Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Lydia Maria Child told Sumner that she agreed with his assessment of the president: “I believe he is, as you think, honest and right-minded.” She did, however, “wish he were a man strong enough to lead popular opinion, instead of following it so conscientiously.” Nevertheless, she rejoiced “that so much has been accomplished. Slavery has been abolished in the District, an event which I had long given up the expectation of living to see. Liberia and Hayti are recognized as States among the sisterhood of nations. Military officers are forbidden to return fugitive slaves.” In addition, slavery had been abolished in the territories.158 After visiting the White House in April, abolitionist William Goodell reported that Lincoln was open-minded and “sincerely desirous of doing what was best for the country.”159 A black writing from Brooklyn said “every colored man” should “uphold the present administration, because it is doing more for his race than has ever been done since the organization of the government. Never has a President, or cabinet officer stood forth to vindicate the rights of black men before.” He was especially thankful for the attorney general’s 1862 ruling that blacks were citizens and the secretary of state’s decision to issue them passports. Beyond that, “the recognition of the republics of Liberia and Hayti, [and] the acceptance of ambassadors from these countries, all demonstrate that this administration is the friend of the black race, and desires its prosperity no less than the good will of all the races of men.”160

  Lincoln did not please all militant opponents of slavery; they wanted every slave of disloyal owners freed, even if those slaves were not being used directly to support the Confederate military. The abolitionist George Luther Stearns told Charles Sumner that he “could hope for nothing good from the imbecility in Washington.”161

  On July 12, Lincoln made his third and final appeal to Border State lawmakers, urging them to support his gradual emancipation plan and gently chiding them for their failure to do so: “I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that in my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended. And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent, and swift means of ending it. Let the states which are in rebellion see, definitely and certainly, that, in no event, will the states you represent ever join their proposed Confederacy, and they can not, much longer maintain the contest. But you can not divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own states. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever.”

  Lincoln implored them to think rationally about the future, to realize that slavery was doomed, and that they should accept gradual, compensated emancipation now rather than risk sudden, uncompensated emancipation later. “Most of you have treated me with kindness and consideration; and I trust you will not now think I improperly touch what is exclusively your own, when, for the sake of the whole country I ask ‘Can you, for your states, do better than to take the course I urge?[’] Discarding punctillio and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and looking only to the unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you do better in any possible event? You prefer that the constitutional relation of the states to the nation shall be practically restored, without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty, in this respect, under the constitution, and my oath of office, would be performed. But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war. The incidents of the war can not be avoided. If the war continue long, as it must, if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion—by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. … I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room in South America for colonization, can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance; and when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go.”

  The president begged the Border State delegations to view the situation from his perspective, to realize how much pressure he was under to abolish slavery by decree, especially after he had overruled General Hunter. “I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned—one which threatens division among those who, united are none too strong. An instance of it is known to you. Gen. Hunter is an honest man. He was, and I hope, still is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere, could be free. He proclaimed all men free within certain states, and I repudiated the proclamation. He expected more good, and less harm from the measure, than I could believe would follow. Yet in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offence, to many whose support the country can not afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure, in this direction, is still upon me, and is increasing.”

  In closing, Lincoln appealed to their idealism. “As you would perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world, I beseech you that you do in no wise omit this. Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, it’s form of government is saved to the world; it’s beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and it’s happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand. To you, more than to any others, the previlege is given, to assure that happiness, and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever.”162

  A day later, the president submitted to Congress a bill compensating any state which would abolish slavery voluntarily. Some thought Lincoln’s approach might eventually work. “It is not at all improbable that the Presdt’s way of managing this matter may turn out the best,” Maine Congressman Frederick Pike wrote on July 13. “Kentucky is getting accustomed to the policy. What would shock her six months ago she tolerates now very readily.”163 But most of Pike’s colleagues agreed with Vermont Senator Jacob Collamer, who called the bill “ridiculous” and reported that it was received with “considerable disappointment.” Free State members were, he said, “about sick of this dickering, bargaining business. The feeling is, that inasmuch as a fair offer had been made, and the border states show no signs of accepting it, that they had better be left alone until great events shall terrify them into compliance.”164 They were unterrified. On July 14, twenty of the twenty-eight members of the Border State delegations rejected Lincoln’s appeal. This negative response depressed Lincoln badly. The following day, Orville H. Browning found him looking “weary, care-worn, and troubled.” Alarmed by his appearance, Browning said: “your fortunes Mr President are bound up with those of the Country, and disaster to one would be disaster to the other, and I hope you will do all you can to preserve your health and life.” Lincoln “looked very sad, and there was a cadence of deep sadness in his voice” as he replied that he felt “tolerably well” and added “in a very tender and touching tone, ‘Browning I must die sometime.’ ” As Browning bade good-bye, both men had tears in their eyes.165

