In the summer of 1864 Lincoln was becoming increasingly desperate to finish the war. He authorized Grant to engage in destructive warfare, targeting and destroying plantations, railroads, bridges, crops, and anything that the Confederacy needed to sustain its troops. In the latter part of 1864, General Philip Sheridan burned fields and plantations in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, while Sherman did the same in his March to the Sea through Georgia. Union forces left no possibility that Confederate forces could resupply soldiers along the way.
Meanwhile, Lincoln was coming under fire, literally. Robert E. Lee sent Confederate General Jubal Early to race up the Shenandoah Valley, invade Maryland, disrupt Union rail-supply lines, and threaten Washington. Lee hoped this would force Grant to move troops away from him and Richmond in order to defend the capital. Success would also disrupt the November presidential election, and a Lincoln loss would change the trajectory of the war.
Lincoln was at the Soldier’s Home when news of fighting at nearby Fort Stevens reached him. Against the wishes of his aides, Lincoln rode out to the fort to witness the assault firsthand. The Confederate threat was repulsed, but not before the exposed Lincoln was pulled down from his viewing point after a soldier next to him was killed by incoming fire. Some reports suggest it was future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who shouted at Lincoln, “Get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!”
In early September, Lincoln finally caught a break. Admiral David Farragut won the Battle of Mobile Bay, a quixotic Union campaign to capture the last harbor controlled by Confederates in the Gulf of Mexico. The harbor was protected by three onshore forts, three traditional wooden gunboats, and an imposing ironclad commanded by Roger Jones, the same man who had so impressively commanded the CSS Virginia against the USS Monitor in a battle of ironclads two years earlier. Mines (then called torpedoes) blocked the harbor entrance. Farragut became famous by being lashed to the rigging of the main mast and, according to legend, yelling, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
Lincoln was so convinced he would lose reelection that on August 23, 1864, he wrote what has become known as the “blind memorandum:”
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.
He folded the memorandum in half, asked each member of his perplexed cabinet to sign the back without reading it, then put it away for safekeeping.
Soon afterward, William T. Sherman finally drew Confederate General John Bell Hood away from Atlanta, which allowed the Union to capture the Georgia capital. As northern newspapers praised the mighty successes at both Atlanta and Mobile Bay, Lincoln’s reelection chances suddenly looked more promising.
Indeed, by the time November arrived the election was not even close. The National Union Party received 55 percent of the popular vote (with only northern states voting, of course) to 45 percent for the Democratic Party. But the electoral vote was even more decisive: 212 for Lincoln and 21 for McClellan. Lincoln won 22 of the 25 northern states and was reelected in a landslide.
[Adapted from Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.]
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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