," he said. "You know how it has been with all the rest. They wanted me to be the general. I am glad to find a man who can go ahead without me."

In May 1864, the mightiest offensive of the war began. Grant marched into Virginia, but he met stubborn resistance from Lee's newly rebuilt army in a densely wooded area called the Wilderness. "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," Grant declared. Unfortunately, that's what happened. After fighting three major battles near Richmond, Grant was unable to take the city. And his losses were staggering. About fifty-four thousand Union soldiers were killed or wounded during the Wilderness campaign. "Those poor fellows," Lincoln grieved, "this suffering, this loss of life."

Throughout the North, people were shocked by the death toll. Once again a cry went up to end the slaughter and bring the boys home. With all his other troubles, Lincoln now had to worry about the presidential election scheduled for 1864. Northern Democrats were determined to turn the president out of office. And there were some Republicans, members of Lincoln's own party, who talked of dumping him in favor of another candidate. They felt that Lincoln wasn't pushing the war vigorously enough, that he would be too easy on the South once the war was over, that in any case, he was too unpopular to win reelection.

Lincoln wanted to stay in office. Reelection alone would show that the people approved of his emancipation policy. He felt that he was "not entirely unworthy to be entrusted with the place" he had occupied since 1861. Most Republicans still supported the president, and now he exerted all his presidential powers of patronage and persuasion to rally the party and whip reluctant Republicans into line. In June, he was nominated for a second term by a National Union convention representing both Republicans and "war Democrats."

Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Then the Democrats nominated their candidate—General George B. McClellan, the very same McClellan that Lincoln had dismissed as commander of the Union armies. McClellan ran against Lincoln on a peace platform, promising to stop the fighting right away and restore both the Union and slavery.

A political cartoon from the campaign of 1864 shows Lincoln, General McClellan, and Jefferson Davis fighting over the Union.

The summer of 1864 was the most dismal period of Lincoln's presidential career. People in the North were weary of the constant calls for more men, the growing casualty lists, the lack of progress. Friends and foes alike felt certain that Lincoln could not win the election. Some Republicans appealed to the president to step down in favor of a stronger candidate, and Lincoln himself believed that he might lose. In a secret memorandum, he outlined his plans to hand over power in an orderly manner should the election go against him. "It seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected," he wrote.