  To Illinois Congressmen Owen Lovejoy and Isaac Arnold, Lincoln vented his disappointment: “Oh, how I wish the border states would accept my proposition. Then, you, Lovejoy, and you, Arnold, and all of us, would not have lived in vain! The labor of your life, Lovejoy, would be crowned with success.”166

  Congress Applies Heat: The Second Confiscation Act

  Radicals also exasperated Lincoln. In December 1861, Senator Lyman Trumbull introduced legislation embodying their demands for stronger action to liberate slaves and punish rebels. Known as the Second Confiscation Act, it reflected the mood of the Northern public, which clamored for sterner measures against the Confederates. The publisher of the Lincoln–Douglas debates declared that “the people are anxious that Congress should really feel that we are at Wa
r, that Rebels are Enemies that their property and their negroes, is not half so precious as the lives of our brave and noble soldiers, and that the speedy enactment of a law confiscating the one, and liberating the other class of property, would be an evidence, that the peoples representatives are in Earnest, having the bravery to vote, while the people fight.”167 According to Henry Winter Davis, the people of the North “feel that there is not brains enough at Washington to put down the insurrection by skillfully used military power, which has been furnished ample, adequate & magnificent; & this bill is their mode of saying so. It is the transition from military suppression to revolutionary suppression.”168

  On July 12, after months of heated debate, Congress passed a watered-down version of Trumbull’s bill (primarily reshaped by senate Moderates like Jacob Collamer and William Pitt Fessenden), providing that all slaves of disloyal masters—not just those directly employed in direct support of the Confederate military—were free and that the property of rebels could be confiscated. An additional provision authorized the enlistment of freedmen as soldiers. Trumbull believed that “[p]roclaiming freedom to any slave who shall escape to our lines is worth more than many victories.”169 Henry Winter Davis was skeptical, calling the statute “one of those shapeless agglomerations which com[mi]tte[e]s of conference after long labor bring forth—with the features of both parents & usually the worst of both.”170

  Moderate and conservative Republicans urged Lincoln to veto the Second Confiscation Act, which seemed to violate the Constitution’s ban on bills of attainder and ex post facto legislation. Fearing that if the measure became law “there will be fifty thousand increased bayonets against us, in the Border States,” Orville H. Browning told the president that “he had reached the culminating point in his administration, and his course upon this bill was to determine whether he was to control the abolitionists and radicals, or whether they were to control him;” that “the tide in his affairs had come and he ought to take it at its flood;” that “if he vetoed it he would raise a storm of enthusiasm in support of the Administration in the border states which would be worth to us 100,000 muskets, whereas if he approved it I feared our friends could no longer sustain themselves there;” that “we could not succeed without unity of sentiment and purpose which would be secured by a veto as that would at once bring to his support every loyal Democrat in the free states, and consolidate all truly loyal men into one party—whereas if approved it would form the basis upon which the democratic party would again rally, and reorganize an opposition to the administration.” Lincoln promised to give this advice “his profound consideration.”171

  As he thought over Browning’s advice, Lincoln asked Congress to delay its planned adjournment. When told that the members were exceedingly reluctant to do so unless there was a true emergency, he somewhat testily remarked: “I am sorry Senators could not so far trust me as to believe I had some real cause for wishing them to remain. I am considering a bill which came to me only late in the day yesterday, and the subject of which has perplexed Congress for more than half a year. I may return it with objections; and if I should, I wish Congress to have the oppertunity of obviating the objections, or of passing it into a law notwithstanding them.”172 Secluding himself, he hurriedly prepared a veto message focusing on the confiscation of Rebel property beyond the life of guilty parties. Such confiscation, he argued, violated the Constitution’s ban on “corruption of blood.” Moreover, slaveowners accused of treasonous acts committed before the passage of the bill would be victims of ex post facto legislation. As for a general policy in dealing with the Confederates, he counseled that the “severest justice may not always be the best policy.” But the president was careful to acknowledge his agreement with many provisions of the bill and with its ultimate aim: “That those who make a causeless war should be compelled to pay the cost of it, is too obviously just, to be called in question. To give governmental protection to the property of persons who have abandoned it, and gone on a crusade to overthrow that same government, is absurd.”173

  Indignant Radicals stormed into the White House and told Nicolay that if the president vetoed the bill “he destroys the Republican party and ruins his Administration.”174 They insisted that they would not compromise and threatened to denounce the administration publicly. Senators Wade, Wilkinson, Trumbull and other Radicals predicted that “if the confiscation bill is not signed, & the policy of the government in prosecuting the war is not changed, the Union is gone.”175 William P. Fessenden thought that the president might “be mad enough to veto the Confiscation bill—Such an act will disappoint, & I fear will dishearten, the country.” Lincoln, said the Maine senator, “seems to be very much in the hands of the Philistines. Well—we have what we bargained for—a Splitter of rails—and have no right to complain.”176 Republicans in caucus denounced Lincoln “as the deliberate betrayer of the freedmen and poor whites.”177

