The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

by Abraham Lincoln

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864

  The dismal month finally drew to a close. On the twenty-ninth, the Democrats held their convention at Chicago. The general who had failed to save the nation on the field of battle was nominated to save it by political means. A platform was adopted which declared that four years of warfare had failed to restore the Union, and that every Constitutional right of the people had been trampled on in the process. It recommended that “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the states.”

  When this platform was submitted to McClellan, together with the nomination, he explicitly repudiated the platform but accepted the nomination. McClellan realized that he could not afford to admit that the blood of his soldiers had been poured out in vain. He knew that his best chance of election was to stand on his war record, hesitating and unsuccessful as it had been.

  The Democratic convention at Chicago ended on August 31 with high hopes for the election of its candidate. These hopes lasted just two days. On September 2, Sherman’s army, which had been besieging Atlanta for weeks, finally entered the city. A Northern victory had come at last to clear the air. The first deep wound had been made in the body of the Confederacy, and the rebellious section, which for so long had seemed to be impregnable, was beginning to crack up under external pressure and internal strain. The news of Atlanta’s fall was received with such enthusiasm in the North that it blasted the chances of Lincoln’s rivals for the Presidency. Frémont withdrew from the campaign, and McClellan’s backers began to lose heart.

  During September, Grant sent Sheridan into the Shenandoah Valley to attack Early, who had retired there after his raid on Washington. Several engagements took place (one of which served to inspire Thomas Buchanan Read’s famous poem on Sheridan’s ride from Winchester), and then the Union army proceeded to devastate the smiling valley that had sheltered Confederate forces throughout the War.

  Grant and his generals were embarking on a new plan of warfare. They determined to bring fire and destruction to complete the work of the sword. When Sherman took Atlanta, he ordered its people to evacuate the city, and he had his men wreck everything of military value. When he set out from Atlanta in November for his march to the sea, his army left behind it a city abandoned to the flames with the smoke of its burning standing like a vast pillar in the sky.

  Nothing that the North did during the whole War infuriated the South so much as these measures taken to destroy property. Human lives and human suffering were forgotten in the outcry raised over the burning and wrecking of inanimate objects. The bodies of the dead are quickly buried out of sight, but the fire-blackened walls of gutted buildings remain for years as stark reminders of terror long past.

  This ruthless campaign gave the death-blow to the already weakened Confederacy. By the time the November elections were held, it was obvious, even to the most skeptical Northerner, that the end of the War was really in sight and that the Union armies must prevail.

  The politicians had misjudged the people’s support of the President, although it is true, of course, that the autumn victories swung an even larger vote to the administration. Twenty-five states participated in the election; twenty-two of them were carried by Lincoln. McClellan received the electoral votes of only New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky. The popular vote was 2,214,000 for Lincoln and 1,802,000 for McClellan.

  On the two nights following his election, Lincoln spoke to the people in answer to serenades of victory. In his speech of November 10, he outlined his own attitude toward the election: “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain itself in existence in great emergencies.… We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.… What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.”

  Once the long-dreaded election was over, the administration could make long-term plans for the future, but its immediate problem was to try to bring the War to a speedy close. Sherman set out from Atlanta on November 15, severing his lines of communication and marching across Georgia, cutting a swath of destruction sixty miles wide as he went. Grant tightened his stranglehold on Petersburg and Richmond. Richmond was now in desperate straits; food prices skyrocketed as money became almost worthless, and criticism of the government was increasing daily. Sherman continued his inexorable advance; on December 21 he captured Savannah and then prepared to head northward through the heart of the Confederacy.

  On December 6, Lincoln delivered his annual message to Congress. He reminded that body that although the House had previously refused to pass the amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, the election had been a clear-cut call from the voters of the nation for it to do so now. He expressed pessimistic views on dealing with Jefferson Davis for peace—Davis was evidently committed to a last-stand policy. The President indicated, however, that the Southern people might be more willing than their leader to sue for a settlement to end the War. He stood firmly on his emancipation policy and said that he would not be a party to any effort to re-enslave Negroes already set free by it.

  On the same day, Lincoln announced his choice for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a position which had been made vacant by the death of the superannuated Taney in October. In making his decision, Lincoln again forgot personal rivalries and selected the man he felt was best fitted to serve. He appointed Salmon P. Chase, whom he regarded as a great lawyer, and he ignored the fact that Chase was a Radical Republican who had sat for three years in the Cabinet offering more opposition to the President than any other member.

