Lincoln's Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24-April 8, 1865
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Lincoln's Greatest Journey: Sixteen Days that Changed a Presidency, March 24-April 8, 1865
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Overview
March 1865: The United States was at a crossroads and, truth be told, Abraham Lincoln was a sick man. I am very unwell, he confided to a close acquaintance. A vast and terrible civil war was winding down, leaving momentous questions for a war-weary president to address. A timely invitation from Gen. Ulysses S. Grant provided the impetus for an escape to City Point, Virginia, a journey from which Abraham Lincoln drew much more than he ever expected. This book offers the first comprehensive account of a momentous time in his presidency.
Lincoln made the trip to escape the constant interruptions in the capital that were draining his vitality, and to make his personal amends for presiding over the most destructive war in American history in order to save the nation. Lincoln returned to Washington sixteen days later with a renewed sense of purpose, urgency, and direction that would fundamentally shape his second-term agenda.
This was his longest break from the White House since he had taken office, and until now little has been known about it. Lincoln’s Greatest Journey represents the most extensively researched and detailed story of these decisive sixteen days at City Point, in a narrative laden with many previously unpublished accounts that fill in gaps and clear up misconceptions. A fresh, more complete picture of Lincoln emerges, set against a dramatically new narrative of what really happened during those last weeks of his life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611213270 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Savas Beatie |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 360 |
| Sales rank: | 599,922 |
| File size: | 22 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
January - March, 1865
"It was an immense relief to him to be away from Washington."
Four years of Civil War had taken a heavy toll of Abraham Lincoln. Friends and colleagues were shocked by the man they now encountered. A Springfield acquaintance visiting in late February 1865, thought that he "looked badly and felt badly — apparently more depressed than I have seen him since he became President," while another at the same time observed that he "appeared to be worn out and almost completely exhausted." "I am very unwell," Lincoln confided to a close acquaintance at this time. A reporter for the Chicago Tribune wrote that many of the president's visitors "were painfully impressed with his gaunt, skeleton-like appearance," while the editor of the New York Tribune described his face as "care-ploughed, tempest-tossed and weatherbeaten." Lincoln was so ill by mid-March that he had to conduct a Cabinet meeting in his bedroom. "I shall never live to see peace," he told Harriet Beecher Stowe at this time, "this war is killing me."
The stresses began with personal matters. His wife, Mary, was continuing to show signs of what later writers would characterize as bipolar disorder: depression, migraines, and obsessive tendencies. Not having the benefit of such a modern analysis, Lincoln feared his wife was going crazy. Atop that were worries about his eldest son, Robert, who was eager to see something of the war in uniform. Father and son were willing, but Mary opposed it. "I am so frightened he may never come back to us," she said. The matter assumed a political dimension when the First Lady was challenged by a New York senator who demanded to know: "Why isn't Robert in the army?"She finally compromised on the arrangement that saw her eldest attached to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's staff. Though not a field officer, Robert's duties put him in harm's way, and the Lincolns — who had lost a son from illness as recently as 1862 — worried about losing another.
Then there were the stresses connected to the Office of the President. Lincoln's reelection once more opened the floodgates for job seekers eager to be rewarded for their efforts on his behalf. He tried to get ahead of the problem by announcing that he would be making very few changes this time around. Still they came, and it seemed to Lincoln that every one "darted at him, and with thumb and finger carried off a portion of his vitality." When he attended a March opera performance in the company of Colonel James Grant Wilson, he explained that he didn't come for the music, "but for the rest. I am being hounded to death by office-seekers, who pursue me early and late, and it is simply to get two or three hours' relief that I am here." He called on a friendly senator from New Hampshire and pleaded, "Can't you and others start a public sentiment in favor of making no changes in offices except for good and sufficient cause? It seems as though the bare thought of going through again what I did the first year here would crush me."
