In his third Annual Message, Lincoln had also said of black soldiers, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any."4As military operations extended into every corner of the land, the moral meaning of the war was also expanding. He recounted the proclamation, the recognition of Haiti and Liberia, the encouraging movement of border states turning away from slavery, and that black men now shouldered rifles. Yet the growing popularity of the Democrat Party's platform threatened all the progress that had come from the evolution of this conflict with an indifference to slavery's depravity. With an election looming in eight months, this was an hour of "hope as well as danger." Douglass ended the speech as he had begun:
No war but an Abolition war; no peace but an Abolition peace; liberty for all, chains for none; the black man a soldier in war, a laborer in peace; a voter at the South as well as at the North; America his permanent home, and all Americans his fellow-countrymen. Such, fellow-citizen, is my idea of the mission of the war. If accomplished, our glory as a nation will be complete, our peace will flow like a river, and our foundations will be the everlasting rocks.
This was Douglass's gospel. During February, he spread it through Portland, Maine; Trenton, New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania in Montgomery County, Newtown, Pineville, and Bucks County.5
Douglass's name was heard far and wide, and it turned up on Stanton's desk again in mid-February. General Benjamin Butler clipped an article from a Richmond newspaper, thinking the secretary of war would be interested in a glimpse into current Confederate psyche. The article had a rather distorted view of the prisoner exchange programs that would go on between the two sides: "If President Lincoln should signify that he is ready to permit a new negotiation to be entered upon, with a view to exchange, provided we send our commissioner to settle the terms with Frederick Douglass." Imploring the Confederate government to never negotiate with the hated black abolitionist, the writer waxed colorfully on the humiliation their soldiers would be subject to if an agreement influenced by Douglass determined their destiny. They wanted the Virginia legislature to introduce a measure forbidding them "to accept, as a federal agent of exchange . . . the mulatto Frederick."6
It was a puzzling piece detached from reality. Perhaps the South had heard of Lincoln and Douglass's meeting in which the protection of captured black soldiers was a principal issue. From there, it was quite a leap in imagination for Douglass to be representing the government's negotiations on the topic. It was a reminder of the fear and abhorrence Douglass brought to the minds of many in the South. The revolutionary nature of his meeting with the president was a powerful image.
At this time early in 1864, Lincoln asked Stanton for information and statistics about black citizens. He wanted to know how many men were enrolled in the military, how many had escaped from slavery since the Emancipation Proclamation, and how many were born free. The same day that Butler mailed to Stanton the southern fantasy of Douglass becoming Lincoln's personal negotiator, the president asked General Daniel Sickles to travel to New Orleans, through the Gulf region, and then north along the Atlantic coast in order to gather information on how black men were faring as soldiers, laborers, and most of all, as free people. Whether they were working for their old masters or for Union generals, placing them on abandoned plantations was of interest to Lincoln. In coming to grips with the sweeping new course he was setting for the nation, he wanted to understand whether life was better for them inside rebel lines or along the confused areas of northern occupation. He wanted to know what they were experiencing.7
On April 12, 1864, an incident on the muddy banks of the Mississippi River near Memphis showed the nation how real and dire the need to protect black soldiers from Confederate vengeance was becoming. Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former slave trader, commanded the men who attacked Fort Pillow, a Union outpost in western Tennessee, that morning. Forrest's cavalry division surrounded a small fort defended by black and white regiments and demanded surrender. Acting Union commander William Bradford refused. The Confederates attacked, overrunning the fort and driving its occupants toward the bluffs along the river. Few of the black soldiers survived what followed.
One soldier remembered the fort becoming a "great slaughter pen," where "Blood—human blood—stood about in pools, and brains could have been gathered up in any quantity." Numerous accounts corroborate that it became an object of amusement among Forrest's men to shoot black soldiers in one leg, then make them stand and beg before murdering them. Rebels visited atrocities on Union white soldiers too, believing that they had betrayed Tennessee not only for remaining loyal to Lincoln but for fighting alongside black soldiers. Three women came across the seared body of Lieutenant John C. Akerstrom, who had been nailed to wood planks and burned alive.
Black women traveling with the army, along with their children, were shot and thrown into the Mississippi. When a Confederate officer saw one of his troops helping a black boy who looked about eight by putting him on his horse, he ordered the soldier to take him down and shoot him. The soldier objected, crying that he was "nothing more than a child."
