If Lincoln meant to suggest subtly to Banks that he would be willing to have some blacks vote in Louisiana, the general failed to take the hint. He allowed only whites to cast ballots in the February 1864 election. Revealingly, Durant raised no objection, though he was enraged by Lincoln’s decision to name Banks “master of all.” In an access of injured self-esteem, Durant became an implacable and highly effective foe of Lincoln’s plan. If Banks had handled Durant with more tact, Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy might have worked. As it was, the general hurt Durant’s feelings by reading him Lincoln’s letter making him “master of all.” The “word master … grated harshly upon my ears,” Durant told Chase. “I was deeply mortified.”107 Further antagonizing the Free State Committeemen, Banks scuttled their effort to hold a constitutional convention before the general election. Durant said that he would not oppose the general’s policy but would do nothing to further it either. When Banks issued a call for elections to be held on February 22, Durant quit his posts as attorney general and commissioner of registration.
Equally alienated was Benjamin F. Flanders, who wrote Chase from New Orleans that “Mr Lincoln has lost by his letter to Gen Banks much of the friendship which he previously enjoyed of loyal men here. He will find … that he has another Missouri case on his hands.”108 The general further angered the free-state faction by reneging on his agreement to hold elections for delegates to the constitutional convention simultaneously with the general election (February 22). At the free-state nominating convention, the Durant–Flanders faction lost to more conservative Unionists, who nominated Michael Hahn for governor. Though he emphatically endorsed immediate emancipation, Hahn was suspect in the eyes of the Radicals, who regarded him as “a trickster and a trimming politician.” To challenge him, they put Flanders forward.109 (Conservatives had decided not to contest the election.)
During the brief campaign, Hahn’s supporters engaged in race-baiting, which Banks failed to stop. Such tactics lent credence to the Radicals’ claim that they were the only true-blue antislavery faction. Durant openly charged that Banks had scrapped the original plan to hold a constitutional convention before the general election at the insistence of the Lincoln administration, which he said greatly dreaded the prospect of black suffrage. This charge was unfounded, as Durant knew from Chase’s letters. In fact, Flanders denied that black suffrage was an issue in the contest, though when challenged to state his position on the subject, he refused to oppose it. Privately, he acknowledged that blacks eventually should be enfranchised, but not in 1864. Hahn won, to the intense disgust of the Durant faction, which then refused to have anything to do with the subsequent election for delegates to the constitutional convention. They believed that Banks had rigged the election. Their boycott drastically reduced the chances that the constitutional convention would enfranchise blacks.
To counter that development, Lincoln on March 13 injected himself into the contest on the side of black voting rights. Congratulating Hahn on his election, the president significantly alluded to the upcoming convention: “Now you are about to have a Convention which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in—as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.”110 Though phrased tentatively, the president’s letter was really an order, similar to the August missive regarding emancipation that he had sent to Banks, with copies to Free State Committee leaders.
Lincoln’s letter to Hahn may have been prompted by a delegation of New Orleans free blacks who had recently handed the president a petition, ignored by Shepley and Banks, bearing the signatures of a thousand blacks. Their leaders, Jean Baptiste Roudeanez and Arnold Bertonneau, asserted that of the 30,000 free blacks in Louisiana, all but 1,000 were literate; that they paid taxes on property worth over $15 million; that many were descended from French and Spanish settlers and from men who had fought with Andrew Jackson in the epic battle against the British on January 8, 1815; that many had lighter complexions than some whites; and that they had rallied to protect the city from a feared attack by Confederates while Banks’s men were besieging Port Hudson. “We are men; treat us as such,” they argued in their appeal for the right to vote.111
Lincoln’s respectful treatment of his black visitors shocked the sensibilities of some Southern whites who observed the interview. After reading their petition, he remarked: “I regret, gentlemen, that you are not able to secure all your rights, and that circumstances will not permit the government to confer them upon you. I wish you would amend your petition so as to include several suggestions, which I think will give more effect to your prayer, and after having done so please hand it to me.” When a leader of the delegation volunteered to rewrite the document on the spot, Lincoln asked: “Are you, then, the author of this eloquent production?”
“Whether eloquent or not, it is my own work,” he replied, and thereupon swiftly incorporated the president’s suggestions into the petition.112
Although Lincoln was courteous and respectful to his black guests, and although they agreed to his suggested changes in their petition, he denied their request, explaining “that the restoration of the Union in all its parts being his primary aim, all other questions, in his mind, were subordinate to this. Hence, whatever he did to attain this end arose from his estimate of the political necessity demanding the action, and not from any moral aspects of the case. Inasmuch as the reasons given for admitting the free people of color to the voting privilege in Louisiana were purely of a moral nature, in no wise affecting the relation of that State to the Union, he would not depart from his established views, and would decline to take any steps in the matter until a political urgency rendered such a course proper.”113 This statement strikingly resembled Lincoln’s famous 1862 letter to Horace Greeley responding to “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” (According to another account of this interview, Lincoln said that he “saw no reason why intelligent black men should not vote; but this was not a military question, and he would refer it to the Constitutional Convention in Louisiana.”)114
Lincoln’s support of black suffrage was more comprehensive than that of Radicals like Durant, who endorsed voting rights only for free-born blacks. The president’s recommendation that some former slaves be allowed to vote if they had served in the army or were “very intelligent” closely resembled Chase’s stand on that issue. On December 28, the treasury secretary wrote Durant: “I hope your Convention will be wise enough to adopt the principle of universal suffrage of all men, unconvicted of crime, who can read & write and have a fair knowledge of the Constitution of the State & of the United States. What a glory for Louisiana to be the first state to adopt a constitution basing the right to suffrage on virtue & intelligence alone. The object might be easily attained by establishing Commissions to make examinations & give certificates for which a small fee, fifty cents or a dollar, might be required. These certificates would naturalize the recipients into the great electoral community.”115 (In later decades, white Southerners would use the requirement that blacks interpret the state and national constitutions and pay a poll tax as a means to strip blacks of voting rights granted them after the war.)
