CHAPTER XLVII.

NIGHT.

Preparing for a Great Struggle-Popular Discontent-Murmurs of Sedition-European Hostilities-Chancellorsville-Bitter Hours for the President-Darkness at the South-Statesmen under a HallucinationThe Second Invasion of the North-Hooker Succeeded by Meade.

MR. LINCOLN did not retain the external equanimity of his earlier days under the galling pressure of the burdens laid upon him in 1863. The goading irritations were too many, and they gave him no rest whatever. The path he was forced to walk in was rugged with lacerating difficulties. To say that he now and then gave way to short-lived fits of petulance is but to admit that he was human. He was keenly conscious of every deficiency, in himself or in his human and other means for performing his vast undertaking, and he could not but worry when things went wrong. More than enough did go wrong, and the few admissions of harassed weariness which escaped him do not deserve especial record.

It was well understood, through many channels of information, that the Confederacy was now preparing to put forth its full and uttermost strength: and this was more than the North would or could be induced to do. There was, indeed, a sort of prophetic hope in the obvious fact that such an exhaustive effort could never be made more than once by the South; but the certainty that it was coming filled the outlook for the military year with promises of bloodshed, and these were speedily and terribly fulfilled. Mr. Lincoln read all these signs and promises, and knew their meaning perfectly. He saw and he felt that a large proportion of the men he was drawing into the

army from their homes and workshops were to be sent, by his orders, to certain and sudden death; and he was not the man to put from him carelessly any of the solemn questions asked of him by such a responsibility.

The cares heaped upon the President by the demands and perils of the military situation were made heavier by the aspect of affairs in several of the loyal States. The murmurs of the opponents of the Draft grew louder daily, as the machinery for its enforcement assumed forms which men could see. It was something new and strange and horrible, even to the minds of many who were genuinely patriotic; for it was a sort of remorseless and unavoidable "direct tax" which could only be paid, in person or by substitute, with the bodies of living men.

There were yet other omens of possible disaster. More emphatic than ever came continual assurances from abroad, official, unofficial, and journalistic, that the sympathies of the great commercial powers and controlling aristocracies of Europe were strongly with the Confederacy. The sympathies of the French Imperial Government assumed their most offensive form in the disastrous history of its Mexican expedition, and the foregone failure of this was a significant prophecy of the subsequent events by means of which the French people regained self-government. Popular good-will in France for the American Republic was without any means for making itself heard or felt in the year 1863.

The "Southern" sympathies of that part of the English nation affected by such leanings were made to be very deeply felt by the American people. We were assailed by them, and in the most hurtful modes, by land and sea. On the sea, by

the continuous and often successful efforts of British blockaderunners to enter or leave the Southern ports, and by the ravages of British cruisers, like the Alabama, under the Confederate flag; on the land, by the presence, on every battle-field, of British arms and ammunition in rapidly increasing supply. That part of the English nation whose heart and hope instinc

tively clung to the Free North and its long struggle for Free Labor had attained no other political power than that of suffering patiently, in the year 1863.

Whatever may have been the caste feeling of a part of the German ruling classes, the Germans as a mass were with the North. They bought our national "bonds" liberally, at wartime prices, and in due season they reaped a golden harvest of rich profits thereby.

Alone among the great powers of Europe, Russia was firmly bound to America by the ties of a friendship which bore a strict relation to her undying hatred of France and England. Her vivid memories of the Crimean War were sure guaranties of her active alliance, in case her old enemies should offer her an opportunity to obtain satisfaction for Sevastopol. Her position aided largely in checking any too aggressive an expression of the now half-triumphant malice of her rivals who mistakenly regarded themselves as interested in our political division and destruction.

The State Department was in good hands, and Mr. Seward could safely be intrusted with all diplomatic affairs. The condition and promise of the revenue and the Treasury seemed all that could be reasonably expected. The Navy grew more and more efficient, at sea and on the Western rivers. Secretary Stanton was accomplishing marvels of genius and of sleepless toil in the War Office, burning out in faithful services the fiery energy which led Mr. Lincoln to select him for that tremendous duty.

Congress adjourned and its membership went home. The very air grew hot and dense with expectations of a "battlesummer." The army was in fine condition, East and West. The forces on the line of the Potomac were necessarily somewhat scattered, but they outnumbered, two to one, the forces opposed to them under Lee.

The Army of the Potomac was still, to the perceptions of a large majority of the people, the representative army, by the

successes or failures of which they measured the tides of the war. It was under the command of General Hooker; and the exact condition of the President's mind in relation to this officer cannot be better expressed than by the following letter, on file in the War Department:

Major-General Hooker.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C., January 26, 1863.

GENERAL: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambitions, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong both to the country and a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you a command. Only those generals who gain success can set up as dictators. What I ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you, as far as I can, to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again,

could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it.

And now, beware of rashness! Beware of rashness! But with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

General Hooker had succeeded in winning the good-will and confidence of his men, but that was all he was destined to win. Leaving to professional military critics all discussion of the exact strategic methods employed or omitted, it is enough to state the facts as follows:

During the first week in May, 1863, General Hooker so handled several of his best army corps, in what is known as the Battle of Chancellorsville, that the net result to them was a severe defeat. The obstinacy of the fighting and the generally good conduct of the forces engaged appears from the official statements of losses on both sides. The Confederate commander admits a total loss of 13,019, and the Union general of 17,197, and, with these, of the battle-ground.

Mr. Lincoln might well walk the floor of his room, late into the night, after receiving the news of this disaster. One of his private secretaries was detained by unusual pressure of clerical work in an adjoining room. Midnight came; one o'clock; two o'clock; and when, a half-hour later, the young man paused at the head of the stairs, before creeping silently out to go to his own residence, the last sounds he heard were the slow and heavy footfalls of the all but heart-broken ruler. So many more fathers and mothers were looking towards him, reproachfully, between their sobs for their sons. So many more widows were mourning for their husbands and wondering whether their heartache need have come to them if Mr. Lincoln had done, or had not done, something, they knew not what. He knew that the news would stimulate the hatred in Europe and strengthen all the disaffection at the North. Even loyal