The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876

by Nester, William

  A few generals, however, saw practical and moral advantages in protecting rather than returning slaves who sought freedom. Slaves were crucial to the Confederate war effort. They not only sowed and reaped crops but dug fortifications and delivered supplies. Depriving the rebels of their slaves would cripple their ability to wage war.

  Gen. Benjamin Butler, then commanding Fort Monroe, was the first to recognize and wield this weapon. After three slaves showed up at Fort Monroe on May 23, 1861, and asked for freedom, Butler thought of a way to grant it. He designated the escapees “contraband of war” and put them to work in return for provisions and small stipends. Lincoln accepted that policy when he learned of it, explaining that “the government neither should nor would send back to bondage such as came into our armies.”7 In doing so he repudiated the Fugitive Slave Act, which was grounded in a constitutional tenet, and thus took a significant step on the road to emancipation. Congress codified this policy by passing the Confiscation Act by twenty-four to eleven in the Senate and sixty-one to forty-eight in the House on August 6, 1861.

  Gen. John Frémont, who commanded the Department of the West, headquartered at St. Louis, carried this policy a huge step forward. Rather than simply protect and put to work slaves who escaped, he declared martial law in Missouri on August 30 and warned that his forces would liberate any slaves from their masters and execute any rebel civilians bearing arms.

  News of Frémont’s act alarmed Lincoln, who feared that it might push the border slave states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland into the Confederacy. This was not his only objection. Armies can temporarily requisition property for their needs but must restore it when it is no longer needed. Only legislatures and courts can legally deprive an owner permanently of his property. He assessed Frémont’s decree of the “confiscation and liberation of slaves” as “purely political and not within the range of military law or necessity.” The result was tyranny: “Can it be pretended that it is no longer the government of the U.S. . . . Constitution and laws—wherein a General or a president may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?” He first privately wrote Frémont on September 2, asking him to cancel his order, and then, when Frémont refused, publicly ordered him to do so on September 11.8

  Lincoln initially sought emancipation by giving the slave and border states incentives that encouraged manumission. He first targeted the state with the fewest slaves, figuring its government would be the least difficult to convince and that the result could serve as a model for other states. In December 1861 he worked with Delaware representative George Fisher to sponsor a bill whereby his state would emancipate its 1,798 slaves over a decade in return for $719,200 in federal compensation. But Delaware’s slaveholders pressured Fisher to break his deal with the president.

  Lincoln then asked Congress on March 6, 1862, for a joint resolution that Washington would compensate masters who emancipated their slaves. He grounded his argument on practical rather than moral grounds—the cost of paying masters to free their slaves would be a fraction of the cost of conquering the Confederacy. He followed this up on March 10 by meeting with congressional members of the border states and encouraging them to embrace gradual emancipation over three decades in return for $400 for each freed slave. They bluntly rejected the notion. Nonetheless, on March 13 Congress did amend the Articles of War to forbid officers under pain of court-martial from returning escaped slaves to their masters.9

  To see whether incentives worked, Lincoln and his congressional allies decided to use the District of Columbia as a laboratory. On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed into law a bill that abolished slavery in the district, promised to pay masters $300 for each liberated slave, and appropriated $100,000 for any blacks who wished to settle in Liberia in Africa, Chiriqui in Central America, or any other foreign land. Once again he encouraged border state leaders to adapt similar policies but met only with angry refusals.

  Having tacked one way, an unexpected event forced Lincoln to tack the other. On May 9, 1862, Gen. David Hunter, the regional commander for South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, issued an order declaring all slaves in these states freed and calling on black men to join the First South Carolina Colored Regiment that he established. Lincoln rescinded the order on May 19. In doing so, he left himself plenty of room one day to assert his own emancipation proclamation by asserting that only the president, as commander in chief, was empowered to declare slaves free, and only when he deemed it “a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government.”10

  New Orleans was the headquarters for the Department of the Gulf, which stretched from Brownsville, Texas, to Pensacola, Florida, and far inland for varying distances. As if the duties of overseeing that region were not daunting enough, the departmental commander also had to run New Orleans itself. Even under the best of circumstances, governing 140,000 people would have been no easy task, but New Orleans was then America’s most diverse city. Although most people spoke English, there were communities of French and Spanish speakers from an array of ancestries, while a babble of tongues could be heard along the docks. The black population alone was a microcosm of diversity. Of twenty-five thousand blacks, eleven thousand were legally free and collectively owned $2 million in property. Not only was there a small group of wealthy blacks, but some of them owned slaves. Under these circumstances, those who ruled New Orleans had to be at once sensitive and firm. Although most whites in New Orleans were diehard Confederates, a large minority welcomed liberation by the Union army.

