Monday, March 18, AD 2024 9:15pm

Lincoln Defeated

Lincoln Weeping

If the end brings me out wrong, ten thousand angels swearing I was right wouldn’t make any difference.

Abraham Lincoln

 

 

During the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the War Between the States, it is time to take stock of the War that severed forever the United States of America and led to creation of two American republics, soon to be joined by a third, the Pacific Republic, and, eventually, by a fourth, after Texas seceded from the Confederacy  during the Great Depression of 1893.  All of our American history, for good and ill, was irrevocably altered by the events that transpired a century and a half ago.  Could events have come out differently?  I think many historians would say yes, if Lincoln had not lost the election of 1864.

By the Spring of 1864 the Union war effort had clearly made progress but at a terrible cost in human lives and treasure.  The Union had succeeded in conquering almost all of Tennessee and Arkansas.  The Confederacy’s largest city, New Orleans, was under Union control and, in Lincoln’s phrase, “the Father of the Waters” went unvexed to the Sea, and the Confederacy in Texas and the unconquered portions of Arkansas and Louisiana were now cut off from the rest of the Confederacy by a newly hostile Mississippi.  The Union had established control of much of the coast line of the Confederacy and the Union blockade, a joke in 1861, had become a very grim reality for the Confederacy in 1864.  Today, most people do not appreciate how close the Confederacy came to defeat in 1864, although it was a common theme in speeches given at Confederate Victory Day celebrations throughout the South for decades after the War.  How did this all turn to ashes for the Union by November 1864 with Lincoln rejected at the polls?  Here are, I think, some of  the major factors:

1.  War Weariness-By 1864 most Americans, North and South, were heartily sick of the War, the huge casualty lists filling the newspapers giving a nightmarish quality to life.  However, there was a difference.  If the North lost the War, there would be little change in the life of most Northerners.  If the South lost the War, they would be under what most white Southerners now perceived as hated foreign domination.  Northern morale was as a result more fragile than Southern morale.  The South would resist until they could resist no longer, while the North would continue the War only if it could be brought to a victorious conclusion relatively quickly.

2.  Lee-Ulysses S. Grant was a fine General even if ultimately he failed in his goal of defeating Lee.  In his Overland Campaign he succeeded in driving Lee back to Richmond, and ultimately brought Petersburg under siege.  No mean feat up against a man now universally regarded by nearly all Americans as the finest American General.  Lee realized the caliber of General that he was up against in regard to Grant, and that Grant could not be defeated easily as he had defeated other Union drives against Richmond.  It took all of Lee’s immense skill to prevent Grant from taking Richmond, but this he succeeded in doing while inflicting casualties of 2-1 against Grant, and causing much of the North, including, privately, Mary Todd Lincoln, to denounce Grant as a butcher.  Grant had brought the Union close to victory, but only by an immense effusion of Northern blood, and the population of the North simply had no stomach for many more casualties in what appeared to be an endless War.

3.  Sherman’s Death-Sherman’s drive on Atlanta, which had been making progress, came to a sudden end on June 27, 1864 with the battle of Kennesaw Mountain.  Of all the Civil War might have beens, perhaps none are more poignant than what would have happened if Sherman had stopped the battle after the failure of the initial assaults as he was advised to do by General Thomas.  Instead, Sherman ordered two more attacks each bloodily repulsed.  As he went out to meet the retreating survivors of his last attack, Sherman was felled by a long-range shot from a Confederate sharpshooter equipped with a rifle and a telescopic sight.  Lincoln wished to place Thomas in command, but Grant, who bore animosity for Thomas, why still being something of a mystery, insisted on General James McPherson being placed in overall command.  McPherson wished to continue the offensive against Atlanta, but that simply was not possible after the fifteen thousand casualties sustained by the Union.  Resisting calls in Northern papers to fall back on Chattanooga, McPherson remained in place and awaited reinforcements.  In early September the offensive was renewed, with McPherson making slow but steady progress against a skillful and dogged defense by General Johnston.  McPherson placed Atlanta under siege, two days before the November election, too late to alter the outcome.

4.  Blind Memorandum- With the War stalled both East and West Union morale was faltering.  Lincoln’s morale was also faltering as graphically demonstrated by what has become known as The Blind Memorandum.  Lincoln sealed this document and asked his cabinet officers to sign it unread.  They complied.  In the chaos that followed Lincoln’s defeat the document lay forgotten for some twenty years until Lincoln mentioned it in his autobiography, Of the People, (1884).  Here is the text:

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate 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 can not possibly save it afterwards.