  The new year brought high hopes to the North. To the South it brought only a dull realization of impending defeat. The Richmond Sentinel published a remarkable article admitting the exhaustion of the Confederacy’s resources, and suggesting that an alliance be made with England, France or Spain to preserve independence from the North even at the price of allowing a foreign power to gain a foothold on the American continent. As a concession to tender European feelings, the Sentinel recommended that slavery in the Southern states be abolished before any alliance was sought. Rebellion had run its course; this was the logical conclusion of the separation-at-any-price policy.

  While the theoreticians in Richmond played with such ideas as this, Sherman’s army left Savannah on January 14 and pushed steadily northward. By February 18, Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, was in his hands, and like Atlanta, it too went up in smoke, although this time Sherman claimed that the fire had been set by the retreating Confederates. Not only Columbia, but the proud city of Charleston had to yield before the advance of Sherman’s victorious army. As soon as her railroad communications were cut, Charleston collapsed. She had been holding out for several years against a Federal fleet besieging her harbor. Now the fleet sailed in unresisted, and “the cradle of secession” was in the hands of the Northern invaders.

  Before the first month of the new year was out, Congress heeded the President’s urgent request to pass the Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The vote was taken on January 31 in the presence of an intensely interested public audience which greeted with wild applause the announcement that the required two-thirds majority had been obtained.

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  A few days later, Lincoln, who had so recently spoken against entering into peace negotiations with the Richmond Government, now became a direct party to such a move himself. On February 3, he held a c
onference with three Confederate commissioners. They came to see him at Hampton Roads on board the River Queen, a ship often used by Lincoln when he traveled by water routes. This attempt to effect a reconciliation turned out to be as fruitless as all the others had been. Davis wanted peace and independence; Lincoln insisted on peace and reunion, so the commissioners were powerless and could accomplish no direct result. The conference, however, was probably not without influence upon Lincoln’s policies. One of the commissioners was Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, a former Whig and United States Congressman. The South could not have chosen a better person to deal with Lincoln. They had both been in Congress together, and Lincoln had long admired this man who was one of the most beloved figures in the South. Lincoln had corresponded with him when he was President-elect in 1860. They were unalterably opposed to each other on the slavery issue, but they had always gotten on well together, and they talked for a while about old times. Although Lincoln was adamant about reunion, he intimated that he would be liberal in dealing with the Southern states if they would return. He also said that he favored some kind of compensation for the expropriation of slave property, for he believed that the North shared the South’s guilt in having permitted slavery to be established in the nation.

  During the interview, Lincoln had occasion to remark that he doubted whether it was proper for him as the leader of a nation to deal directly with rebels who were opposing the authority of his government by force of arms. One of the commissioners cited the case of Charles I as precedent. It was an unfortunate example. Lincoln immediately said: “I don’t profess to be posted in history—all I distinctly recollect about Charles I is that he lost his head.”

  When the commissioners were about to leave the ship, Stephens said to Lincoln: “I understand, then, that you regard us as rebels who are liable to be hanged for treason?”

  Lincoln nodded solemnly.

  “Well, we supposed that would have to be your view,” Stephens said with equal solemnity. Then he smiled as he turned to go, and his eyes twinkled as he looked at Lincoln, “But to tell you the truth, we have none of us been much afraid of being hanged with you as President!”

  We have no way of knowing how much the President’s contact with his old friend, Alexander Stephens, influenced his policies, but it is interesting to note that on Sunday evening, February 5, only twenty-four hours after his return from the Hampton Roads conference, Lincoln called a special Cabinet meeting. He had evidently spent the day preparing a proposal which incorporated a twofold plan to end the War quickly and to compensate the Southern slaveowners for the loss of their property. The document he read to his Cabinet provided that if the Confederacy would lay down arms by April 1, the United States would pay $400,000,000 to the rebellious states as an indemnity for their loss of slave property. The liberality of such an idea stunned the Cabinet. Pay the enemy for stopping a war that was almost won! There was an embarrassed silence. Hardly any discussion was given to the President’s plan. One after another the members of the Cabinet voted against it. Reluctantly the President had to write on the sheets of paper in his hand:

  February 5, 1865. Today these papers, which explain themselves, were drawn up and submitted to the Cabinet and unanimously disapproved by them. A. Lincoln.

  And then he put the documents away in his files. They were not made public until after his death.

