Rise to Greatness (46 page)

The president and his colleagues proved to be in moods as dark as Chase’s. Lincoln’s irritation, especially with McClellan, was apparent from the start. In the words of one participant, the cabinet engaged in “a long and free discussion of the condition of the army,” during which the president lamented the fact that Ambrose Burnside had refused to take command. McClellan, Lincoln complained, “can’t go ahead. He can’t strike a blow. He got to Rockville, for instance, last Sunday night, and in four days he advanced to Middlebrook—ten miles, in pursuit of an invading enemy. This is rapid movement for him.”

Others joined the grumbling. Welles theorized that the Union’s problem was too many West Point graduates at the head of the armies. The well-trained engineers excelled at building fortifications, but they just weren’t aggressive. This was a stale observation; people had been complaining about West Point generals for months. But Blair took the chance to defend his alma mater and criticize Stanton at the same time. There were plenty of good West Pointers, he said. The problem was a War Department that failed to find and promote them. “There was bluster,” Blair asserted, “but not competency.”

This sour meeting broke up having accomplished nothing, and Chase went to Stanton’s office to commiserate. Why couldn’t Lincoln be stronger? they asked each other. Why couldn’t he dismiss the conniving Democrats from their field commands; why couldn’t he free the slaves and enlist them as soldiers? It was obvious what needed to be done. Chase blamed Lincoln’s “negrophobic” friends and advisers for leading him astray.

Seward, of course, was one of the advisers Chase had in mind. Two months ago, Lincoln had been on the cusp of emancipation; now, with McClellan and Buell once again ascendant, it seemed that the conservative Democrats were, if anything, stronger. And the critical voice at the key moment had been Seward’s—it was he who had persuaded Lincoln to wait for a victory to issue an emancipation decree. That was the point, Chase felt, when the president seemed to lose his nerve.

The conflict between Chase and Seward was now so open and damaging that Seward’s mentor—and Lincoln’s frequent sounding board—Thurlow Weed decided to undertake a mission of peace. He called on Chase for “a long talk,” during which Chase expressed his frustration that Seward was encouraging “the irresolution and inaction of the President.” Weed implored Chase to mend fences with Seward and “agree on a definite line” that the two men could support together. The rumors of Seward’s supposed resistance to emancipation were hurting him with his New York political base, Weed revealed. Hoping to play the mediator, Weed promised to relay Chase’s complaints to Seward.

Weed’s mission was doomed from the start. That Seward and Chase had legitimate differences concerning policy and strategy made the relationship challenging enough; worse, they were opposites in personality while being identical in scope of ambition. Conflict between them was inevitable. Welles summed up their differences nicely: “Seward was supple and dexterous; Chase was clumsy and strong. Seward made constant mistakes, but recovered with a facility that was wonderful and almost always without injury to himself; Chase committed fewer blunders, but persevered in them … often to his own serious detriment.”

Chase resented Seward’s easy relationship with Lincoln. Seward, in turn, took too much pleasure from tweaking the pompous Chase. For example on September 12, after Chase finished commiserating with Stanton, he paid a call on the secretary of state to dispose of a routine matter. Seward, ignoring Chase’s businesslike demeanor, chose this moment to make a joke about emancipation. He knew that Chase was not a joking man, especially when it came to issues about which he was passionate, yet Seward quipped that if the Rebels invaded Pennsylvania, “the President should make a Proclamation … freeing all the apprentices in the state.” Recounting this in his diary, Chase commented icily: “I thought the jest ill-timed.”

Backbiting and squabbling were but symptoms of the disease of helplessness: as Little Mac plodded forward in search of the Rebels, there was little to do in Washington but wait. “Alas! Poor country,” wrote Charles Sumner, capturing the mood of mid-September. “A vigorous ruler might have saved it.”

