No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865 page 5

No Peace without Victory, 1861–1865

By James M. McPherson,
President of the Association, 2003

In the same draft, however, and in an interview two days later with a pair of Wisconsin Republicans, Lincoln explained forcefully and eloquently why he included abandonment of slavery as a precondition for peace. "No human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done," he insisted. Lincoln pointed out that 100,000 or more black soldiers and sailors were fighting for the Union. "If they stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept." To abandon emancipation would "ruin the Union cause itself," Lincoln continued. "All recruiting of colored men would instantly cease, and all colored men in our service would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them? ... I should be damned in time and eternity for so doing. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends and enemies, come what will."41

Recognizing the inconsistency of these sentiments with his "let Jefferson Davis try me" challenge, Lincoln filed that letter away unsent. When he did so, he and everyone else believed that he would be defeated for reelection on the peace issue. "I am going to be beaten," he told a visitor, "and unless some great change takes place badly beaten." On August 23, Lincoln wrote his famous "blind memorandum" and asked Cabinet members to endorse it sight unseen: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards."42

This memorandum may have been prompted by a letter Lincoln received that day from Henry Raymond. "The tide is setting strongly against us," wrote the editor. "Two special causes are assigned to this great reaction in public sentiment,—the want of military success, and the impression ... that we can have peace with Union if we would ... [but] that we are not to have peace in any event under this administration until Slavery is abandoned." To allay this impression, Raymond urged Lincoln to appoint a commissioner to "make distinct proffers of peace to Davis ... on the sole condition" of reunion, leaving "all the other questions to be settled in a convention of all the people of all the States." Of course, Raymond added, Davis would reject such a proffer, and this rejection would "dispel all the delusions about peace that prevail in the North ... [and] reconcile public sentiment to the War, the draft, & the tax as inevitable necessities."43

Once again, Lincoln seemed to yield to such pressure. On August 24, he drafted instructions for Raymond himself to go to Richmond and "propose, on behalf [of] this government, that upon the restoration of the Union and national authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful modes." Lincoln's private secretaries and later biographers, John G. Nicolay and John Hay, maintain that Lincoln had no intention of sending Raymond to Richmond. His purpose in drafting this document, they assert, was to make the editor a "witness of its absurdity."44

In any event, Raymond and the rest of the Republican National Committee met with Lincoln and three Cabinet members on August 25. The committeemen, according to Nicolay, were "laboring under a severe fit of despondency and discouragement ... almost the condition of a disastrous panic." Lincoln convinced them that the proposed commission to Richmond "would be utter ruination ... worse than losing the Presidential contest—it would be ignominiously surrendering it in advance."45 To back away from emancipation would not only betray a promise, it would also give the impression of an administration floundering in panic and would alienate the radical wing of the Republican Party.46 After all, Lincoln had been renominated on a platform pledging a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery and calling for the "unconditional surrender" of the rebels. For weal or woe, Lincoln intended to stand on that platform.47

For a week after that fateful meeting at the White House, woe seemed to be the fate of Lincoln's reelection prospects. On August 31, the Democrats nominated McClellan for president and a Peace Democrat for vice-president on a platform that declared, "After four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war ... [we] demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union."48 This last phrase was little more than window dressing; almost everyone recognized that an appeal by the U.S. government for an armistice would be tantamount to confessing defeat.49 McClellan himself recognized this, and his letter accepting the nomination made peace negotiations contingent on prior agreement to reunion as a basis for such negotiations.50

Whether these internal Democratic contradictions would be put to the test suddenly became moot. On September 3, a telegram from General Sherman arrived in Washington: "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won." This news turned morale around 180 degrees in both North and South. "Glorious news this morning," wrote George Templeton Strong in his diary. "Atlanta taken at last!!! ... It is (coming at this political crisis) the greatest event of the war."51 The Richmond Examiner reflected with despair that "the disaster at Atlanta" came "in the very nick of time" to "save the party of Lincoln from irretrievable ruin ... [It] obscures the prospect of peace, late so bright. It will diffuse gloom over the South." One of the North's foremost clergymen, Joseph P. Thompson, delivered a widely published sermon whose title summed up the meaning of Atlanta: "Peace through Victory."52

Few in the North urged this policy with more determination than Union soldiers themselves. Although many of them had a lingering affection for McClellan, most denounced the war-failure plank of the Democratic platform, and a remarkable 78 percent of them voted for Lincoln. "To ellect McClellan would be to undo all that we have don in the past four years," wrote a Michigan corporal. "Old Abe is slow but sure, he will accept nothing but an unconditional surrender." A New York lieutenant, a former Democrat, repudiated his party. "I had rather stay out here a lifetime (much as I dislike it)," he wrote, "than consent to a division of our country ... We all want peace, but none any but an honorable one."53

