Free Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle

vulnerable to rebel cavalry raids and guerrilla operations.
    Far more dependable as highways to supply and transport Union forces were the great rivers; thus the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the many navigable waterways flowing into them provided the third means of exploiting the South’s terrain. Lincoln knew from deep experience that the American interior was “a frontier of rivers,” for he had spent his young manhood all over the waterways of the West. The first dollar he ever earned was for ferrying passengers to a steamboat on the Ohio River; a year later, he steered a flatboat from Rockport, Illinois, on the Ohio, down the Mississippi to New Orleans. At twenty-one, he forded the Wabash River when it was swollen with rain, wrestling his family’s oxen through the roiling waters. At twenty-two, he built another flatboat, launched it in the Illinois River, and once more made the long, looping, oxbowed trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Attempting to prove that a steamboat could travel the Sangamon River, Lincoln got stuck at the little town of New Salem, Illinois, where he soon began his political career—on a platform of improving rivers for navigation. He even received a patent on an invention for lifting steamboats over shoals.
    Lincoln had seen the western rivers in flood and in drought, and he knew their moods and seasons. Now, as president, he saw that the rivers crisscrossing the South could substantially offset the problem of inadequate roads. If “evidences of progress” were needed, the rivers could open the way.
    For months, buyers from the army and navy had been bustling around river wharfs from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, purchasing steamboats to serve as troop transports and cargo ships. Lincoln took particular interest in a frantic construction project in and around St. Louis, where a boatwright and bridge builder named James Eads was creating a fleet of steam-powered, ironclad gunboats designed to navigate in shallow water and carry an array of heavy cannon. The Eads boats, dubbed “turtles,” were ungainly things, ugly but tough. By early January there were seven turtles in the water, all nearing completion.
    Yet Lincoln was impatient for his “brown water navy” to get moving. The Confederates weren’t waiting idly for the attack. They were building forts on the rivers, and they had their own ironclad gunboats under construction in New Orleans.
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    Fog lay thick in the Washington swamplands on January 10; the streets melted into soupy ooze. Lincoln convened the cabinet again, this time for one of its gloomiest meetings yet, a freewheeling ventilation of fears and frustrations over the fact that nearly two weeks had gone by since the New Year’s Eve session and still they knew nothing of McClellan’s intentions. Attorney General Bates wondered aloud whether McClellan had any real plans at all; he then repeated his well-worn speech to Lincoln, urging him to trust his judgment and assert his authority, somehow failing to see that this was exactly what Lincoln was trying to do. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles echoed the sentiment; like many navy men, he enjoyed thinking that all the army needed was a swift kick. Lincoln replied by explaining that generals are not the sort of men who respond well to scolding and kicking.
    The meeting came to a close and again nothing had been accomplished. By now the president was nearly beside himself. It was all meetings and telegrams and hand-wringing, but still no action. Lincoln fled the White House and strode across the lawn to the War Department, where he entered the office of Montgomery Meigs, quartermaster general, one of the most competent staff officers in the country. There, Lincoln expressed his profound frustration. “The people are impatient; Chase has no money and tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub,” Lincoln declared. “What shall I