  Implicit in this proposal is the trend of purpose that now dominated Lincoln. He was eager to see the War end as quickly as possible, for every day less of fighting meant fewer men killed. He knew, however, that the War could not last very long—the South had been cut in half when the Mississippi was won; it was now being quartered by Sherman’s army. But even more important than bringing to a quick end a War that must inevitably end quickly anyway, was the problem of reconciling the two hostile sections. The South had gone to war to defend slavery and had declared her independence in order to maintain the “peculiar institution” that was the mainstay of her economy. The War had completely ruined the South; her economy was wrecked; her manpower depleted. The North, however, had become richer and stronger during the War. Huge factories had been erected; railroads and telegraph lines had been extended; grain acreage had increased enormously in the new West; more and more gold and silver were being mined. Hundreds of thousands of Northern youths had died in the War, but millions of people in Europe were eager to come to America to take their places, and it was obvious that they would settle, not in the war ruined South, but in the thriving factory areas of the North and in the new lands of the West.

  To Lincoln the United States was still one nation. He had never recognized the independence of the South, never granted that the seceding states were out of the Union. Now he simply wanted to restore peace and prosperity to the whole country. In order to make reconciliation easy, he was willing to take some of the North’s wealth to use for the rehabilitation of the South. More than three billion dollars had been spent by the North to subdue the South—surely the victorious section could afford to give $400,000,000—seven and a half percent of the war expenditure—to the South as a stake with which she could begin a new life. This money was to be an indemnity for the loss of property represented in freeing the slaves. Lincoln’s legal training made him feel that expropriation without proper compensation would be unjust.

  There was no malice in his mind, no hatred of the men who had taken up arms against the United States. He was willing to do anything that would make the South an integral part of the nation again. He was a kindly and generous person who wanted to buy peace at any price so long as he could re-establish the Union. Unfortunately he was no economist. He arrived at his conclusion by sheer intuitive judgment. As a result, he did not see the fallacy in his argument—that by indemnifying the slaveholders for their loss of property he would be strengthening the very men who had brought on the War. He thought that the provision made in his plan requiring emancipation as part of the bargain would eliminate the slavery that was the root of their power, but he did not realize that if he indemnified them, they would still be the dominant group in the new South that he hoped to see established. If they were permitted to hold their power, the same old cycle would begin all over again, and the South would still be ruled by an oligarchy24 instead of by the democratic methods he hoped to establish there. Perhaps the Cabinet sensed this. At any rate they disapproved, and Lincoln’s dream was swept into the dustbin of history.

  Yet the spirit that pervaded Lincoln’s proposal of February 5 was the spirit that was to be expressed in developed form in the famous Second Inaugural Address. To Lincoln, slavery was a hateful and offensive thing—a sin in the sight of the Lord. In the second inaugural he speaks of the War as a heaven-sent retribution for this sin. But evil as he thought slavery was in the abstract, he held no malice against the Southern people who had gone to war to defend it. To him North and South equally shared the guilt of slavery; the retribution was visited upon them both for the trespass against righteousness that they had both committed in allowing it to flourish upon the nation’s soil. He wanted them now to forget the years of hatred—the hideous period of fratricidal strife. His last words—the last words he was ever to speak in an official capacity before a great audience—were an apostrophe to peace and a plea for charity toward all those who erred in inflicting human bondage upon their fellow creatures.

  The occasion of the delivery of this celebrated speech marked the differences which four years of battle had made. Outwardly the inauguration ceremonies of 1865 may have seemed much the same as they had been four years before. Again precautions had to be taken to protect the life of the President; again there were riflemen on the housetops; again there was a long covered passage leading to the speaker’s platform. And the actual ceremonial procedure itself, of course, did not vary. But the great dome of the Capitol, which had been under construction in 1861, was now finished, and from its top the huge bronze statue of Freedom looked down at the scene. There were more subtle
differences, too. Instead of the ancient Taney with memories of the infamous Dred Scott decision hanging over him, Lincoln’s own appointee, Chief Justice Chase, administered the oath of office. The pathetically small garrison of 1861 was replaced by huge numbers of soldiers whose uniforms were seen everywhere in the city. Among them were the wounded; they were a commonplace sight in Washington. The President, too, had changed. His ordeal had steeled him in dealing with strong men, but it had mellowed him also in dealing with the weak and the defeated. The man who had had to be persuaded in 1861 not to close his inaugural address with a clear-cut offer of peace or a sword was still firm in his belief in the righteousness of his cause:

  The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

  But his very last words were a plea for peace—peace without malice, peace which would “bind up the nation’s wounds”:

  With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.