IV.

President of the United States

A.

First Year in Office

Even before election day, Southern militants were threatening to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected. In December, with the Republican victory final, South Carolina seceded. By February, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had followed. These states joined together to form the Confederate States of America, also known as the Confederacy. President Buchanan did nothing to stop the secessionist movement, and President-elect Lincoln was not yet in a position to intercede. Lincoln remained silent on the issue, believing that, in time, Union sentiment would reassert itself in the South and the secession of the seven states would come to an end.

On February 11, 1861, Lincoln bade farewell to his neighbors in Springfield and set out for Washington, D.C. He now had a beard, which he had grown at the suggestion of a young girl during the campaign. Alluding to the troubled days ahead, he told his friends, “Today I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him, shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if the same omniscient mind, and almighty arm that directed and protected him, shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, I shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.”

On the way to Washington, Lincoln made many short speeches, but he did not commit himself to a specific policy regarding the South. Because of a rumor of an assassination plot against him in Baltimore, he was secretly spirited through that city and into Washington by night. The opposition press ridiculed this undignified entry of the president-elect into the capital.

A.1.

First Inaugural Address

On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the United States. Ironically, he received the oath of office from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, whose decision in the Dred Scott Case was a direct cause of the crisis Lincoln now faced.

Lincoln's inaugural address was aimed at allaying Southern fears. His opening words were, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” But he flatly rejected the right of any state to secede from the Union, and he announced that he would “hold, occupy, and possess” the property and places belonging to the federal government. Such a threat was necessary because the rebellious states had already seized federal forts, arsenals and customhouses within their boundaries. Even with this threat, Lincoln's tone was moderate. “The government will not assail you,” he addressed the South. “You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.”

A.2.

Lincoln's Cabinet

To his Cabinet, Lincoln appointed his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and other leading Republicans. He made Seward secretary of state, Chase secretary of the treasury, Cameron secretary of war, and Bates attorney general. Gideon Welles of Connecticut became secretary of the navy, and Caleb B. Smith of Indiana became secretary of the interior. Montgomery Blair of Maryland was named postmaster general.

After one month in office, Lincoln still had not decided on a policy of action against the secessionist states. Seward, therefore, decided to supply the president with one. In a memo entitled “Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration,” Seward suggested that the administration should provoke a war with a foreign nation so as to unite the country in a wave of patriotism. Seward also suggested that he, rather than Lincoln, might be better equipped to formulate the administration's policy. Lincoln tactfully put his presumptuous Secretary of State in his place. Seward knew he had met his match. “Executive force and vigor are rare qualities,” he wrote his wife. “The President is the best of us.” In time, Seward was to become Lincoln's most trusted aide.

Lincoln also had to contend with Chase's presidential ambitions and Cameron's inefficiency. He kept Chase in the Cabinet for four years and then appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. But in January 1862 he replaced Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton, who had been Buchanan's attorney general. With the exception of Cameron, Lincoln's Cabinet appointments were good. An inefficient administrator himself, he was able to delegate less important administrative tasks to his Cabinet while he worked on more important issues.

A.3.

Fort Sumter

Lincoln feared that taking direct action against the Confederacy would lead to the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. But events at Fort Sumter forced him to act. Fort Sumter was located at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston and was occupied by a small detachment of federal troops commanded by Major Robert Anderson. The South demanded the evacuation of the fort because it was in Confederate territory. Because Major Anderson was short on supplies and could not get any in Charleston, a direct confrontation was unavoidable. Early in April, Lincoln decided to send supplies to the fort by sea. Hoping that the ships would be able to land at the fort peacefully, he informed the governor of South Carolina of his intention. The governor notified Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

A.4.

The Civil War Begins

Davis and his cabinet instructed Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard to demand the fort's surrender. Anderson refused this ultimatum, and at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, Beauregard's guns opened fire on Fort Sumter. Lincoln's relief party was unable to land supplies, and two days later Anderson surrendered the fort.

Lincoln reacted promptly. Using the language and authority of a militia act of 1795, he declared that in seven states the federal laws were being opposed “by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” To quell this insurrection he asked the loyal states to provide 75,000 militia for three months' service. He also called a special session of Congress to convene on July 4. The Civil War had begun.

The North immediately rallied around its president. His old opponent, Stephen Douglas, called at the White House and agreed to tour Illinois to rally public support. Lincoln's call for arms, however, caused Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to join their sister slave states in the Confederacy. The border states, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, remained in the Union, although many of their people sympathized with and fought for the Confederacy.

