Not content with rhetorical exhortation, Lincoln used his personal authority and considerable charm to influence Democratic and border-state congressmen whose votes were in doubt. Not since 1862, when he tried hard to persuade border-state congressmen to support his gradual emancipation plan, had the President been so deeply involved in the legislative process. He worked closely with James M. Ashley of Ohio, the principal sponsor of the amendment in the House, to identify members who might be persuaded to support the amendment and invited them to the Executive Mansion. For instance, he had a long talk with Representative James S. Rollins of Missouri, who had voted against the amendment in June, and entreated him as an old Whig and follower of “that great statesman, Henry Clay,” to join him now in supporting the measure. When Rollins said that he was ready to vote for the amendment, Lincoln pressed him to use his influence with the other congressmen from his state. “The passage of this amendment will clinch the whole subject,” the President assured him; “it will bring the war, I have no doubt, rapidly to a close.”
If Lincoln used other means of persuading congressmen to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, his actions were not recorded. Conclusions about the President’s role rested on gossip and later recollections like those of Thaddeus Stevens, who remarked, “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.” Lincoln was told that he might win some support from New Jersey Democrats if he could persuade Charles Sumner to drop a bill to regulate the Camden & Amboy Railroad, but he declined to intervene, not on grounds of principle but because, he said, “I can do nothing with Mr. Sumner in these matters.” One New Jersey Democrat, well known as a lobbyist for the Camden & Amboy, who had voted against the amendment in July, did abstain in the final vote, but it cannot be proved that Lincoln influenced his change.
Whatever the President’s role, in the final balloting more than two-thirds of the House members voted for the Thirteenth Amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification. Celebrating, the House adjourned after inadvertently sending the resolution to the President, who happily signed it on February 1. He was untroubled when senators pointed out that, according to a Supreme Court decision of 1798, presidential approval was not required for constitutional amendments. He was convinced that, with or without his signature, the Thirteenth Amendment would root out “the original disturbing cause” of the rebellion and would fully settle all questions about the legal validity of the Emancipation Proclamation. Finally the country had “a King’s cure for all the evils.”
IV
One important bit of assistance Lincoln gave to the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment he was not prepared to make public at the time. During the last days of debate in the House of Representatives, rumors spread that Confederate commissioners were on their way to Washington to negotiate a settlement, that peace was at hand. Fearing defections among the reluctant supporters of the measure, Ashley anxiously asked the President whether there was any truth in the reports. Choosing his words with care, Lincoln replied: “So far as I know, there are no peace commissioners in the city, or likely to be in it.” His note calmed the Democrats, who, as he said later, “would have gone off in a tangent at the last moment had they smelt Peace.”
In fact, at that very moment a Confederate peace commission, consisting of Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, John A. Campbell, the Confederate assistant secretary of war, and Robert M. T. Hunter, the prominent Virginia Confederate senator, was crossing into Union lines—but at City Point, not Washington.
Behind their visit lay some careful planning on Lincoln’s part. Earlier he had strongly opposed any negotiation with the Confederates, refusing to meet with Stephens in 1863 and as recently as July insisting on terms he knew the Confederate emissaries at Niagara Falls could not accept. Talk of peace, he then thought, would lower army morale; worse, it might lead to an armistice that, in effect, gave the Confederacy its independence. But now things had changed. The overwhelming victories of Sherman and Thomas in the West, coupled with the unremitting devastation that Grant and Sheridan were wreaking in Virginia, had weakened the Southern will to fight, and there were strong indications that the Confederacy might be coming to pieces. Grant believed that half of Lee’s army would desert if there was an armistice. The governors of Georgia and North Carolina were openly talking of making a separate peace; the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Confederate House of Representatives debated a resolution creating a peace commission; Representative Henry S. Foote demanded a “cessation of hostilities and restoration of peace” and declared that only Jefferson Davis stood in the way of ending the war.
Lincoln’s annual message to Congress in December 1864 sought to take advantage of this disarray among the Confederates. After what he had learned through the Jaquess-Gilmore mission, he was confident “that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader”—whenever possible he avoided Jefferson Davis’s name and never referred to him as President of the Confederate States—“could result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the Union—precisely what we will not and cannot give.” But, the President continued: “What is true ... of him who heads the insurgent cause, is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot reaccept the Union, they can.” To encourage these second-level Confederate leaders, the President promised generous terms: “They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the Constitution.” But the generous program of amnesty and pardon, which he had offered in December 1863 and which was still “open to all,” would not remain so indefinitely. “The time may come—probably will come,” he said, “when ... more rigorous measures ... shall be adopted.”
