A Family and Nation under Fire

The Civil War Letters and Journals of William and Joseph Medill

Georgiann Baldino

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781631013058
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

This collection of previously unpublished diaries and correspondence between Maj. William Medill and older brother Joseph, one of the influential owners of the Chicago Tribune, illuminates the Republican politics of the Civil War era. The brothers correct newspaper coverage of the war, disagree with official military reports, and often condemn Lincoln administration policies. When shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the Medills mobilized, unaware how their courage would be tested in the coming years.

Joseph's letters to President Lincoln reveal their exceptional relationship. A founding member of the Republican Party, Joseph was a powerful force for moral journalism. With his partner Dr. Charles Ray, Joseph extended the Tribune's reach until it achieved national influence. By 1860, Ray and Joseph claim to have elected Abraham Lincoln president, and Lincoln publicly agrees that their paperdid more for him than any paper in the Midwest. When regional divisions escalate, Joseph issues early calls for war and lobbies fervently for emancipation. He continues to support Lincoln and the war effort but uses the Tribune to advise Washington about the conduct of the war, the draft, monetary policy, and slavery. In private letters, Joseph lectures the president about emancipation, urging him to take an aggressive stance toward slave owners and warning about the Conscription Act.

William began his military career as a private but was promoted to captain and then major, first serving on the front and later dealing directly with commanders. His letters rail against inept leaders, good men weakened by short- ages, lives wasted, and destruction that defies understanding. His eyewitness accounts provide a fascinating perspective-part personal trauma and part social commentary.

The Medill letters and journals are poignant, private, and traumatic. Joseph's early public calls for war turn to anxiety as the war escalates and then to grief when William is wounded. The Medills are revealed as vulnerable human beings caught up in cataclysmic events that test their moral vision and compel them to find ways to better society. A war of liberation is their solution. The brothers embrace that deadly game in order to pursue a more perfect Union.

CHAPTER ONE

The Call to Action

If 50,000 men is not enough, call for 100,000, and
if that is not sufficient call for 500,000.
—Joseph Medill

JOSEPH TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Office of the Daily Tribune, Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois, April 15, 1861 President Lincoln,

There is but one opinion in Chicago—Douglas Dems and Lincoln Reps are a unit, and that is, that Sumter must be retaken, Moultrie retaken, Pinckney retaken, the custom house retaken, and the Stars & Stripes—the National Emblem, must float over the Federal property in Charleston. Chicago will send you a gallant regiment on call, and Illinois fifty more.

England & France met Russia at Sebastipol—localized the war and whipped her there. She has been tame and quiet ever since. Charleston of all spots, is the place to settle our national difficulties. There meet the secessionists and there crush them. If 50,000 men is not enough, call for 100,000, and if that is not sufficient call for 500,000. But crush the head of the rattlesnake. There is where the trouble was hatched. The Tories live there—let them die there. The North West will back you with their last man, dollar and bushel of corn. The authority of the Govt. must be made good. Do your duty; the people are with you.

J. Medill¹

Joseph made sure that President Lincoln understood how supporters in Illinois viewed the administration’s management of the war. Lincoln had given John C. Fremont command of the Department of the West, but on August 30, 1861, Fremont issued a proclamation, placing Missouri under martial law. Fremont decreed that all property of those bearing arms in rebellion would be confiscated—confiscated slaves would be declared free—and he imposed capital punishment on those rebelling against the federal government. Fearing this would push Missouri to join the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote to Fremont, asking him to rescind the proclamation. Fremont refused, and Lincoln looked for a way to remove him from command. Lincoln’s solution was to send officials to Missouri to build a case for Fremont’s removal based on alleged incompetence.² As the following letters show, Joseph supported Fremont and objected to Lincoln’s decisions.

JOSEPH TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Confidential, Chicago, September 16, 1861

President Lincoln,

Your letter to Gen. Fremont has cast a funeral pall over our loyal city. We are stricken with a heavier calamity than the rout at Bull Run. It comes like a mildew, like a frost in June, killing the coming harvest. If there was one thing above another on which the whole people were agreed it was in support of Fremont’s noble proclamation. Democrats vied with Republicans in eulogizing it and defending its positions. That proclamation and the pervading belief that you endorsed it had received enlistments and rekindled flagging enthusiasm. Since you have vetoed the penalties against the misdeeds of slave-holding rebels, the war will degenerate into duels and assassination. Mr. President, this is a slaveholders’ rebellion. Slavery is at the bottom of the whole trouble. The revolt was inaugurated to give expansion & greater strength to the system—more territory. More slaves. More special privileges. These are the objects and the dismemberment or subjugation of the Republic [which] is to them a preliminary necessity. Until the Administration sees the contest in the light of this truth, success will be impossible. A slaveholders’ rebellion cannot be put down by conducting the war on pro-slavery principles.