A.5.

Emergency Measures

Lincoln now took decisive measures to win the war. No American president had ever faced such a crisis, and Lincoln had to find for himself the necessary powers by which he could pursue the war and uphold his oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States. Recognizing the problem, Lincoln said, “It became necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing means, agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should let the Government fall at once into ruin or whether, availing myself of the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save it.” Lincoln found the necessary powers in the constitutional clause making him “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states.” He told some visitors to the White House, “As commander in chief in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may subdue the enemy.”

Using this power, Lincoln took a number of vital steps before Congress convened. Besides summoning the militia, he ordered a blockade of the Confederacy's ports, expanded the regular army beyond its legal limit, directed government expenditures in advance of congressional appropriations, and suspended the legal right of habeas corpus. The suspension of this constitutional guarantee, by which a person could not be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with some specific crime, aroused much opposition throughout the country. Although Lincoln himself made no concentrated effort to suppress political opposition, which at times was extremely vocal, the repeal of habeas corpus enabled overzealous civil and military authorities to imprison thousands of people who were vocal in their opposition to the war against the South.

During the war, in the case Ex parte Merryman, Chief Justice Taney ordered Lincoln to grant a writ of habeas corpus to a Southern agitator who had been arbitrarily jailed by military authorities in Maryland. Lincoln ignored the order. After the war, in the case Ex parte Milligan, in an opinion written by David Davis, the Supreme Court ruled that a president could not suspend habeas corpus without the consent of Congress.

A.6.

Lincoln and the Union

By his executive orders, Lincoln showed that he was going to be a strong president. But his executive leadership went far beyond the mere administration of the war. By word and deed he became, to many people in the North, a symbol of the Union. Without this strong belief in the Union, the war could not have been won. Despite the superior manpower and resources of the North, the Confederacy had one great advantage. This was the same advantage George Washington had had against the British in the American Revolution. It is far more expensive and time consuming to invade an area than it is to defend it. The North had to carry the battle to the South and defeat the rebel army. This meant that progress in the war was slow at first, and Lincoln used all the persuasive powers at his command to prevent the North from becoming disillusioned.

Lincoln never lost sight of his responsibility to preserve the Union. Even the crusade against slavery remained a secondary purpose of the war. “What I do about slavery and the colored race,” he wrote to newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, “I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” By this sentiment, Lincoln was able to sustain the spirit of the North through numerous defeats and failures in the bloodiest war the world had yet known. Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation. He considered the Southern states only to be in rebellion against the federal government.

Beyond preservation of the Union lay an even more profound issue, the future of democracy throughout the world. The United States had long been a symbol of hope to democrats the world over, and Lincoln realized that the future of representative government might depend on the outcome of the war. “This is essentially a people's contest,” Lincoln told Congress. It was the destiny of the Union “to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry out an election can also suppress a rebellion; and ballots are the rightful successors to bullets...”

A.7.

Wartime President

Lincoln had little military training or experience, but was often called upon to make decisions that would ordinarily be made by professional military people. Although the advice he got on military matters was often conflicting, most of his decisions were good. Political considerations played an important part in shaping Lincoln's military strategy.

During the spring and summer of 1861 many people in the North called for military action against the South. The North expected a brief struggle and an easy victory. But the first Union offensive put an end to this optimism. In July, Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, leading the federal Army of the Potomac, was defeated in Virginia in the first Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas, as it is called in the South. For the first time the North realized that it faced a long, hard war. After this defeat, Lincoln removed McDowell and placed Major General George B. McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan soon restored the army's morale and whipped it into a superb fighting force.

Despite his strong distaste for war, Lincoln was not afraid to wage total war to achieve total victory. Finding a general who was both competent and willing to carry the fight to the Confederacy was his greatest military problem. He had to appoint many politicians to important field commands and, while some made excellent soldiers, others blundered tragically. McClellan was a capable professional soldier but proved overly cautious after his strong start. When Lincoln finally settled on General Ulysses S. Grant as his overall commander in 1864, he never wavered in giving Grant his complete support, although victory came slowly and the casualties were appallingly high.

A.8.