Several intermediaries attempted to follow the lead the President offered. James R. Gilmore wanted to try another peace mission, this time to North Carolina, where he was sure he could persuade Governor Zebulon B. Vance to bring the state back into the Union, but Lincoln did not think this approach expedient. The plan of a former Illinois legislator evoked a more favorable response from the White House. Backed by Browning, James W. Singleton, a leading Peace Democrat, secured Lincoln’s permission to go to Richmond in order to sound Confederate opinion on ending the war. Singleton spent two pleasant weeks in the Confederate capital and had interviews with Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and others. He returned to tell the President that Southerners were eager for peace on generous terms but that they were unwilling to give up slavery except for “a fair compensation coupled with other liberal terms of reconstruction secured by Constitutional Amendments.” Lincoln listened, but his faith in Singleton, always slight, dwindled when it became clear that he was less interested in peace than in buying up huge quantities of Southern cotton and tobacco.
The most conspicuous effort at peacemaking was that of Francis P. Blair, Sr., who reached Richmond on January 11. He had wanted to go earlier, but Lincoln had refused permission, saying, “Come to me when Savannah falls.” When the President did allow the elder statesman to cross the lines, he declined to talk with him about his project or to offer any instructions; Blair was on his own. In a long interview with Jefferson Davis, who had been a close friend of his family before the war, Blair argued that slavery was no longer “an insurmountible [sic] obstruction to pacification,” since the recent decision to enroll blacks in the Confederate army necessarily entailed giving them freedom. The reunion of the North and South was now inevitable. Only the machinations of European monarchs could prevent it, and the activities of France’s puppet ruler of Mexico, Maximilian, showed how real was this danger. Davis could remove this threat by agreeing to an armistice with the Union and removing his armies to Texas, where—as dictator, if necessary—he could lead the fight to drive out the French invaders. Doubtless many Northern soldiers would volunteer to join his forces, and Blair offered the services of his son, General Frank Blair.
According to the elder Blair,
Davis rose to the bait. He doubted—or perhaps it was Blair who doubted—the good faith of Seward in any negotiations, but he was willing to accept Blair’s assurance that if Lincoln “plights his faith to any man ..., he will maintain his word inviolably.” He gave Blair a letter to take to Washington, promising to appoint a commission that would enter into negotiations “with a view to secure peace to the two countries.”
This was not at all what Lincoln had in mind. He wanted to undermine the authority of the Confederate government and to fragment the Confederate state, not to negotiate with its leader as an equal. Promptly he sent Blair back to Richmond with the message that he would be willing to receive a Confederate commission that looked toward “securing peace to the people of our one common country.”
That should have been that. But on both sides of the battle lines sentiment for peace was now too strong to be derailed. Under pressure, Davis named three leading advocates of negotiation—Stephens, Campbell, and Hunter—as commissioners authorized not merely to secure peace between the two countries but to discuss “the issues involved in the existing war.” Lincoln and Stanton were ready to refuse to receive the commissioners because they would not concede, even for purposes of discussion, that the Confederacy was a separate nation. At this point Grant, who was increasingly eager to finish off the war and who was not attuned to the niceties of diplomatic negotiations, intervened. He persuaded the commissioners to delete from their instructions the reference to two separate countries and wired to Washington that he hoped Lincoln could meet with them.
Agreeing with Grant that to send the three Confederates back to Richmond “without any expression from any one in authority” would be impolitic, Lincoln forthwith joined Seward at Fort Monroe for a conference from which he expected little. On the morning of February 3, Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell came aboard the President’s steamer, the River Queen, at Hampton Roads for an interview of several hours. Lincoln had not seen Stephens for sixteen years, when they were both Whig members of the House of Representatives, and he greeted the Confederate Vice President with a smile and a handshake. Watching the ninety-pound Stephens take off his thick gray woolen overcoat, his long wool muffler, and several shawls, he laughed, “Never have I seen so small a nubbin come out of so much husk.”
The five men agreed that the discussion was to be informal, that no papers or documents would be read, and that no notes would be taken. Stephens opened by asking, “Well, Mr. President, is there no way of putting an end to the present trouble, and bringing about a restoration of the general good feeling and harmony... between the different States and Sections of the country?” Thus at the outset he avoided making an issue of whether there was now one country or two.