  President Lincoln hoped to make Louisiana a reconstruction model.11 This ambition, however, was problematic as long as Benjamin Butler was in charge.12 When the war erupted, Butler was a prominent Boston lawyer and Massachusetts Democratic Party political chief who wielded his connections and skill to wrangle a general’s commission. Lincoln rewarded his initiative at Fort Monroe with command of the army to take New Orleans. Soon after his troops occupied New Orleans Butler became reviled as “the beast” for mercilessly repressing any rebel resistance. When rebel William Mumford pulled down and ripped into shreds the American flag that Admiral Farragut had raised over New Orleans, then bragged of the deed, Butler had him arrested and tried by a military tribunal. Mumford was found guilty of treason and hanged. Butler replaced the outspoken mayor with Gen. George Shepley. He ordered all six of the city’s newspapers shut down for spreading sedition in their columns. He abruptly ended the practice of women hurling insults and spittle upon Union soldiers with this order: “Hereafter when any female shall by word or deed or gesture or movement insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the U.S. she shall be regarded and held liable as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”13

  Yet Butler asserted reforms along with the repression. He put the jobless to work by paying them fifty cents a day to clean the streets, ditches, and canals of a century and more of malodorous, disease-festering filth. He distributed provisions to thousands of hungry people. In May 1862 he helped establish the Union Association of New Orleans and welcomed into the city’s administration anyone who signed a loyalty oath to the United States. He cracked down on criminal gangs that bullied and robbed people in many neighborhoods. New Orleans was never better run than when Butler took over.

  The trouble was that Butler had become too controversial and thus a political liability. In December 1862 Lincoln replaced him with Nathaniel Banks, another Democratic Party chief who finagled a general’s commission. Banks expanded the reforms while avoiding measures and attitudes deliberately designed to rub salt in rebel wounds. On January 29, 1863, he decreed that those who hired blacks had to sign contracts guaranteeing them ten-hour work days, set wages in coin or kind, provide clothing and shelter if necessary, and promise not to whip their employees for any reason. Federal officials could inspect any workplace to ensure compliance with these rules. With the Union army’s protection, Louisiana’s loyalists wrote, ratified, and implemented a state constitution that established a liberal democracy and abolished slavery. This
in turn let them send two senators and five representatives to Congress.

  Lincoln and the Republican Party achieved a major and long-sought goal on June 19, 1862, when the president signed a bill forbidding slavery in the territories. Nearly a month later, on July 12, and for the third and final time, Lincoln summoned all the border state representatives and senators to the White House and once again tried to talk them into voluntary abolition. He got no takers. This convinced him that emancipation could come only through his own leadership. He first revealed his intention to Seward and Stanton on July 13, after they returned in a carriage from the funeral of the war secretary’s son. But for the time being that would be their secret.

  Over the next few days, Lincoln worked with congressional leaders to draft and pass two bills that he signed on July 17. The Second Confiscation Act empowered the government to confiscate rebel property, including slaves. Due process would prevail—courts rather than soldiers would determine just who was a rebel and thus whether his or her property could be taken. This would obviously be a slow, laborious process, given the nearly 350,000 rebel slaveholders. There was another limitation. Masters in border states loyal to the United States could keep their chattel. Nonetheless, escaped slaves could enjoy relative freedom while their cases worked their way through court. The military could pay escapees to construct fortifications and roads or provide other labor crucial for the war effort. The Militia Act empowered the president to call up three hundred thousand nine-month militia aged from eighteen to forty-five years; a clause let blacks serve in the militia and promised any male slave who enlisted freedom for himself and his family if his master was a rebel.

  So far Lincoln had taken a series of small steps that nibbled around slavery’s edges and that he later confessed had not “caused a single slave to come over to us.”14 He sought a way to speed the process. After consulting with a number of key abolitionist politicians like Thurlow Weed and Charles Sumner, he drew up the Emancipation Proclamation. He shared his idea with his cabinet on July 21 and the following day submitted the draft to them. They embraced it along with Seward’s proposal to issue it only after a major victory to avoid making it seem like an act of desperation rather than triumph.

  Lincoln justified freeing slaves in rebel-held territory purely on grounds of “military necessity.” If “slaves are property,” then declaring them war contraband permits the federal government to seize and use them to help crush the rebellion. This policy obviously had stronger legal and practical than moral rationales. The policy angered liberals who sought immediate and total emancipation on moral grounds.

  Lincoln committed a historic first when he invited five leading black abolitionists to the White House on August 14. He reassured them that he completely sympathized with the plight of black people in America: “Your race is suffering . . . the great wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages that the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.” The only way to escape this tragic fate was to “go where you are treated the best.” He then tried to talk them into accepting as the price of abolition for black people immigration to Liberia or someplace in Central America that might welcome them. His argument’s essence was that black people should not stay where they were unwanted and could never be accepted as equals: “Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer by your presence. There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us. . . . It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated.”15

  The black delegation firmly rejected any notion of leaving America. What they insisted upon was equality between the races, not the cruel choice of separation and discrimination or exile. Abolitionists were incensed when they read Lincoln’s quotes in an article by a New York Tribune reporter who attended this meeting. On August 19 Horace Greeley, the Tribune’s editor, blistered Lincoln in a column titled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” and called on him to support slavery’s immediate and complete abolition.

