CHAPTER XXXVII.

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS.

The Legislative Branch-The Committee on the Conduct of the WarUseful Interference-Councils and Umpires-Political Complications Beginning-Civilian and Soldier.

THE position of President Lincoln in the year 1862 cannot be studied advantageously without a glance at his relations to the National Legislature which assembled at Washington in the winter.

Congress came together with the majority of its membership in a red heat of patriotism. There was a minority, indeed, and the material for an "opposition," but only a very few ultraists cared to be known as anti-war men. Omitting the extreme Copperheads, every member was under a sort of triple pressure:—of his own ideas as to the prosecution of the war; of a knowledge of the feverish eagerness of his constituents for the suppression of the Rebellion; and of the even greater eagerness of a persistent fraction of that same constituency to obtain civil or military offices under the general government.

There were, indeed, a great many offices to be given, and these were all nominally at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln. He had a vast amount of trouble in avoiding the onerous responsibility of giving that wide business his personal attention. He succeeded fairly well, but could not escape altogether. He drily remarked of it all that there were twenty applicants for each office, and every time he filled one he made twenty enemies. The nineteen were enemies because they were disappointed, and the man appointed hated him because he

thought he ought to have a better place or because he was indebted for it to some other man.

As a body, Congress was profoundly ignorant of the Dictatorship, although a few voices made bold to denounce it. The idea prevailed that the government had traveled thus far by virtue of the work done during the hasty summer session of 1861. The President had obeyed and followed very well, but must now be again taken in hand a little. It was not long before the "Legislative Branch" of the government began to interfere with the "Executive Branch" in military matters. It was a little more patriotic than constitutional, but Mr. Lincoln had no manner of objection. When, in December, 1861, Congress appointed a strong and capable "Committee on the Conduct of the War," its members were at once taken into hearty and intimate consultation. What would surely have been a peril or a hindrance to a weak or a selfish ruler was transformed at once into an additional and powerful guaranty of Congressional co-operation. It was not so much, thenceforward, that Congress had assumed a part of the Executive province, but that the Executive had deftly provided himself with personal and official representatives upon the floor of Senate and House.

This Committee, constantly advised with, cordially invited to investigate, to consider, to come and to go, and to know everything before it happened, became a priceless safety-valve for the growing discontent over inexplicable delays. Without it, there can now be little question that Mr. Lincoln would have been more seriously misunderstood and even antagonized by the body of men nominally represented by the committee.

The President of the United States is Constitutionally the Commander-in-Chief, and Abraham Lincoln was also actually Dictator; but he was entirely at ease as to all his rights and dignities when a joint committee of Senators and Representatives freely summoned before them his military officers, by the dozen, and called for their views of things in general and their

professional opinions of battles and campaigns. He knew beforehand that the sure result would be the strong and unanimous sympathy of that "jury" of clear-headed men, with him personally, and their approval of the general outlines of his policy, however much they might disagree among themselves or with him as to details of specific operations. In the long run it turned out as he expected.

Congress had appointed seven of its best men to find fault with the President, and grumble at him, and agree with him, and help him; and to help the nation stand by him more firmly than ever. Changed in its membership somewhat, as time went on, the Committee continued its services to the end of the war. Never at any time were they of greater utility than in their close and searching study of the condition of the army and the causes of its inaction during the long trial of that memorable winter. At the same time, their personal pressure, and that of Congress exerted upon Mr. Lincoln through them, was an additional burden of no insignificant weight.

It is now very easy to perceive that if the President had at once assumed the full exercise of his nominal powers as Commander-in-Chief, forcing a reluctant general and his minor generals to a course of action for which they avowed themselves unprepared, the results could hardly have been other than disastrous. The President fully understood this feature of his responsibilities, and it was forcibly dwelt upon by his civil and military advisers. It was also true that the latter held erroneous ideas of the Rebel forces opposed to them, and magnified less than fifty thousand effective men into a hundred and fifteen thousand in their official estimates; but Mr. Lincoln had no trustworthy means of refuting the error. He believed it to be one, but was compelled to submit to its effects as patiently as the circumstances permitted. He did so, but even his tough patience wore slowly away, as has been related, and at last became altogether exhausted.

It has been said and printed that he "disclaimed all military

ability," and it is true that he often spoke very modestly of his pretensions; but the necessity was upon him, and he continually and distinctly and from the beginning exercised the important functions of a military umpire. His decision was final in the selection of plans and in their modifications as campaigns progressed. This was equally true when he yielded his own opinion to that of another. It was unavoidable, in the absence of any one military authority of well-attested value. He never shirked the implied responsibility; but the records, so far as these are preserved, clearly sustain the conclusion that the announced and adopted decisions and plans attributed solely or mainly to him were in fact the verdicts of a sort of perpetual "council of war" of which he was the conspicuous chairman. This council was of varying membership and size, but he made it include not only his maps and books but the best educated and informed military capacity in the country. To this he added the Committee on the Conduct of the War and judicious selections from his Cabinet. He would gladly have been relieved of a responsibility so heavy. The hour and the man for his relief came at last, but neither had arrived in 1862.

Now that the veils of the army lines are removed from the then hidden condition of the Confederate armies between Richmond and Washington, and all personal and political considerations can be omitted from an analysis of the situation, the attitude and action of Mr. Lincoln, prior to the Peninsular campaign of 1862, is more than justified.

Beginning in full time, he had summoned an army and had strained all the resources of the country to prepare it for the field. At the earliest day of its apparent readiness he had urged the prompt and vigorous use of that army in a forward movement. His estimate of the opposing forces and their power to resist such an attack is now proved to have been correct. As to specific plans of movements, military critics are yet divided concerning the relative wisdom of such as were

presented by General McClellan, representing his own council of war, on the one side, and by Mr. Lincoln on the other as the fruit of the joint skill and wisdom of the "council" over which he presided. There is, however, no longer any respectable authority bold enough to commend the inaction against which the President so earnestly strove and protested.

The campaign on the Potomac was but a part of the load upon his shoulders, and he was sufficiently wise and self-controlled not to exercise the fullness of his authority, even when compelled to say, as he did to General McDowell, in December, 1861, "If something is not done soon, the bottom will be out of the whole affair." He was well aware that a yet more certain ruin to the national cause would follow the failure of any great military movement directly ordered by himself, and that no campaign can be more sure of failure than one undertaken contrary to the will of its controlling general and his most trusted lieutenants.

Perhaps the most striking fact of all is that the apparent repugnance to forward movements never ceased. It was manifested, under various forms, to the very end of the Peninsular campaign, and even later. It is in vain now, but it is hardly possible not to ask the question: "What would have been the net results of the campaigns upon the Potomac in 1861 and 1862 if President Lincoln had been sustained by a general as eager for action as himself and as correctly estimating the strength of his own army and the enemy?"

The natural reply is: "Why, then, did not Mr. Lincoln remove McClellan at once and appoint some other commander ?" It was urged upon him more than once or twice, and he answered it by the homely anecdote of the man who declared it "a bad time to swap horses when you are crossing a freshet."

True, doubtless; but there was more than a question of mere military expediency in the way, and the President labored under difficulties which are worthy of record.