Table Of ContentAND THE WAR CAME
The Six Months That Tore America Apart
Jamie Malanowski
BYLINER ORIGINALS
Copyright © 2011 by Jamie Malanowski
All rights reserved
Cover photograph: Alexander Gardner, circa 1863
Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-19301
ISBN: 978-1-61452-000-9
Byliner, Inc.
San Francisco, California
www.byliner.com
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my beloved daughter Cara,
with Kentucky in her sights
Table of Contents
Foreword
1: Will Lincoln Prevail?
2: The North Picks a President—Now What?
3: Would the South Really Leave?
4: A Superabundance of Velocity
5: Drama in Milledgeville
6: Off the Record, Behind the Scenes
7: Buchanan: Too Little, Too Late
8: Will the North Bend or Hold?
9: The Government Disintegrates as the Union Dissolves
10: A Coup de Main in Charleston Harbor
11: War in the Cabinet
12: Is This War?
13: Avoiding War, Rejecting Peace
14: Showdown in Georgia
15: Two Out, One In
16: Cold Hopes, Warm Dreams, Chilly Schemes
17: Two Journeys, Destination Unknown
18: A Circumspect President, a Furtive President-Elect
19: Many Mouths, Few Ears
20: The First Trick
21: A Letter from the Postmaster
22: Holding Actions
23: The Choice Is Charybdis
24: Chaos and Confusion
25: The Clarion Notes of Defiance
26: Patriots and Traitors
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Foreword
I WAS RECENTLY STRUCK by an observation that may have long been tired and
obvious to nearly everyone, but that seemed fresh and insightful to me: The way we
learn about history is strikingly at odds with the way we experience current events and
life in general. History is presented to us as a kind of orderly flow, weaving around big
landmark moments like Prohibition and the Depression and World War II. Life, on the
other hand, comes to us all at once in a big disorderly mess. And while we try to make
sense of all this turbulence, it is almost impossible to know for sure which event, large
or small, will turn out to be the one on which the fate of millions will ultimately
depend.
The problem with learning about these landmarks is that the truth of our history
resides in the details. The true causes of events get left out of the viewfinder when we
focus on outcomes. Our leaders lose their humanity when we concentrate on their
decisions and neglect their indecisions, not to mention their evasions, blind spots, and
mistakes. We tend to think of ourselves as the product of destiny, which has moved in a
straight line of progress to reach our times, rather than seeing ourselves as the product
of thousands of actions and inactions, most of which could have gone another way.
This is the story of the six months between the election of Abraham Lincoln in
November 1860 and the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. It was, perhaps, the most
intensely political period in American history: The nation had to choose a president
from among four candidates; the residents of the fifteen states where slavery was legal
had to decide whether or not to leave the Union; those states that chose to leave then
had to decide whether to form a new government; the federal government, officially led
by an ineffectual lame-duck president as a powerless president-elect spent four months
standing by, had to formulate a response from options that ranged from appeasement to
war. But at the start of this period, only a tiny minority of Americans would have
believed that a titanic struggle lurked just beyond the horizon.
In telling this story, an effort was made to recount the events of the Secession
Winter in something like real time, weekly segments that try to comprehend the
developments as they happened, trying as best as possible to ignore how things turned
out. That is, of course, a fiction—we know all too well that 650,000 people ended up
dead, nearly $7 billion (in today’s dollars) was expended, a civilization was destroyed,
and black Americans escaped slavery into a century of segregation and struggle. But by
knowing the ending, we can view all the preceding moments as opportunities when
something different might have happened—and at least have the chance to bring that
same awareness to what we see happening today.
October 1860
Will Lincoln Prevail?
October 31, 1860
SEVEN DAYS TO GO until election day, and the campaigns are reaching a rousing
climax. In Manhattan, the at-long-last-united Tammany and Mozart Democrats mass in
the evenings under torch lights and stomp up and down Broadway bellowing for their
man Stephen Douglas, while in cities and towns upstate, young Republican Wide
Awakes holler and whistle for their tiger Abraham Lincoln. Apple farmers fear for their
crops, as there is hardly a basket that has not already been overturned and had a
surrogate speaker installed on top. The outcome of one of the bitterest presidential
elections in the history of the republic—or perhaps only the beginning of the outcome
—is falling squarely on the shoulders of New York.
