1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See

381 Pages·2008·3.55 MB·English

by  Bruce Chadwick

© 2008, 2011 by Bruce Chadwick
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The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Chadwick, Bruce.
1858 : Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, and
the war they failed to see / Bruce Chadwick.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Causes. 2. United States—
Politics and government—1857-1861. 3. Politicians—United States—
Biography. 4. Generals—United States—Biography. 5. Politicians—Southern
States—Biography. 6. Generals—Southern States—Biography. 7. Secession—
Southern States. 8. Southern States—Politics and government—1775-1865. I.
Title. II. Title: Eighteen fifty-eight.
E458.C425 2008
973.7’11—dc22
2007039254
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Margie
and Rory
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR TO READER
CHAPTER ONE: THE WHITE HOUSE, NEW YEAR’S DAY 1858
CHAPTER TWO: THE DEATH OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
CHAPTER THREE: THE WHITE HOUSE, EARLY 1858:
ONE YEAR OF DRED SCOTT
CHAPTER FOUR: COLONEL ROBERT E. LEE LEAVES
THE MILITARY FOREVER
CHAPTER FIVE: THE WHITE HOUSE, FEBRUARY 1858:
SHOWDOWN WITH STEPHEN DOUGLAS
CHAPTER SIX: HONEST ABE AND THE LITTLE GIANT:
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES, PART ONE
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE WHITE HOUSE, JULY 1858
CHAPTER EIGHT: HONEST ABE AND THE LITTLE GIANT:
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES, PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE: THE WHITE HOUSE, AUTUMN 1858:
THE FORNEY FEUD
CHAPTER TEN: OBERLIN, OHIO: THE RESCUERS
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE WHITE HOUSE, OCTOBER 1858
CHAPTER TWELVE: WILLIAM SEWARD:
THE “IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE WHITE HOUSE, ELECTION DAY
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN:
DEAD-ENDED
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE WHITE HOUSE, WINTER 1858:
SWASHBUCKLING IN THE AMERICAS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD:
JOHN BROWN’S CHRISTMAS RAID INTO MISSOURI
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE WHITE HOUSE,
DECEMBER 1858
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENDNOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The gratification in writing about history is not the publication of the book, but
the journey to that moment. My journey on this book was long and complicated
because I found myself writing biographies in one long story about one of the
most critical twelve-month periods in American history. I realized that I needed
plenty of help to tell the story of 1858 and I received it.
I want to thank many people for their assistance in my work on 1858, but
first I want to thank Hillel Black, my editor and the executive editor of
Sourcebooks. Hillel, a lover of history, helped me make an entire story out of
seven fragmented tales in this work and has, over the years, encouraged me in all
of my work about history. Also at Sourcebooks, I must thank Tara Van
Timmeren, who also edited the book, and Heather Moore, the hardworking
director of publicity.
My tracking of the year 1858 took me to numerous libraries, archives, and
museums. Many thanks to the gracious people at the Virginia State Library, the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Princeton University’s Firestone Library,
Rutgers University’s Alexander Library, the David Library of the American
Revolution, Cindy Van Horn at the Lincoln Museum, Ronald Baumann at
Oberlin College, Lisa Keys at the Kansas State Historical Society, Elizabeth
Hogan at the University of Notre Dame Archives, Mary Troy and historian
Frank Cucurrulo at Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, Heather
Milne at the Museum of the Confederacy, Mike Coker at the South Carolina
Historical Society, Peter Wisbey at the William Seward House Museum, and Jim
Gerswenc at Dickinson College Library.
Dr. Michael Birkner at Gettysburg College was kind enough to read through
the Buchanan chapters of the book and offer suggestions. Thanks, too, to Fred
Smith, at New Jersey City University’s Guarini Library, and to Jo Bruno at New
Jersey City University for their encouragement.
I want to thank my agents at McIntosh and Otis, Elizabeth Winick and
Jonathan Lyons, plus Rebecca Strauss, for their support in this project and my
other work.
And, as always, thanks to my wife Marjorie for her never-ending assistance
and for sharing my hopes and dreams.
AUTHOR TO READER
The Civil War began in April 1861, when Confederate forces in Charleston,
South Carolina, bombarded Fort Sumter, ensconced on an island in the city’s
harbor. The terrible conflict has resulted in hundreds of books about the war, its
battles, causes, and aftermath. This book explores the events and personalities of
a single year to show what happened in those twelve months that would set the
nation, North and South, on a collision course that culminated in the war that
ripped the country apart and brought about the deaths of more than 630,000
young men.
The record of that year is told within seven separate stories that stand alone
as complete sagas, and together explain what happened throughout the nation
that year, a year in which slavery came to dominate every election and
discussion from the gold fields of California to the mansions of Boston to the
campaign trail in Illinois. The stories of events of that critical year include:
Mississippi senator and Mexican War hero Jefferson Davis, who later became
the president of the Confederacy, nearly died, but recovered to become the
nation’s secessionist spokesman. A disgruntled Colonel Robert E. Lee, who later
led the Confederate Army, had to decide whether he would resign from the
military, disappear from public life and return to his beloved Virginia to run his
wife’s family plantation. William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the great Union
generals in the Civil War, left the army to make his wife happy. He had failed at
a number of jobs, and by the fall of 1858 he was reduced to running a roadside
food stand in Kansas.
In autumn of that year, two dozen residents of Oberlin, Ohio, freed a slave
that had been apprehended by slave catchers from Kentucky; their arrest and
well-publicized trial set off a firestorm of debate across America. During that
same autumn, in the middle of the elections, New York Senator William Seward
seemed to solidify his hold on the 1860 Republican presidential nomination with
a fiery speech in Rochester, New York, in which he told the country that all
Americans were engaged in an “irresistible conflict” over slavery that might end
in Civil War. That winter, abolitionist fanatic John Brown, who later attacked
Harper’s Ferry, freed several slaves in a daring raid in Missouri, marching them
eleven hundred miles to Canada in a trek involving chases and gunfights that the