Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie
went out there and loaded up train after train of the poor wounded
volunteers. The rebels were reported to be close upon us and we were
finally compelled to close Burke Station, the operator and myself
leaving on the last train for Alexandria where the effect of panic was
evident upon every side. Some of our railway men were missing, but the
number at the mess on the following morning showed that, compared with
other branches of the service, we had cause for congratulation. A few
conductors and engineers had obtained boats and crossed the Potomac,
but the great body of the men remained, although the roar of the guns
of the pursuing enemy was supposed to be heard in every sound during
the night. Of our telegraphers not one was missing the next morning.
[Footnote 20: "When Carnegie reached Washington his first task was to
establish a ferry to Alexandria and to extend the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad track from the old depot in Washington, along Maryland Avenue
to and across the Potomac, so that locomotives and cars might be
crossed for use in Virginia. Long Bridge, over the Potomac, had to be
rebuilt, and I recall the fact that under the direction of Carnegie
and R.F. Morley the railroad between Washington and Alexandria was
completed in the remarkably short period of seven days. All hands,
from Carnegie down, worked day and night to accomplish the task."
(Bates, _Lincoln in the Telegraph Office_, p. 22. New York, 1907.)]
Soon after this I returned to Washington and made my headquarters in
the War Building with Colonel Scott. As I had charge of the telegraph
department, as well as the railways, this gave me an opportunity of
seeing President Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Secretary Cameron, and others;
and I was occasionally brought in personal contact with these men,
which was to me a source of great interest. Mr. Lincoln would
occasionally come to the office and sit at the desk awaiting replies
to telegrams, or perhaps merely anxious for information.
All the pictures of this extraordinary man are like him. He was so
marked of feature that it was impossible for any one to paint him and
not produce a likeness. He was certainly one of the most homely men I
ever saw when his features were in repose; but when excited or telling
a story, intellect shone through his eyes and illuminated his face to
a degree which I have seldom or never seen in any other. His manners
were perfect because natural; and he had a kind word for everybody,
even the youngest boy in the office. His attentions were not
graduated. They were the same to all, as deferential in talking to the
messenger boy as to Secretary Seward. His charm lay in the total
absence of manner. It was not so much, perhaps, what he said as the
way in which he said it that never failed to win one. I have often
regretted that I did not note down carefully at the time some of his
curious sayings, for he said even common things in an original way. I
never met a great man who so thoroughly made himself one with all men
as Mr. Lincoln. As Secretary Hay so well says, "It is impossible to
imagine any one a valet to Mr. Lincoln; he would have been his
companion." He was the most perfect democrat, revealing in every word
and act the equality of men.
When Mason and Slidell in 1861 were taken from the British ship Trent
there was intense anxiety upon the part of those who, like myself,
knew what the right of asylum on her ships meant to Britain. It was
certain war or else a prompt return of the prisoners. Secretary
Cameron being absent when the Cabinet was summoned to consider the
question, Mr. Scott was invited to attend as Assistant Secretary of
War. I did my best to let him understand that upon this issue Britain
would fight beyond question, and urged that he stand firm for
surrender, especially since it had been the American doctrine that
ships should be immune from search. Mr. Scott, knowing nothing of
foreign affairs, was disposed to hold the captives, but upon his
return from the meeting he told me that Seward had warned the Cabinet
it meant war, just as I had said. Lincoln, too, was at first inclined
to hold the prisoners, but was at last converted to Seward's policy.
The Cabinet, however, had decided to postpone action until the morrow,
when Cameron and other absentees would be present. Mr. Scott was
requested by Seward to meet Cameron on arrival and get him right on
the subject before going to the meeting, for he was expected to be in
no surrendering mood. This was done and all went well next day.
The general confusion which reigned at Washington at this time had to
be seen to be understood. No description can convey my initial
impression of it. The first time I saw General Scott, then
Commander-in-Chief, he was being helped by two men across the pavement
from his office into his carriage. He was an old, decrepit man,
paralyzed not only in body, but in mind; and it was upon this noble
relic of the past that the organization of the forces of the Republic
depended. His chief commissary, General Taylor, was in some degree a
counterpart of Scott. It was our business to arrange with these, and
others scarcely less fit, for the opening of communications and for
the transportation of men and supplies. They were seemingly one and
all martinets who had passed the age of usefulness. Days would elapse
before a decision could be obtained upon matters which required prompt
action. There was scarcely a young active officer at the head of any
important department--at least I cannot recall one. Long years of
peace had fossilized the service.
The same cause had produced like results, I understood, in the Navy
Department, but I was not brought in personal contact with it. The
navy was not important at the beginning; it was the army that counted.