The Jacobins

Early in the war a group of radical Republicans, called the Jacobins, began to oppose Lincoln's policies. The Jacobins called for immediate action against the South, freeing of the slaves, and punitive measures against Southern leaders. Some of them thought the war should be fought as a holy crusade to destroy the evil, slaveholding South. Others wanted merely to extend Republican influence into the South by taking political power away from the white man and giving it to the freed black population. They confidently expected that blacks would thereafter vote Republican.

The Jacobins also believed that Lincoln had usurped congressional power in his conduct of the war. They controlled the joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, led by the radical Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, and used it to try to dictate the direction of the war. The Jacobins were especially opposed to McClellan, who was a conservative Democrat. Despite continuous pressure, Lincoln supported the general. He told McClellan, “...you must not fight till you are ready.”

A.9.

The Trent Affair

In the winter of 1861 the Union became involved with Britain in an incident, known as the Trent Affair, that almost led to war. The Confederacy had sent James Murray Mason and John Slidell to Britain and France to win support for the Southern cause. After slipping through the Northern blockade to Cuba, they boarded the British ship Trent. On its first day at sea the ship was stopped and searched by a Union naval captain, Charles Wilkes, and the two Southerners were taken off the ship as prisoners. Wilkes's act was a violation of the international law over which the United States had gone to war with Britain in 1812. Britain demanded an apology and the release of the two prisoners. Wilkes was a hero in the North, and many Union partisans were demanding war against Britain. Lincoln patiently let the agitators have their say. Then he released the Southern envoys, and Britain agreed to accept Lincoln's assurance that Wilkes had acted without authority. In this way, Lincoln averted what might have been a fatal conflict with Britain.

B.

Second Year in Office

In the spring of 1862, McClellan began the so-called Peninsular Campaign. He advanced by way of the peninsula between the James and York rivers in Virginia, with the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, as his goal. Fearing an attack on Washington by Confederate forces led by General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Lincoln diverted 40,000 of McClellan's troops for the defense of the capital. But the Army of the Potomac was still larger than its adversary. McClellan advanced on Confederate troops protecting Richmond, and his army fought well in the resulting Seven Days' Battle. McClellan, however, was unwilling to commit his troops for a decisive offense, and he ordered a retreat even though he had suffered fewer casualties than his opponent. In August the Confederates led by General Robert E. Lee defeated Major General John Pope's Army of Virginia in the second Battle of Bull Run. Finally, in September, the Union won a minor victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. Lincoln chose this opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.

B.1.

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln had given much thought to the problem of slavery, and he was under continual pressure from the Jacobins and the abolitionists to free the slaves. On April 16, 1862, he signed a bill that abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., with compensation to the slaveholders and voluntary colonization in tropical lands for the slaves. This bill was similar to the one Lincoln proposed in Congress years earlier.

As much as Lincoln abhorred slavery, the political situation prevented him from freeing the slaves elsewhere. The slaveholding border state of Kentucky was key to Union policy. Because of its strategic location on the Ohio River, which would have made an easily defended border for the South, it had to be kept in the Union. And, in his inaugural address, Lincoln had promised not to interfere with slavery. To do so would have meant the loss of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky to the Confederacy. Consequently, in 1861, when Major General John C. Frémont freed the slaves in his military district in Missouri, and in May 1862, when Major General David Hunter freed the slaves in his southern military district, Lincoln rescinded their orders. His patience was rewarded, for the border states remained loyal.

By July 1862, through a combination of military pressure, arrest of dissenters, and respect for neutrals, the border states appeared to be safely in the Union. At this time Lincoln informed the Cabinet of his decision to emancipate (free) the slaves. On Seward's advice, he withheld the proclamation until it could be coupled with the announcement of a Union military victory.

On September 22, 1862, immediately after Antietam, Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation. In this document, Lincoln announced that on January 1, 1863, all slaves residing in a rebellious state would “be then, thenceforward, and forever free...” With this 100-day warning, Lincoln gave the rebellious states an opportunity to rejoin the Union with slavery intact. Lincoln did not have the power to free the slaves except as a necessity of war. The proclamation was a military decree, directed only at those states at war with the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation was formally issued on January 1, 1863. It did not affect border states in the Union or areas in the rebellious states under federal control. For these states, Lincoln encouraged voluntary, compensated emancipation. To assure the legality of emancipation, Lincoln pressed for the passage of a constitutional amendment that would bar slavery from the United States forever. Later, acceptance of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution became a condition whereby Southern states were readmitted to the Union.