Looming over all of this were the profound stresses of being commander-in-chief in a time of war. Lincoln was not the first American president to govern in wartime, but none of the previous occasions had so pervaded the national fabric as this. No one realized it more than the man whose decisions had sent thousands of young men to their death. Speaking in June 1864, Lincoln explained his perspective in the starkest of terms. "War, at the best, is terrible," he said, "and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible. It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented. ... It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the 'heavens are hung in black.' Yet it continues."
It speaks to Lincoln's ability to focus on what was important that, despite the distractions, he quietly and patiently pulled strings in early 1865 to assure Congressional approval of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. It further drained him, but he persisted and made full use of the prestige and patronage of the Executive branch to muster the necessary House support. When the vote was called on January 31, 1865, it passed with just three more than the needed two-thirds majority. Lincoln declared it "a great moral victory." In its aftermath, he began thinking more and more about escaping Washington for a while.
Since taking office on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln had been a reluctant and very occasional out-of-town traveler. During his entire first term he had undertaken just 16 trips away from the capital, averaging 3.25 days apiece. These excursions invariably involved either military matters or official appearances. What passed for a rest break were the early summer and late fall weeks (variously from June 1862 to November 1864) that he spent with his family in a house on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home in northeast Washington, an easy three-mile ride from the White House. Even there he was not free from the press of visitors or the need to commute nearly every day to the office to handle necessary matters. With spring military operations in the offing, time away seemed like an unobtainable luxury. Still, he had made no definite decision when an unexpected telegram arrived on March 20, 1865, that made it for him.
Approximately 130 miles south from Washington was City Point, Virginia, known today as Hopewell, just where the Appomattox River entered the James River. Once the clearinghouse for shipping intended for Petersburg (ten river miles distant), since June 1864, it had been the logistical hub for Union forces operating against Richmond and Petersburg. Perched atop a long bluff rising over a busy waterfront and at the point of land thrust between the two rivers was the plantation manor of Dr. Richard Eppes, whose family had occupied the house for more than a century. The current residents had been uprooted when Union troops arrived and the good doctor spent much of the war working as a contract surgeon in a Petersburg Confederate military hospital.
A row of small rustic log cabins (replacing tents in the fall of 1864) stretched out in an orderly line running east of the plantation house. These unassuming habitations represented the command-and-control center for all the armies of the United States. A visitor about this time mused that the "whole place reminds one of a frontier settlement on the skirts of our Indian territories." Near the middle of the line was a two-room structure that doubled as head- and living-quarters for General Grant, who had been general-in-chief for the army's operations since March 1864. Beginning right after January 1, 1865, the cabin was also occupied by Grant's wife, Julia, and their young son, Jesse. Julia described herself as "snugly nestled away" and assured a friend that her general's headquarters "can be as private as a home."
The task of prosecuting the war was Grant's principal, but not his sole, responsibility; even with an abundantly manned War Department in Washington and a modest staff at City Point, the general's days were filled with matters large and small. On the small side, Grant had to intervene in the first three weeks of March for several officers regarding official recognition of their proper ranks, investigate fraud charges laid against an officer at Fortress Monroe, and settle a turf war between the officer commanding in the Baltimore area and the irate railroad president whose trains he was appropriating. A sad personal matter was injected on March 19 when he learned of the death of his oldest sister, Clara, who had passed away thirteen days earlier. His father wrote two letters announcing the fact, the second taking his son to task for his silence. "Your last letter made me feel very badly," Grant told his father.
The list of more significant items requiring his attention that month seemed endless. There were touchy issues regarding the treatment and exchange of prisoners of war, the matter of commodity traders with official Washington passes attempting to move merchandise (mostly tobacco and cotton) between the battle lines, and various military districts needing replacement officers. Important matters to be sure, but they paled in comparison with the decisions Grant had to make every day to keep the prosecution of the war on track.
