Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [227]
That night, Emilie Helm later recalled, her husband was unable to sleep. The next day, he returned to the White House. “I am going home,” he told Lincoln. “I will answer you from there. The position you offer me is beyond what I had expected, even in my most hopeful dreams. You have been very generous to me, Mr. Lincoln, generous beyond anything I have ever known. I had no claim upon you, for I opposed your candidacy, and did what I could to prevent your election…. Don’t let this offer be made public yet. I will send you my answer in a few days.” When Helm reached Kentucky and spoke with General Simon Bolivar Buckner and his friends, he realized he must decline Lincoln’s offer and “cast his destinies with his native southland.” The time spent in drafting his reply to Lincoln proved to be, he told a friend, “the most painful hour of his life.” Soon after, he received a commission in the Confederate Army, where he eventually became a brigadier general.
EACH DAY BROUGHT NEW conflicts and decisions as Lincoln struggled to stabilize the beleaguered Union. In a contentious cabinet meeting, Seward argued that a blockade of Southern ports should be instituted at once. Recognized by the law of nations, the blockade would grant the Union the power to search and seize vessels. Gideon Welles countered that to proclaim a blockade would mistakenly acknowledge that the Union was engaged in a war with the South and encourage foreign powers to extend belligerent rights to the Confederacy. Better to simply close the ports against the insurrection and use the policing powers of municipal law to seize entering or exiting ships. The cabinet split down the middle. Chase, Blair, and Bates backed Welles, while Smith and Cameron sided with Seward. Lincoln concluded that Seward’s position was stronger and issued his formal blockade proclamation on April 19. Welles, despite his initial hesitation, would execute the blockade with great energy and skill.
The commencement of war found Welles and the Navy Department in a grave situation. Southerners, who had made up the majority of navy officers in peacetime, resigned in droves every day. Treason was rampant. Early in April, Lincoln had graciously attended a wedding celebration for the daughter of Captain Frank Buchanan, the commandant of the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. Two weeks later, expecting that his home state of Maryland “would soon secede and join the Confederacy,” Buchanan resigned his commission, vowing that he would “not take any part in the defence of this Yard from this date.”
Meanwhile, the secession of Virginia jeopardized the Norfolk Navy Yard. With its strategic location, immense dry dock, great supply of cannons and guns, and premier vessel, the Merrimac, the Norfolk yard was indispensable to both sides. Welles had encouraged Lincoln to reinforce the yard before Sumter fell, but Lincoln had resisted any action that would provoke Virginia. This decision would seriously compromise the Union’s naval strength. By the time Welles received orders to send troops to Norfolk, it was too late. The Confederates had secured control of the Navy Yard. The calamitous news, Charles Francis Adams recorded in his diary, sent him into a state of “extreme uneasiness” about the future of the Union. “We the children of the third and fourth generations are doomed to pay the penalties of the compromises made by the first.”
The first casualties of the war came on April 19, 1861, the same day the blockade was announced. When the Sixth Massachusetts