  Lincoln wrote a reply designed to prepare the public for his upcoming proclamation and that he knew Greely would publish: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”16

  A religious delegation met with Lincoln on September 13 and urged him to proclaim emancipation. Of course, he intended to do just that as soon as the Union won a major victory, but he pretended to oppose the notion. He made all the arguments against the idea and let them refute each in turn. He then acknowledged the superiority of their arguments. He said that if he did ever issue a proclamation it would be on practical rather than moral grounds—emancipation would at once deprive the rebels and empower the United States with blacks as laborers and soldiers.

  It was through reports of meetings with abolitionists and his own carefully written letters that the newspapers published that Lincoln prepared the public psychologically and politically for emancipation.17 Yet, paradoxically, most Americans appeared more appalled by the institution of polygamy than slavery. They applauded when Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act into law on July 2, 1862. Signing and enforcing a law, however, can involve two very different exercises of power. Lincoln made it clear that suppressing polygamy was not his priority. He needed the Mormon people’s cooperation rather than enmity. Specifically, he wanted to call on them to protect the telegraph lines and mail delivery that passed through their territory until federal troops could secure those routes. To a Mormon journalist, Lincoln explained his approach to the antibigamy law: “Occasionally [in clearing timber] we would come to a log that had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we ploughed around it. That’s what I intend to do with the Mormons. Tell Brigham Young that if he lets me alone, I will let him alone.”18 One can imagine the wry expression on Lincoln’s face as he passed on this message.

  After defeating Pope’s Army of Virginia at Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas, and Chantilly, Lee sought to carry the war north of the Potomac River and seek a decisive victory. He marched his army to the head of the Shenandoah Valley, detached Jackson’s corps to invest 12,500 Union troops defending Harpers Ferry, and crossed the Potomac with the rest of his men. He used South Mountain, a steep ridge running north-south for twenty miles, to screen his right flank. He detached troops to defend South Mountain’s three passes while he spread out most of his other troops to round up provisions.

  McClellan, meanwhile, finally obeyed Lincoln’s repeated orders to transfer his army from the peninsula to Washington but then typically sat tight rather than seeking the enemy. Then, on September 13, an extraordinary piece of luck gifted the American cause. In an abandoned rebel camp, Union troops found a copy of Lee’s Special Order Number 191, wrapped around three cigars, apparently left by a negligent orderly. Officers on the spot recognized the intelligence windfall and hurried it to McClellan’s headquarters. What the orders revealed was that Lee had widely dispersed his army behind South Mountain, which was lightly defended, while Jackson’s corps was besieging Harpers Ferry.

  For the only time in his career, McClellan acted decisively. He ordered his army to march toward and over the South Mountain gaps. The Union troops attacked and routed the rebels at South Mountain’s passes on September 15. Lincoln replied to McClellan’s triumphant telegraph with congratulations and this admonition: “Destroy the rebel army if possible.”19

  The same day, Harpers Ferry’s garrison surrendered to Jackson. After dispatching the prisoners under guard, Jackson led his corps to join Lee
, who had massed his army around Sharpsburg behind Antietam Creek. The bloodiest day in American history took place there on September 17, 1862.

  McClellan proved to be as utterly inept a tactician as he was a strategist. The Union army outgunned the Confederate by sixty thousand to thirty-seven thousand men. Rather than take advantage of this by launching an overwhelming assault on one or more enemy flanks, McClellan ordered his troops forward in a series of piecemeal attacks directly against the rebel army. This enabled Lee to shift his limited forces to blunt one Federal assault after another. By the day’s end, the Union had suffered 13,724 casualties and the Confederates 12,469.

  Despite these horrific losses and with no more than twenty-five thousand troops, Lee kept his army defiantly in place the following morning. He had little choice. Rains had swollen the Potomac River and engineers struggled to build a bridge across it so the army could retreat to Virginia. Meanwhile twenty thousand reinforcements joined the Union army, bringing its total to sixty-five thousand troops after subtracting the previous day’s losses.

  Yet, despite his overwhelming superiority, McClellan refused to attack. Had he done so, Lee’s army would have been trapped with its back to the flooded Potomac River and forced to surrender. Nonetheless, Antietam was a decisive Union victory in three ways: it repelled the rebel invasion of Maryland, it undercut the pressure of some in the British government to openly aid the Confederacy, and it gave Lincoln the excuse to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.