Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  Davis took his own advice. In a message to Congress on February 3, 1864, urging passage of the law to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, he said that such legislation was needed to deal with "citizens of well-known disloyalty" who were seeking to "accomplish treason under the form of the law." Holden knew this meant him. On February 24 he announced that he was suspending publication of the Standard because, he later explained, "if I could not continue to print as a free man I would not print at all."19 But this did not stop the peace movement;

  16. Vance to W. A. Graham, Jan. 1, 1864, quoted in Richard E. Yates, The Confederacy and Zeb Vance (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1958), 95; Vance to Davis, Dec. 30, 1863, in Rowland, Davis, VI, 141–42.

  17. It also eluded the astute Mary Boykin Chesnut and her husband James, who was Davis's aide de camp. They interpreted Vance's letter as a suggestion for accepting peace without victory, a death knell for the Confederacy. Woodward, Chesnut's Civil War, 527.

  18. Davis to Vance, Jan. 8, 1864, in Rowland, Davis, VI, 143–46.

  19. Ibid., 165; Horace W. Raper, "William W. Holden and the Peace Movement in North Carolina," North Carolina Historical Review, 31 (1954), 509–10. Holden resumed publication of the Standard in May.

  on the contrary, a week later Holden announced his intention to run against Vance for governor in the midsummer election.

  This was the most serious internal threat to the Confederacy so far. Most observers expected Holden to win. But Vance went on the offensive and in a clever campaign captured much of the peace vote on a war platform. "We all want peace," the spell-binding governor told audiences. The question was how to get it. Holden's plan for a separate state convention would lead North Carolina back into the Union. "Instead of getting your sons back to the plow and fireside, they would be drafted . . . to fight alongside of [Lincoln's] negro troops in exterminating the white men, women, and children of the South." The only way to obtain a real peace was "to fight it out now" and win the war despite its mismanagement by Richmond.20

  Vance succeeded in pinning the reconstructionist label on Holden. A timely exposure late in the campaign of the Heroes of America as a treasonable organization secretly aiding Holden gave the editor's candidacy the coup de grâce. Few believed Holden's denial of any connection with the society. North Carolina soldiers at the front damned Holden for disgracing the state. "There has been a good many N. Carolinians shot in this army for desertion," wrote a private. "Old traitor Holden is Responsible for the most of it. . . . I think the N C soldiers passing through Raleigh on Furlough ought to stop and hang the old son of a bitch." On election day Vance smothered Holden, winning 88 percent of the soldier vote and 77 percent of the civilian vote. North Carolina remained safe for the Confederacy.21

  II

  The signs of southern disaffection in the fall of 1863 encouraged Lincoln to announce a policy for the reconstruction of recanting Confederates. "Whereas it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States, and to reinaugrate loyal State governments," declared the president in a proclamation on December 8, he offered pardon and amnesty to such persons

  20. Yearns and Barrett, eds., North Carolina Civil War Documentary, 302–4.

  21. Richard Bardolph, "Inconstant Rebels: Desertion of North Carolina Troops in the Civil War," North Carolina Historical Review, 41 (1964), 184. See also Marc W. Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina, 1836–1865 (Baton Rouge, 1983), 249–65.

  who took an oath of allegiance to the United States and to all of its laws and proclamations concerning slavery. (Confederate government officials and high-ranking military officers were exempted from this blanket offer of amnesty.) Whenever the number of persons in any state taking the oath reached 10 percent of the number of voters in 1860, this loyal nucleus could form a state government which would be recognized by the president. To Congress, of course, belonged the right to decide whether to seat the senators and representatives elected from such states.22

  This deceptively simple document grew from multiple layers of experience and debate during the previous two years. By the end of 1863 a consensus existed among Republicans that the pieces of the old Union could not be cobbled together. One piece lost but not lamented was slavery; another that must go was the prominent role played in southern politics by the old state's-rights secessionists. Beyond this, however, a spectrum of opinions could be found in the Republican party concerning both the process and substance of reconstruction.

  Lincoln never deviated from the theory that secession was illegal and southern states therefore remained in the Union. Rebels had temporarily taken over their governments; the task of reconstruction was to return "loyal" officials to power. At one level all Republicans subscribed to this theory of indestructible states in an indissoluble Union; to believe otherwise would stultify their war aims. But at another level, no one could deny that the southern states had gone out of the Union and had formed a new government with all the attributes of a nation. A few radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stevens boldly insisted that they had therefore ceased to exist as legal states. When invaded and controlled by the Union army they became "conquered provinces" subject to the conqueror's will. But most Republicans were unwilling to go this far. Instead, many of them subscribed to one variant or another of a theory that by attempting the treasonable act of secession, southern states had committed "state suicide" (Charles Sumner's phrase) or had "forfeited" their rights as states and reverted to the condition of territories.23

  Discussion of these theories consumed much time and energy in

  22. CWL, VII, 53–56.

  23. For summaries of these theories see Charles H. McCarthy, Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction (New York, 1901), 190–217; Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 96–119; and Herman Belz, Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Policy during the Civil War (Ithaca, 1969), 7–13.

