Gathering to Save a Nation: Lincoln & the Union’s War Governors By Stephen D. Engle

Abstract

Stephen D. Engle’s long-awaited study of the governors of the Northern states during the American Civil War rejects the widely accepted damning verdict pronounced by historian William B. Hesseltine in his 1948 magnum opus, Lincoln and the War Governors. Hesseltine concluded that the governors, collectively and individually, by their meddling and complaining, had hindered President Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to put down the Confederate rebellion and save the national Union. Rather, Engle argues at great length that the governors complemented the president and his administration in mobilizing citizens to fight and win the war. Forming a “crucial partnership” (p. 2) with the president, the governors advanced boldly when sometimes the Lincoln administration was paralyzed by uncertainty. Acting singly and collectively, state executives energetically addressed crises and challenges, offering leadership, ideas, and resources to the cause of freedom. Gathering together, as in Cleveland in 1861 and in Altoona in 1862, as well as frequently traveling individually to Washington, D.C. to confer with the president, they pressured Lincoln to adopt aggressive policies. Shortly after the commencement of fighting, the governors compensated for the administrative weaknesses of Lincoln’s first secretary of war, Simon Cameron, often bypassing him to mobilize the Union army. By July 1861, Engle argues, the “federal-state alliance” (p. 100) had built the foundation for an effective fighting force and grown both federal and state executive power strong enough to muster volunteers to the war effort and succor soldiers in the field, two functions left to the states. Later, the governors often quarreled with the more effective but testy Edwin M. Stanton, in the end gingerly developing a working relationship with the War Department that achieved victory.