B.2.

Effects of Emancipation

The Emancipation Proclamation hastened the defeat of the Confederacy because it deprived the South of much-needed labor. About 3.5 million black slaves, out of a total population of 9.5 million, had grown the food and fiber needed by the Confederate Army. They had also dug trenches, built fortifications and served as teamsters for the army. In the proclamation, Lincoln invited the blacks to join the Union Army. Almost 186,000 former slaves did so. Most of them served behind the lines, thus freeing regular soldiers for active duty. Those who saw action fought bravely.

The Emancipation Proclamation also isolated the Confederacy from potential allies in Europe. As the North suffered defeat after defeat, France and Britain threatened to recognize the Confederate government and give it aid. The cause of Union doubtless meant nothing to the people of these countries, but the cause of freedom did. Freeing the slaves brought them and their governments over to the Northern side.

B.3.

A Succession of Defeats

From the high point of Antietam, the political and military situation worsened. In the autumn elections the Republicans lost control of five states, including Illinois. The North was becoming tired of the war.

When McClellan refused to take the offensive after Antietam, Lincoln replaced him with Major General Ambrose E. Burnside. In December 1862, Burnside was defeated by Lee at Fredericksburg, Virginia. Union casualties exceeded 12,000, and the cry went up for new political and military leadership. The war also went badly in the West. Major General Don C. Buell was sent to take eastern Tennessee, where Union sentiment was strong. Like McClellan, however, he was too cautious and the Confederate army of General Braxton Bragg, eluded him. Lincoln then replaced him with Major General William S. Rosecrans. In December, “Old Rosey” repulsed Bragg at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, but the battle losses were so great that his army was out of action for months.

B.4.

Cabinet Crisis

In December 1862, Lincoln faced a crisis in his Cabinet. Secretary of the Treasury Chase had sought the support of the Jacobins to strengthen his chances for the Republican presidential nomination of 1864. These radical Republicans, looking for an opportunity to discredit Lincoln, turned against Secretary of State Seward, a former radical who now agreed with the president on most matters. They demanded that Seward be removed from the Cabinet and replaced as secretary of state by Chase. Lincoln needed Seward in the Cabinet, but he also needed Chase and the support of the radical wing of the party. It took all of Lincoln's great political skill to remain in control of his Cabinet and party.

Seward, unwilling to embarrass the president, resigned at once. Lincoln then called a meeting in which the other Cabinet members and the Jacobin senators were present. Confronted with his fellow Cabinet members, Chase could not attack Seward and Lincoln as he had done in private with the senators. Chase offered to resign. Lincoln refused to accept either his or Seward's resignation, and the two men returned to their posts. Chase and his allies now knew that in Lincoln they faced a skilled and resolute politician.

B.5.

Growth of the Union

The Civil War stimulated industry and agriculture in the North and West. The Union grew at a rapid rate. Between 1861 and 1865, 800,000 Europeans immigrated to the North, and 300,000 emigrants traveled west to settle in California and Oregon. To promote settlement, Lincoln signed three important acts in 1862. The Homestead Act offered settlers 65 hectares (160 acres) of Western land each (see Homestead Laws). The settler had only to reside on and use the land for five years and pay a nominal fee to the government. The Morrill Act gave the states free land to establish agricultural and mechanical colleges. The Pacific Railway Act incorporated the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads for the construction of a transcontinental railroad, which had long been a national goal to speed the development of the West. During Lincoln's administration, Kansas, Nevada, and West Virginia (the part of Virginia loyal to the Union) were granted statehood.

C.

Third Year in Office

After Fredericksburg, Lincoln replaced Burnside with Major General Joseph Hooker, who was promptly defeated at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. The soldiers fought bravely, but once again their generals failed them. Now Lee turned his army north to invade Pennsylvania. Lincoln replaced Hooker with Major General George G. Meade.

The two armies met at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania during the first days of July 1863. Meade chose to stay on the defensive, and for three days his Army of the Potomac repulsed Lee's assaults. On July 5, Lee retreated. His army had been beaten badly. Meade's troops had also suffered heavy casualties, and he let Lee get away. On the day Lee withdrew, Lincoln received word that General Grant had captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, the key Confederate fort on the Mississippi River (see Vicksburg, Campaign of). In November, Grant won a resounding victory at the Battle of Chattanooga, in Tennessee. Here at last was a general who would fight.

