Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [240]
By shying from emancipation in these early months of the war, Lincoln aligned himself with the majority of the Northern people, the Republican Congress, and the whole of his cabinet. Two weeks into its session, the House passed a resolution declaring that the purpose of the war was “to preserve the Union,” not to eliminate slavery. Even Chase, the most fervent antislavery man in the cabinet, agreed that at this time the “sword” of total abolition should be left “in the sheath.” If the conflict were drawn out, however, he told the historian John Motley, if “we find it much more difficult and expensive in blood and treasure to put it down than we anticipated,” then the sword would be drawn. “We do not wish this, we deplore it, because of the vast confiscation of property, and of the servile insurrections, too horrible to contemplate, which would follow. We wish the Constitution and Union as it is, with slavery, as a municipal institution, existing till such time as each State in its wisdom thinks fit to mitigate or abolish it…but if the issue be distinctly presented—death to the American Republic or death to slavery, slavery must die.”
BY MID-JULY, the outcry in the North for some form of significant action against the rebels reached fever pitch. “Forward to Richmond!” blared the headline in the New York Tribune. Senator Trumbull introduced a resolution calling for “the immediate movement of the troops, and the occupation of Richmond before the 20th July,” the date set for the Confederate Congress to convene. General Scott hesitated, believing the army still unprepared for a major offensive, but Lincoln feared that without action, the morale of both the troops and the general public would diminish. European leaders would interpret Northern inaction as a faltering resolve in the Union.
General Irvin McDowell, a brigadier general from Ohio, devised a plan to engage the rebel forces under command of General Beauregard at Manassas, twenty-six miles southwest of Washington. It was an intelligent plan. Many Northerners had come to see Manassas as “a terrible, unknown, mysterious something…filled by countless thousands of the most ferocious warriors,” poised to attack Washington, D.C. “Foreigners do not understand,” Bates confided to a friend, “why we should allow a hostile army to remain so long almost in sight of the Capitol, if we were able to drive them off.” With 30,000 Union troops at his disposal, McDowell could overrun Beauregard’s forces so long as Union general Robert Patterson prevented the 9,000 Confederate troops under General Joseph Johnston at Winchester, Virginia, from joining Beauregard. On June 29, Lincoln and his cabinet approved McDowell’s plan.
The Battle of Bull Run, as it later became known in the North, began in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 21. As the “roar of the artillery” reached the White House, Elizabeth Grimsley recalled, “the excitement grew intense.” As far away as the Blair estate in Silver Spring, Monty’s sister, Elizabeth, took a walk in the woods to “stop the roar in [her] ears,” but the sound of the guns only increased. As soldiers on both sides of the battlefield were discovering the gruesome carnage of war, hundreds of Washingtonians hastily prepared picnic baskets filled with bread and wine. They raced to the hill at Centreville and the fields below to witness what most presumed would be an easy victory for the North. Senators, congressmen, government employees, and their families peered through opera glasses to survey the battlefield. After “an unusually heavy discharge,” the British journalist William Russell overheard one woman exclaim: “That is splendid. Oh, my! Is not that first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time to-morrow.”
While Lincoln attended church, the Union troops pressed forward, forcing the rebels farther south into the woods. At midday, news of what seemed a complete Union victory reached Lincoln and the members of his