A. Lincoln

5.  Cedar Creek- Lincoln’s prospects appeared brighter in September and October of 1864 with Union victories in the Shenandoah.  This came to a halt with the Confederate victory at Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864. In the aftermath Union commander General Phil Sheridan was sacked by Secretary of War Stanton, over the strenuous objections of General Grant, who had always considered him to be too young at 33 for such an important command.  Grant placed Meade in overall command of the Shenandoah theater.  The cautious Meade avoided any further Union defeats prior to election day, but did not succeed in winning any Union victories.  Democrats made considerable hay at rallies in late October with the fact that Sheridan had been fifty miles from Cedar Creek at the time of the battle and mocked his strenuous, albeit futile, ride to get to the battlefield in time to rescue the situation.

6.  Drunk Andy-Although it was unprecedented, Andrew Johnson, war-time military Governor of Tennessee, and perhaps the dominant political figure in Tennessee prior to the war, after his nomination as Vice-President, made a series of speeches in support of the re-election of Lincoln in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.  All went well, until he caught the flu and drank a fair amount of liquor in an effort at self-medication.  This led to a drunken speech in Ohio, and cries from Democrats that he was a drunkard.  Lincoln, although embarrassed, kept Johnson on the ticket, saying, “I have known Andy Johnson for many years; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be scared; Andy ain’t a drunkard.” Lincoln’s loyalty was commendable, but it did him no good politically.

7.  John C. Fremont- Well, he didn’t get many votes as the candidate of the Radical Democracy Party, but Fremont gained enough votes to cost Lincoln the states of California, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New York and Wisconsin, a total of 102 electoral votes, and the election.  Efforts were made by the Republicans to get Fremont to withdraw in September and he might have if the military situation had not been looking so dismal and Lincoln so vulnerable.

8.  Little MacDoubtless the most controversial President in American history, other than Abraham Lincoln, George B. McClellan ran a skillful campaign for the Presidency.  Although tempted to repudiate the peace plank of the Democrat convention that nominated him, McClellan was ultimately convinced by the stalled offensives in the East and the West that what the country needed above all was peace, even if that meant dissolution of the Union.  Running on the slogan of Peace with Honor, McClellan emphasized that the Union soldiers were all heroes in his eyes and that he wanted to bring them home, and to strive for ultimate re-unification through peaceful means.  McClellan actually received slightly fewer votes than Lincoln received on election day, but aided by the votes Fremont deprived Lincoln of in swing states, he won enough states to eke out an electoral college victory.

Aftermath- After the election of McClellan, Lincoln attempted to carry on the War to no avail.  Many of the Union soldiers were relatively green troops, replacing three-year men who had gone home, the effort to convince these veterans to reenlist failing with the stalled military campaigns of 1864.  Desertions became rampant throughout the Union armies after the election as whole units, convinced that the War was lost, deserted and commandeered transport to get home.  Draft riots spread throughout the North, with the worst, unsurprisingly, in New York City.    Mobs roamed the streets of Washington, aided by Confederate agents, and Lincoln found himself in a state of semi-siege in Washington, similar to what he experienced at the beginning of the War in 1861.  McClellan called for calm, for troops to obey their officers and made it clear that Lincoln was to be obeyed and respected as President.  However, he also made it clear that he would undertake peace negotiations with the Confederate government as soon as he was inaugurated.  On December 24, 1864, Grant, in a secret meeting with Lincoln, advised him that he could not count on more than 25% of his troops to obey if he ordered them to attack Confederate entrenchments and that he recommended that disloyal troops be sent home before mutinies destroyed the Union armies.  Lincoln refused to agree, and the remainder of his term in office featured him giving commands to his generals for offensives that they simply could not convince their men to undertake.   Grant asked to be relieved of command on January 31, 1865, an event which effectively ended the military phase of the War Between the States.

Lincoln in Memory-Each year my family and I go down to Springfield to visit the grave sites of Lincoln and his wife.  Not many visitors go there, and the headstones have not been well-kept up.  In his life there often seemed to be a great melancholy about Lincoln, perhaps a foreboding as to the role he would play as the last President of the old United States.  In his retirement Lincoln manfully shouldered all the blame for the Union defeat, and although some Union veterans recalled him fondly, History is rarely kind to losers and it has not been kind to Lincoln.  Lincoln when he gave the Gettysburg Address mentioned that the world would little note nor long remember what he said there which has proven to be an accurate prediction.   Lincoln had the misfortune to be President at a great turning point in the history of the American people and sadly for him History did not turn in the direction he wished.  His tombstone reads He Tried to Save the Union and that will have to be the final word on Abraham Lincoln.

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Pinky
Pinky
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 11:48am

Don, I know you’re the expert on history around here, but do you really think that the US / CS could have worked as a country over the long haul? I think we were doomed from the start. They’re, essentially, the northernmost South American oligarchy, split by racial lines. We’re the shining city on the hill, the last sign of progressivism with the freedom of pre-Hitler Europe. Sure, it’d be cool if we owned Texas instead of them pretty much owning us, but history has shown us that the South was never, ever going to give up on slavery, and as Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Jon
Jon
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 2:12pm

And to think the Original Gorilla opposed a government founded on principles like these. Why, the temerity.

