Even without emancipation as a war aim, Lincoln emphasized, the conflict still had a great moral foundation around which the people easily rallied “in the fact that constitutional government is at stake. This is a fundamental idea, going down about as deep as any thing.” Lest his callers draw a false inference from his remarks, Lincoln assured them that his questions merely “indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God’s will I will do.”265 At the close of the interview, he added that “there is a question of expediency as to time, should such a proclamation be issued. Matters look dark just now. I fear that a proclamation on the heels of defeat would be interpreted as a cry of despair. It would come better, if at all, immediately after a victory. I wish I could say something to you more entirely satisfactory.”266
Similarly, Lincoln told Leonard Swett that if he issued an emancipation proclamation, “50,000 troops, armed with our weapons, and in our service, in Kentucky and Tenn[essee], would in a body go over to the enemy.”267 He acknowledged to Swett that Robert Dale Owen had given him excellent arguments in favor of immediate emancipation, but the president added that while “all his sympathies were that way,” there were “a few things to be considered before venturing into the unknown result. Such negroes as had come through the lines were very poor and helpless, and at one place in the neighborhood of the capital he had two regiments exclusively employed in feeding them. If emancipated, would the negro come? If he came, would he fight?”268
Lincoln sought advice from some emancipation advocates. On September 11, he asked James A. Hamilton to draft a proclamation that he thought should be issued. Hamilton may have been flattered, but most abolitionists despaired. “I am growing more and more skeptical as to the ‘honesty’ of Lincoln,” William Lloyd Garrison snorted. “He is nothing better than a wet rag.”269 Frederick Douglass felt “ineffable disgust” as he contemplated the president’s course.270 The irascible Thaddeus Stevens wrote that it “is plain that nothing approaching the present policy will subdue the rebels. Whether we shall find any body with a sufficient grasp of mind, and sufficient moral courage, to treat this as a radical revolution, and remodel our institutions, I doubt. It would involve the desolation of the South as well as emancipation; and a re-peopling of half the Continent.”271 A Massachusetts editor sarcastically remarked, “Mr. Lincoln must worship a strange God indeed, if he imagines He is not in favor of universal freedom. The Bible Society, or some other benevolent institution ought at once to present him with a copy of the New Testament, with directions to peruse several chapters daily. Unless he indulged his usual hair-splitting propensity, he might derive great benefit.”272
Conservative Counterpressure
Counterpressure came from the Border States and areas of the Confederacy controlled by the Union. Henry Winter Davis of Maryland argued that the “President can issue no decree of emancipation; if he could he would be my master & could take my home & imprison me at pleasure.”273 Most vocal in their opposition were Louisiana Unionists, including a prominent New Orleans attorney who told Lincoln: “we are in imminent danger of another revolution a thousand times more bloody than the present. If the agitation about slavery is not silenced, every man woman and child capable of using the knife or pistol will rush into the fight regardless of life or property, [and the] result will be that the stars and stripes will not wave over this city ninety days longer.”274
A similar complaint came from another New Orleans Conservative, Thomas J. Durant (who, like Henry Winter Davis, would eventually become a Radical and effectively sabotage the president’s Reconstruction efforts). Lincoln replied heatedly to Cuthbert Bullitt, who had forwarded Durant’s letter, calling Durant “an able, a dispassionate, and an entirely sincere man.” Lincoln nonetheless criticized him and his allies for their passivity: “The paralysis—the dead palsy—of the government in this whole struggle is, that this class of men will do nothing for the government, nothing for themselves, except demanding that the government shall not strike its open enemies, lest they be struck by accident!” The president insisted that “what is done, and omitted, about slaves, is done and omitted on … military necessity. It is a military necessity to have men and money; and we can get neither, in sufficient numbers, or amounts, if we keep from, or drive from, our lines, slaves coming to them.” Durant must be aware “of the pressure in this direction” and “of my efforts to hold it within bounds till he, and such as he shall have time to help themselves.”
Durant and his ilk might have no unpatriotic motives, Lincoln argued, but even so, “if there were a class of men who, having no choice of sides in the contest, were anxious only to have quiet and comfort for themselves while it rages, and to fall in with the victorious side at the end of it, without loss to themselves, their advice as to the mode of conducting the contest would be precisely such as his is.” Durant “speaks of no duty—apparently thinks of none—resting upon Union men. He even thinks it injurious to the Union cause that they should be restrained in trade and passage without taking sides. They are to touch neither a sail nor a pump, but to be merely passengers,—dead-heads at that—to be carried snug and dry, throughout the storm, and safely landed right side up. Nay, more; even a mutineer is to go untouched lest these sacred passengers receive an accidental wound.”