The superior responded, "Damn the difference . . . Take him down and shoot him, or I'll shoot you instead." The soldier sadly lifted the youngster from his saddle, placed him on the ground and ended his life.8
Horrible as it was, Fort Pillow was not an isolated case. Six days later, black troops were not given the option of surrendering in Poison Spring, Arkansas; they were slaughtered. In Plymouth, North Carolina, eight days after Fort Pillow, white southern men took captured black soldiers; some were hung, others beaten to death with butt ends of muskets.9
It did not take long for these sickening stories to spread from the blood-soaked knolls around Fort Pillow throughout the nation. While northerners were largely indifferent to discrimination against black soldiers, Fort Pillow crossed a line of civilized behavior. The outraged cries of politicians and newspapers editors made this clear. In this new climate, Douglass did not want white Americans to believe that this was the inevitable result of whites and blacks fighting. Nor did he want them to suppose that the atrocities would necessarily deter black recruitment. His message was that it would only make black men more energized to enlist, as they would wish to avenge this atrocity.10
An address by Lincoln given at a Soldier's Relief gathering in Baltimore six days after the news of Fort Pillow touched on "A painful rumor, true I fear." Lincoln felt the massacre called into question his decision to allow black soldiers to fight in this war. He explained, "Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the Christian world, to history, and on my final account to God."
Lincoln said of the black recruit, "there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it." Lincoln wanted the country to know that the issue grieved him greatly and he was searching for a solution. His first priority was discovering what actually happened, because he dreaded executing anyone upon false reports. If men trying to surrender were killed in cold blood, "the retribution shall as surely come. It will be a matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case, it must come."11
But it never did. Lincoln asked his cabinet for opinions in writing on what course he should take in the government's reaction.12In a meeting on May 6, some in his cabinet argued for the execution of the officers responsible if they were ever caught; others advocated the killing of an equal number of war prisoners if the Confederate government admitted the massacre. Lincoln never went forward with either course, being more interested in winning the war as the ultimate reprisal.
Lincoln did take action on one matter that concerned Fort Pillow, however. Mary Elizabeth Wayt Booth was the widow of Lionel Booth, the white commander of the fort, who had been killed by sharpshooters early in the battle. She had gone to the s
ight of the battle in its grisly aftermath and learned the plight of black widows. Slavery had prevented legal marriage contracts, so those widows were without the proof necessary to receive government pensions. The twenty-four-year-old Booth traveled from Ohio to Washington, determined to bring this issue to the attention of the president. Her case seems to have genuinely affected Lincoln, as on the same day as their meeting he wrote to Senator Charles Sumner saying she had asked for "widows and children in fact, of colored soldiers who fall in our service be placed in law, the same as if their marriages were legal." Lincoln wished Congress could ensure their having "the benefit of the provisions made the widows & orphans of white soldiers." Six weeks later, a measure passed the House and Senate that included these black women. The widow pension was a redeeming moment in what is otherwise the darkest chapter in the history of black Civil War soldiers.13
On April 26, a beautiful Sunday morning, the Ninth, headed toward action in Virginia, paraded through Washington. It was a significant movement since the unit included black regiments recruited from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the capital had never seen soldiers of color. They began their procession around eleven A.M., taking New York Avenue, a dusty road leading into the heart of the city. The troops halted at 14th Street, where the grand Willard's Hotel stood. Lincoln stood silently on the second floor balcony. Just two years ago, there had still been slavery in this city; now armed black men marched through it. When these men saw the president, military discipline gave way to euphoria. As they threw hats and screamed out his name, the president respectfully uncovered his head. His secretary, William Stoddard, asked what he thought of this remarkable sight. Lincoln tightened his lips and shut his eyes. He said, "It'll do, it'll do!"14
A letter he had written at the beginning of the month captured his quickly evolving views on the future of slavery. He spent the morning with three Ken-tuckians, including Governor Thomas Bramlette. Lincoln retained strong emotional ties to Kentucky, a state he believed he understood and certainly sympathized with. The delegation complained about the Union's recruitment of black men who might not yet be free, and Lincoln expressed a different opinion. Kentucky felt it should be exempt from the swift social changes from the Emancipation Proclamation since it had never seceded from the Union. One of the visitors, Albert G. Hodges, editor of the widely read Frankfort Commonwealth, suggested Lincoln record the contents of this "little speech" for a public letter.15
What Lincoln offered for many skeptical American eyes, not just his fellow Kentuckians, was the simple idea that if slavery was not wrong, "nothing is wrong." He added, "I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel." Yet, the presidency did not furnish him the right to act upon that which was not constitutional. He wondered, "Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution?" Recalling the incidents with his generals Fremont and Hunter, he had halted their military emancipation attempts because, at those points, "I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come."16He reminded the nation about his many overtures to the border states for gradual, compensated emancipation. Those offers had been rebuffed and that helped set his course now—this moment of necessity had arrived.
By the end of 1863, Lincoln had faced a choice of "either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter." A year later, the nation had not been marred; instead, it had gained thousands of soldiers. These were "palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure." Without those black troops, Lincoln did not see how winning the war was possible.
