Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [336]
Though irritated by Chase’s haughty yet fundamentally insecure nature, Lincoln recognized the superlative accomplishments of his treasury secretary. In the two months since Congress had adjourned, Chase had sold more than $45 million in bonds, and the demand for the bonds was steadily increasing. “Never before did the finances of any nation, in the midst of a great war, work so admirably as do ours,” the New York Times noted in a laudatory article on Chase. Even as Lincoln deferred to Chase, however, he placed his prickly secretary’s third resignation letter on file for future reference.
Monty Blair, meanwhile, resented Chase and showed little respect for his remaining colleagues. He considered Seward “an unprincipled liar” and Stanton “a great scoundrel.” In fact, Blair thought the entire cabinet save Welles, and perhaps Bates, whom he liked but did not consider a stalwart ally, should be replaced, and that his father, “the ablest and best informed politician in America,” should become Lincoln’s “private counsellor.” And so one personal struggle succeeded another, complicating the president’s job, absorbing his energies.
Lincoln’s uneasiness about his warring cabinet colleagues paled in comparison, however, to his disquietude about the impending movements of the Army of the Potomac. On April 13, 1863, three days after Lincoln returned from his trip, Hooker took the first step in what would become known as the Battle of Chancellorsville. He dispatched ten thousand cavalrymen under General George Stoneman to head south and insert themselves between Lee’s army and Richmond. With the Confederate supply lines to Richmond severed, Hooker intended to cross the Rappahannock, draw the enemy away from Fredericksburg, and engage him in battle. Heavy rains and impassable roads delayed the advance, but finally, during the last week of April, Hooker’s men began crossing the river.
For Lincoln and his cabinet, anxious days followed. “We have been in a terrible suspense here,” Nicolay wrote his fiancée on Monday, May 4. Fighting had begun, but there was no “definite information” on the battle’s progress. Welles joined Lincoln in the War Department to wait for news that did not come. Bates was particularly tense, knowing that his son John Coalter was with Hooker “in the most active and dangerous service.” Lincoln admitted to Francis Blair, Sr., that nobody seemed to know what was going on. Welles found it odd that “no reliable intelligence” was reaching them, correctly surmising that this boded ill. “In the absence of news the President strives to feel encouraged and to inspire others,” he wrote, “but I can perceive he has doubts and misgivings, though he does not express them.”
“While I am anxious, please do not suppose I am impatient, or waste a moment’s thought on me, to your own hindrance, or discomfort,” Lincoln had written Hooker at the outset of the campaign. Even when disturbing fragments filtered in, Lincoln refused to pressure Hooker. “God bless you, and all with you. I know you will do your best,” he wired his general on the morning of May 6. “Waste no time unnecessarily, to gratify our curiosity with despatches.”
At 3 p.m. that afternoon, the suspense ended with an unwelcome telegram from Hooker’s chief of staff. The Union forces had been defeated. The army had retreated to its original position on the north side of the Rappahannock, and seventeen thousand Union soldiers were dead, wounded, or missing. Hooker’s second in command, General Darius Couch, later claimed that Hooker was simply “outgeneraled” by Lee. Assuming that Lee would “fall back without risking battle,” Fighting Joe was “demoralized” by the fierceness of the Confederate attack. Had he committed all his troops, as Lincoln had directed