Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [242]
When Lincoln returned, his young aides relayed Seward’s message. “He listened in silence,” they later reported, “without the slightest change of feature or expression, and walked away to army headquarters.” He remained there with Scott and his cabinet until a telegram from McDowell verified the loss. Immediate reinforcements were summoned to defend the capital. With no further recourse, the disconsolate team dispersed.
“Oh what a sad long weary day has this sabbath been,” Elizabeth Blair told her husband. For Simon Cameron, the day brought a sharper personal grief. His brother James, in the service of Colonel William Sherman’s brigade, was among the nearly nine hundred soldiers killed. “I loved my brother,” Cameron wrote Chase, “as only the poor and lonely can love those with whom they have toiled & struggled up the rugged hill of life’s success—but he died bravely in the discharge of his duty.”
Seward stayed up past midnight composing a letter to Frances. “Every thing is being done that mortal man can do. Scott is grieved and disappointed…. What went out an army is surging back toward Washington as a disorganized mob. They fought well, did nobly, and apparently had gained the day, when some unreasonable alarm started a retreat. If the officers had experience and the men discipline, they could be rallied, and could be marched clear back to the field.”
Lincoln returned to the White House, where he watched the returning soldiers straggle down the street, listened to the mournful sounds of ambulances, and sat for hours with various senators and congressmen who had witnessed the battle from the hill. Early the following morning, with rain pouring down, General Scott arrived, urging Mary to take the children to the North until Washington was deemed safe from capture. Elizabeth Grimsley recollected the exchange as Mary turned to her husband: “Will you go with us?” she asked. “Most assuredly I will not leave at this juncture,” he replied. “Then I will not leave you at this juncture,” she answered with finality.
Lincoln did not sleep that dreadful night. Finding his only comfort in forward motion, he began drafting a memo incorporating the painful lessons of Bull Run into a coherent future military policy. Understanding that the disorder of the newly formed troops had contributed to the debacle, he called for the forces to “be constantly drilled, disciplined and instructed.” Furthermore, when he learned that soldiers preparing to end their three months of service had led the retreat, Lincoln proposed to let all those short-termers “who decline to enter the longer service, be discharged as rapidly as circumstances will permit.” Anticipating European reactions to the defeat, he determined to move “with all possible despatch” to make the blockade operative. That night, a telegram was also sent to General George McClellan in western Virginia with orders to come to Washington and take command of the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln then devised a strategy consisting of three advances: a second stand at Manassas; a move down the Mississippi toward Memphis; and a drive from Cincinnati to East Tennessee.
“If there were nothing else of Abraham Lincoln for history to stamp him with,” Walt Whitman reflected, “it is enough to send him with his wreath to the memory of all future time, that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer than gall—indeed a crucifixion day—that it did not conquer him—that he unflinchingly stemmed it, and resolved to lift himself and the Union out of it.”
Recriminations were plentiful. The Democratic New York Herald placed responsibility on “a weak, inharmonious and inefficient Cabinet.” General Patterson was blamed for failing to keep Johnston’s troops from joining Beauregard. “Two weeks ago,” Chase self-righteously complained to a friend, “I urged the sending of Fremont to this command; and had it been done we should now have been rejoicing over a great victory.” Still, the historian James Rowley concludes that “public censure touched too lightly on Lincoln,” who should have held back the assault