  Congress. Disliking "pernicious abstraction," Lincoln expressed impatience with this "merely metaphysical question" whether "the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it." Everyone agreed, he said, that they were "out of their proper practical relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government . . . is to again get them into that proper practical relation."24 What Lincoln well understood, but did not acknowledge, was that the "metaphysical question" of reconstruction theories concealed a power struggle between Congress and the Executive over control of the process. If the southern states had reverted to the status of territories, Congress had the right to frame the terms of their readmission under its constitutional authority to govern territories and admit new states. If, on the other hand, the states were indestructible and secession was the act of individuals, the president had the power to prescribe the terms of restoration under his constitutional authority to suppress insurrection and to grant pardons and amnesty.

  Underlying this conflict over procedure was a significant difference of opinion about substance. Of Kentucky birth and moderate antislavery persuasion, Lincoln had been a Whig and had maintained cordial relations with southern Whigs and unionists almost to the end in 1861. He believed that these men had been swept into secession against their better judgment and were ready by 1863 to return like prodigal sons. By offering them pardons on the conditions of Union and emancipation, Lincoln hoped to set in motion a snowballing defection from the Confederacy and a state-by-state reconstruction of the Union.

  Despite the exclusion of top Confederate leaders from Lincoln's blanket offer of amnesty, his policy would preserve much of the South's old ruling class in power. To most abolitionists and radical Republicans this was unacceptable. They insisted that simply to abolish slavery without also destroying the economic and political structure of the old order would merely convert black people from slaves to landless serfs and leave the political power of the planter class untouched. By restoring property and the franchise to Confederates, said Wendell Phillips, the president's amnesty program "leaves the lar
ge landed proprietors of the South still to domineer over its politics, and makes the negro's freedom a mere sham." When these pardoned Confederates gained control of their states, Phillips continued, "the Revolution may be easily checked with the aid of the Administration, which is willing that the negro should be free

  24. CWL, VIII, 402–3.

  but seeks nothing else for him. . . . What McClellan was on the battlefield—'Do as little hurt as possible!"—Lincoln is in civil affairs—'Make as little change as possible!' "25

  Phillips and other radicals envisaged reconstruction as a revolution. "The whole system of the Gulf States [must] be taken to pieces," said Phillips. "The war can be ended only by annihilating that Oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war—by annihilating a state of society." Similar rhetoric came from Chairman Thaddeus Stevens of the House Ways and Means Committee, whom a foreign observer described as "the Robespierre, Danton, and Marat" of this second American Revolution. Reconstruction must "revolutionize Southern institutions, habits, and manners," said Stevens. "The foundation of their institutions . . . must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain."26

  Although Stevens and Lincoln had different visions of the South's future, Congress and Executive had not yet become polarized on this issue. For his part, Lincoln remained flexible toward reconstruction as he had done earlier toward emancipation. While his plan of amnesty and restoration "is the best the Executive can present, with his present impressions," he said, "it must not be understood that no other mode would be acceptable." For their part, most congressional Republicans also entertained a range of shifting and flexible opinions less radical than those of Phillips and Stevens. But many moderates as well as radicals believed that some way must be found to ensure political domination by genuine unionists in the South. They distrusted the sincerity of some of those repentant rebels. And a growing number of Republicans favored at least partial enfranchisement of freed slaves to offset the voting power of former Confederates. "I find," wrote Salmon P. Chase at the end of 1863, "that almost all who are willing to have colored men fight are willing to have them vote."27 Believing that Lincoln lagged

  25. Phillips to Benjamin Butler, Dec. 13, 1863, Benjamin Butler Papers, Library of Congress; Phillips to George W. Julian, March 27, 1864, Giddings-Julian Papers, Library of Congress; Liberator, May 20, 1864.

  26. Liberator, Aug. 8, 1862; New York Tribune, Jan. 23, 1863; Eric Foner, "Thaddeus Stevens, Confiscation, and Reconstruction," in Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, eds., The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial (New York, 1974), 154; Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (New York, 1959), 231–32.

  27. CWL, VII, 56; Chase to Horace Greeley, Dec. 29, 1863, quoted in Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Jusfice (New York, 1969), 285.

  behind them by only a few months on this matter as on emancipation, most Republicans responded favorably at first to his amnesty and reconstruction proclamation. And indeed, about a month later Lincoln did write privately to a New York Republican that, having offered amnesty to whites, he also favored suffrage for blacks, "at least, suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service."28 Both Lincoln and congressional moderates stepped warily around this issue in public, however. Black men could vote in only six northern states, and the possibility of them doing so elsewhere was no more popular among many northern voters than the prospect of emancipation had been a year or two earlier.