The essence of Grant's overall plan was to simultaneously press the enemy across the country in as many strategic places as possible, but he found instilling a sense of urgency in distant commanders both a challenge and a frustration. Topping his list of problem people was Major General Edward R. S. Canby, headquartered in New Orleans and charged with capturing the Confederate port of Mobile, Alabama. Grant had wanted it done back in December when Major General William Tecumseh Sherman was beginning his sweep through Georgia, but Canby found reasons to procrastinate. He sidestepped several specific instructions Grant gave him regarding officer appointments and seemed to be spending more time building an infrastructure than organizing an advance. "I am very much dissatisfied with Canby," Grant complained to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton on March 14.
Another key officer whose actions fell below Grant's expectations was Major General George H. Thomas. Thomas had delivered a significant victory to the Union in December 1864 at Nashville, but since then he had consistently underperformed, at least in Grant's estimation. Grant did not hesitate to take from Thomas the infantry he needed to support offensives elsewhere. His hope now was that the general would dispatch his ample cavalry in several important raids, but instead of reports of actions accomplished, Grant received a litany of reasons for delay. He vented some of his frustration in a March 16 letter, describing Thomas as "slow beyond excuse." Every dalliance at this critical stage, Grant believed, raised the specter of a long summer of costly operations.
The two shining stars in his constellation were William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan. Of the pair, he was closest to Sherman. They shared a biography that included a hardscrabble youth, West Point studies, civilian interludes where failure was a regular visitor, and a feeling that the military life offered the only viable framework for success and recognition. Their personalities, however, were decidedly different. Sherman thought himself more susceptible to doubt than his friend. "I am more likely to change my orders or countermarch my command than he is," explained Sherman. "He uses such information as he has according to his best judgment; he issues his orders and does his level best to carry them out without much reference to what is going on about him and, so far, experience seems to have fully justified him."
Only Sherman could have convinced a skeptical Grant to allow the operation that became known as the "March to the Sea," or that tramping his men overland from Savannah to Virginia was better than waiting for sufficient sea transportation to materialize. Both men grasped the intricacies of modern operational planning, and both had the self-confidence to know when to act and the courage of convictions to act decisively. "To you," Sherman confided to Grant, "I can always unfold my thoughts as one worthy and capable of appreciating the feelings of a soldier and gentleman."
Grant's relationship with Sheridan was different. Grant relied on him to efficiently and effectively accomplish any task given him — just as he trusted Sherman. He knew Sheridan to be a master of the military craft, amply provided with determination, courage, and sheer force of will; unbending in his execution of orders, and ambitious. In many ways he was Sherman without the massive intellectual framework that gave Sherman the confidence to operate independently. Sherman and Grant complemented each other and enhanced each other's skill set; Sheridan always seemed to require an element that Sherman's or Grant's support provided. With their backing he was unstoppable.
Both men had contributed to Grant's anxieties in early March as they disconnected communications in order to carry out their missions. Each was out of contact with higher authorities for days and even weeks as they managed their operations — Sherman somewhere in North Carolina and Sheridan deep in the southern Shenandoah Valley. Grant was reduced to reading Richmond newspapers to glean some evidence of their activities, though the Rebel editors always made it seem as if each had met with disaster. It wasn't until March 12 that he established direct contact with Sheridan, and March 16 with Sherman.
Grant could now finalize his plans to break the Petersburg stalemate and (he hoped) end of the war. He believed that his superior numbers and resources would prevail if he could lever Lee's army out of its entrenchments and transform the situation to a more fluid fight in the open. He had known this since the Petersburg campaign began in June 1864, but now, nearly a year later, everything finally seemed right. He had crafted a battle plan that he believed would get the job done.
Throughout this period Grant's contacts with President Lincoln had been occasional and not always supportive. He complained to Secretary of War Stanton on March 8 that "Rebel prisoners in the North are allowed to take the oath of allegiance and go free," and thought that such a program was wrong. The answer came from Lincoln who admitted that this was happening "in accordance with the rule I proposed." After explaining why he had initiated this policy, Lincoln insisted that "on the whole I believe what I have done in this ways has done good rather than harm." One important constant remained, however, a mutual respect. The same day Lincoln's policy note arrived another went to the White House from Grant recommending the appointment of the son of an army general as a West Point cadet — a request that was promptly honored.