When the rebel slaveholder raises his dagger against his country, let one of the penalties be the confiscation and liberation of his slaves. This strikes at the root of the disease and touches the parricide [sic] in his only sensitive spot.

If you had let Fremont and the Northwest alone, Missouri would have been pacified in 30 days. Memphis would be ours before six weeks and New Orleans by Jan 8th. The Great West had taken the job of crushing this unholy rebellion in the Valley of the Mississippi and opening its navigation from the Falls of St. Anthony [Minneapolis, Minnesota] to the Belize. Your own State has nearly 50,000 soldiers in camp today. The heart of our great and noble state is in this work.

The effect of your letter in Kentucky will be to embolden the rebel slaveholders by removing from their eyes the pains and penalties of treason. The halting neutral will be converting into an assassin rebel, and the loyal slaveholder having no selfish motive (the safety of his slaves) for action will relapse into indifference and “neutrality.”

And let me say that the reason given for the crushing blow on Fremont will utterly fail to satisfy the people. Since the Executive is obliged to transcend the acts of Congress and the Constitution every day. The higher law of military necessity and national self-preservation furnish you ample justification, and there also Fremont found his authority for his proclamation. The Union cannot be saved on the basis of your repudiation of Fremont’s proclamation. We waste our blood and treasure in vain. I wish to God! you could pass among the people and touch their pulse and hear their great heart beat, and you would be no longer in the dark in relation to the will and sentiments of those to whom this nation belongs and who furnish the men and means to prosecute the war.

Pardon this intrusion, but believe me sincere. My heart is full of anguish. I look into the future with despair if the war is to be conducted on the principles indicated in your letter. I have sent two brothers to the army. Their blood will be shed in vain. Chicago sits today in sackcloth and ashes. Those who were chiefest in securing your nomination for the high post you occupy are shedding bitter tears. Judge Trumbull, who is here, is in agony. Men are here attending the State Fair from all parts of the state and from neighboring states. They are all downcast and in sorrow.

Yours in grief, J. Medill

Even though Joseph had strong disagreements with President Lincoln, the two men continued to regard each other as friends, important allies and sources of information. In addition to the president’s friendship, Joseph Medill’s connections in Washington included other high-ranking officials. One of these connections was Schuyler Colfax, Republican congressman from Indiana (1855–69). Colfax would go on to become Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1863–1869. Colfax wrote to Joseph to report a meeting he had with President Lincoln, in which he shared a letter Joseph had written. When reading Joseph’s letter to Lincoln, Representative Colfax skipped any comparison people were making between the Lincoln administrations and those of Presidents Tyler and Fillmore—because those two administrations had increased sectional divisions between slave and free states.³

CONGRESSMAN SCHUYLER COLFAX TO JOSEPH

H.R. [House of Representatives] Washington, June 9, 1862

Friend Medill,

I saw Mr. Lincoln last night & had an hour’s talk with him. I told him I had an interesting letter from you, which you authorized me to read to him & asked him if he would like to hear it. He said, “Yes, very much. Medill is a man of brains—a capital friend, and although more radical than myself his views are always well worth considering.” I then read it to him, skipping the part where you said people at one time had began to talk of him as Tyler & Fillmore. When you spoke of the fact that [illegible] if he acted so & so, more than Washington, he sighed & replied while I was reading, “I am not looking for reelection. I expect more trouble and difficulty before my present term ends than will be the share of any one man. But I am trying to do right.”

When I got through, he said, “Tell Medill … we can only act where we have power & no slave that works for the U.S. or comes to our lines shall be re-enslaved.”

The Colfax letter goes on to cover political concerns, including “Andy Johnson’s”⁴ telegraph asking Lincoln if he could arrest 70 percent of the “meanest secesh near Nashville.” In closing Schuyler Colfax writes that the contents of the letter are not to be reprinted, but he knows Joseph Medill likes to hear President Lincoln’s views.

