James Ford Rhodes

“ Slow to act and distrustful of his impulses, Lincoln let the great opportunity slip when with a word he might have won the equivalent of a successful campaign in the field. Alike a leader and a representative of popular sentiment, he in this instance suffered his representative character to overtop the leadership. The fellow-feeling with the American public that in any dispute with Great Britain there is but one side to be considered prevented him from making a brilliant stroke. ”

“ I could not feel that to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country and Constitution all together.... I think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said—if so much—is that slaves are property. ”

“ The sympathy of the British government and public with Italy during the war of 1859, and the progress made in that war towards Italian liberty, impressed upon the English mind the doctrine that a body of people who should seek to throw off an obnoxious dominion and form an orderly government of their own, deserved the best wishes of the civilized world. Why, it was asked in England, if we were right to sympathize with Italy against Austria, should we not likewise sympathize with the Southern Confederacy whose people were resisting the subjugation of the North? ”

“ The most significant and touching feature of the situation was that the operatives of the North of England who suffered most from the lack of cotton, were frankly on the side of the United States. They knew that their misery came from the war, and were repeatedly told that it would cease in a day if the North would accept an accomplished fact; but discerning, in spite of their meagre intelligence, that the struggle was one of democracy against privilege, of freedom against slavery, they resisted all attempts to excite them to a demonstration against its continuance. ”

“ These achievements appealed to the popular imagination as Stonewall Jackson’s had done in 1862; but now it was the Northerner’s turn to rejoice in a commander who, uniting dash and prudence, was giving them the long-wished-for but unexpected victories in the Shenandoah Valley—that famous graveyard of Northern hopes with its open gateway for invasion from the South. Better than any campaign speeches were Sheridan’s despatches telling the story of Confederate defeats. While such victories are gained, said one citizen to another as they shook hands and rejoiced, the war is not a failure ”

“ Yet Lincoln clearly feared to give up Mason and Slidell, although he must have appreciated that their voices were more eloquent from their prison than they would have been in London and Paris. Indeed, as a mere matter of policy, the United States ought to have made it easy for the author of the Fugitive Slave Law to reach London and the champion of filibustering in the interest of slavery to reach Paris, since their pleading could in no way injure the Northern cause, so well was it understood, at any rate in England, that they represented slavery. ”

“ Such a proposal to the Southern Confederacy, tottering to her fall, only sixty-three days before Lee’s surrender to Grant would have shown magnanimous foresight. Had the Confederate States accepted it, there would have been an immediate fraternal union after the Civil War. Had they rejected it, the President and Congress would have made a noble record. The offer, however, was too wise and too generous to be widely approved of men; Lincoln of all those in authority had reached a moral height where he must dwell alone and impotent. ”

“ In this proclamation, he made an earnest appeal to the people of the Union border slave States to give freedom gradually to their slaves and accept the compensation proffered them by himself and Congress. “I do not argue,” he said; “I beseech you to make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times.” The abolition of slavery contemplated “would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything.”
Then came the utter failure of McClellan’s campaign, which convinced the President that slavery must be struck at. ”

“ But there were English statesmen and writers of ability who understood that the fight of the North was against slavery; they urged her cause without ceasing, although many times their hearts failed them as they feared she had undertaken an impossible task. They had as their followers the workingmen whom hunger stared in the face but who realized, as did the upper class, that the cause of the Union was the cause of democracy in England.
Up to the latter part of November, Great Britain preserved a strict neutrality. ”

“ Manifestly superior as had been Davis’s advantages in family, breeding, training and experience, he fell far below Lincoln as a compeller of men. We have seen Lincoln in times of adversity and gloom and have marvelled at his self-effacement and we have seen him listening to words of advice, warning and even reproof such as are rarely spoken to men wielding immense power; and throughout he has preserved his native dignity and emerged from nearly every trial a stronger and more admirable man.
Grant appears at his best in the final operations of his army. ”