Nothing but defeat was to be looked for until the heads of the various
departments were changed, and this could not be done in a day. The
impatience of the country at the apparent delay in producing an
effective weapon for the great task thrown upon the Government was no
doubt natural, but the wonder to me is that order was so soon evolved
from the chaos which prevailed in every branch of the service.
As far as our operations were concerned we had one great advantage.
Secretary Cameron authorized Mr. Scott (he had been made a Colonel) to
do what he thought necessary without waiting for the slow movements of
the officials under the Secretary of War. Of this authority unsparing
use was made, and the important part played by the railway and
telegraph department of the Government from the very beginning of the
war is to be attributed to the fact that we had the cordial support of
Secretary Cameron. He was then in the possession of all his faculties
and grasped the elements of the problem far better than his generals
and heads of departments. Popular clamor compelled Lincoln to change
him at last, but those who were behind the scenes well knew that if
other departments had been as well managed as was the War Department
under Cameron, all things considered, much of disaster would have been
avoided.
Lochiel, as Cameron liked to be called, was a man of sentiment. In his
ninetieth year he visited us in Scotland and, passing through one of
our glens, sitting on the front seat of our four-in-hand coach, he
reverently took off his hat and bareheaded rode through the glen,
overcome by its grandeur. The conversation turned once upon the
efforts which candidates for office must themselves put forth and the
fallacy that office seeks the man, except in very rare emergencies.
Apropos of this Lochiel told this story about Lincoln's second term:
One day at Cameron's country home near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he
received a telegram saying that President Lincoln would like to see
him. Accordingly he went to Washington. Lincoln began:
"Cameron, the people about me are telling me that it is my patriotic
duty to become a candidate for a second term, that I am the only man
who can save my country, and so on; and do you know I'm just beginning
to be fool enough to believe them a little. What do you say, and how
could it be managed?"
"Well, Mr. President, twenty-eight years ago President Jackson sent
for me as you have now done and told me just the same story. His
letter reached me in New Orleans and I traveled ten days to reach
Washington. I told President Jackson I thought the best plan would be
to have the Legislature of one of the States pass resolutions
insisting that the pilot should not desert the ship during these
stormy times, and so forth. If one State did this I thought others
would follow. Mr. Jackson concurred and I went to Harrisburg, and had
such a resolution prepared and passed. Other States followed as I
expected and, as you know, he won a second term."
"Well," said Lincoln, "could you do that now?"
"No," said I, "I am too near to you, Mr. President; but if you desire
I might get a friend to attend to it, I think."
"Well," said President Lincoln, "I leave the matter with you."
"I sent for Foster here" (who was his companion on the coach and our
guest) "and asked him to look up the Jackson resolutions. We changed
them a little to meet new conditions and passed them. The like result
followed as in the case of President Jackson. Upon my next visit to
Washington I went in the evening to the President's public reception.
When I entered the crowded and spacious East Room, being like Lincoln
very tall, the President recognized me over the mass of people and
holding up both white-gloved hands which looked like two legs of
mutton, called out: 'Two more in to-day, Cameron, two more.' That is,
two additional States had passed the Jackson-Lincoln resolutions."
Apart from the light this incident throws upon political life, it is
rather remarkable that the same man should have been called upon by
two presidents of the United States, twenty-eight years apart, under
exactly similar circumstances and asked for advice, and that, the same
expedient being employed, both men became candidates and both secured
second terms. As was once explained upon a memorable occasion:
"There's figuring in all them things."
When in Washington I had not met General Grant, because he was in the
West up to the time of my leaving, but on a journey to and from
Washington he stopped at Pittsburgh to make the necessary arrangements
for his removal to the East. I met him on the line upon both occasions
and took him to dine with me in Pittsburgh. There were no dining-cars
then. He was the most ordinary-looking man of high position I had ever
met, and the last that one would select at first glance as a
remarkable man. I remember that Secretary of War Stanton said that
when he visited the armies in the West, General Grant and his staff
entered his car; he looked at them, one after the other, as they
entered and seeing General Grant, said to himself, "Well, I do not
know which is General Grant, but there is one that cannot be." Yet
this was he. [Reading this years after it was written, I laugh. It is
pretty hard on the General, for I have been taken for him more than
once.]
In those days of the war much was talked about "strategy" and the
plans of the various generals. I was amazed at General Grant's freedom
in talking to me about such things. Of course he knew that I had been
in the War Office, and was well known to Secretary Stanton,[21] and
had some knowledge of what was going on; but my surprise can be
imagined when he said to me:
"Well, the President and Stanton want me to go East and take command
there, and I have agreed to do it. I am just going West to make the
necessary arrangements."
I said, "I suspected as much."
"I am going to put Sherman in charge," he said.
"That will surprise the country," I said, "for I think the impression