Abraham Lincoln: The Observations of John G. Nicolay and John Hay

10. Cabinet Crisis: December 1862

117  cabinet crisis: december 1862 )n the wake of the disastrous Union defeat at Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, gloom settled over the people of the North. “They have borne, silently and grimly, imbecility, treachery, failure, privation, loss of friends and means, almost every suffering which can afflict a brave people,” observed Harpers Weekly. “But they cannot be expected to suffer that such massacres as this at Fredericksburg shall be repeated.”1 Benjamin Brown French gave voice to the widespread pessimism: “Unless something occurs very soon to brighten up affairs, I shall begin to look upon our whole Nation as on its way to destruction.”2 Lincoln’s popularity sank. “A year ago we laughed at the Honest Old Abe’s grotesque genial Western jocosities, but they nauseate us now,” remarked George Templeton Strong. He predicted that if things continued to go as they had been going, pressure would grow to have Lincoln “resign and make way for Hamlin, as for one about whom nobody knows anything and who may therefore be a change for the better, none for the worse being conceivable.”3 Charles Eliot Norton lamented that while the nation required leadership from “a Bengal tiger,” it had only a “domestic cat” in the White House.4 Constituents told Pennsylvania Representative Edward McPherson that “almost everybody is dissatis- fied with the administration. President Lincoln is denounced by many of his most devoted friends in former times.” The public was “utterly 118 cabinet crisis disgusted,” believing “that the present administration is utterly incompetent .” Ominously, McPherson was warned that “if things are not more successfully managed the President will be generally deserted.”5 Orestes A. Brownson complained to Charles Sumner, “I do not believe Mr. Lincoln at all. . . . He is thick-headed; he is ignorant; he is tricky, somewhat astute in a small way, and obstinate as a mule.”6 Abolitionist John Jay foresaw a “storm rising that presently will not be stilled by any thing less than an entire reconstruction of the Cabinet.”7 From Boston came a prediction that Lincoln’s resignation “would be received with great satisfaction” and might “avert what . . . will otherwise come viz a violent and bloody revolution at the North.”8 The president was aware of such threats of violence against him. When told that a Pennsylvanian expressed the hope that Lincoln would be hanged from a lamppost outside the White House, he remarked to Congressman William D. Kelley, “You need not be surprised to find that that suggestion has been executed any morning; the violent preliminaries to such an event would not surprise me. I have done things lately that must be incomprehensible to the people, and which cannot now be explained.”9 Congress too was growing disenchanted with the president. Michigan Senator Zachariah Chandler declared that “the country is gone for unless something is done at once.” Lincoln, he concluded, “is a weak man, too weak for the occasion,” and as “unstable as water.”10 Rather than attack Lincoln directly, congressmen and senators, upset by the defeats at Fredericksburg and at the polls, made Seward their scapegoat. Anger at the secretary of state had been building for some time. In September, when a delegation from New York called at the White House to urge a change of policy, a “sharp encounter” developed between Lincoln and John E. Williams. Then James A. Hamilton criticized Seward’s April 10, 1861, dispatch to Charles Francis Adams. The president, “in an excited manner,” interrupted: “Sir! You are subjecting some letter of Mr. Seward’s to an undue criticism in an undue manner.” 119 cabinet crisis Pointing to Williams and Hamilton, he added, “You gentlemen, to hang Mr. Seward, would destroy this government.” Hamilton replied, “Sir, that is a very harsh remark.”11 Two months later, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens wrote that “it would be a great blessing if Seward could be removed.”12 To achieve that end, thirty-two Republican senators, with the news of the Fredericksburg debacle fresh in their minds, caucused secretly on December 16 and 17 “to ascertain whether any steps could be taken to quiet the public mind and to produce a better condition of affairs.” They denounced Seward bitterly “and charged him with all the disasters which had come upon our arms alleging that he was opposed to a vigorous prosecution of the war—controlled the President and thwarted the other members of the Cabinet.” Lincoln, too, was criticized...