Lincoln and His Admirals by Craig Symonds

Author:Craig Symonds [Symonds, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-09-16T22:00:00+00:00

8

“I Shall Have to Cut This Knot”

Lincoln as Adjudicator

IT WAS NOT ALL BAD NEWS. Though the reports from the Army of the Potomac were devastating, those from the West were more positive, even electrifying. After his capture of Grand Gulf, Grant marched inland, brushed aside a rebel force under Joseph E. Johnston, and captured the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, on May 14. He then turned west toward Vicksburg’s back door, defeating the main Confederate army of John C. Pemberton at Champion Hill on May 16, and soon his forces were closing in on the city. Assaults on the Vicksburg defensive lines on May 19 and May 22 were unsuccessful, however, and Grant settled in for a siege. Despite Lincoln’s abhorrence of sieges, the almost breathless pace of the campaign left him feeling optimistic. On the day Grant captured Jackson, Dahlgren noted in his diary, “The President… was full of jokes and we had some hearty laughs.” Though only a month earlier Lincoln had expressed doubt about Grant’s seemingly endless maneuverings, he now wrote a friend that Grant’s campaign was “one of the most brilliant in the world.”1

Meanwhile, Lincoln again found himself playing referee in a series of disagreements between his secretary of state and his secretary of the navy. From the outset, Seward and Welles had taken opposing sides on many, if not most, of the issues before the cabinet, and like jealous siblings, each appealed to Father Abraham to sustain them. Usually, Lincoln brought the two men together and let them hash it out, but on occasion he played the role of arbiter, meeting separately with each man to let him explain his position, weighing and measuring the power of their arguments, then deciding for himself. On other occasions, Lincoln sought a middle ground between them. Seward prevailed in most of these clashes, leaving Welles to complain to his diary about the mysterious influence that “the trickster” had on the president. There was more than a hint of jealousy in Welles’ notation that Lincoln allowed the “assuming and presuming, meddlesome, and uncertain” Seward to influence the president’s “wonderful kindness of heart.” In the spring of 1863, the disputes between Seward and Welles focused mostly on America’s precarious relationship with England. As a question of diplomacy, it was a subject that fell squarely within Seward’s domain as secretary of state, but the source of the friction was the conduct of U.S. Navy officers on the high seas, and that, Welles insisted, was his responsibility.2

Their first quarrel that spring concerned the authorization of American privateers. Despite administration protests against Confederate privateers back in 1861, Congress authorized Union privateers in March 1863, granting to Lincoln the power to issue letters of marque. Seward was enthusiastic about it. He believed that sending out private armed vessels would remind the English of how much they had to lose by risking war with the United States and act as a restraint on British behavior. Seward also suggested that American privateers would slow down, if not entirely halt, Confederate blockade running.

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