Prospects for that honorable peace—a peace through victory—continued to brighten through the fall and winter. General Philip Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah won several important victories in September and October. Lincoln was triumphantly reelected in November. General George Thomas's Union Army of the Cumberland virtually destroyed the Confederate Army of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville in mid-December. A month later, a combined assault by Union naval and army forces captured Fort Fisher in North Carolina, closing the port of Wilmington, which had been the principal remaining terminus for blockade runners. In his annual message to Congress in December, Lincoln promised no let-up in the war. Northern determination to see the matter through "was never more firm, nor more nearly unanimous, than now," said the president. But this consummation could not be achieved by negotiations with "the insurgent leader," Jefferson Davis, who "does not attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He cannot voluntarily reaccept the Union; we cannot voluntarily yield it. Between him and us the issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory."54

Nevertheless, one more bid to end the war by mutual agreement took place. This one was launched by Francis Preston Blair, the old Jacksonian Democrat whose powerful family had become Republicans in the mid-1850s. Blair had maintained his ties across party lines, however, and even across the bloody chasm of war. With Lincoln's tacit consent, Blair traveled to Richmond under flag of truce in January 1865 to visit his former friend and political associate Jefferson Davis. Although the content of their conversations remained secret, Blair's presence in Richmond gave rise to endless speculation in the press both North and South. Blair's purpose was to see whether there might be some way to reunite Union and Confederacy in order to put an end to the internecine bloodletting.

Signs abounded that the Southern people, if not President Davis, were prepared to give up. Desertions from Confederate armies soared. The previously indefatigable chief of Confederate ordnance, Josiah Gorgas, made despairing entries in his diary during January: "Where is this to end? No money in the Treasury, no food to feed Gen. Lee's Army, no troops to oppose Gen. Sherman ... There is a strong disposition among members of congress to come to terms with the enemy, feeling that we cannot carry on the war any longer with hope of success. Wife & I sit talking of going to Mexico to live out the remnant of our days."55

Mexico was also on Blair's mind. That country experienced its own civil war in the 1860s, prompting Louis Napoleon to send 35,000 French troops and to install Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian as emperor of Mexico in 1864. Blair seemed obsessed with the idea that a joint campaign of Union and Confederate armies to throw the French out of Mexico would pave the way to reunion. Hints of Blair's suggestion to Davis of such a project leaked out and elicited cautious approval by Richmond newspapers and more enthusiastic endorsement by the jingo press in the North.56 Davis returned a cool response to this Mexican scheme, but he did give Blair a letter for Lincoln's eyes offering to appoint commissioners to "enter into conference with a view to secure peace to the two countries."57

Lincoln wanted nothing to do with Blair's proposed Mexican adventure. But the president thought he saw an opportunity to end the war on his own terms without compromising his refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. He authorized Blair to return to Richmond with an offer to receive any commissioner that Davis "may informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the people of our one common country."58

Davis overlooked the discrepancy between "two countries" and "one common country." He appointed a commission composed of Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens, President pro tem of the Senate Robert M. T. Hunter, and Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice. Davis expected their efforts to fail because he knew Lincoln would stick to his terms of Union and freedom. This was the outcome Davis wanted, for it would enable him to rally flagging Southern spirits to keep up the fight as the only alternative to degrading submission.59

This peace effort almost foundered before it was launched. Lincoln sent word to military commanders in Virginia that the Confederate commissioners should not be allowed through the lines for an "informal conference" with Secretary of State Seward, whom he had sent to Virginia, unless they agreed in advance to Lincoln's "one common country" phrase as a basis for talks. The commissioners instead showed to the army major Lincoln dispatched to meet them their "two countries" instructions from Davis. The major therefore barred them from crossing Union lines.

That would seem to have ended the matter. But this affair had generated huge coverage in the press—more even than the peace flurries of the previous summer—and had raised hopes that this cruel war might soon be over. On the morning of February 2, Lincoln read a telegram from General Grant: "I am convinced, upon conversation with Messrs Stevens & Hunter that their intentions are good and their desire sincere to restore peace and union ... I am sorry however that Mr. Lincoln cannot have an interview with [them] ... I fear now their going back without any expression from anyone in authority will have a bad influence."60

Grant's intervention was decisive. On the spur of the moment, Lincoln decided to go to Virginia to join Seward for a personal meeting with the commissioners. This extraordinary, "informal" four-hour meeting of the five men took place February 3 on the Union steamer River Queen anchored in Hampton Roads. No aides were present and no formal record was kept, although Seward and Campbell wrote brief summaries and Stephens later penned a lengthy account, which must be used with care.61 Despite an underlying tension, the mood was relaxed. Lincoln and Stephens had been friends and fellow Whigs in Congress nearly two decades earlier, providing a basis for a cordial atmosphere.

