Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [344]
In similar fashion, Lincoln reassured Mary when a headline in a Northern paper blared: “Invasion! Rebel Forces in Maryland and Pennsylvania.” “It is a matter of choice with yourself whether you come home,” he told her. “I do not think the raid into Pennsylvania amounts to anything at all.” When each day brought reports of further Confederate advances, however, Mary decided to rejoin her husband in Washington.
“The country, now, is in a blaze of excitement,” Benjamin French recorded on June 18. “Some of the Rebel troops have crossed into the upper part of Pennsylvania, & the North is wide awake.” While Welles worried that “something of a panic pervades the city,” Lincoln remained quietly confident that the Union troops, fighting on home ground, would achieve the signal victory so long denied. Capitalizing on the intense patriotism inspired by the invasion, he called out a hundred thousand troops from the militias in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and the new state of West Virginia.
“I should think this constant toil and moil would kill him,” French marveled, yet the resilient president seemed “in excellent spirits.” Inspired by Lincoln’s steadfast nature, French added, “the more I see of him the more I am convinced of his superlative goodness, truth, kindness & Patriotism.”
In the tense atmosphere of Washington, the committee charged with planning the Fourth of July celebrations considered suspending their preparations. “Don’t you stop!” Mary Lincoln ordered White House secretary William Stoddard, promising to personally help make the anniversary celebrations a success. Reflecting her husband’s unruffled confidence, she assured Stoddard of her husband’s certainty that “the crisis has come and that all the chances are on our side. This move of Lee’s is all he could ask for.”
Lincoln’s primary concern was that Hooker would again be “outgeneraled” by Lee. His worry escalated in the last weeks of June when he “observed in Hooker the same failings that were witnessed in McClellan after the Battle of Antietam. A want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not, and ought not to be taken from other points.” When Hooker delivered a prickly telegram asking to be relieved of command, Lincoln and Stanton replaced him with General George Meade, who had participated in the Peninsula Campaign, Second Bull Run, and Chancellorsville. The surprising move distressed Chase. He had long championed Hooker and had recently returned from spending the day with him in the field. When Lincoln informed his cabinet that the change was already accomplished, Welles noted that “Chase was disturbed more than he cared should appear.” The following day, Chase wrote to Kate, who was in New York. “You must have been greatly astonished for the relieving of General Hooker; but your astonishment cannot have exceeded mine.”
THREE DAYS LATER, in Pennsylvania, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg began. “The turning point of the whole war seems to be crowding itself into the present,” wrote John Nicolay. “It seems almost impossible to wait for the result. Hours become days and days become months in such a suspense.” If Lee achieved victory at Gettysburg, he could move on to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington. His aura of invincibility might, it was feared, eventually lead the British and French to recognize the independence of the Confederacy and bring the war to an end.
Telegraph service from the front was “poor and desultory,” according to operator David Bates. Lincoln remained a constant fixture in the telegraph office, resting fitfully on the couch. At intervals, Stanton, Seward, Welles, and Senators Sumner and Chandler drifted in and out. Senator Chandler would “never forget the painful anxiety of those few days when the fate of the nation seemed to hang in the balance; nor the restless solicitude of Mr. Lincoln, as he paced up and down the room, reading dispatches, soliloquizing, and often stopping to trace the map which hung on the wall.” Sketched on the map were the generals and