As the days warmed, Grant had been steadily but gently lobbied by his wife to "invite Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln down to visit the army; so many people were coming, and the weather was simply delightful." Julia Grant was motivated by a simple sense of kindness; she had seen several newspaper accounts commenting on the "exhausted appearance of the President" and believed a little time out of the office would do him good. The general wasn't convinced.
"If President Lincoln wishes to come down, he will not wait to be asked," he huffed. "It is not my place to invite him."
"Yes, it is," Julia countered. "You know all that has been said about his interference with army movements, and he will never come for fear of appearing to meddle with army affairs."
Grant still shook his head. Julia now had the happy thought to consult with the one person at City Point who would know for sure. U. S. Grant had received a note from Lincoln not long after the New Year writing "only as a friend" and asking if it would be possible for his 22-year-old son Robert to enter the service as part of Grant's military family "with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means." Grant promptly answered that he would "be most happy to have him in my Military family ... and I would ... say give [him] the rank of Captain." He also made it clear that young Lincoln should be paid and treated like any other officer. Robert Todd Lincoln's appointment was finalized on February 11, and he came to City Point shortly after the president's second inauguration. Julia Grant now corralled him, wanting to know "why his father and mother did not come down for a visit."
"I suppose they would, if they were sure they would not be intruding," the young man answered.
Julia promptly renewed the matter with her husband who did something he would never have done as a military man: he capitulated,
CITY POINT, Va., March 20, 1865 — 10 a. m.
His Excellency A. Lincoln, President of the United States:
Can you not visit City Point for a day or two? I would like very much to see you, and I think the rest would do you good.
Respectfully, yours, &c. U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General.
That telegram settled Lincoln's thinking about the matter. Although he never explained why he accepted Grant's invitation, there were compelling reasons for him to do so: to make sure that he and Grant were on the same page regarding the military end to the war, to honor the soldiers and sailors for their service and sacrifice, and to clear his mind to confront the multitude of issues that would remain after the fighting stopped. The fact that Lincoln chose to escape Washington by traveling to an active combat area with no urgent matters directing him there speaks to a deeper emotional motivation for his decision. A great and terrible chapter of American history was coming to a close, and the man who decried it as a "mighty scourge of war" needed very much to personally confront the costs, consequences, and future it had bequeathed the country.
He answered Grant's note later the same day:
Your kind invitation received. Had already thought of going immediately after the next rain. Will go sooner if any reason for it. Mrs. L. and a few others will probably accompany me. Will notify you of exact time, once it shall be fixed upon.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Lincoln's Greatest Journey"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Noah Andre Trudeau.
Excerpted by permission of Savas Beatie LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface,
Chapter 1: January-March, 1865,
Chapter 2: Saturday, March 25, 1865,
Chapter 3: Sunday, March 26, 1865,
Chapter 4: Monday, March 27, 1865,
Chapter 5: Tuesday, March 28, 1865,
Chapter 6: Wednesday, March 29, 1865,
Chapter 7: Thursday, March 30, 1865,
Chapter 8: Friday, March 31, 1865,
Chapter 9: Saturday, April 1, 1865,
Chapter 10: Sunday, April 2, 1865,
Chapter 11: Monday, April 3, 1865,
Chapter 12: Tuesday, April 4, 1865,
Chapter 13: Wednesday, April 5, 1865,
Chapter 14: Thursday, April 6, 1865,
Chapter 15: Friday, April 7, 1865,
Chapter 16: Saturday, April 8, 1865,
Chapter 17: Sunday, April 9, 1865,
Epilogue,
Appendix One: Sources Casebook,
Appendix Two: Marine Muster Roll, USS ITL[Malvern]ITL,
Chapter Notes,
Bibliography,
Acknowledgments,