  Abolitionist Gerrit Smith concluded that Lincoln “is bound hand and foot by the Pro-Slavery regard for the Constitution in which he was educated.” Further inhibiting him, Smith concluded, was public opinion, for “in every part of the North you meet with this insanity about our Constitutional obligations to the Rebels.” During the present emergency, the Constitution was no more useful as a guide than an outdated almanac, Smith cavalierly asserted. The Framers’ handiwork was to be preserved in peacetime, but “in time of war, save the Country with or without the Constitution.”178 William Dickson complained that the president shirked his duty as a leader and was acting merely as “a moderator between contending factions, helping the one today & the other tomorrow & holding for the present, each in fealty to himself by the hope that he holds out that he will finally be with one of them. Neither break[s] with him because each yet hopes him to be on its side.”179

  Dickson was correct. Lincoln considered it his imperative duty to hold the party—and the North—together. To avoid a confrontation with Congress, he met secretly with some members to hammer out a compromise. On July 15, Tennessee Representative Horace Maynard, evidently at the president’s suggestion, introduced a “joint resolution for the purpose of correcting the confiscation act” which refined the language so as to meet Lincoln’s desire for a more “justly discriminating application” of the measure.180 That night Senators Daniel Clark of New Hampshire and Fessenden met with Lincoln, who warned them that he would veto the bill unless it were modified to conform to the Constitution. The following day, Clark offered another amendment stating that no property would be confiscated beyond the lifetime of any convicted traitor. Despite the objections of Benjamin Wade and other Radical senators, who thought the president’s tactics “monstrous” (as Preston King put it), these provisos passed, and on July 17 Lincoln signed the bill and the joint explanatory resolution. The ban on the forfeiture of property beyond the owners’ lifetime severely weakened the government’s ability to restructure the society and economy of the South. Many supporters of the original bill sought to make such a dramatic reform possible; Radical Congressman George W. Julian of Indiana said that the supplementary resolution was “inexpressibly provoking to a large majority of Congress.”181 Other Radicals were profoundly disgusted by what they considered Lincoln’s deficient backbone. Adams S. Hill of the New York Tribune was surprised “that a President can live in such utter ignorance of popular feeling.”182 But Charles Sumner acknowledged that Lincoln and Congress agreed on two fundamental principles: “Blacks are to be employed, and slaves are to be freed. In this legislative proclamation the President and Congress will unite. Together they will deliver it to the country and to the world.”183

  Curiously, Lincoln sent the House and senate a copy of his veto message, even though he now agreed to sign the modified bill. This uncharacteristically tactless gesture annoyed many members of Congress. As it was being read aloud, some lawmakers uttered irreverent cracks. One of them asked incredulously, “Whoever heard of the reading of a veto that was not a veto, or the production of a document the necess
ity for which had passed away?”184 According to Adams S. Hill, it was “entirely unexpected, and fell like a wet blanket upon his friends.” Everyone “was disgusted, and particularly those who were most ready to get down on their knees to avoid a vetoe yesterday. They got more than they bargained for, soiled their trousers, and got the vetoe to boot. Such men as Washburne, Gurley, Arnold, Sumner, and Conway, were ineffably disgusted. Washburne said he went out in order that he might not hear it read, and Collamer privately expressed the hope that it would not be read at all in the Senate.”185 Congressman Julian later wrote that “[n]o one at a distance could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of Republican members toward Mr. Lincoln … while it was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in Washington. Mr. Wade said that the country was going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here.”186 Republicans retaliated against Lincoln by filibustering a motion to print his veto message.

  Lincoln’s motive in communicating the draft veto was unclear. Perhaps he intended to show Congress that on matters of slavery and reconstruction, he was master. On other legislative matters—such as taxation, public lands, and internal improvements—he generally followed traditional Whig doctrine, which called for the executive branch to defer to the legislature.

  On July 18, Congressman Isaac N. Arnold said that “within the last two or three days the President has been subjected to the greatest pressure in favor of vigorous war measures that was ever brought to bear upon him.”187 That day the main author and promoter of the Confiscation Acts, Lyman Trumbull, urged Lincoln to “use rebel property for the support of your armies, subsist off the enemy’s country, use negroes as laborers, and put arms in their hands when necessary. Give the country proof that you are in earnest and you can raise one hundred thousand soldiers in Illinois alone; adhere to the present peace policy of conducting the war, and you get none at all.”188 It is not known what Lincoln said in reply, but on July 17 John W. Forney publicly announced that the president had recently told him “that henceforth his policy should be as stringent as the most enthusiastic could desire. That hereafter there will be no restriction in the employment of all men to put down this rebellion. No more doubting about the confiscation of rebel property. No longer need the northern people be frightened with the cry of negro equality and emancipation.”189