Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865

by James Oakes

  This was too much for Lincoln. We were elected on the principle that the Constitution did not allow us to abolish slavery in the states, he said. To repudiate that principle now would discredit every promise the Republican Party ever made. The issue was not really Reconstruction. The Wade-Davis Bill imposed more stringent requirements for reestablishing loyal governments in the rebel states than had Lincoln, but he was not “inflexibly committed to any single plan.” Lincoln would not, however, “declare a constitutional competency in congress to abolish slavery in states.” He pocketed the bill rather than sign it, a veto because it was passed on the last day of Congress. There was the usual outrage against executive usurpation but no lasting breach within the party, in part because Lincoln himself had already required the rebel states to endorse the Emancipation Proclamation as a condition for readmission to the Union and in part because many Republicans still agreed with Lincoln that Congress could not abolish slavery in a state. Like the more conservative John Sherman and the more radical Lyman Trumbull, Lincoln was “sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation will be adopted.”33

  Lincoln had one more reason for not signing the Wade-Davis Bill. Two states—Louisiana and Arkansas—had already reorganized their state governments and were abolishing slavery. If the president signed the bill, those new state governments would be invalidated and their abolitions thereby undermined. Notwithstanding Lincoln’s hopes for a thirteenth amendment, its failure in the House made state abolition more critical than ever.

  STATE ABOLITION

  Part of the frustration on display during congressional passage of the Wade-Davis Bill stemmed from the fact that by July of 1864 only two states had actually abolished slavery. All along, state abolition had been the major goal of antislavery politics, and this was an unpromising record of success, especially so in light of the increasingly obvious limits of military emancipation. Lincoln had devoted increasing attention to state abolition in the year since he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In the summer of 1863 his letters to state officials strongly urged them to endorse some form of abolition, whether gradual or immediate. By the fall of that year his tone shifted, and he began to warn state politicians that their efforts to reorganize loyal state governments would come to nothing if they did not abolish slavery along the way. Lincoln had hoped that Louisiana would abolish slavery by the time Congress returned in December of 1863. Antislavery coalitions had formed in several states, but by July of 1864 none of those coalitions had succeeded. Finally, in September of 1864, Louisiana voters endorsed an abolition amendment to the state constitution, and in late October, Maryland voters did so as well, though by an extremely narrow margin. Yet as of Election Day in November of 1864, when the fate of the Thirteenth Amendment was being decided in the presidential balloting only three of the fifteen slave states had abolished slavery.

  Lincoln had announced his decision to require the rebel states to emancipate their slaves in his annual message to Congress on December 8, 1863. He began with the reminder that under the Constitution “the general government had no lawful power to effect emancipation in any State.” It could, however, establish standards for admission to the Union—and by extension for readmission to the Union. It could, for example, require all those wishing to participate in state government to swear “an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States.” And if it could require loyalty to the Constitution, Lincoln wondered, why not “also to the laws and proclamations in regard to slavery?” After all, those laws and proclamations were justified as measures needed to suppress the rebellion and sustain the Constitution. Moreover, one hundred thousand blacks had by then enlisted in the Union army. Together with the confiscation acts and the emancipation proclamations, black troops had proved to be invaluable weapons in the federal arsenal. “To now abandon them would be not only to relinquish a lever of power, but would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.” He reiterated, emphatically, that he would never retract the Emancipation Proclamation, “nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress.” For all of these reasons, Lincoln concluded, he would henceforth require two basic things of any seceded states choosing to “resume their allegiance” to the Union. First, all those participating in the restored state government would have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Union. Second, the restored government would have to endorse the Emancipation Proclamation. At that point there was no Thirteenth Amendment, so abolition would be accomplished by formal state endorsement of the military.34

  These were the major elements of Lincoln’s famous “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,” which he submitted to Congress along with his annual message. Though often treated like tea leaves that might reveal Lincoln’s “plan” for reconstruction, the proclamation was at least as significant for its immediate and relatively unambiguous implications for emancipation. Lincoln required 10 percent of the 1860 voters to take the oaths he prescribed, although he also indicated that he had no particular commitment to this so-called Ten Percent Plan for reconstruction. More telling than the percentage of citizens swearing the oath was the content of the oath itself. Lincoln required Louisianans to avow their allegiance to “the Constitution of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder,” but he also required them to “faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves” as well as “all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves.”35 Simply put, they had to endorse both liberty and Union. Everything else was negotiable.