  On theoretical and procedural questions, Lincoln and congressional Republicans had also moved closer together by 1863. Several bills to provide territorial governments for rebellious states had come before the previous Congress. More than two-thirds of House Republicans favored this concept. But the remainder along with Democrats and border-state unionists produced enough votes to defeat the one measure that came to a vote. Sobered by this experience, a majority of Republicans turned to a new approach that combined the view of indestructible states with a notion of congressional power to intervene in the affairs of these states under extraordinary circumstances. Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution stipulates that "the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government." Here was a concept of sufficient ambiguity to attract supporters of various viewpoints. A "republican form of government" might mean Negro suffrage; it could be construed to prohibit slavery; it certainly discountenanced rebellion. And best of all, the Constitution did not state whether Congress or the Executive had the principal responsibility in this matter, and earlier Supreme Court interpretations had suggested dual responsibility. Although the theories of conquered provinces, state suicide, and the like did not disappear, the "republican form of government" clause became by 1863

  28. Lincoln to James S. Wadsworth, probably in January 1864, in CWL, VII, 101. Some controversy surrounds the authenticity of this letter, but the doubt focuses on two probably spurious paragraphs that are not quoted here. Even the doubters accept the probable genuineness of the letter's first two paragraphs, including the quotation above. See Ludwell H. Johnson, "Lincoln and Equal Rights: The Authenticity of the Wadsworth Letter," JSH, 32 (1966), 83–87; and Harold M. Hyman, "Lincoln and Equal Rights for Negroes: The Irrelevancy of the 'Wadsworth Letter,' " CWH, 12 (1966), 258–66. Wadsworth was a major general in the Army of the Potomac as well as a leading New York Republican who had been defeated for governor in 1862. He was killed in action on May 6, 1864.

  the basis for both presidential and congressional approaches to reconstruction.

  In the matter of intervening in the affairs of states the president as commander in chief had an inherent advantage over Congress in time of war. While Congress had debated in 1862, Lincoln had acted. He appointed military governors for the portions of Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas that came under Union control, and he authorized them to prepare for the restoration of civil government. The continuation of active fighting in all three states postponed this prospect for a year or more. But with the capture of Port Hudson, the expulsion of Bragg from Tennessee, and the occupation of Little Rock in the latter part of 1863, Lincoln urged his military governors to begin the process of reconstruction. He intended his amnesty proclamation and 10 percent proposal to serve as "a rallying point—a plan of action."29

  Louisiana seemed to offer the best prospect for an early test of Lincoln's policy. Union forces had controlled two of the state's four congressional districts since the spring of 1862. New Orleans contained a cosmopolitan and politically active population which had voted overwhelmingly for Bell or Douglas in 1860. Many wealthy sugar and cotton planters along the bayous had been Whigs and conditional unionists. They readily took the oath of allegiance—if only to obtain trade permits to sell cotton. The light-skinned free black community in New Orleans was well-educated and prosperous, supported a bilingual Republican newspaper during the Union occupation, and furnished two regiments that fought at Port Hudson. In Nathaniel Banks, veteran Republican who commanded the occupation forces, and George F. Shepley, prewar Maine Democrat who became a radical Republican and military governor of occupied Louisiana, Lincoln had political generals eager to aid the reconstruction process.

  But the process was slowed by Banks's military campaign to plant the flag in Texas as a warning to France and by the division of unionists into two factions. The first and smaller faction was the planters, many of whom accepted with reluctance the quasi-emancipation imposed by the army (occupied Louisiana had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation). This faction sent a delegation to Lincoln in June 1863 urging the election of a new state government under the existing Louisiana constitution. Suspecting that their purpose was to preserve the

  29. CWL, VII, 52.

  framework of slavery, Lincoln rebuffed them. But these conservatives did not stop trying; the idea of reconstructing the state under the old constitution remained alive.

  The second and more dynamic faction was led by lawyers, doctors, and entrepre
neurs most of whom had been born in the North or abroad but had resided in New Orleans for many years before the war. They had opposed secession, and some had gone into exile rather than support the Confederacy. They organized a Union Association and proposed to hold a state convention to adopt a new constitution abolishing slavery and ridding the old constitution of other conservative features. Once this was accomplished, an election of state officials and congressmen could be held and a purified Louisiana could rejoin the Union.

  In the summer of 1863 Lincoln approved this procedure. But the registration of voters lagged because neither Banks nor Shepley took the matter in hand. "This disappoints me bitterly," Lincoln wrote Banks in November. Though less than half the state was under Union military control, the president did not consider that a reason for delay. "Without waiting for more territory," he told Banks, "go to work and give me a tangible nucleus which the rest of the State may rally around as fast as it can, and which I can at once recognize and sustain as the true State government."30 It was this desire for a prompt beginning that caused Lincoln to fix the "tangible nucleus" at 10 percent of a state's 1860 voters.

  Stung by Lincoln's censure, Banks decided to move quickly by military fiat. Instead of organizing an election first of delegates to a constitutional convention, as the Union Association wished, he ordered the election of state officials in February 1864 under the existing constitution, to be followed in April by a convention. To take care of the problem of slavery, Banks simply issued an order declaring the institution "inoperative and void." The planters, he explained in a letter to Lincoln, would accept emancipation by ukase in preference to being compelled to enact it themselves in a new constitution. As for holding a convention first, Banks feared that delegates would debate "every theory connected with human legislation," occasioning "dangerous if not fatal delay." If Lincoln wanted prompt restoration, assured emancipation, and participation by at least 10 percent of the voters, insisted Banks, the election of state officials must be held first and the convention later.