Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [306]
Frances profoundly disagreed with this balancing equation, asserting there could be no “truly republican” institutions with slavery intact—“they are incompatible.” Sometime during that long, anxious summer, she recorded her exhortations in a note to her husband. “Whatever may be the principles in the determination of the President in this matter,” she wrote, “you owe it to yourself & your children & your country & to God to make your record clear.” If the president refused to act on slavery, “it would be far better for you to resign your place tomorrow than by continuing there seem to give countenance to a great moral evil.”
Frances had no intimation that Lincoln’s views on the relationship between emancipation and republican institutions had already evolved beyond those of her husband. For despite the continued criticism of his inaction on slavery, Lincoln kept his proclamation concealed until victory could offer the propitious moment. Everything depended on the success of his army.
CHAPTER 18
“MY WORD IS OUT”
LINCOLN PINNED HIS HOPES for the victory that would allow him to issue his Emancipation Proclamation on the newly assembled Army of Virginia, headed by General John Pope. In the Western theater, Pope had demonstrated the aggression McClellan lacked. Early August 1862, Halleck ordered McClellan to withdraw his entire army by steamship from Harrison’s Landing to Aquia Creek and Alexandria, thus ending the Peninsula Campaign. Once there, McClellan was to rendezvous with Pope, who would be pushing south from Manassas toward Richmond along the interior route Lincoln had initially favored. Joined together, the two armies would substantially outnumber General Lee’s forces.
But McClellan stalled, fearing that Pope would be placed in charge of the merged army. He argued ferociously against the move, warning Halleck it would “prove disastrous in the extreme.” His only hope, he confided to his wife, was that he might “induce the enemy to attack” before he reached Washington and was relieved of his command. After delaying for ten days with strategic protests and claims of insufficient transports, he grudgingly began his withdrawal on August 14, not reaching Aquia Creek until August 24.
Realizing that he would be overpowered by the combined armies, General Lee moved north from Richmond to engage Pope before McClellan reached him. By August 18, the Confederate forces, under Generals Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, had come within striking distance of Pope. Only the Rappahannock River, midway between Washington and Richmond, separated the two forces. From the security of the northern riverbank, Pope waited in vain for McClellan’s troops to reinforce what everyone hoped would be a major offensive.
Lee capitalized brilliantly on McClellan’s delay. Leaving Longstreet’s forces in front of Pope, he sent Jackson behind Pope’s lines to capture the Union’s supply base at Manassas Junction and then assemble in the woods near the old Bull Run battlefield. In a state of confusion, Pope left the Rappahannock and headed north, where he would encounter the combined forces of Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson. “What is the stake?” Seward wrote Frances. “They say that it is nothing less than this capital; and, as many think, the cause also.” While soldiers on both sides waited for the fighting to begin, a comet appeared in the northern sky. Lincoln, so familiar with Shakespeare, doubtless recalled Calpurnia’s ominous warning to Caesar: “When beggars die there are no comets seen/The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
Although McClellan agreed to send two corps to Pope, he continued to delay, awaiting word on his own status as commander. If his troops were integrated into Pope’s army, he told his wife on August 24, he would “try for a leave of absence!” Everything would change, however, if “Pope