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89 6 “A Very Dreadful Night” Robert Lincoln began law school in 1864 as his father sought reelection to the presidency. No records survive to indicate young Lincoln’s prowess as a law student, his feelings about being at Harvard, or his thoughts or actions supporting a second term in office for his father.1 He watched the contest as did the rest of the country, eagerly, because Abraham Lincoln’s reelection was not as inevitable in 1864 as it seems today. No president had been renominated by his party since 1840, and none had been reelected since Andrew Jackson in 1832. Lincoln himself long believed he would not win and with good reason. The country showed signs of disenchantment—such as the New York draft riots—with a four-year war with few major victories, a continuous shifting of commanding generals, high soldier casualties, and suspension of some civil liberties. Abraham Lincoln was, in fact, during his first term, one of the most reviled presidents in American history. It should be no surprise then that Lincoln prepared both himself and his administration for defeat. In late August 1864, six days before the Democrat Party officially chose General George B. McClellan as its presidential candidate, Lincoln had his entire cabinet blindly sign a letter he had written that, he showed them all later, pledged to “so cooperate 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 cannot possibly save it afterwards.”2 Lincoln may have underestimated himself and overestimated McClellan here, for, on election day, Lincoln won in a landslide. His victory was helped immeasurably by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September. Interestingly, Robert Lincoln later told a friend that what pleased his father more than anything else during the campaign was the support of the soldiers. Union prisoners in Libby Prison held their own election on­ chapter six 90 November 4, 1864, and Lincoln defeated McClellan 3–1. When the president heard of this vote months later, he referred to it as “the most satisfactory and encouraging episode in the Presidential campaign. His words were in effect: We can trust the soldiers.”3 By the beginning of 1865, with Union victories in Atlanta and Savannah, Sheridan cleaning out the Shenandoah Valley, Grant laying siege to Petersburg, and the end of the war apparently in sight, Robert made a renewed effort to enlist. He returned to the White House in January 1865 for his winter break specifically to “press upon my father my wish to see some military service before the close of the war.”4 Finally, the president relented, but it was not a complete concession for Abraham Lincoln as a father. He still wanted to protect his son, both for his wife’s emotional sake and for his own political fears. Mary Lincoln’s reaction to or part in this decision is unknown. On January 19, 1865, President Lincoln wrote to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant to ask if the Union commander could place Robert on his staff as a volunteer aide-de-camp. “I do not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet to give him a commission to which those who have already served long are better entitled and better qualified to hold,” Lincoln wrote. “Could he, without embarrassment to you, or detriment to the service, go into your military family with some nominal rank, I, and not the public, furnishing his necessary means?” Lincoln clearly was embarrassed by this request, as is evident not only in proposing to pay Robert’s salary himself but also by asking Grant to read and answer the letter “as though I was not the President, but only a friend” and to feel free to refuse his request “without the least hesitation.”5 One historian even concludes that in asking for special favors for his son, “Lincoln veered slightly from his usual moral and ethical path.”6 While Lincoln did use his position to influence his son’s appointment, the majority of military commissions during the war were achieved due to political connections. Yet unlike many political appointees, Robert, as a Harvard graduate, was qualified for such a post. Grant responded two days later that he would be “most happy” to have Robert join his staff. He rejected the notion that the president’s son not receive a full commission and be a volunteer and instead...

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