*   *   *

A young artist for
Harper’s Weekly,
Thomas Nast, was traveling with McClellan’s staff that same September 12 when the general entered Frederick, Maryland, on his favorite horse, Dan Webster. Later Nast sketched the triumphal scene: American flags decking the buildings; cheering citizens filling the streets and waving from balconies; bouquets raining down on the soldiers; a mother thrusting her baby toward Little Mac, who gave his hat the trademark wave revealing cow-licked hair. The general enjoyed every moment. “I was nearly overwhelmed and pulled to pieces,” McClellan reported to his wife, and he enclosed in his letter a “little flag that some enthusiastic lady thrust into or upon Dan’s bridle. As to flowers!!—they came in crowds! In truth I was seldom more affected than by the scenes I saw [and] the reception I met with.”

The general ordered his men to make camp in the farmlands outside town, which they were happy to do after months of hiking and camping in the hostile environs of Virginia. Tubs of lemonade and fresh-baked pies awaited them at nearly every farmhouse, and the women and children wore smiles on their faces. McClellan was taken with the beauty of the countryside: “one of the most lovely regions I have ever seen—quite broken with lovely valleys in all directions, & some fine mountains in the distance.” Lee and his army lay beyond those mountains, gone somewhere to the west. Exactly where was a mystery, and in fact a few reports suggested that the Rebels had recrossed the Potomac to return to Virginia, greatly distressing Lincoln. “Please do not let him get off without being hurt,” he telegraphed McClellan.

And how strong was Lee? Governor Andrew Curtin of Pennsylvania deployed a network of spies to find the answer, and his latest estimate was ludicrously high: as many as 190,000 Rebels in Maryland, plus 250,000 south of the river in Virginia, for a total of 440,000 men. The habit of exaggerating enemy forces had finally reached a peak; this was nearly ten times the actual number. Eyes rolled in Washington, but the hyperbole still did damage. This overstatement of Lee’s strength by a factor of ten made McClellan’s own inflated estimates seem modest. The truth—that Union forces greatly outnumbered Confederates in the East—could gain little traction.

Saturday, September 13, found the Army of the Potomac resting happily along the Monocacy River outside the welcoming town of Frederick. Its general gazed at the fine, long ridge known as South Mountain and imagined legions of Rebel soldiers—unquestionably more men than McClellan was leading—on the other side, perhaps poised to spring a trap. But his side of the mountain could not be more pleasant, and this was enough to make a man reluctant to cross over. McClellan decided to wait for Lee to make the next move, and he therefore convened a meeting with leading citizens of Frederick to arrange what might be an extended stay for his army. In a wire to Halleck, McClellan promised: “Should the enemy go towards Penn[sylvania] I shall follow him.”

As Little Mac was preparing to settle in, however, the strangest thing happened, a twist so unlikely that only history could write it with a straight face. Just outside Frederick, the 27th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment made camp in a meadow that had been home, only days earlier, to Confederate troops under General Daniel H. Hill. Much of the field was still trampled flat, but in a tall patch of grass, a Union corporal named Barton Mitchell noticed a paper package with something inside. He picked it up and was glad, because the package held three fine cigars wrapped in paper. But this was not just any paper—the wrapping was covered in neat script under the heading: “Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, Special Orders, No. 191.” With his friend Sergeant John Bloss, Corporal Mitchell began reading through various objectives assigned to men with familiar Rebel names: Jackson. Longstreet. Stuart. And at the bottom of the page appeared the most familiar name of all: “By command of Gen. R. E. Lee.” The signature purported to be that of Lee’s assistant adjutant general, R. H. Chilton.

No doubt the two soldiers understood that this cigar wrap, if genuine, represented an intelligence coup of staggering dimensions. The paper suggested that Lee’s forces were widely divided on the other side of the mountains, with Jackson leading a detachment against Harpers Ferry while Lee and Longstreet took the rest of the men toward Hagerstown. They were all to meet up eventually at Boonsboro, but the boom of distant artillery from the direction of Harpers Ferry indicated that the reunion had not yet taken place. If this was true, the Federals now had a golden opportunity to attack the scattered Rebel forces and destroy them piece by piece. But how could anyone possibly know whether the paper was genuine?

The soldiers gave the paper to their captain, who gave it to his colonel, who took it to his general, who showed it to an aide. The aide noticed the signature and announced that he had known R. H. Chilton before the war and would recognize that handwriting anywhere. The document was rushed to McClellan’s headquarters, where the general was in the middle of his meeting with town leaders. He studied the paper, then looked up and cried: “Now I know what to do!”

