Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Turning to the danger presented by a Democratic victory, Lincoln told Douglass that the “slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped.” (The situation had changed since 1862, when he had informed Orville Browning that the flood of escaped slaves posed a significant problem.)

  Douglass “replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his Proclamation.”

  Earnestly the president suggested “that something should be speedily done to inform the slaves in the Rebel states of the true state of affairs in relation to them” and “to warn them as to what will be their probable condition should peace be concluded while they remain within the Rebel lines: and more especially to urge upon them the necessity of making their escape.” Months later, Douglass recalled that Lincoln’s words that day “showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before in anything spoken or written by him.” The president said: “Douglass, I hate slavery as much as you do, and I want to see it abolished altogether.”176 The black orator agreed to recruit a band of black scouts “whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”177

  Douglass also asked Lincoln to discharge his ailing son Charles from the army. Lincoln granted the request for Charles’s discharge, but thanks to the military developments soon afterward, nothing came of the plan to create a sort of underground railroad encouraging slaves to flee to Union lines.

  Douglass excitedly told General John Eaton that the president “treated me as a man; he did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins! The President is a most remarkable man. I am satisfied now that he is doing all that circumstances will permit him to do.” The admiration was mutual, for Lincoln said “that considering the conditions from which Douglass rose, and the position to which he had attained, he was, in his judgment, one of the most meritorious men in America.”178

  No Backsliding: Commitment to Emancipation Reaffirmed

  Douglass was not the only one fearful that Lincoln might backslide on his commitment to abolition. In Henry J. Raymond’s letter of August 22, he had urged the president “to appoint a Commission, in due form, to make distinct proffers of peace to Davis, as the head of the rebel armies, on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,—all other questions to be settled in convention of the people of all the States.” To make such “an offer would require no armistice, no suspension of active war, no abandonment of positions, no sacrifice of consistency.” Raymond predicted that if “the proffer were accepted (which I presume it would not be,) the country would never consent to place the practical execution of its details in any but loyal hands, and in those we should be safe.” If “it should be rejected, (as it would be,) it would plant seeds of disaffection in the South, dispel all the delusions about peace that prevail in the North, silence the clamorous & damaging falsehoods of the opposition, take the wind completely out of the sails of the Chicago craft, reconcile public sentiment to the War, the draft, & the tax as inevitable necessities, and unite the North as nothing since firing on Fort Sumter has hitherto done.”179

  When word of this advice leaked out, Charles Eliot Norton asked incredulously: “What does Raymond mean … ? Is he hedging for a reconstruction with slavery? If so, he is more shortsighted and more unprincipled than I believed.”180 Defending the president’s insistence on the “abandonment of slavery” in the Niagara Manifesto, Charles A. Dana told Raymond that if Lincoln “had left slavery out of his letter, he would have done himself and his party a great injury, hopelessly alienating the great part of the Radicals. As you are very well aware, he is more or less under suspicion of a want of earnestness upon this supreme question and if in such a communication he had omitted all reference to it, people would have taken for granted that he was willing to sacrifice his emancipation proclamation, and let the Southern States come back with their old power.”181

  Along with the rest of the Republican National Executive Committee, Raymond called at the White House on August 25. Nicolay reported that “Hell is to pay. The N. Y. politicians have got a stampede on that is about to swamp everything. … Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement. Our men see giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows of the opposition, and are about to surrender without a fight. I think that today and here is the turning-point in our crisis. If the President can infect R[aymond] and his committee with some his own patience and pluck, we are saved.” Three days later, Nicolay rejoiced that Lincoln and the cabinet had managed to convince Raymond “that they already thoroughly considered and discussed his proposition; and upon showing him their reasons, he very readily concurred with them in the opinion that to follow his plan of sending Commissioners to Richmond, would be worse than losing the Presidential contest—it would be ignominiously surrendering it in advance.” (Lincoln said Raymond’s plan to send a commission to Richmond “would be utter ruination” and that “our military prospects and situation would not allow it [an armistice] at present.”) According to Nicolay, Raymond and his colleagues “found the President and Cabinet wide awake to all the necessities of the situation, and went home much encouraged and cheered up.”182

  Lincoln did not show his visitors a letter that he had drafted to Raymond on August 24, instructing the editor to “proceed forthwith and obtain, if possible, a conference for peace with Hon. Jefferson Davis, or any person by him authorized for that purpose,” to “address him in entirely respectful terms, at all events, and in any that may be indispensable to secure the conference,” to “propose, on behalf of this government, that upon the restoration of the Union and the national authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful modes.” If Davis were to reject this offer, then Raymond was to “request to be informed what terms, if any embracing the restoration of the Union, would be accepted” and report back to Washington. These instructions remained in the president’s desk.183 Lincoln doubtless hoped to make Davis state unequivocally what he had already told Colonel Jacquess, namely, that he would accept no peace terms denying independence to the Confederacy.