Earlier this year, when Lincoln, the Illini lawyer, looked at the electoral map, he
made a stunning discovery: If he could win sixteen of the eighteen Northern states, plus
the Western states of California and Oregon, he would have enough votes in the
Electoral College to win the presidency.
Forget the tempestuous South; even if every Southern state fell into line behind
one of his rivals—Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, Senator John Bell of Tennessee,
Vice President John Breckinridge of Kentucky, the squabbling standard bearers of the
factions of the suicidally splintered Democratic Party—Lincoln could win with just the
votes of the increasingly populated, firmly Free State North. And after the results from
the state elections earlier this month—Pennsylvania had been suspect and Indiana iffy,
but both tilted decisively toward the Republicans—the erstwhile rail-splitter looked like
he just might convert his audacious gamble.
But one of Lincoln’s anti-slavery sixteen has always needed to be New York, with
its muscular thirty-five electoral votes that are more than a fifth of the 152 needed to
win.
And the race in New York, once thought to be a breeze, has tightened. In the past
week, Thurlow Weed, the Republican Party political boss known for his unsavory
methods and infallible acumen, has taken on a decidedly dyspeptic expression. The
perpetually feuding Democratic factions in New York City finally coalesced behind
Douglas, and the Democratic money spigots have begun to gush.
Simultaneously, chagrined Republicans across the state report that they had spent
far too lavishly during the easygoing summer, and now have little or nothing left for the
final push. “We are gaining so rapidly it is impossible to foretell the result,” Douglas’s
man George Sanders has been telling associates.
Impossible indeed. Even if Douglas was able to capture the Empire State, the Little
Giant has no chance of winning an Electoral College victory straight up. The Southern
Democrats who walked out on him at their convention in the spring will surely snub
him once again. They will split their votes between Breckinridge and Bell. Should
Douglas snatch New York from Lincoln, no candidate will be able to claim a majority.
The choice next week, then, is not only between Lincoln and Douglas. It is, to put
it another way, a choice between having someone clearly entitled to call himself
president-elect (if Lincoln prevails), and muddy irresolution that will yield a second
phase of electioneering to be held according to the secret and arcane processes of the
House of Representatives. Our previous experiences with this process has shown it to
be rife with pitfalls. In 1800, a deadlocked House nearly elected Aaron Burr, a man who
had gone into the election hoping, at most, to become vice president. In 1824, the
House picked John Quincy Adams instead of Andrew Jackson, the man who had
actually received the most electoral votes (but just a plurality, not a majority).
Should Douglas take New York, the Adams-Jackson scenario is almost certain to
reoccur. Lincoln’s popular and Electoral College pluralities will not factor. In the
House, each state delegation gets one vote; to win the presidency, a candidate needs the
votes of at least seventeen of the thirty-three states. The Republicans control fifteen
delegations, the Democrats fourteen, the American Party (heir of the anti-immigrant
Know-Nothings) controls one. Maryland, Kentucky, and North Carolina are split, but
Douglas has no support among the voters of those states.
It’s conceivable that Lincoln could wrestle away his home state, Illinois; the
Democrats outnumber Republicans in that delegation five to four, but Lincoln is
enormously popular and might take it. That would still leave him one frustratingly
elusive vote short, with virtually no chance of finding it among the staunchly pro-
slavery delegations that remain. In a real sense then, next week we will witness not one
election among four men, but two elections between two pairs: Lincoln vs. Douglas in
New York, to see whether Honest Abe will be able to fill his inside straight; and should
he fail, a secondary contest, Breckinridge vs. Bell, to see which of the pro-slavery
candidates will enter the House proceedings as the favorite to exit as president.
But let’s not get ahead of events. Thurlow Weed never likes losing elections, and
he will be especially loath to lose the presidency in his own backyard. Already his
appeals to Lincoln headquarters in Springfield have resulted in more campaign funds.
Moreover, a veritable regiment of Republican big shots have been burning up the rails
moving from Buffalo and Long Island and all points between, praising the Lincoln-
Hamlin ticket. “New York is the Democrats’ forlorn hope,” James Gordon Bennett, the
editor of the New York Herald, wrote last week. Exactly—and Thurlow Weed aims to
crush it.