JOSEPH TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN

Office of the Daily Tribune, Chicago, October 13, 1862

President Lincoln,

In the name of God and his holy angels! What evil influence is holding our army torpid on the north bank of the Potomac? The summer is passed, and winter approaches and nothing is done. How long will the nation consent to keep a million of idle men in the field? Gen. McClellan deserved to be arrested and cashiered or shot for not pursuing the beaten rebel army the day after the Battle of Antietam. Twenty-six days of superb campaign weather have been since wasted in scandalous idleness and counter profitable reviews. Thousands of soldiers became weary, disgusted and discouraged and deserted; it is called “straggling.” They have run off to escape McClellanism and another winter in tents on the Potomac. That army is rapidly demoralizing and will melt away.

The people are gravely discontented and discouraged. The cost of the war is eating up the substance of the people and mortgaging the property and labor of unborn generations. The elections will go badly against us, I fear, in consequence of the vast preponderance of Republicans in the army—held down by proslavery generals. And public discontent at the do nothing behavior of McClellan, whom you persist in keeping in command. Put Halleck in the field or Hooker or Burnsides—some man who desires to beat the rebels.

All patriotic men thank and bless you for issuing the [Preliminary Emancipation] Proclamation, but like faith without works it is dead. The Potomac Army must move. This nation is gone forever if the army goes into winter quarters without pursuing and overthrowing the rebels in Virginia, or there may burst forth a revolution in the North. Either men will give up in despair or attempt to break from the coils of the handhold that is strangling the Union and waging war only on the resources of the loyal people. I look upon Geo. McClellan and Carlos Buell⁵ as the assassins of the Great Republic. The one has suffocated our endeavors for 12 months in the West and the other for 14 months in the East. They hold exactly the same political views of Major Key, whom you dismissed. He is only an echo of theirs. They are suspiciously popular with the rebels. Their motives suit Jeff Davis to a dot. Buell’s present spasm amounts to nothing. He will soon relapse into his former torpidity. These men want a compromise with the rebels, not a subjugation of them. The former is training for your place. Every man of secession sympathies are warmly for him. Is it right that such men should command armies composed mainly of earnest Republicans? The Republican Party is held responsible for the success of the war, while proslavery generals manage it, and a proslavery democracy has thus far dictated the policy on which the war is conducted. Is that right? Gold is 30 percent premium. The Gov’t. credit is on the brink of bankruptcy. Hell yawns close by, and McClellan holds a quarter of a million impatient soldiers on the north bank of the Potomac.

Oh, Mr. Lincoln, wake up before all is lost. Drive McClellan to his work or kick him out of the army. The country will sustain you in any act that will give motion to the grand army. Why listen to the reactionary croakings of the hold-back cowardly conservatives? That class never save any cause. You must have Jeff Davis or he will have you. One or other has got to be. If he wins, anti-slavery men will be persecuted unto death.

I feel deeply the national peril. And cannot help saying a word to the only man who has the power to avert impending calamity and swift destruction.

Yours desponding, J. Medill

While war enveloped the country, Joseph Medill and Dr. Ray pledged to keep an editor in Washington, and at times they went to Washington themselves to report the news or influence policy decisions. Dr. Charles Ray was present for the “story of his lifetime,” the first Union defeat at Bull Run. After he learned the full extent of the disaster, Ray published a full report that began: “The battle is lost. The enemy have a substantial victory. The result, so unexpected, dangerous and mortifying…. The well-appointed and magnificent army that is now coming back broken and disorganized into the entrenchments on the opposite side of the river, ought never to have been beaten.”⁶

Traveling during the Civil War was arduous and fraught with delays because the Union army commandeered rail lines to transport men and supplies. The rigors of traveling must have been particularly hard for Joseph, who suffered from rheumatism and inflammation of the spine.

When Joseph was in Chicago, he left the job of field correspondent to younger men. The Tribune claimed to have twenty-seven editor/correspondents covering the war. These reporters were an unpredictable group.⁷ In this era, newspapers were not impartial, instead printing partisan articles and editorials. Subscribers bought papers that printed political viewpoints they favored. Chicago had two other major daily papers, and to compete the Tribune had to attract an audience by appealing to men of action.⁸

While Joseph and Katherine traveled, their daughters spent time with their grandparents. The following letter from Joseph’s father displayed the tender feelings Joseph’s daughters have for their parents. The older child, Kitty, was age seven, and the younger, Nelly, only five. Grandfath...