And I Thought I Had It All Figured Out…..

You know, I am wrong so often that it has become a habit. However, I think that this once I can actually take a bow and say, ‘I told you so!’. There was just TOO much involved to believe that the plan could have arisen from someone ‘in the ranks’ or even someone of importance in the Administration. Then, too, Lincoln’s upcoming election was so ‘iffy’ that he needed something decisive to insure re-election and certainly, the destruction of the Confederate civil government and the resultant collapse of its military operations would have been ‘just the ticket’, so to speak.

Again, as I pointed out, the American military had a history of being subordinate to civilian rule. I cannot believe for a moment that Lee or any other Confederate general, deprived of an actual civilian government and in the ultimate chaos immediately preceding its destruction, would have considered himself in a position to continue the war. Once there was no more ‘Confederate government’, there would have BEEN no more war. It would have simply died out or at least that part of the war being waged by large armies would have ceased. As for guerilla activities, that is problematic, but the general conflict would soon have sputtered to a halt.

And who knows? It might actually have been better for the South had that in fact happened. It certainly would have been a moral ‘black eye’ for Lincoln and his government, but it might well have saved thousands of lives on BOTH sides and millions of dollars of waste and destruction.

So, here and now, I believe I have the right (perhaps for the first – and last – time in my life) to correctly point out, ‘I told you so!’

V.P.

Eric,

I look forward to reading the letter.

Valerie, as I stated earlier, if you have proof I’d like to see it. It doesn’t do any good arguing back and forth over possibilities, probabilities or whatever. My take is that you will always, no matter what, believe Lincoln ordered it. Nothing I say will change your mind, and I really don’t want to change your mind. You have your ways of determining truth.
I personally just like to see actual proof when people are accused of doing things such as ordering people murdered before I condemn them.
BTW, I don’t believe Jeff Davis ordered Lincoln’s murder either, even though there are many who believe ‘evidence’ exists of that.

So, Eric, can we see the evidence? Without it, it seems too early for “told you so.”

Ever since you posed this question, I have been looking for anything that would suggest that Lincoln directed or knew about a scheme that involved murdering his Confederate counterpart. It is a fascinating question that I doubt it will ever be resolved fully, and as I have repeatedly said, and you judiciously put it, we cannot rule out that Lincoln at least knew of the plot. Still, the continued lack of any evidence had led me to come down pretty much where you did in your working draft.

As you know, I found a surprisingly deep and detailed involvement by Sec. Stanton in prisoner-of-war matters, and especially in regard to those Union prisoners held in Richmond. This involvement was particularly intense in early 1864, and suggests that he had focused on those prisoners as a problem to be solved. That would tend to support the thesis that he had a major hand in the raid, at least to the extent of trying to free those prisoners.

But I have also found something else: distaste by Stanton for wild and risky schemes, and distaste for “hell for leather” fighters. He advocated more aggressive generalship, but not recklessness (and surely the K-D raid, even absent the scheme to capture or murder Confederate civilian leaders, was reckless). Nor was he generally one to initiate military operations (the sole exception was the rapid conveyance of the 11th and 12th corps to fight at Chattanooga.) Having not studied Stanton in-depth before, I was surprised by this. Welles thought that Stanton was a bit of a coward, an assessment picked up by other chroniclers. Of course, he could have been overruled by the President. The problem here is that, by all evidence, Lincoln was considerably more cautious, both politically and militarily, than Stanton and by 1864 had some grasp of what cavalry might be expected to accomplish.

The Mosby letter you posted on August 7 suggests, perhaps strongly, that the orders to kill Davis came from above. As an attorney, you know the problems inherent in such hearsay, but let’s suppose that Mosby reported accurately and that Kilpatrick was loose-lipped with Wistar and that Wistar reported Kilpatrick’s words accurately years after the fact. That means that someone in DC wrote, or at least dictated, the orders.

One problem is that the actual wording of the order lacks any similarity with language used by Stanton or Lincoln, or any military authority for that matter: “We hope to release the prisoners from Belle Island first & having seen them fairly started we will cross the James River into Richmond, destroying the bridges after us & exhorting the released prisoners to destroy and burn the hateful City & do not allow the Rebel Leader Davis and his traitorous crew to escape. . . The City it must be destroyed and Jeff. Davis and Cabinet killed.” Dahlgren could have somehow tried to cover the language of his orders to protect higher-ups, but it strikes me as much more likely that it is a creation of a 20-something glory-seeker. Did someone give him verbal orders? Did someone give him a hint of what he wanted the raid to accomplish?

Other questions arise with the Mosby account. Was Kilpatrick ever actually under Butler’s orders? How likely was it that Kilpatrick would have been so close-lipped with everyone but Wistar, a non-West Pointer?

Yet . . . Undermining my own thesis is that Wistar’s raid included as an objective capturing Davis, perhaps as a hostage to free the Union prisoners. Butler apparently obtained this approval from Lincoln and Stanton. I was surprised that Lincoln and Stanton could be that aggressive, even that reckless. That approval may, or may not, be explained by the status of the originator of the proposal. Butler was someone at that point to appease at all costs lest he turn his wandering eye toward seeking a presidential nomination.

Put another way, my research has found little to support my original notion that Stanton was at least indirectly behind any scheme that included killing Davis. That has moved me slightly off my previous supposition and more towards the individuals with documented “cowboy” tendencies: Kilpatrick and Dahlgren.

But, keeping an ever-open mind, I await what, I hope, will be more evidence.

Bill

Eric,

Just looked up Wistar’s entry in Generals in Blue. Odd how he basically disappears from the records after Cold Harbor and resigns in August. Affords no light at all.

Bill