Lincoln in the World (43 page)

Even some of Lincoln’s erstwhile admirers in the diplomatic corps had begun to turn against him. Matías Romero, the increasingly frustrated Washington-based representative of the anti-Maximilian Mexican liberals, met over the summer with James McDougall, the drunken California senator who had been aggressively advocating a harder line on Mexico. McDougall complained to Romero that the president’s reelection would be a “calamity” for Mexico. The senator grumbled about his one-time acquaintance Lincoln’s “very objectionable conduct of United States foreign affairs, most especially his policy in regard to Mexico.” Romero, who was eager for a new American administration that might challenge Maximilian’s regime more forcefully, agreed to help McDougall compile opposition research—a dossier that would help Mexico hawks “vigorously to attack the government on the subject.”
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Lincoln’s reelection prospects improved instantaneously, however, with the arrival of a telegram from General William Tecumseh Sherman on September 3. “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won,” the dispatch read. Lincoln’s armies finally dominated the heart of the Southern Confederacy. From the Hague, the U.S. minister to the Netherlands reported that the news had effected “a marked change in the public sentiment of Europe in regard to our affairs.” The capture of Atlanta “suddenly destroyed the illusion” that the major Confederate cities were invulnerable. As a result, the diplomat observed, “the public judgment on the whole subject fell to pieces.”
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Seward was in the library of his home in Auburn, New York, when he got the news. Euphoric revelers poured into the park across from his house, as cannon thundered and church bells tolled in celebration. The secretary of state gave an hour-long speech lauding the victory. In a reference that Napoleon III would not have missed, Seward compared Lincoln’s secretary of war to the military mastermind of the French Revolution. American newspapers began comparing Sherman to the French emperor’s conquering uncle.
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Actually, imperial adventures remained the last thing that Lincoln and Seward wanted in the autumn of 1864. With the final defeat of the Confederacy in reach, only some unpredictable event like an unwanted war with France had the potential to scuttle the Union victory. In late September, Seward wrote to a Union military commander in New Orleans, reiterating that he should avoid provoking a conflict with France at all cost. “On no account,” Seward wrote, “and in no way, must the neutrality of the United States in the war between France and Mexico be compromised by our military forces.” The president sent a good-natured letter to Napoleon congratulating him on the birth of a second son to his cousin Prince Napoleon Joseph Bonaparte and Marie Clotilde of Savoie. Lincoln wrote that he hoped God would protect the royal family, warmly signing the missive, “Your Good Friend.” Mention of the Monroe Doctrine was nowhere to be found.
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Gratuitous threats were unnecessary. The events of the fall spoke for themselves. Lincoln’s reelection on November 8 could not help but impress the European powers. Around seven p.m. on a drizzly election night, the president and a small band of supporters left the White House and walked over to the War Department to get the returns. Lincoln, despite the wet weather, was in a good mood. In the warmth of the war office, the president joked around and served fried oysters to his guests. The news was all good. Telegram after telegram arrived announcing wide margins for Lincoln. The party did not break up until well after midnight, when Lincoln’s reelection appeared sure. The president ended up winning by more than four hundred thousand ballots and nearly two hundred electoral votes.
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Two nights later, a euphoric crowd arrived at the White House after dark, pushing up to the front gates and then spilling onto the front lawn. The revelers dangled lanterns and hoisted banners, while a band played military marches. The concussion from a pounding cannon shivered the windows of the Executive Mansion, delighting eleven-year-old Tad. The boy flew from window to window taking in the scene.

Lincoln dreaded serenades. “I never know what to say on these occasions,” he once remarked. Nevertheless, he scratched down several dozen lines of a short speech in his clear, looping hand. Then he walked to a window above the north portico, gazing out at the dim shape of the crowd shifting in the dark below. When the revelers spotted the president’s tall, gaunt figure, they erupted in “the maddest cheers”—a “deafening racket” that lasted for several minutes.