Lincoln refused to smooth “the rough angles of the war.” The fighting would end only when the Rebels surrendered, and to achieve that end, stern measures must be taken. With some sarcasm, he asked Bullitt: “What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? … Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?” He closed this remarkable private letter with an eloquent disclaimer: “I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than I can, and I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”275 (Two years later, the recipient of this missive justifiably called it one of Lincoln’s best.)
Bombshell: Public Announcement of Emancipation Plans
The despair of many abolitionists turned to joy in September when Lincoln seized upon the result of Antietam and announced his intention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The battle took place on Wednesday, September 17, but three days passed before he felt sure that it could be considered a Union victory. That weekend he tinkered with the Proclamation, which he presented to his cabinet on Monday, September 22. He began that memorable session by reading a humorous piece by Artemas Ward entitled “High-handed Outrage at Utica.” Everyone enjoyed the tale but Stanton, who thought it inappropriately frivolous for such a solemn occasion.
Lincoln then turned serious. According to Welles, he said that “he had made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. It might be thought strange, he said, that he had in this way submitted the disposal of the matter when the way was not clear to his mind what he should do. God had decided this question in favor of the slaves. He was satisfied it was right, was confirmed and strengthened in his action by the vow and the results.”276 (Lincoln offered a similar explanation to a Massachusetts congressman: “When Lee came over the river, I made a resolution that if McClellan drove him back I would send the Proclamation after him.”)277
Chase recorded a somewhat different version of the president’s words that fateful twenty-second day of September: “I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery; and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an Order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by so
me of you, was not issued. Ever since then, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might very probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little)—to my Maker. The Rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter—for that I have determined for myself. This I say without intending any thing but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and as carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say.” He asked for suggestions about the form but not the content of the proclamation, a four-page document much longer than the brief one he had read to them two months earlier. Modestly Lincoln acknowledged to the cabinet that “many others might, in this matter, as in others, do better than I can; and if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any Constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe that I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”278 (Two years later, Lincoln would remark that “it is very strange that I, a boy brought up in the woods, and seeing, as it were, but little of the world, should be drifted into the very apex of this great event.”)279
Lincoln then read aloud his Proclamation, which was preliminary, for it would not go into effect until January 1. Like the Proclamation he had submitted to the cabinet in July, it called for voluntary colonization of the freedmen, endorsed his earlier gradual emancipation plan, and exempted both the Border States and some (but not all) areas occupied by the Union army. As Montgomery Blair remembered, the president stated that “he had power to issue the proclamation only in virtue of his power to strike at the rebellion, and he could not include places within our own lines, because the reason upon which the power depended did not apply to them, and he could not included such places” merely because he opposed slavery.280 Confederate slaveholders would have one hundred days in which to cease rebelling; if they would lay down their arms, they could keep their chattels. If they did not, then as of New Year’s Day, their slaves “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Wherever the Union army penetrated, it would rigorously enforce the Proclamation. The attorney general, not commanders in the field, was to determine which slaveowners were loyal.
A striking new feature of the Proclamation was its seeming hint that the administration would aid slave insurrections: “The executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize the freedom of such persons [freed slaves], and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.” Lincoln doubtless meant that the Union army would not return runaways to bondage, though many would interpret his words to mean that the North would incite slave uprisings. Also noteworthy was the Proclamation’s pledge that “all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall … be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.” He was promising to compensate loyal slaveholders without congressional authorization!
