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Lincoln, Abraham, as Sixteenth President
Description
Literature
Condition
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Catalogue Note
Lincoln refutes rebel press propaganda about the siege of Vicksburg: "The news you send me from the Richmond Sentinel of the 3rd must be greatly if not wholly incorrect ... our troops [are] in good health, condition and spirits" and Union dispatches do not "mention any demand made by Grant upon Pemberton for a surrender."
Both the North and South used the newspapers of the opposing region to gather intelligence during the Civil War. Northern journalists, in particular, indiscriminately published vital information on troop strength and movement. Robert E. Lee had agents supply him with the latest newspapers from the North, and William Tecumseh Sherman's relationship with the press was so antagonistic that he had a reporter from the New York Herald arrested and tried as a spy by a military tribunal (the journalist, Thomas W. Knox was acquitted on that charge but banished outside army lines for disobeying Sherman's orders.) In the midst of the Vicksburg Campaign, Sherman wrote that "the conductors of the Press of the Northern States as now conducted, are as much the Enemies of our Common Country as the Armed Rebels whose sentinels now walk in bold and manly defiance on the opposing heights of Vicksburg" (to William Scott, 11 February 1863; Sotheby's New York, 3 December 2004, lot 344).
Sherman and other Union commanders also had to contend with the Southern press, which tended to be much more partisan in its coverage. Whether intended to mislead the North or simply to encourage the Confederate citizenry, Southern newspapers consistently exaggerated both Union setbacks and Confederate successes.
Nevertheless, Southern papers were carefully scrutinized north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and when Ulysses S. Grant took his assault against Vicksburg incommunicado, President Lincoln turned to them for information. On 11 May he asked General John Dix if "the Richmond papers have anything about Grand Gulf or Vicksburg?"; and on 27 May he sent a telegram to General Joseph Hooker in the field, asking "Have you Richmond papers of this morning? If so, what news?" (Basler, 6:210, 233).
Hooker replied that the Richmond newspapers contained only "rumors"—and these were plentiful. According to David Herbert Donald, during this period of the Vicksburg Campaign Lincoln read false Confederate newspaper reports "that Sherman had been seriously wounded during the siege, that Banks had lost an arm in his campaign for Port Hudson, that Confederate General Edmund Kirby-Smith was bringing reinforcements from the trans-Mississippi region to relieve Vicksburg" (Lincoln, pp. 445-46).
On 4 June, Lincoln received another bulletin assembled from the Confederate press in the form of a telegram from Hooker's chief of staff, General Daniel Butterfield: "Richmond Sentinel June 3d says ... Grant demanded the surrender of Vicksburg on Thursday giving three days to Pemberton to consider the demand. Pemberton replied that he did not want 15 minutes & that his troops would die in the trenches before they would surrender. The federal troops are demoralized & refused to renew the attack on Saturday. ... the federal loss is estimated at 25,000 to 30,000" (Basler, 6:247 note).
Far from being despondent at this report, Lincoln seems to have sensed in its obfuscation the increasingly desperate position of the Confederate army holding Vicksburg. He replied immediately to Butterfield, discrediting the Sentinel's story point-by-point:
"The news you send me from the Richmond Sentinel of the 3rd must be greatly if not wholly incorrect. The Thursday mentioned was the 28th and we have despatches here directly from Vicksburg of the 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st and while they speak of the siege progressing, they speak of no assault or general fighting whatever; and, in fact they so speak, as to almost exclude the idea that there can have been any—since Monday the 25th which was not very heavy. Neither do they mention any demand made by Grant upon Pemberton for a surrender. They speak of our troops as being in good health, condition and spirits. Some of them say that Banks has Port Hudson invested."
The President's analysis proved correct and his steadiness allowed Grant to complete his brilliant siege. A month after Lincoln's exchange with Butterfield, Vicksburg had capitulated, and, as a result, Banks had captured Port Hudson as well. The Union Navy now controlled the whole of the Mississippi River, and lines of supply and communication between the Confederate armies and state governments in the east and those in the trans-Mississippi west were choked off. The death knell of the Confederacy had been sounded.