Thus in later 1863 and early 1864, Chase and Lincoln saw virtually eye to eye on black suffrage. The treasury secretary had not objected to the voting provision in Lincoln’s Amnesty and Reconstruction Proclamation. The president hesitated to endorse black suffrage as long as Louisiana officially remained a Slave State, but he made it clear that he would not object if white Louisianans enfranchised their black neighbors.
Acting on Lincoln’s gently phrased letter, Governor Hahn threw his weight behind efforts to incorporate voting rights for at least some blacks into the new state constitution. Banks,
evidently at Lincoln’s behest, worked behind the scenes to obtain the same result. When delegates met in April to draft a new constitution, the general maneuvered to prevent a Conservative from becoming chairman of the convention. Instead he helped get Edward H. Durrell, a New Orleans attorney, named to that post. Banks urged Durrell to have a provision adopted enfranchising blacks who were intelligent or who owned property. He gave similar advice to another delegate, Thomas B. Thorpe. The majority of delegates, however, were unreceptive and went so far as to prohibit the legislature from ever granting blacks the right to vote. Banks and Hahn worked hard to reverse that decision. The final version of the document authorized the legislature to allow blacks to vote based on service in the army, intellectual merit, or payment of taxes. This did not satisfy Lincoln’s desire for limited black suffrage, but it did pave the way for its eventual adoption. The constitution also provided for the education of all children without distinction of race, allowed blacks to serve in the militia, and guaranteed equal rights in court.
This was as much as white public opinion in Louisiana would abide. Chase’s main informant about Louisiana affairs, George S. Denison (collector of the port of New Orleans), told him that “constitutions & laws are without good effect, unless sustained by an enlightened public opinion—and any law giving suffrage to negroes, could not be so sustained at present, in any State county or town throughout the whole South. I do not think you appreciate or understand the intense antipathy with which Southerners regard negroes. It is the natural antipathy of races, developed & intensified by the servile, brutal condition of one—the insolent, despotic position of the other.” Given those conditions, Denison judged that the constitution’s provision allowing the legislature to enfranchise blacks was “a great step in the right direction.”116
Lincoln’s March 13, 1864, letter to Hahn had smoothed the way for the adoption of that clause in the new constitution. The following year, Hahn said that the missive, “though marked ‘private,’ was no doubt intended to be seen by other Union men in Louisiana beside myself, and was consequently shown to many members of our Constitutional Convention and leading free-State men.” He added that the “letter, written in the mild and graceful tone which imparted so much weight to Mr. Lincoln’s simple suggestions, no doubt had great effect on the action of the Louisiana Convention in all matters appertaining to the colored man.”117
Having helped to get the constitution written with some, if not all, of the desired protections for blacks, Lincoln injected himself into the ratification contest. On August 9, he wrote to Banks that he had just seen a copy of the constitution and was “anxious that it shall be ratified by the people.” To achieve that end, he was willing to employ the patronage power, as he told the general: “I will thank you to let the civil officers in Louisiana, holding under me, know that this, is my wish, and to let me know at once who of them openly declare for the constitution, and who of them, if any, decline to so declare.”118 Banks used this authorization effectively to enlist support for ratification and took other steps to support the pro-constitution campaign, which was successful. The new state legislature chose two U.S. senators and held elections for five Representatives. But, Lincoln wondered, would Congress recognize them?
Chase Lays Pipe: The Attempt to Supplant Lincoln
To attain congressional approval of the Louisiana experiment, Lincoln could have used the assistance of Chase, who had great influence with the Radical wing of the party both in Louisiana and Washington. The treasury secretary, however, was scheming to win the Republican presidential nomination, “at work night and day, laying pipe,” as a Pennsylvania politician noted.119 In October 1863, Edward Bates confided to his diary that “Chase’s head is turned by his eagerness in pursuit of the presidency. For a long time he has been filling all the offices in his own vast patronage, with extreme partizans, and contrives also to fill many vacancies, properly belonging to other departments.”120 The patronage at his disposal included 15,000 jobs. As a rival for the nomination, Chase had little incentive to help Lincoln achieve a legislative victory, even though they shared similar views about Reconstruction policy in the Bayou State.
