A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [391]
Adams felt liberated. For the past three years, his life had been blighted by fear and anxiety. Lincoln’s reelection—which would not have happened if the war were still going badly—seemed to herald the end of perpetual crisis. “The responsibility attending this post declines steadily with the progress of the war,” Adams wrote in his diary. He felt that the change justified his asking Seward “about the possibility of my being relieved in the spring.” When Henry Adams heard the news of the election, he feared his father would be too reticent in his request, and asked Charles Francis Jr., “Should you go to Washington, try and have a talk with Seward about our affairs.”30
Adams delivered his amended version of Seward’s protest on Confederate Canadian operations to Lord Russell on November 25. His lingering misgivings about deserting the legation fell away once he learned that Russell had not only received Seward’s protest via Lord Lyons but also had already replied. “Mr. Adams is very angry with Mr. Seward about his conduct,” reported Benjamin Moran. “His labor was all thrown away and he is made to look like a fool. It was a trick that no man but Seward could have played with Mr. Adams.”31
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“This election has relieved us of the fire in the rear,” Charles Francis Jr. wrote to Henry Adams on November 14, “and now we can devote an undivided attention to the remnants of the Confederacy.”32 The Democrats’ hopes of winning the White House had been upended by the twin victories of Sherman at Atlanta and Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. Grant’s tenacity had made the Copperheads appear defeatist, if not unpatriotic, and the same message of “peace now” that had been so popular during the summer had alienated all but the Democrats’ core supporters in the autumn. Ordinary Federal soldiers shared Charles Francis Jr.’s determination to finish the war; 78 percent had voted for Lincoln. The Democratic candidate, General McClellan, had counted on the army without considering the psychological cost to men who were fighting for victory rather than for peace. Even many Federal prisoners of war “voted” for Lincoln. James Pendlebury had been a prisoner at Andersonville, considered to be the worst of the Confederacy’s prisons, since his capture in June. Unable to cope with the sheer number of prisoners, the commandant of Andersonville, Henry Wirz, had allowed a small delegation to travel to Washington with a petition to resume the exchange system.33 The failure to gain a response led to a second prison being built nearby to take some of the overflow. “We moved to Millen and while there I voted for Abraham Lincoln,” Pendlebury wrote in his memoirs. “Our Captains allowed us to as they were anxious to carry McLennon [sic] because Abe Lincoln was a Republican and McLennon a Democrat. Now 19 out of every 20 voted for Lincoln so we were all ‘docked’ rations.”34.6 The defiance shown by Pendlebury was all the more remarkable given that the Federal soldiers knew Lincoln had refused to resume prisoner exchanges until the Confederates treated white and black prisoners on an equal basis. On some days, there were more than 150 burials at the prison: “We would fight like wild beasts that we might carry out the body of a fellow prisoner, because on those occasions we would get into the woods and come back with a supply of firewood with which to do our cooking.”35 After the prisoners were forbidden to go into the woods, they fought for the “privilege” of taking the bodies to the carts, since it was their only opportunity to scavenge for clothing.