I came across this clip today of Ken Burns recounting his discovery of “one of the scariest things” he’s ever heard. The clip and transcript (in relevant part) are below. My comments follow.
Transcript:
“One of the scariest things I’ve ever heard came out of the mouth of somebody who I admire almost more than anyone else in American history, and that’s…uh… Abraham Lincoln. In the spring of ’63, when he loses the battle of Chancellorsville and… uh… Stonewall Jackson’s instrumental in that defeat, he’s got another passive sort of anxious general amongst a whole bunch of Union generals that keep getting replaced and replaced, including McClellan and all the names you know, McDowell and Meade, all that stuff, he says: “This war will come to an end when I find a general who understands the arithmetic and the arithmetic is the ability to send dead bodies north because you gained ground…”
Here’s what Burns got right: Lincoln was “the scariest” and for the reason Burns tries to explain. Lincoln was engaged in a war of attrition against the South. He was willing to kill and to keep killing until he won his War of Southern Subjugation, knowing that the North had more resources than the South to fight the war. BTW, while Lincoln was killing 750,000 and maiming another 750,000 American sons, brothers husbands and fathers for political reasons, he sent his own son to safety at Harvard University. When his son graduated from Harvard, Lincoln asked Grant to given him a safe job on Grant’s staff in February 1865, about seven weeks before Lee surrendered to Grant. But I digress.
Here’s what Burns got wrong: There is no record of Lincoln uttering the words Burns attributes to him. While one of Lincoln’s private secretaries (William Stoddard) did recount in his memoirs that, after the bloody battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, an exasperated Lincoln was seemingly distraught that the Union commanding general (Ambrose Burnside) didn’t keep sending men up against the impregnable Confederate position on Marye’s Heights. Burnsides’ series of futile charges killed and wounded about 8,000 Union soldiers (vs. 1,000-1,200 for the Confederates) in more than six hours of fighting. Below is the section from page 125 of Stoddard’s memoir, “Inside Lincoln’s White House in War Times.”
This incident happened after the battle of Fredericksburg, not Chancellorsville, which was in May 1863. Stoddard wrote this from memory and was not quoting Lincoln. The book wasn’t published until 1890, although he seems wrote several articles about his experiences with Lincoln starting as early as 1866.
Burns has Lincoln’s [sick] war of attrition sentiment correct because that’s how Lincoln conducted the war and what he expected from his generals from the beginning. My question for Burns and the rest of the world’s Lincoln lovers is “What part of this obviously sick man is admirable?”
Lincoln did make a notable quote after the battle of Chancellorsville. Upon learning that the Army of the Potomac had been embarrassingly routed by Lee (again), an exasperated Lincoln stated: “My God! What will the country say?” And that’s Lincoln for you, worried about his agenda and the optics. The men were just cannon fodder.