  Many Republicans shared Lincoln’s view that any attempt to hold peace talks would be ruinous. Rumors that the administration might be willing to accept a compromise settlement were “paralyzing the Republican and the Union party,” John Murray Forbes noted. He feared that if “the milk and water policy of trying to negotiate with the rebels while their armies exist is attempted, earnest men will feel that it is a mere contest for party power, and that perhaps the war Democrats may react upon the peace party, and make McClellan just as likely to save the Union as we should be.” The Confederates would take advantage of a truce to “arm and make treaties with foreign nations, and negotiate with our border and Copperhead States for free trade seduction.”184 Negotiating with the Confederates “means defeat.”185 Forbes believed that if Lincoln had sent commissioners to Richmond, the party would have been forced to name a new ticket.

  It is not clear if Lincoln seriously toyed with the idea of backsliding on emancipation. He probably had not meant to suggest that he would rescind the Emancipation Proclamation; his “try me” dare was in all likelihood merely a ploy to smoke out Jefferson Davis and thus undo the harm done by the Niagara Manifesto, which the Democrats repeatedly attacked, calling it “The Republican Platform.”186 While a retraction of his antislavery pledge might gain him some support from Conservatives, he said it would “lose ten times as much on the other side.”187

  But if Lincoln did really consider abandoning emancipation as a prerequisite for peace, it is not to be wondered at, for he may well have believed that insisting on it as a war aim guaranteed that the Democrats would win the election. To him it may have seemed preferable to save the Union by abandoning emancipation rather than
losing both reunion and abolition by insisting on the latter. If such thoughts did occur to him, his keen moral sense trumped them. He hated slavery just as he hated to renege on promises. Even if it meant his defeat, he would not abandon emancipation. Lincoln may not have been thinking along these lines, but if he was, it is noteworthy that he made his decision before the tide turned in favor of the Republicans.

  Gustavus Fox thought Lincoln’s “playing with ‘peace negotiations’ in 1864 was a repetition of that profound and secretive policy which marked his course with regard to Fort Sumter in 1861. Many of the leaders, even those close to him, thought him to be a ‘simple-minded man.’ ” Fox knew better. To him, Lincoln seemed “the deepest, the closest, the cutest, the most ambitious man American politics has produced.”188

  In late August, John Murray Forbes, who had earlier favored postponing the Republican convention, warned that it was too late to field another standard-bearer. “We cannot change our Candidate,” even though the Democrats might win, he told Charles Eliot Norton. If the Peace Democrats “keep in the background & let the opposition put up some one at Chicago who can catch the votes of the war & peace opposition men we shall have a hard time in electing Lincoln. Were we free today we could nominate Dix or Butler and elect him by a strong vote.” But the time for such a change had past.189 As August drew to a close, the future looked bleak indeed.

  34

  “The Wisest Radical of All”

  Reelection

  (September–November 1864)

  The political tide began turning on August 29, when the Democratic national convention met in Chicago. Lincoln accurately predicted that the delegates “must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform, or a War Democrat on a peace platform; and I personally can’t say that I care much which they do.”1 The convention took the latter course, choosing George McClellan for president and adopting a platform which declared the war “four years of failure” and demanded 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.” This “peace plank,” the handiwork of Clement L. Vallandigam, implicitly rejected Lincoln’s Niagara Manifesto; the Democrats would require as a prerequisite for peace only union, whereas the Republicans demanded union and emancipation. The platform also called for the restoration of “the rights of the States unimpaired,” which suggested that slavery would be preserved under a Democratic administration. As McClellan’s running mate, the delegates chose Ohio Congressman George Pendleton, a thoroughgoing opponent of the war who had voted against supplies for the army.

  As the nation waited day after day to see how McClellan would react to this platform, Lincoln wittily opined that the general “must be intrenching.” More seriously, he added that Little Mae “doesn’t know yet whether he will accept or decline. And he never will know. Somebody must do it for him. For of all the men I have had to do with in my life, indecision is most strongly marked in General McClellan;—if that can be said to be strong which is the essence of weakness.”2

  A week and a half after the Chicago Convention, McClellan finally issued a temporizing acceptance letter which seemed to disavow the “peace plank.” Yet he did indicate that he had no objection to a compromise settlement, leaving slavery intact within a restored Union. It is highly unlikely that if he had won the election, McClellan could have brought the war to a successful close with the nation reunited and slavery abolished. Throughout the campaign he never indicated that he approved of the Emancipation Proclamation or that he would make abolition a precondition for peace.

  Rallying around the Flag

  Although some observers agreed with Fighting Joe Hooker’s prediction that McClellan would “have an easy and a successful run” because “the people seem to desire to have a President who has some influence with the Administration,” the news from Chicago restored Lincoln’s flagging spirits.3 Along with Vallandigham’s “peace plank,” the defiant nomination of Pendleton, Vallandigham’s alter ego, estranged War Democrats and Conservative Unionists (supporters of John Bell in 1860). A New York critic of Lincoln spoke for many when he said: “I admire McClellan & should vote for him but I cannot swallow Pendleton & that Chicago platform. I never could digest them. The dyspepsia that would follow such a banquet would torment me all my days.”4

  Emphatically and confidently, Lincoln told a Pennsylvania Republican leader that “the danger was past” because “after the expenditure of blood and treasure that has been poured out for the maintenance of the government and the preservation of the Union, the American people were not prepared to vote the war a failure.” Shortly before the Chicago Convention, he had speculated that if the Democrats were to put McClellan “on a platform pledging the party to a vigorous prosecution of the war, … the result in November would not only be doubtful, but the chances were in favor of the Democracy.”5 He was doubtless right. Others guessed that if McClellan had more definitively repudiated the peace plank, Peace Democrats would have fielded a candidate of their own, and the general might have won the ensuing three-way race.