We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

Alphatron Shinyskullus
Alphatron Shinyskullus
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 2:53pm

All of this will mean nothing when hordes of Californios overwhelm your petty little fiefdoms and drive up your housing prices. Why destroy your homes when we can buy five of them and drive you out? Union? No! Confederacy? You make us laugh. We shall turn your states into Ranchos named after the saints and build new churches out of adobe, the only truly becoming building material within which to worship.

Jon
Jon
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 6:01pm

Wow, I didn’t knwo there was anotehr Jon here. What amazes me is how much debate remains regarding the reason(s) behind the war. It seems to have been fought over more than one issue if you ask me. I would say states’ rights as well as slavery, and perhaps other reasons too.

Jon
Jon
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 6:11pm

Well then, perhaps states’ rights by default. I mean, to defend slavery it then becomes about states’ rights.

I suppose you’re right, though. It was the belief of my Civil War professor that it was fundamentally fought over slavery.

Jon
Jon
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 6:20pm

But Jon, I’m the original Jon. Ask Don. ;`)

Anyway, Don,

But just think how much trouble that single little phrase may have saved us had our “Entlightenment” Founders in Philadelphia included it:

“…invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God…”

Jon
Jon
Monday, April 1, AD 2013 7:40pm

Yes, I think it was always intended in teh documents that the union would be a perpetual union, not a mere colleciton of states that could secede at any time.

Darwin
Darwin
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 10:13am

Finally got the chance to finish reading this. Superb, Don.

Now remind me: What effects did all this have in the 20th century? It’s certainly interesting to think how events such as the Great War and the Continental Empire might have gone differently had there been a unified “United States” rather than the four republics.

Pinky
Pinky
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 1:33pm

Jon/s – You have two problems in trying to define the cause of the Civil War. First off, you’ve got sympathizers for both sides, who are going to put their own emphasis on the causes. Secondly, you’ve got to deal with the fads among historians over the last 150 years. They were big on things like class struggle and economic determinism, uninterested in things like the influence of religion.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 1:48pm

Interesting alternate history.

As you know, Bob, in our history, the Central Powers (Imperial Germany, the United States, Austria and the Turks) defeated the Allies (UK, France, CSA and Russia) by spring 1917, albeit with horrific casualties running north of 2 million in each of the major combatants. The post-war reunification of the exhausted American states and the annexed parts of Canada have proven vexing and uneven to this day, though at least the guerilla fighting didn’t last beyond a quarter century.

In many ways, North America is still trying to recover from that conflict, which saw massive fleet actions in the Atlantic and Carribean, along with trench warfare from California to Virginia in the south, and from Winnipeg to Quebec City in the north. The tensions between North America, German-dominated Europe and Japanese East Asia are also a source of concern, though a wary equilibrium keeps things from heating up beyond trade, currency and the occasional proxy war.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 2:34pm

The consensus among most of the other “what if the South won the Civil War” alternate histories that I have read, or read about, is that the South and North would have reunited at some point during the 20th century due to economic concerns and military concerns as new superpowers such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia came on the scene.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 4:01pm

I remember MacKinlay Kantor’s alternate history where the three American successor states reunited in the face of the Soviet threat. It’s back in print again:

http://tinyurl.com/d7s8jft

The thing is, there’s a good chance the Soviet Union would have been “butterflied away” by the consequences of an America disintegrating after 1865–e.g., there would be no Nazi Germany if Imperial Germany was triumphant, nor likely a Soviet Union (the Germans would have squashed it flat).

FWIW, Roger Ransom’s recent alternate history/historical analysis of a sundered America is very convincing. He imagines the Great War taking place on the American continent, with reunification in the wake of Confederate (and Allied) defeat.

http://tinyurl.com/cznqpfw

Jon
Jon
Tuesday, April 2, AD 2013 4:15pm

The South was ideologically on the losing side of history (if you want to put it that way). When England enacted the anti-slavery act, it was a losing battle for pro-slave people. Plus, the political movement was toward consolidation–it was an age of nationalism.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Wednesday, April 3, AD 2013 11:15am

Hard to say about Imperial Germany’s long-term prospects. Wilhelm II was something of a twit, and the German government under his regime staffed with a remarkable number of nonentities. A triumphant but still exhausted Germany could have just as easily seen a return to the prudence of the post-Kulturkampf regime. At a minimum, the Crown Prince had a reasonably moderate political head on his shoulders, and likely would have governed differently.

Darwin
Darwin
Wednesday, April 3, AD 2013 11:39am

Boy, I’ve been out of the loop a long time on Harry Turtledove, I think when I was last paying attention he was still working through the series where aliens invaded during WW2. The southern victory series sounds interesting.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Thursday, April 4, AD 2013 9:38am

Darwin:

It is. It’s also massive and borderline unwieldy. But it ends with a literal bang or two, and the humorous touches (e.g., what happened to Hitler) make it worthwhile.

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