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As he began to speak, Lincoln reminded his audience of the Civil War’s global significance. The progress of the war shows “how
sound
, and how
strong
we still are,” the president cried, in his shrill, piercing voice with a hint of a Kentucky drawl. The Union victories were not just a message to the Confederacy, Lincoln insisted, but a demonstration to the world. “We have more men now, than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, patriotic men, are better than gold.” The London
Times
considered Lincoln’s brief remarks “one of the best speeches he has ever made.” Lincoln’s secretaries, too, thought the serenade response “one of the weightiest and wisest of all his discourses.” It contained, Hay and Nicolay later held, “the inmost philosophy of republican governments.”
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Meanwhile, congratulations flooded in from supporters at home and abroad. From London, Karl Marx wrote on behalf of the International Working Men’s Association to congratulate Lincoln on “the triumphant war cry of your reelection.” In a private letter to a relative a few weeks after the election, Marx marveled at the “gigantic transformation” in American politics. The results, Marx declared, would “have a beneficent effect on the whole world.” John Lothrop Motley, Lincoln’s minister in Vienna, saw Lincoln’s reelection as a victory for the New World at the expense of Old Europe. Motley told the president that it had been naïve of Union diplomats at the start of the war to think they could change the minds of “the privileged classes of Europe.” Public opinion in elite quarters remained “depraved,” Motley wrote Lincoln. And yet, the diplomat added, the Union effort had managed to secure “the sympathy of the uncounted millions of mankind throughout the civilized world, who would be
left without a hope if the great transatlantic commonwealth should go down in this struggle.”
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In Atlanta, meanwhile, Sherman prepared to jump off on his commanding March to the Sea. The disheveled, chain-smoking former banker had recognized the international implications of the war early on. Shortly before Lincoln’s reelection, Sherman telegraphed Grant, suggesting that if they could manage to march an army straight through Confederate territory, it would provide “a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power which Davis cannot resist.” Lincoln, however, was not initially so sanguine. He later admitted to being “
anxious
, if not fearful” as Sherman’s army of sixty thousand departed Atlanta on November 15 for the Georgia coast.
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Indeed, as Sherman’s forces plunged on to Savannah, stomping through the red-clay roads with bands blaring “John Brown’s Body,” Europeans seemed puzzled by the maneuver. “Military history,” the London
Times
observed, “has recorded no stranger marvel than the mysterious expedition of General Sherman, on an unknown route against an undiscoverable enemy.” Henry Adams reported from London that Britons remained skeptical. Still, he added, the “interest felt in his march is enormous.” If Sherman were to succeed, Adams wrote, “you may rely upon it that the moral effect of his demonstration on Europe will be greater than that of any other event of the war. It will finish the rebs on this side.”
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The tens of thousands of battle-hardened Federal troops hurtling southward must have unnerved Napoleon. The Mexican adventure had long since lost its charm for the French emperor. He insisted that Maximilian should abandon any illusions of liberal reforms and first try to get a grip on his country. “I consider,” the French emperor wrote to Maximilian in November, “that Your Majesty is bound to keep the absolute power in your hands for a long time.” From Chapultepec, Maximilian and Charlotte begged the emperor to avoid further drawdowns of French troops. Charlotte complained to Eugénie that their efforts to control the country
were “much hampered” by the shrinking French forces. As the New Year dawned, Charlotte reported that the Mexican monarchy was passing through “a grave crisis.” Only “big battalions,” she insisted, would save Napoleon’s project.
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There Has Been War Enough

As Northern armies laid siege to the last bastions of Confederate power, Lincoln began to feel his oats. With Grant’s army stalled near Petersburg, Virginia, a delegation visited the White House, complaining about the Union army’s progress. Lincoln walked over to a map and explained to the visitors how close Grant actually was to victory. The president then broke into one of his ribald stories—this one about “a wicked and lascivious sinner” in Indiana who had asked to be baptized. The preacher took the man to the local river and dunked him in. When the sinner came up for air, “gasping and rubbing his face,” he immediately asked to be dunked again. The preacher was puzzled but ultimately obliged. When the man emerged the second time, he exclaimed, “Now I’ve been baptized twice, and the Devil can kiss my ass.” Lincoln jabbed a finger at a place on the map, and insisted that when his army arrived at that spot, the Union would finally be victorious. “And then,” Lincoln told his visitors, “the Southern Confederacy can kiss my ass.”