Chase’s prospects appeared good in Washington, where Lincoln enjoyed far less popularity than he did in the country at large. Henry Winter Davis did not “know a public man who is not disgusted with the lack of Presidential qualities in the Prest.”121 In February, Lyman Trumbull reported that “the surface current is running in favor of Mr. Lincoln’s renomination, but I find with many that the feeling for Lincoln is only apparent. It is by no means certain that he will be the candidate.”122 Few public men in the capital, the senator said, favored Lincoln’s reelection, for there was “a distrust & fear that he is too undecided & inefficient ever to put down the rebellion.” Trumbull would not be surprised “if a re-action sets in before the nomination in favor of some man supposed to possess more energy, & less inclination to trust our brave boys in the hands, & under the leadership of Generals who have no heart in the war.”123 One of Trumbull’s constituents asserted that “a majority of Republican members of Congress are opposed to Lincoln’s renomination.”124 During a visit to Washington in early 1864, William M. Dickson found “a strong feeling” against Lincoln’s reelection. The Republican Party’s “best men” insisted that the president “has been in the way, that our success has been [achieved] not by him but in spite of him & that he is so inefficient that he must not be permitted to remain in power another four years. But the thing most unfavorable to him, was the fact that the Blairs have assumed with or without his consent the care of his political fortunes.”125 Lincoln’s support of the Blair family alienated many Ohioans, including Republican state legislators. One of them who had voted in February to endorse the president’s renomination declared in May that Lincoln “must cut loose from the Blairs or sink with them.”126
Radicals condemned Lincoln’s purported conservatism, inconsistency, administrative incapacity, and reluctance to make difficult decisions. Henry Ward Beecher lamented that the president’s mind “seldom works clearly & cleanly,” and George Luther Stearns dismissed Lincoln as “unfit by nature and education to carry on the government for the next four years.”127 The state treasurer of Minnesota hoped that Lincoln would be denied renomination, for though the president was “honest and upright no doubt,” nevertheless “we need a great leader in these hard times & not one who must be pushed by the people.”128 A Kansas abolitionist deplored Lincoln’s “everlasting playing Hawk and Buzzard. You never know what to depend on. Sometimes he is just and sometimes he is unjust. Sometimes he is wise and sometimes he is foolish. Sometimes he is earnest and sometimes he is joking. Sometimes he is clear and sometimes he is muddy.”129 In Massachusetts, Richard Henry Dana sneered that Lincoln was “a shapeless mass of writhing ugliness” who “lacks administrative power” and “is not up to the office.”130 Lydia Maria Child complained that though God “is doing a great work,” nevertheless “the agents by which He is accomplishing it are so narrow, so cold! The ruling motive of this administration, from the beginning to the present time, seems to have been how to conciliate the Democratic party.”131
Radical senators were especially critical of the president. According to Charles Sumner, “there is a strong feeling among those who have seen Mr. Lincoln, in the way of business, that he lacks practical talent for his important place. It is thought that there should be more readiness, and also more capacity, for government.” Sumner likened the president to Louis XVI and opposed his renomination, arguing that any member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation was better qualified for chief executive than the incumbent.132 Sumner’s colleague from Massachusetts, Henry Wilson, harshly criticized Lincoln behind his back. When asked why he did not voice his disapproval publicly, he replied that the president clearly was so popular with the people that he would be renominated, and that “bad as that would be, the best must be made of it.”133 William P. Fessenden scornfully remarked that the people of the Nor
th were “woefully humbugged in their notions” of the president, who was “weak as water.” Yet, he acknowledged resignedly, “it will not do to tell the truth, and I see no way but to take another four years of selfish stupidity,” for “Lincoln is, after all, about as good a candidate as we shall be likely to get.” Despite the president’s failings, “the people have a strong faith in his honesty of purpose, and at a time when their endurance is so largely drawn upon, that is a great point.”134 James W. Grimes of Iowa told Fessenden that the president could win reelection only if he dramatically reorganized his cabinet: “The truth is the people have not the slightest confidence in either Stanton Usher Blair Welles or Bates. There is no administrative ability possessed by either one of them, and some of them are generally supposed to be and I know them to be positively dishonest.”135 Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin grumbled, “I am tired of this administration which I do not really know whether to characterize as many-headed or no-headed.”136
Like Senators Fessenden and Wilson, Massachusetts Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar had “come at last, though slowly and reluctantly, to the decided conviction, not only that Mr. Lincoln will be certain to be nominated in June, but that he would be equally certain to be nominated in September.” There was no better alternative, Hoar told businessman John Murray Forbes: “I am afraid … that he represents about the average (and perhaps even a little better than that) of all that we have to trust for suppressing the rebellion.”137 Forbes, who deplored Lincoln’s “system of floating along by the impulse of the people,” was of like mind.138
Defenders of the administration pointed out that Lincoln’s congressional critics who thought that “he has been right, but slow” ought to remember that “within three years they themselves solemnly resolved [in the Johnson–Crittenden resolutions] that the war should not touch slavery, and even went so far as to adopt an amendment to the constitution to preclude any further amendment that should abolish slavery.” Thus “reproach comes from them with an ill grace.”139
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