CHAPTER XXVIII LINCOLN'S RE-ELECTION IN 1864 66 IT WAS not until the fall of 1863 that Abraham Lincoln was able to point to any substantial results from the long months of hard thought and cautious experiment he had given to the Civil War. By that time he did have something to show. The borders of the Confederacy had been pressed back and shut in by an impregnable wall of ships and men. Not only were the borders of the Confederacy narrowed; the territory had been cut in two by the opening of the Mississippi, which, in Lincoln's expressive phrase, now ran unvexed to the sea." He had a war machine at last which kept the ranks of the army full. He had found a commander-inchief in Grant; and, not less important, he had found, simultaneously with Grant, also Sherman, McPherson, and Thomas, as well as the proper places for the men with whom he had tried such costly experiments-for Burnside and Hooker. He had his first effective results, too, from emancipation, that policy which he had inaugurated with such foreboding. Fully 100,000 former slaves were now in the United States service, and they had proved beyond question their value as soldiers. More than this, it was evident that some form of emancipation would soon be adopted by the former slave States of Tennessee, Arkansas, Maryland, and Missouri. At every point, in short, the policy which Lincoln had set in motion with painful foresight and labor was working as he had believed it would work, but it was working slowly. He saw that many months of struggle and blood and pa 170 Лence were needed to complete his task; many months-and in less than a year there would be a presidential election, and he might be obliged to leave his task unfinished. He did not hesitate to say frankly that he wanted the opportunity to finish it. Among the leaders of the Republican party were a few conservatives who, in the fall of 1863, supported Lincoln in his desire for a second term; but there were more who doubted his ability and who were secretly looking for an abler man. At the same time, a strong and open opposition to his re-election had developed in the radical wing of the party. The real cause of this opposition was Lincoln's unswervable purpose to use emancipation purely as a military measure. The earliest active form this opposition took was probably under the direction of Horace Greeley. In the spring of 1863, Mr. Greeley had become thoroughly disheartened by the slow progress of the war and the meager results of the Emancipation Proclamation. He was looking in every direction for some one to replace Lincoln, and eventually he settled on General Rosecrans, who at that moment was the most successful general before the country. Greeley, after consulting with a number of Republican leaders, decided that some one should go to Rosecrans and sound him. James R. Gilmore (“ Edmund Kirke ") was chosen for this mission. Mr. Gilmore recounts, in his "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln," as an evidence of the extent of the discontent with Lincoln, that when he started on his mission, Mr. Greeley gave him letters to Rosecrans from about all the more prominent Republican leaders except Roscoe Conkling, Charles Sumner, and Henry Wilson. Mr. Greeley's idea was, as he instructed Mr. Gilmore, to find out, first, if Rosecrans was "sound on the goose" (political slang for sound on the anti-slavery policy), and, socondly, if he would consider the nomination to the presi dency. If Mr. Gilmore found Rosecrans satisfactory, Greeley declared that he would force Lincoln to resign, put Hamlin in his place, and compel the latter to give Rosecrans the command of the whole army. His idea was, no doubt, that the war would then be finished promptly and Rosecrans would naturally be the candidate in 1864. Mr. Gilmore went on his mission. Rosecrans seemed to him to fulfil Mr. Greeley's ideas, and finally he laid the case before him. The General replied very promptly: "My place is here. The country gave me my education, and so has a right to my military services." He also declared that Mr. Greeley was wrong in his estimate of Lincoln and that time would show it. Lincoln knew thoroughly the feeling of the radicals at this time; he knew the danger there was to his hopes of a second term in opposing them; but he could be neither persuaded nor frightened into modifying his policy. The most conspicuous example of his firmness was in the case of the Missouri radicals. The radical party in Missouri was composed of men of great intelligence and perfect loyalty; but they were men of the Frémont type, idealists, incapable of compromise and impatient of caution. They had been in constant conflict with the conservatives of the State since the breaking out of the war, and by the spring of 1863, the rupture had become almost a national affair. Both sides claimed to be Union men and to believe in emancipation; but while the conservatives believed in gradual emancipation, the radicals demanded that it be immediate. The fight became so bitter that, as Lincoln said to one of the radicals who came to him early in 1863, begging his interference: "Either party would rather see the defeat of their adversary than that of Jefferson Davis. You ought to have your heads knocked together," he added in his exasperation. |