Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [308]
The scathing document, written in Stanton’s distinctive back-sloping script with words added and erased, declared that the undersigned were “unwilling to be accessory to the waste of natural resources, the protraction of the war, the destruction of our armies, and the imperiling of the Union which we believe must result from the continuance of George B. McClellan in command.” It charged McClellan with willful “disobedience to superior orders,” which had “imperiled the army commanded by General Pope.” Chase made several suggestions for changes, affixed his signature above Stanton’s, and promised to bring it to Bates, Smith, and Welles.
Having long since lost faith in McClellan, Smith was persuaded immediately to add his signature. Climbing the narrow stairs to the navy secretary’s second-floor office later that afternoon, Chase reached him just as he was preparing to leave for the day. After reading the document, Welles assured Chase that he believed McClellan’s “withdrawal from any command was demanded,” but he “did not choose to denounce McC. for incapacity or declare him a traitor,” as the document seemed to proclaim. Even when Chase repeated the damning facts of McClellan’s fatal delay in moving to reinforce Pope, Welles hesitated. He pointedly asked whether Blair had seen the document. Chase replied that his “turn had not come.” At that very moment, while Welles still held the document, Blair walked in. Sensing Chase’s alarm, Welles kept the paper close to his chest until Blair departed only a few minutes later. With the postmaster general out of earshot, Chase entreated Welles not to mention the document to Blair or anyone else.
While Chase was performing his part in the intrigue, Stanton had invited Lincoln and Hay to his K Street home for an impromptu dinner. No clear information on the course of the battle was yet available, though preliminary reports suggested that Pope had gained the advantage. “A pleasant little dinner,” Hay recorded, “and a pretty wife as white and cold and motionless as marble, whose rare smiles seemed to pain her.” In conversation with Lincoln, Stanton was “unqualifiedly severe upon McClellan,” charging that “nothing but foul play could lose us this battle & that it rested with McC. and his friends.” Both Stanton and Lincoln expressed their strong belief in General Pope.
After dinner, the president and Hay went to army headquarters, where General Halleck appeared “quiet and somewhat confident” about the direction of what he considered “the greatest battle of the Century.” Proceeding to Stanton’s office, they found he had dispatched “a vast army of Volunteer Nurses out to the field” to help care for the sick and wounded. “Every thing seemed to be going well,” Hay reported, “& we went to bed expecting glad tidings at sunrise.”
For Stanton, however, much work was in store that evening. If Pope managed to win without McClellan’s aid, it would only strengthen the argument for the young Napoleon’s ouster. When Welles stopped by to get an update from the front, he found Stanton with Smith. Stanton launched into a long diatribe against McClellan, reaching back to the winter doldrums, the “Quaker gun” affair, and the blunders on the Peninsula. When Smith left, Welles recalled, Stanton lowered his voice to a whisper. He had previously learned from Chase that Welles had refused to sign the document. Welles explained that while he, by and large, agreed that McClellan must be removed, he “disliked the method and manner of proceeding.” It seemed “discourteous and disrespectful to the President.” The president, he declared, “had called us around him as friends and advisers to counsel and consult…not to enter into combinations against him.”
Agitated, Stanton exclaimed that “he knew of no particular obligations he was under to the President who had called him to a difficult position and imposed upon him labors and responsibilities which no man could carry, and which were greatly increased by fastening upon him a commander who was constantly striving to embarrass him…. He could not and would not submit