  As of December 8, 1863, then, seceded states had to embrace the Emancipation Proclamation as a condition for readmission to the Union. Whether those states would comply was an open question. It depended on how much power the slaveholders retained. At its core secession was a slaveholders’ rebellion, and even in the Border States support for secession was concentrated in the master class. By requiring an oath of loyalty to the Union, President Lincoln therefore helped shift the balance of political power within the loyal slave states away from the master class, making antislavery politics much more viable. Federal authorities had far less leverage in the four Border States that had remained loyal to the Union, but in two of them—Maryland and Missouri—state-imposed loyalty oaths had a similar effect, severely undermining the political influence of the slave-owning class. The slaveholders inadvertently helped as well. In the Border States thousands of secessionist masters defected to the Confederacy, absenting themselves from the wartime politics of their respective states. In Missouri the slaveholding class bankrupted itself by investing heavily in a pro-Confederate government that lost control of the state early in the war.36 As the power of the slaveholding class waned a new politics of slavery emerged. Proslavery forces were weakened, of course, but antislavery forces divided into factions, with conservatives supporting gradual abolition and radicals favoring immediate.

  Lincoln was frustrated by these divisions within the antislavery coalition. For him “the common object”—the abolition of slavery—was more important than the particular means of accomplishing it. “Of all things,” he urged General Frederick Steele in Arkansas, “avoid if possible, a dividing into cliques among the friends of the common object.” He had initially proposed a system of gradual abolition to begin right away, but when the Arkansans went further, abolishing slavery outright, Lincoln was pleased and urged Steele to back off. “They seem to be doing so well,” he wrote, that the best thing to do was “to help them on their own plan.”37 This was one indication that Lincoln’s support for gradual abolition was more pragmatic than dogmatic. It never affected his commitment to immediate and uncompensated military emancipation, for example. Gradual abolition was something Lincoln urged on the states acting on their own, and he supported it for different reasons. He worried about the effect immediate emancipation would have on children and th
e elderly, who might not be able to care for themselves if emancipated immediately. Fully aware of the humanitarian crisis in the South and shocked by its dimensions, Lincoln held to his conviction that gradual abolition was a more humane way to destroy slavery. He also thought a gradual approach would garner the broadest base of support for abolition within the affected states. But Lincoln was never inflexibly committed to gradualism. Indeed, he complained that his “expressions of preference for gradual over immediate emancipation, are misunderstood.” He had thought a gradual approach would be easier for everyone, but if “those who are better acquainted with the subject” preferred immediate emancipation, “most certainly I have no objection.” Lincoln’s basic “wish,” he explained, “is that all who are for emancipation in any form, shall co-operate.” When in 1864, Arkansas, then Maryland, then Missouri, adopted immediate abolition, Lincoln gave them his enthusiastic endorsement.38

  ARKANSAS WAS THE FIRST seceded state to abolish slavery. As early as July in 1863, Lincoln was urging General Stephen Hurlbut to promote a plan of gradual abolition in the state. The slaves already freed were free forever, Lincoln explained. For those remaining enslaved, emancipation should “begin at once,” even if it proceeded gradually. Commencing abolition immediately would diminish the chances of slavery being reestablished, or so Lincoln hoped. In late 1863 Union forces routed the Confederates and expelled them from the state, setting off an exodus of pro-southern planters who packed up their farms and moved their slaves to Texas. The “loss of the Ark. Valey was disastrous in the extreme,” one pro-Confederate Arkansan wrote to Jefferson Davis. The “immense immigration of planters & others flocking there [to Texas] to save their slaves” meant that the only people left in Arkansas were “lukewarm and disloyal” southerners, otherwise known as unionists.39 Almost immediately the balance of political power shifted to the supporters of abolition.

  A state constitutional convention met on January 4, 1864, composed only of delegates who could swear an oath of loyalty to the Union and who had never participated in the rebellion. Since this effectively excluded most of the state’s slaveholders, the convention had no trouble meeting Lincoln’s requirements. By then the Thirteenth Amendment had been introduced in Congress, and Arkansas chose that route to abolition rather than the endorsement of the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln had asked for in early December. Ten days into the convention a committee reported to the floor a proposal to retain the existing state constitution, but with an amendment declaring that “[t]here shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude” in Arkansas. In late January a delegation petitioned Lincoln to be allowed to reorganize the state government under a new constitution. When he learned that the convention’s own proposal for government reorganization differed slightly from his own, Lincoln instructed General Steele to “harmonize” the two plans, making “sure to retain the free State constitutional provision in some unquestionable form.” The amended Arkansas constitution was submitted to the eligible voters for ratification on March 4. Confederates vowed to disrupt the voting process and immediately denounced the results, which were indeed spectacularly lopsided: 12,177 in favor of the new abolition constitution, 266 against. Thus was slavery abolished in Arkansas on March 4, 1864.40

  Arkansas was a success for Lincoln, but Louisiana was a more important one. In June of 1863, a group of Louisiana planters petitioned Lincoln to allow them to form a loyal state government under the old constitution, with slavery intact. By then, however, Lincoln had already been warned by Michael Hahn, a leader of the emerging Free State movement, that “the more radical or free-soil Union men” of Louisiana favored a new constitution that would abolish slavery. Lincoln rejected the conservatives’ petition, noting that “a respectable portion of the Louisiana people desire to amend their State constitution, and contemplate holding a convention for that object.”41 There was no doubt what Lincoln meant by this: he wanted Louisiana to abolish slavery on its own. “I would be glad for her to make a new Constitution recognizing the emancipation proclamation, and adopting emancipation in those parts of the state to which the proclamation does not apply.”42 At that point Lincoln was still willing to suggest but not force Louisiana, or any state, to comply with his wishes.