Lincoln nevertheless stuck to the terms he had written out for Seward before the president had decided to join him: "1 The restoration of the National authority throughout all the States. 2 No receding by the Executive of the United States, on the Slavery question ... 3 No cessation of hostilities short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government."62 Stephens tried to change the subject by alluding to Blair's Mexican project; Lincoln promptly disavowed it. What about an armistice while peace negotiations took place? asked the Confederates. No armistice, replied Lincoln, reiterating his third condition. Well, then, said Hunter, would it be possible to hold official negotiations while the war went on? After all, he noted, even King Charles I had entered into agreements with rebels in arms during the English civil war. "I do not profess to be posted in history," replied Lincoln—probably with a twinkle in his eye. "All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head."63

On questions of punishing Confederate leaders and confiscating Southern property, Lincoln promised generous treatment based on his power of pardon. With respect to slavery, Lincoln even suggested that if Confederate states abolished it themselves as part of a peace settlement, he would ask Congress for partial compensation. In any event, the Union Congress had passed the Thirteenth Amendment three days earlier, and several states, including Lincoln's Illinois as the first, had already ratified it.64 Slavery was dead, implied Lincoln, and to avoid further bloodshed the Confederate leaders should recognize that the Confederacy itself would soon be in the same condition.

Whatever their personal convictions, the commissioners had no authority to concede the death of their nation. They returned sadly to Richmond and admitted their failure to President Davis—who was neither surprised nor disappointed. Davis reported to the Confederate Congress that Lincoln's terms required "degrading submission" and "humiliating surrender." Richmond newspapers echoed the president's angry words. The Examiner paraphrased Lincoln in this fashion: "Down upon your knees, Confederates! ... your mouths in the dust; kiss the rod, confess your sins." Davis addressed a rally in Richmond. He predicted that Seward and "His Majesty Abraham the First" would find "they had been speaking to their masters," for Southern armies would yet "compel the Yankees, in less than twelve months, to petition us for peace on our own terms."65

War fever in Richmond rose higher than at any time since April 1861. "Every one thinks the Confederacy will at once gather up its military strength and strike such blows as will astonish the world," wrote the War Department clerk John Jones. One of the more moderate Richmond newspapers declared that "to talk now of any other arbitrament than that of the sword is to betray cowardice and treachery." We must "conquer or die," declared another. "There is no alternative. We must make good our independence, defend our institutions ... or give up the ... lands we have tilled, the slaves we have owned ... all indeed that makes existence valuable."66

So be it, responded the Northern press. Davis had made it clear, conceded the one-time peace negotiator Horace Greeley, that we could only have "Peace through War." The New York Times pointed out that "we have always demanded 'unconditional surrender' ... We must fight it out."67 Fight it out they did, for two more months, during which several thousand more young men died. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln acknowledged that in 1861 "neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained" or "a result [so] fundamental and astounding." The same can be said of many wars. None of the nations that opened fire with the Guns of August 1914 foresaw the magnitude or duration of that war. The Germans who invaded Poland in 1939 and the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor two years later surely did not expect such a fundamental and astounding result of their actions. Nor, presumably, did the U.S. government when it sent American troops to South Vietnam in the 1960s. As historians, we cannot know—though we can certainly speculate—that the leaders of these nations would have acted differently if they could have foreseen the consequences. It is also quite possible that Americans in 1861 would have chosen a different course if they knew that the war into which they plunged would last four years and cost 620,000 lives. In any event, when Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term on March 4, 1865, he remained committed to the fundamental and astounding results of a Union victory, no matter what it cost and how long it took. He served notice that, if necessary, the war would continue "until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword."68

Mercifully, it did not take that long. Three months after Jefferson Davis had breathed defiance to "His Majesty Abraham the First," the ex-Confederate Ordnance Chief Josiah Gorgas pronounced his nation's epitaph: "The calamity which has fallen upon us in the total destruction of our government is of a character so overwhelming that I am as yet unable to comprehend it ... It is marvelous that a people that a month ago had money, armies, and the attributes of a nation should to-day be no more ... Will it be so when the Soul leaves the body behind it?"69