*   *   *

Lincoln was engaged that same day in a lengthy debate with a delegation of Chicago ministers who had come to Washington to plead for an emancipation decree. The president was nursing a sprained wrist after taking a fall; pained, he listened to all the familiar arguments in favor of such action. At points he jousted and parried, poking holes of doubt into the delegation’s confidence. He did not think such a measure would be as popular as the ministers seemed to believe. Besides, what power did he have over Southern slaves when the Rebels were at large on Northern territory? “What
good
would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated?” he asked. “I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet.” (There was a legend, widely known but eventually debunked, that in the fifteenth century Pope Callixtus III had issued an order excommunicating Halley’s Comet.)

Back and forth they went until Lincoln ended the meeting on an ambiguous note. “I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves,” he allowed, “but hold the matter under advisement.” The president had already told the delegates that he was accustomed to hearing from religious leaders on the topic of slavery, and he found it strange that while clergymen held every variety of opinion, all of them claimed to know “the Divine will.” Why, Lincoln now wondered, didn’t God take the forthright approach and reveal his intentions “directly to me, for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter.
And if I can learn what it is I will do it!
”

The attending stenographer did not record that a pause followed, but it is reasonable to assume that there was one. Then Lincoln continued on a less declarative note: “These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right.”

Would the discovery outside Frederick have qualified in Lincoln’s ever rational mind as a “miracle,” or simply as a “physical fact”? It was a package of cigars, after all, not a voice from a burning bush. Still, in this amalgam of coincidence and fortune, a very important “direct revelation” was received, and a scrap of rubbish in a Maryland meadow became the spark that ignited McClellan at the very moment of Lee’s vulnerability.

Little Mac was elated. “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip ‘Bobbie Lee,’ I will be willing to go home,” the general crowed as the paper worked its electrifying magic. To the president he wired: “I hope for a great success if the plans of the Rebels remain unchanged.”

*   *   *

McClellan moved as quickly as he could, which was not as quickly as some other generals might. He began by ordering William B. Franklin to take his corps to Harpers Ferry and rescue the garrison of 12,000 Union troops. With those forces added to his own, Franklin was to mop up Stonewall Jackson’s column. It was a perfectly fine plan, but time was of the essence—and McClellan instructed Franklin to get started the next morning. He seemed to have forgotten that soldiers can march at night.

And he, too, stayed overnight in Frederick before setting off on Sunday, September 14, with some 70,000 men, marching in the direction of Hagerstown to snuff out Longstreet and Lee. But the Rebels had made one crucial adjustment in the roughly eighteen hours between the discovery in the meadow and the Union advance. Word of McClellan’s good fortune had traveled from a Confederate spy in Frederick to Lee’s headquarters, and now Lee was also on the move, embarking on a desperate race to minimize the damage.

He ordered troops into the South Mountain passes, Crampton’s Gap and Turner’s Gap, to slow the Federals down. Firing downhill at the bluecoats struggling up, the Rebels exacted a high toll for passage over the ridge, chewed up time until darkness fell, and then slipped away. McClellan, watching the fighting from a distance, saw not tactical resistance but bracing confirmation that Lee’s army was immense. When Monday dawned and the Federals went through the passes and down into another picturesque valley, Little Mac figured that he was in the presence of more than 100,000 invisible Rebels. Lee, at the same moment, was taking his troops toward a ford in the Potomac where he planned to cross into Virginia, rejoin Jackson, and thus bring his actual strength up to about 43,000. By overestimating the size of the Rebel forces yet again, McClellan erased his substantial advantage over Lee’s regrouping army. Instead of attacking, he held back.

Then Lee received word that the Harpers Ferry garrison had surrendered to Jackson before Franklin could reach it, which meant it was no longer necessary to suffer the ignominy of retreating over the river. Jackson could now come to him, here at the farm town of Sharpsburg, behind a winding stream called Antietam Creek. The Rebels spread themselves out and tried to appear numerous while waiting for Jackson to reinforce them. In the meantime, the Federals slowly filled the fields on the other side of the creek and awaited their orders. Night fell.