  But the proslavery forces in Louisiana proved obstreperous, and by November, Lincoln was clearly losing patience. “If a few professedly loyal men shall draw the disloyal about them, and colorably set up a State government, repudiating the emancipation proclamation, and re-establishing slavery, I can not recognize or sustain their work.” I would be “powerless to do so,” Lincoln added, for it would fatally divide “this government”—that is, the Republican-dominated government—which was firmly committed to “general freedom.” Louisiana could rejoin the Union only “by acting in harmony with this government.” He was less concerned with the specific terms by which the slaves were emancipated, “but my word is out to be for and not against them on the question of their permanent freedom.”43 As much as anything else it was Lincoln’s frustration with Louisiana that led him, in December of 1863, to settle the dispute between radical and conservative unionists by requiring state endorsement of the Emancipation Proclamation as a condition for readmission to the Union.44 Thereafter, supporters of emancipation in Louisiana split between moderates, led by Hahn, who stopped with abolition, and radicals who hoped to push the revolution further into the realms of civil and political equality for blacks and whites.

  Pressed by Lincoln, General Nathaniel Banks called for delegate elections on March 28, 1864, to a constitutional convention that would abolish slavery in Louisiana. Led by now-Governor Hahn, the moderates swept the elections and dominated the convention, which opened on April 6. Planters and the prewar political elite were conspicuously absent, having been effectively disfranchised by the loyalty oath Lincoln required. By then Republicans had embraced the Thirteenth Amendment. Abolition was therefore a foregone conclusion, and most of the convention debate focused instead on the issue of racial equality after abolition—on the establishment of a public school system for African American children, voting rights for black men, and various civil rights. Yet these discussions presupposed universal emancipation, which remained the main business of the convention. The abolition of slavery was debated for two days beginning on May 9, and on May 11 the convention approved a brief amendment to the state constitution. Like that of Arkansas, it was modeled on the Northwest Ordinance, abolishing “slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.” The convention adjourned in late July and submitted the new constitution to eligible voters. On September 5, 1864, Louisiana’s antislavery constitution was approved by the overwhelming majority of a minuscule electorate. The legislature of Louisiana, the new constitution read, “shall make no law recognizing the right of property in man.”45

  LINCOLN BELIEVED HE COULD REQUIRE seceded states like Arkansas and Louisiana to endorse the Emancipation Proclamation, but he had no such power over slavery in the four Border States, which had never left the Union. Nevertheless, federal authorities resorted to increasingly aggressive tactics to weaken slavery and strengthen its opponents. The most effective, and controversial, of those tactics was the conscription of slaves owned by loyal masters. The Militia Act passed on July 17, 1862, had opened the army to black men by removing the word white from the requirements for enlistment, but it had also eliminated the word free. That meant that when Lincoln ordered the enlistment of black men in the Emancipation Proclamation he was simultaneously endorsing the recruitment of slaves. Republicans were aiming at loyal masters, especially in the Border States, since slaves in disloyal areas were already emancipated and therefore eligible for enlistment. By mid-1863 the Union army had opened recruitment centers in all four Border slave states—Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—setting off a series of feuds between the War Department and proslavery state politicians. In late September of 1863, after months of wrangling, Secretary of War Stanton met with Maryland’s Governor Augustus Bradf
ord and came to an agreement on federal recruitment policy. Because the military situations were similar in Maryland and Tennessee—which had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation—Stanton waited to issue a general order until after he had concluded an agreement on the same terms with the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew Johnson. Under the new policy, slaves of disloyal masters as well as free blacks could be recruited without obstruction. Slaves of loyal masters could also be recruited as a military necessity, with a possibility of later compensation to unionist owners. In practice this meant that army recruiters in the Border States could enlist any able-bodied men they chose.46

  Lincoln endorsed Stanton’s proposal in a memo indicating that he had “no objection” to the recruitment of either “free negroes” or “slaves of disloyal owners.” Slaves of loyal masters could be recruited if the master consented, or if there was an “urgent” military necessity. Otherwise, Lincoln indicated, the ban on enticement of slaves owned by loyal masters remained in effect in the Border States. That is, all able-bodied males could be recruited into the Union army, but no other slaves should be “enticed” from their owners. Unlike the disloyal states, enticement in the Border States was restricted to able-bodied men willing to serve in the Union army. Slaves of loyal masters who voluntarily came to Union lines—the wives and children of recruits, for example—could not be legally excluded. Once Johnson’s agreement was secured Stanton formalized the policy as General Orders No. 329 on October 1, 1863. Union recruiters treated the agreement as carte blanche to enlist all able-bodied black men, regardless of the loyalties of their owners.47