It is at this point in the letter (intended for the whole country to read) that Lincoln famously claimed "not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." In defining controversial acts and defending a course of action that even he himself had not supported for two years, it is understandable that a politician would seek to portray himself as a vessel of fate, as a man subject to larger forces that he cannot control but must bow to. Lincoln contended that after three furious years, the state of affairs was not what any man or party intended or expected. "God alone can claim it." Yet, there is something more here, an emerging theme of Douglass's that would bear fruit in Lincoln's second inaugural address.
Frederick Douglass, in his January 1864 "Mission of the War" speech, said:
Few men, however great their wisdom, are permitted to see the end from the beginning. Events are mightier than our rulers, and these Divine forces, with overpowering logic, have fixed upon this war, against the wishes of our Government, the comprehensive character and mission I have ascribed to it.17
In pivotal speeches, both Lincoln and Douglass grasped that powers beyond human comprehension were somehow guiding this war's end. Each man knew the power of their individual purposes, but humbly accepted that they were to be pieces contributing to a larger course determining the destiny of their country.
General Grant had taken command of the Union troops in the East in March, and the long-promised summer offensive was now under way. The prospects were promising, and the North finally felt it had a general who could confront the superior tactics of Robert E. Lee. They knew they had the numbers and the military materiel, and the advantage of technology and supply lines, and naval superiority. All they needed was a victory, and Grant looked like the man for the task—tough, tenacious, willing to dare.
If Grant's offensive worked, the Confederacy could well collapse, and a war-weary Union might then reelect Lincoln. If, however, Lee performed his usual magic—for even when he was checked, as he had been at Antietam and Gettysburg, he always managed to keep his army together and nimbly escape to fight again—the Democrats might nominate the controversial and retired general George McClellan on a peace platform. Then the South would achieve something that, for all their victories over befuddled Union generals, they had not as yet achieved on the battlefield. McClellan's policies promised in effect a draw, and for the beleaguered Confederate government, that meant victory—and certainly, survival of the institution of slavery.
Union victories during the early summer collapsed. Almost as if Lee could read Grant's mind, he effortlessly stifled and thwarted the Union advance. For soldiers under General Grant's command during May and June, the horror was unspeakable. The battles of the Wilderness where hundreds of men died each hour and then more died in fires sparked in the dense forest—Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor were butcheries. But unlike previous failed federal offensives, Grant did not pull back. He was not daunted by Lee's superior performance and drove on, swinging south, wheeling around again and again, seeking some advantage.
During Cold Harbor, there were seven thousand Union casualties in twenty minutes, a battle with no advantage to show for this monumental forfeiture of life.
Charles Douglass, now a sergeant with the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, fought near Petersburg, Virginia. On the last day of May, Charles took a minute to write to his father from Virginia, but even as his pen glided over the paper, he expected "to be called into battle every moment." The reality was that they had "been fighting ever since our Regt came here." He was seven miles from Petersburg as Grant's great offensive was grinding down into what promised to be a long siege. As he wrote, he could hear bombs falling. Hinting at his fears of entering this carnage, he wrote his father, "I am not over anxious but willing to meet the devil at any moment." He added, "Fort Pillow will be the battle cry."18
In the previous week, he had faced this question of killing in cold blood. As he patrolled alone on picket duty, Charles had spotted a man in gray ducking behind a tree that was about twelve yards away from him. Startled, Charles ordered him to move slowly out from his position. The rebel reluctantly showed his face and then slowly moved into the open. When he was fully exposed, Charles nervously cocked his pistol. The subtle sound of a click seemed to reverberate throughout the still woods. Terror flashed over the white soldier's f
ace and his body froze. The white man asked Charles if he intended to murder him. Charles aimed the gun at the Confederate's head. No one would ever know if he decided to take the life of a man fighting for an institution stealing the lives of his own family members. All he would have to do was squeeze his index finger.
The sensitive Charles could fight, but he could not murder.
With a harsh voice, Charles answered no. He ordered the petrified man forward and promised to shoot him if he dared pause. Charles took the prisoner to his commanders but kept the Confederate's revolver and fifty dollars he found on him. This man survived, but there are accounts of other black soldiers outside of Petersburg dispensing revenge for Fort Pillow. During a roundup of Confederate prisoners, a member of the 117th New York witnessed a United States Colored Troops private spotting an unarmed white man; the private, "came up to him . . . and ran his bayonet through his heart."19
Death nearly caught up with Charles in mid-June. On the evening of June 16, he packed two days' rations because his battalion had drawn a difficult assignment. He and about four hundred comrades left camp at two in the morning. Moving closer to the front lines, he saw ambulance trains heading the other way carrying men with appalling wounds. It went through his head, "some of us were not coming back again." They ended their march five miles from Petersburg, next to General Benjamin Butler's forces.
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