C.1.

The Draft

In 1862 the Confederacy issued a draft (conscription) call for all men between the ages of 18 and 45. In March 1863 the North passed a conscription act of its own. By its terms all men between the ages of 20 and 45 were liable to military service. However, any man who was called for the draft could avoid it by hiring a substitute or paying $300 to the government.

Prior to the draft the Union depended on the states to fill assigned quotas with volunteers. By offering sizable bounties, this system had worked well. Because of the bounty and a desire “to see this thing through,” many volunteers reenlisted for the duration of the war. These veterans formed the nucleus of the Union Army. Out of an army of 1.8 million, only 46,347 were draftees. Another 73,607 were substitutes for men who had been called for the draft. This was only 6 percent of the Union forces. In the South, the draft system provided 20 percent of the forces: 120,000 draftees and 70,000 substitutes.

Many groups rightfully denounced the conscription act as a rich man's law. Indeed, many wealthy men were able to bribe poorer men to take their place in the army. Violent opposition from workingmen and immigrants flared in many places. Draft riots broke out for five days in New York City, and troops returning from Gettysburg had to be called in to quell the disturbance. Although Lincoln was upset by these riots, he dared not suspend the draft.

C.2.

Reconstruction

Lincoln gave frequent consideration to the problem of reconstructing the governments of the rebel states and restoring them to their rightful place in the Union. Whenever Union armies gained control in a rebellious area, he encouraged the local people to form a government loyal to the Union. On December 8, 1863, Lincoln offered his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction to the Southern people. This pronouncement is often called Lincoln's 10 percent plan of Reconstruction after one of its provisions.

In this document, Lincoln offered a full pardon, or amnesty, to any Southerner, with the exception of certain leaders, who would take an oath to support “the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder.” Furthermore, those who took the oath in each state could vote to form a new state government. Lincoln promised to recognize the new government if two conditions were met: the new government accepted the elimination of slavery as required by the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863; and the number of those voting for the new government was at least 10 percent of those who had voted in the 1860 presidential election.

Lincoln was convinced that Reconstruction, or restoration, as he preferred to call it, was for the president to carry out. Congressional leaders thought otherwise. The Jacobins had a plan of reconstruction all their own, expressed in the Wade-Davis bill of July 1864. It was designed to punish the South for past transgressions and to make it subservient to the Republican Party of the North. The bill limited voting on new state constitutions to those who had never joined the rebel cause, required a loyalty oath by the majority of a state's citizens, and permanently deprived former rebel leaders of the right to vote. Lincoln killed the bill by using his pocket veto, and as long as he lived this plan made little headway.

C.3.

Financing the War

The Union was faced with the problem of raising huge sums of money to fight the war. New federal taxes were levied on legal documents, inheritances, and personal income, and the tariff was raised. The federal government also began printing paper money, which people called greenbacks because of the color of the ink. By 1863, $450 million worth of greenbacks were in use. The greenbacks' value was based only on the government's declaration of value. By contrast, the national bank notes that were also in circulation could be exchanged for their face value in gold. The value of a greenback varied and was usually lower than that of gold. At one point, $1.00 in gold was worth $2.85 in greenbacks. The increase in the money supply also caused prices to rise.

Bonds were another way to raise money. In February 1863, Lincoln signed the National Banking Act to make it easier to sell government bonds. The act also provided for a system of federally chartered, privately owned national banks that could issue notes (the national bank notes) backed by government bonds. The credit extended by the national banks increased the money supply while the conditions imposed by their charters created a safe, uniform national currency. Each bank was required by its charter to maintain adequate cash reserves, redeem notes issued by any other national bank, and stay within credit limits set by a federal official, the comptroller of the currency.

As revised the next year, this act was the basis of the American banking system until the Federal Reserve System began in 1913. It ended the era when state-chartered banks issued their own currency, which had been the system since President Andrew Jackson closed the government's central bank, the Second Bank of the United States, in 1836. However, instead of returning to a central bank, the nation now had private banks that were centrally regulated from Washington.

C.4.

Gettysburg Address

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln was called upon to deliver a “few appropriate remarks” at the ceremony dedicating a military cemetery at the Gettysburg battle site. The distinguished orator Edward Everett made the main address. It lasted two hours. Then Lincoln spoke. Although his speech was brief, it was a masterpiece. In it he rededicated the war effort to the principles of democracy. (For the text of this great speech, see Gettysburg Address).

