Those summer nights of July,1864,had many secrets which the tired President musing in the shadows of the giant trees or finding solace with the greatest of earthly minds would have given much to know.How were Gilmore and Jaquess faring?What was really afoot in Canada?And that unnatural silence of the Vindictives,what did that mean?And the two great armies,Grant's in Virginia,Sherman's in Georgia,was there never to be stirring news of either of these?The hush of the moment,the atmosphere of suspense that seemed to envelop him,it was just what had always for his imagination had such strange charm in the stories of fated men.He turned again to Macbeth,or to Richard II,or to Hamlet.Shakespeare,too,understood these mysterious pauses--who better!
The sense of the impending was strengthened by the alarms of some of his best friends.They besought him to abandon his avowed purpose to call for a draft of half a million under the new Enrollment Act.Many voices joined the one chorus:the country is on the verge of despair;you will wreck the cause by demanding another colossal sacrifice.But he would not listen.
When,in desperation,they struck precisely the wrong note,and hinted at the ruin of his political prospects,he had his calm reply:"it matters not what becomes of me.We must have men.
if I go down,I intend to go like the Cumberland,with my colors flying."[12]
Thus the days passed until the eighteenth of July.Meanwhile the irresponsible Greeley had made a sad mess of his Canadian adventure.Though Lincoln had given him definite instructions,requiring him to negotiate only with agents who could produce written authority from Davis,and who would treat on the basis of restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery,Greeley ignored both these unconditional requirements.[13]He had found the Confederate agents at Niagara.They had no credentials.
Nevertheless,he invited them to come to Washington and open negotiations.Of the President's two conditions,he said not a word.This was just what the agents wanted.It could easily be twisted into the semblance of an attempt by Lincoln to sue for peace.They accepted the invitation.Greeley telegraphed to Lincoln reporting what he had done.Of course,it was plain that he had misrepresented Lincoln;that he had far exceeded his authority;and that his perverse unfaithfulness must be repudiated.On July eighteenth,Hay set out for Niagara with this paper in Lincoln's handwriting.[14]
"To whom it may concern:Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace,the integrity of the whole Union,and the abandonment of slavery,and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States,will be received and considered by the executive government of the United States,and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have,safe conduct both ways.ABRAHAMLINCOLN."
This was the end of the negotiation.The agents could not accept these terms.Immediately,they published a version of what had happened:they had been invited to come to Washington;subsequently,conditions had been imposed which made it impossible for them to accept Was not the conclusion plain?
The Washington government was trying to open negotiations but it was also in the fear of its own supporters playing craftily a double game.These astute diplomats saw that there was a psychological crisis in the North.By adding to the confusion of the hour they had well served their cause.Greeley's fiasco was susceptible of a double interpretation.To the pacifists it meant that the government,whatever may have been intended at the start,had ended by setting impossible conditions of peace.To the supporters of the war,it meant that whatever were the last thoughts of the government,it had for a time contemplated peace without any conditions at all.Lincoln was severely condemned,Greeley was ridiculed,by both groups of interpreters.Why did not Greeley come out bravely and tell the truth?Why did he not confess that he had suppressed Lincoln's first set of instructions;that it was he,on his own responsibility,who had led the Confederate agents astray;that he,not Lincoln was solely to blame for the false impression that was now being used so adroitly to injure the President?
Lincoln proposed to publish their correspondence,but made a condition that was characteristic.Greeley's letters rang with cries of despair.He was by far the most influential Northern editor.Lincoln asked him to strike out these hopeless passages.Greeley refused.The correspondence must be published entire or not at all.Lincoln suppressed it.He let the blame of himself go on;and he said nothing in extenuation.[15]
He took some consolation in a "card"that appeared in the Boston Transcript,July 22.it gave a brief account of the adventure of Gilmore and Jaquess,and stated the answer given to them by the President of the Confederacy.That answer,as restated by the Confederate Secretary of State,was:"he had no authority to receive proposals for negotiations except by virtue of his office as President of an independent Confederacy and on this basis alone must proposals be made to him."[16]
There was another circumstance that may well have been Lincoln's consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes.Only boldness could extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties.
The mesh was destined to grow more and more of a snare;his boldness was to grow with his danger.He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter,when,on the day he sent the final instructions to Greeley,in defiance of his timid advisers,he issued a proclamation calling for a new draft of half a million men.[17]