  Among the Conservatives repelled by the doings at Chicago was Edward Everett, who had felt tempted to join a third-party movement but instead threw his support to the Republican ticket. The “golden opportunity which had been given to the Democrats by the folly of the Republicans was miserably thrown away,” said former Massachusetts Governor John H. Clifford, who reluctantly decided to vote for Lincoln. He explained that if he had acted on his political principles and his personal inclinations, he would have backed McClellan, but Lincoln’s reelection seemed to him essential because the general’s letter of acceptance and his public support of the Democratic candidate in the 1863 Pennsylvania gubernatorial election created “a painful distrust of his moral strength.” Moreover, his administration would be dominated by the “peace-at-any-price” faction that had controlled the Chicago Convention.6 Though disenchanted with Lincoln, John Pendleton Kennedy of Baltimore could not bring himself to vote for McClellan and thereby elevate the Peace Democrats to power. (Kennedy thought the president had not prosecuted the war vigorously enough. In addition, he confided to a friend, “I especially dislike Abraham’s bosom friends, or those, who have got into his bosom after the manner of the black snakes which are said to establish themselves as boarders with the prairie dogs.”)7

  Northern morale soared. As George Templeton Strong observed, the “general howl against the base policy offered for our endorsement at Chicago is refreshing. Bitter opponents of Lincoln join in it heartily.”8 One of those bitter opponents, abolitionist editor Theodore Tilton, confided to Anna E. Dickinson: “I was opposed to Mr. Lincoln’s nomination: but now it becomes the duty of all Unionists to present a united front.” The Republican platform “is the best in American history—we can pardon something to a second-rate candidate.” While Lincoln might not be the best possible nominee, it would be “criminal” to desert the Republican Party, which was “the only one that can save the country.” To divide it would be “to give over the country to the Copperheads” and “bring everlasting shame upon us all.”9 Tilton campaigned so hard for the president that shortly before election day he fainted from exhaustion while addressing a crowd. Dickinson herself announced that she would stump for the Republican ticket. To a fellow Quaker who expressed surprise at her support of Lincoln, she explained that “this is no personal contest. I shall not work for Abraham Lincoln; I shall work for the salvation of my country’s life, that stands at stake—for the defeat of this disloyal peace party, that will bring ruin and death if it come[s] into power.”10 Greeley’s New York Tribune followed suit, declaring on September 6 that from then on, “we fly the banner of ABRAHAM LINCOLN for the next Presidency, choosing that far rather than Disunion and a quarter of century of wars … which our opponents would give us.” The editorial gave credit to the president for doing “seven-e
ighths of the work in his fashion; there must be vigor and virtue enough left in him to do the other fraction. … We MUST re-elect him, and, God helping us, we WILL.”11 Greeley told Lincoln’s chief personal secretary, “I shall fight like a savage in this campaign. I hate McClellan.”12

  Radical Republican leaders added their voices to the swelling pro-Lincoln chorus. Although in mid-September Charles Sumner said that “Lincoln’s election would be disaster, but McClellan’s damnation,” and that he had “not quite given up the hope that even now someone might be substituted for Lincoln,” the senator insisted that if the president would not withdraw, duty demanded that Republicans unite behind him. Sumner was as good as his word, delivering pro-Lincoln speeches in New York and Connecticut as well as the Bay State.13 He argued that it was necessary to support the Republican ticket: “I do not see how anything can be done except through Mr. Lincoln and with his good-will.” Republican unity “must be had at all hazards and at every sacrifice.”14 To a Boston audience he declared that “if Lincoln is slow, McClellan is slower,” and rhetorically asked: “why consider these petty personalities? They divert attention from the single question, ‘Are you for your country, or are you for the rebellion?’ ”15 Ben Butler publicly asserted that “the plain duty of every loyal man” was “to support the election of Lincoln and Johnson,” and Thaddeus Stevens told voters that if they reelected “the calm statesman who now presides over the nation,” he “will lead you to an honorable peace and to permanent liberty.”16

  Frederick Douglass, who had signed the call for the Radical Democracy convention, publicly endorsed Lincoln in September. “When there was any shadow of a hope that a man of a more decided anti-slavery conviction and policy could be elected, I was not for Mr. Lincoln,” he told a fellow abolitionist. “But as soon as the Chicago convention [adjourned], my mind was made up.” In a letter which ran in the Liberator, Douglass acknowledged that “all hesitation ought to cease, and every man who wishes well to the slave and to the country should at once rally with all the warmth and earnestness of his nature to the support of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.” Douglass did not actively campaign for the ticket because, as he explained, “Republican committees do not wish to expose themselves to the charge of being the ‘N[igge]r party. The Negro is the deformed child, which is put out of the room when company comes.”17