D.

Fourth Year in Office

Besides the terrible burden of war, Lincoln endured many personal trials while in the White House. The strain of war was almost too much for Mrs. Lincoln. Four of her brothers were killed fighting for the Confederacy. A final blow, the death of her son Willie in 1862, left her mentally ill and morbidly preoccupied with death. She refused to allow her eldest son, Robert, to enter the army. He remained a civilian until the closing days of the war, when Lincoln secured him a relatively safe position on General Grant's staff.

Although weary and saddened by Willie's death and the terrible toll of the war, Lincoln continued to devote full time to his duties. His amazing physical strength enabled him to work long hours, but in spite of his many duties he found time to talk with the many visitors who called at the White House. Nothing was too small to escape his attention. He made a special effort to review death sentences by military courts-martial. He often sent urgent notes to his military commander about particular cases, and wherever possible he urged leniency. “Let him fight instead of being shot,” read one such note. And to Stanton he wrote, “Injustice has probably been done in this case, Sec. of War please examine it.”

D.1.

Final Military Strategy

In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to lieutenant general and commander in chief of all Union armies. Grant gave Major General William Tecumseh Sherman full command in the West while he himself came east to lead Meade's Army of the Potomac against Lee's veterans. Grant's overall strategy was bold. Instead of going after key Southern cities, he decided to attack principal Southern armies. Grant's objective was Lee, while Sherman was “to go for Joe Johnston,” the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. In so doing, Sherman was to strike toward Atlanta, Georgia, and then march across Georgia to the sea, destroying the resources of the Confederacy as he went. The strategy was similar to the modern concept of total war, and a man with less determination than Lincoln would have shied away from such a commitment to destruction.

D.2.

Presidential Nominations

Democrats and radical Republicans were dissatisfied with Lincoln's policies. The radicals first favored Chase and then Frémont for the 1864 presidential election. A splinter group did, in fact, nominate Frémont for president. But the moderate Republicans remained faithful to their leader, and, because the radicals could not get support for their candidate, Lincoln was unanimously nominated for president by the official Republican convention. Senator Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee and the only congressman from a secessionist state to remain loyal to the Union, was nominated for vice president. The platform called for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.

The Democrats nominated General McClellan as their presidential candidate. He was immensely popular with the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, and many people believed that Lincoln had been unjustified in relieving him of his command after Antietam. The Democratic platform called for an immediate end to the war, which was characterized as “four years of failure.” However, McClellan, who favored continuing the war, disavowed his party's platform.

D.3.

Election of 1864

In the spring and summer of 1864, Lincoln did not think he would win the election. Grant's offensive was stalled at Petersburg, Virginia, and Sherman had not yet delivered a decisive blow against Johnston. In July, Washington itself was briefly threatened by a Confederate force under General Jubal Early. The Jacobins, as always, were a continual source of trouble for Lincoln. In August, U.S. Senator Benjamin F. Wade and U.S. Representative Henry W. Davis published a manifesto bitterly denouncing Lincoln's lenient Reconstruction policy.

Finally, in September the political and military situation took a turn for the better. Moderate Republicans prevailed on Frémont to withdraw from the race, and the party united behind Lincoln. Sherman took Atlanta and forced the Confederates to retreat north to Tennessee. Major General Philip Sheridan, on orders from Grant, destroyed the Shenandoah Valley, the breadbasket of Lee's army. Victory seemed near at last.

Under these conditions, Lincoln won an easy victory. He had 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 21. The Democrats carried only Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey. Lincoln polled 2,206,938 popular votes to McClellan's 1,803,787. Even the soldier vote went to Lincoln, or “Father Abraham,” as he was called.

D.4.

Hampton Roads Conference

In December, Major General George H. Thomas's army smashed the Confederate Army of Tennessee at the Battle of Nashville. In December, Sherman took Savannah, Georgia, and began his march north to join Grant's army, which was ready for a final breakthrough at Petersburg. In February 1865, Lincoln and Seward met with Lincoln's old friend, Confederate Vice President Stephens, and two other Southern representatives at Hampton Roads, Virginia, to discuss peace terms. Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation, and he insisted on the restoration of the Union without slavery. He offered pardons to all former Confederates and promised to recommend compensation of slave owners for their losses. But even these terms were unacceptable to the South (see Hampton Roads Conference).