After Lincoln finished reading the text, Seward suggested that it would be better to promise to “recognize and maintain the freedom” of the slaves rather than merely to “recognize” it. The secretary of state also objected that the document as written implied that emancipation would only be valid as long as Lincoln remained president (“the executive government of the United States will, during the continuance in office of the present incumbent, recognize such persons, as being free.”) Lincoln took Seward’s advice, adding “and maintain” and deleting the reference to “continuance in office of the present incumbent.” Chase expressed some reservations about the Proclamation, which “was going a step further than he had ever proposed,” but he nevertheless pledged to “take it just as it is written, and to stand by it with all my heart.” Stanton and Welles voiced strong approval, but Bates and Blair objected to the document’s timing. The postmaster general, a strong emancipationist, feared that the Border States might be driven to secede. Lincoln acknowledged the validity of such criticism but replied that “the difficulty was as great not to act as to act. There were two sides to that question. For months he had labored to get those [Border] States to move in this matter, convinced in his own mind that it was their true interest to do so, but his labors were vain. … They would acquiesce, if not immediately, soon; for they must be satisfied that slavery had received its death-blow from slave-owners—it could not survive the rebellion.” Blair also protested that the proclamation put into the hands of Northern Democrats “a club to be used against us.” Lincoln said that argument “had not much weight with him” for “their clubs would be used against us, take what course we might.”281
The next day Blair elaborated on his argument, maintaining that there was “no public sentiment at the North, even among extreme men which now demands the proposed measure.” The Proclamation would “endanger our power in Congress, and put the power in the next House of Representatives in the hands of those opposed to the war, or to our mode of carrying it on.”282 When the Proclamation was released to the press on September 23, a Republican leader in Ohio echoed Blair, expressing fear that it “will defeat me and every other Union candidate for Congress along the border.”283
The “rheumatic and stiff-jointed” language of the Proclamation disappointed some Radicals.284 “How cold the President’s Proclamation is,” the abolitionist lecturer Sallie Holley remarked; it was “graceless coming from a sinner at the head of a nation of sinners.”285 Adam Gurowski called it an “illogical, pusillanimous, confused half-measure,” written “in the meanest and the most dry routine style.”286 Frederick Douglass lamented that the words of the Proclamation “touched neither justice nor mercy. Had there been one expression of sound moral feeling against Slavery, one word of regret and shame that this accursed system had remained so long the disgrace and scandal of the Republic, one word of satisfaction in the hope of burying slavery and the rebellion in one common grave, a thrill of joy would have run round the world.”287 Beriah Green indignantly asked: “How in his Proclamation … does Mr. L. regard the horribly outraged—the damnably oppressed men & women & children, who in this country are blasphemously called slaves? Other at all than as a fulcrum, by wh. he tries to pry the Confederate States into his Union?”288 The fiery Parker Pillsbury thought “God has no better opinion of our President than he had of Pharaoh.” Pillsbury longed for the day when “somebody calls for justice,” talks “of something besides ‘Compensation & Colonisation,’ ” and acts “from higher considerations than ‘Military Necessity.’ ”289 Although Lydia Maria Child was grateful for the Proclamation, nonetheless she told a friend: “The ugly fact cannot be concealed that it was done reluctantly and stintedly, and that even the degree that was accomplished was done selfishly; was merely a war-measure, to which we were forced by our own perils and necessities; and that no recognition of principles of justice or humanity surrounded the politic act with a halo of moral glory.”290
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Lincoln carefully omitted any moral appeal in order to avoid antagonizing conservative opinion, especially in the Lower North and the Border States. He also wished to make sure that slaves liberated under the proclamation had a sound legal basis to protect their freedom in court, if necessary. Months later, when the Final Emancipation Proclamation was about to be issued, Lincoln told a journalist that he was “strongly pressed” to justify it “upon high moral grounds, and to introduce into the instrument unequivocal language testifying to the negroes’ right to freedom upon the precise principles expounded by the Emancipationists of both Old and New-England.” The president resisted this advice, for “policy requires that the Proclamation be issued as a war measure, and not a measure of morality; and that Law and Justice require that the slaves should be enabled to plead the Proclamation hereafter if necessary to establish judicially their title to freedom. They can do this, the President says, on a proclamation proceeding as a war measure from the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but not on one issuing from the bosom of philanthropy.”291
John Murray Forbes, an influential Massachusetts industrialist and philanthropist, defended Lincoln’s emphasis on military necessity. As Forbes told Charles Sumner, “our strongest Republicans some even of Mr Lincoln[’s] Electors have constitutional scruples in regard to emancipation upon any other ground—& with these must be joined a large class of Democrats & self styled ‘Conservatives’ whose support is highly desireable—and ought to be secured where it can be done without any sacrifice of principle.” Forbes realized that Sumner and his allies “would like to have it done upon higher ground but the main thing is to have it done strongly & to have it so backed up by public opinion that it will strike the telling blow at the Rebellion and at slavery together.” Resorting to a nutritional metaphor to make his case, Forbes added: “I buy and eat my bread made from the flour raised by the hard working Farmer—it is certainly satisfactory that in so doing I am helping the Farmer clothe his children but my motive is self preservation—not philanthropy nor justice. Let the President free the slaves upon the same principle & so state it that the masses of our people can easily understand it. He will thus remove constitutional scruples from some and will draw to himself the support of a very large class—who do not want to expend their Brothers & Sons and money for the benefit of the Negro, but who will be very glad to see Northern life and treasure saved by any practical measure—even if it does incidentally an act of justice and benevolence.” Forbes did not wish to “disclaim the higher motives but where so much predjudice exists—I would eat my bread to sustain my life—I would take the one short sure method of preserving the national life—& say little about any other motive.”292
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