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The same went for Napoleon III. Fortunately, by early 1865, French public opinion had also turned violently against the adventure in Mexico. Auguste Laugel, a French correspondent for
The Nation
magazine, wrote about the changing national mood in his country—and urged U.S. policymakers to avoid sending the military south of the Rio Grande.

Charles Sumner brought Laugel to the White House to see Lincoln in January. The Frenchman found Lincoln in his second-floor office, running one of his huge hands through his coarse, disheveled hair. Through two large windows Laugel could make out “the white
streak of the Potomac, the Virginia heights, the unfinished Washington obelisk.” Lincoln displayed an “almost paternal gentleness,” Laugel told his diary. The Americans did not seem inclined to challenge the French emperor. At a dinner at Seward’s the following night, the secretary of state sounded even more sympathetic. “It is not my judgment that the emperor is hostile to us,” Seward said. “It seems to me that I could bring him over.”
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Still, ordinary Americans did not appear so magnanimous. In late January the French journalist visited the Federal armies in the field. There he found “great irritation against England” in the ranks. “Sir,” one young soldier from Vermont told Laugel, “if war were declared against England, were it ten years hence, or twenty, I would not wait a day to enter a regiment, as a private if need be.” Laugel suspected that the troops harbored as great an anger against France—but concealed it “out of politeness.” With each day that passed during his travels, Laugel became more convinced that France should be courting America rather than provoking it. “America has felt her strength,” he later wrote, “and will want to make use of it like a bird who feels its wings.” France, he insisted, should be positioning itself to “profit by this new force”—not antagonize it.
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Back in France, Napoleon seemed to be slowly getting the message. “What I really want,” the emperor told Bigelow in February, “is to get out of Mexico altogether.” The French emperor alleged that his efforts had done some good in Mexico. Maximilian’s regime, Napoleon said in a speech from the throne in February, was “establishing itself, the country is becoming peaceful, its immense resources are being developed; a happy effect of the bravery of our soldiers, the good sense of the Mexican population, and the intelligence and energy of the sovereign.” And yet later in the same speech, Napoleon announced a dramatic reduction in French troop levels around the world. “Thus,” the emperor continued, “all our overseas expeditions are reaching an end.” The French army in Mexico, Napoleon said, “is already returning to France.”
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In the meantime, the French emperor did his best to reassure his protégés in Mexico. “We have been
rather uneasy at the news from America,” Napoleon wrote. “However, it looks as if the war will still last a long time, and when peace comes, the United States will think twice before declaring war on France and England.”
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High above Mexico City, in their palace at Chapultepec, Maximilian and Charlotte tried to whistle past the graveyard. With his empire crumbling around him, Maximilian did his best to distract the diplomatic corps in the city. Each Monday Charlotte would throw a ball and invite the “boring” local diplomats. The former Belgian princess would fill the events with “a bevy of the loveliest women,” Maximilian told his brother. Guests at the balls could often hear the rumbling cannon from battles with guerrillas in the distance over the music. The former Austrian archduke resorted to stuffing the foreign envoys with rich cuisine and wines from the imperial cellars. “The diplomatists gorge and swill to such an extent,” Maximilian told his brother, “that as a rule after dinner they can only mumble inarticulate sounds.”
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Lincoln, too, could barely speak as the war entered its final days. Shortly before the second inaugural, the president’s old friend Joshua Speed visited the White House and found Lincoln “worn down in health and spirits.” Lincoln complained that he felt ill. “I am very unwell,” he told Speed. “My feet and hands are always cold. I suppose I ought to be in bed.” The poet Walt Whitman spotted the president at the White House the following week. Lincoln, he reported, appeared “very much worn and tired; the lines indeed of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, the demands of life and death cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness [remained] underneath the furrows.”
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