“ Although the number of the Confederates was exaggerated, their power as an invading army, by virtue of their mobility and the genius of their leaders, was rated none too high. Considering that 55,000 veteran soldiers led by Lee, Jackson and Longstreet marched out of Frederick with high spirits and confidence of victory, the alarm which spread over the North was no greater than a community so gravely imperilled might be expected to feel. In Washington the anxiety was no longer so much for the safety of the capital, which was well fortified and garrisoned, as for the danger to the cause. ”

“ But Lincoln though unversed in finance had a first-rate knowledge of men, and this it was that led him to retain as his Secretary of the Treasury one whose inflexible honesty and receptive mind justify the popular estimate of him as a strong finance minister. That the war had gone on for nearly two years with an immense expenditure of money, and that the Government could still buy all it needed of food and munitions of war and could pay its soldiers, was due primarily to the patriotism and devotion of the Northern people, but honor should also be given to the manager of the country’s finances. ”

“ The march to the sea, the march northward from Savannah and Thomas’s operations in Tennessee are a combination of bold and effective strategy, possible only after the Chattanooga-Atlanta campaign and a fit sequel to it. A hundred persons may have conceived the design of advancing to the ocean but the genius of the general lay in foreseeing the possible moves of his adversary, in guarding against them and in his estimate of the physical and moral results of cutting the Confederacy in twain. ”

“ He told them of the pressure upon him to interfere with slavery and of the dissatisfaction with him by the Radical supporters of the government, threatening “division among those who united are none too strong.” “Our common country is in great peril,” he continued; and as lofty views and bold action on their part would bring speedy relief, he begged them to emancipate their slaves. But Lincoln was unable to secure the assent of the border States to his plan. Bound up as was slavery with their social and political life, they could not understand that its doom was certain. ”

“ While recognizing in Meade a better general than Hooker, he believed that the change of commanders at this critical moment would counterbalance the advantage in generalship; and impressed as he was by the rapid and efficient movements of the Army of the Potomac since Meade had taken command, he must on the other hand have felt that he and his army were almost invincible,—a confidence shared by nearly all his officers and men, for his success on his own soil had been both brilliant and practically unbroken. “There were never such men in an army before,” Lee said. ”

“ But men who loved their country better than their party ought to have perceived, for it was palpable at the time, that the Southern States had not the slightest intention of consenting on even the most favorable conditions to the Union as it was, and that the President had been brought to his decree against slavery by the logic of events. Apologists for slavery as the Democrats had been for so many years on the ground that it was a necessary evil, they could not give hearty support to emancipation ”

“ No matter how mercifully war may be carried on it is at the best a rude game. As Lee’s army advanced in the Cumberland Valley alarm and distress ruled. The whole region was alive with wild rumors. Men, women and children fled before the enemy and their horses were driven out of the path of the invader. “The Yanks,” wrote Pickett, “have taken into the mountains and across the Susquehanna all the supplies they could, and we pay liberally for those which we are compelled to take, paying for them in money which is paid to us, our own Confederate script.” ”

“ Lincoln and Davis were both willing to obscure the true reason of the conflict: Lincoln, because he did not wish the border slave States, the Northern Democrats and conservative Republicans to get the idea that the war was waged for the destruction of slavery; Davis, because he knew that the Southerner’s devotion to slavery, if allowed to appear in too strong a light, would stand in the way of the recognition of the Confederate States by European powers which he so ardently desired. But as the Union armies advanced southward, they came into contact with the negro who had to be dealt with. ”

“ We of the North maintain that, after Sumter was fired upon, the war was unavoidable and just, but the summer of 1864 carries this lesson: given our system of government with its division of powers between the nation and the States and its partition of authority at Washington; given our frequent elections; given the independence and individuality of our people,—it is clear that we are but poorly equipped for making war. ”

“ Lincoln comprehended the sentiment of the North and he never gave public expression to any opinion that he did not sincerely hold. In his fourth of July message to the special session of Congress he said: “It may well be questioned whether there is to-day a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States.” ”