Lincoln replied “that there was but one way that he knew of, and that was, for those who were resisting the laws of the Union to cease that resistance.”
The Confederates then began to explore the path that Blair had apparently opened. Stephens asked whether, in order to give time for passions to cool, there was “no Continental question” that could temporarily engage the attention of both sides to the present conflict? In short, just as Blair had suggested, could there not be an armistice, during which Southern and Northern armies could join in driving the French out of Mexico? Lincoln replied bluntly that he had not authorized Blair’s mission and that he could not consider any proposition of an armistice that was not based “upon a pledge first given, for the ultimate restoration of the Union.”
Since Stephens was obviously unwilling to give up the possibility of a Mexican adventure, Seward suggested that he develop what he called a “philosophical basis” for that scheme, and the Confederate Vice President did so at considerable length, discoursing on the importance of maintaining the Monroe Doctrine. Seward raised objections to his arguments, and Hunter made it clear that he differed with Stephens and thought the Southern people “would be found unwilling to kindle a new war with the French on any such pretence.” All three men realized that the discussion was pointless since, as Stephens said, “Lincoln had virtually closed all further conference on that subject.”
Campbell then asked what terms of reconstruction would be offered if the Confederate states agreed to return to the Union. Lincoln replied that once resistance to the national authority ceased, “the States would be immediately restored to their practical relations to the Union”—a phrase that he used repeatedly. But he made it clear that he would not enter into negotiations while Southerners were in arms against the United States. When Hunter attempted to show that governments had often entered into agreements with rebels and pointed out that Charles I of England had frequently negotiated with those who were fighting against him, the President responded tartly: “I do not profess to be posted in history. On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head in the end.”
As to slavery, Seward reminded the Confederates of Lincoln’s pledge, made most recently in his annual message to Congress: “I shall not attempt to retract or modify 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.” The Secretary then dropped a bombshell by telling the commissioners that Congress had just submitted the Thirteenth Amendment to the states for ratification. Seeing that the Confederates were rattled by the news, Lincoln turned to Stephens: “I’ll tell you what I would do if I were in your place: I would go home and get the Governor of the State [of Georgia] to call the Legislature together, and get them to recall all the State troops from the war; elect Senators and Members to Congress, and ratify this Constitutional Amendment prospectively, so as to take effect—say in five years. Such a ratification would be valid in my opinion.”
Hunter gagged at Lincoln’s terms, which he saw as nothing but “an unconditional surrender on the part of the Confederate States and their people.” Shortly afterward Stephens concluded that it was “entirely fruitless” to have further discussion of a peace settlement, and he turned to the vexed problem of the exchange of prisoners, which Lincoln said he had placed entirely in Grant’s hands. On leaving the River Queen, the Confederate Vice President urged the President to think again about his plan for an armistice and a Mexican adventure, and Lincoln replied, “Well, Stephens, I will re-consider it, but I do not think my mind will change, but I will re-consider.”
The Hampton Roads conference, as Lincoln reported to Congress, “ended without result.” It was a failure, as he had expected it to be, because he would not negotiate with Jefferson Davis. But in the course of the conversations Lincoln made two remarkable suggestions that showed the direction of his thinking about ending the war. Discussing possible terms of reconstruction, Stephens asked what would be the status of the Southern slaves who had not been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. He and Seward agreed that only about 200,000 slaves had up to that point gained their freedom. According to Campbell, Lincoln said that there were different opinions about the effects of his proclamation: “Some believed that it was not operative at all; others that it operated only within the circle which had been occupied by the army and others believed that it was operative everywhere in the States to which it applied.” This was a question that only the courts could decide, but, if Stephens’s later report can be credited, the President added: “His own opinion was, that as the Proclamation was a war measure, and would have effect only from its being an exercise of the war power, as soon as the war ceased, it would be inoperative for the future. It would be held to apply only to such slaves as had come under its operation while it was in active exercise.”
Stephens’s record would be highly suspect were it not confirmed by other, more contemporary evidence that Lincoln did not now insist upon the end of slavery as a precondition for peace. He told Representative Singleton that his “To Whom It May Concern” letter to the Confederate commissioners at Niagara Falls had “put him in a false position—that he did not mean to make
the abolition of slavery a condition” of peace and that “he would be willing to grant peace with an amnesty, and restoration of the union, leaving slavery to abide the decisions of judicial tribunals.” On the day before Christmas, Lincoln repeated these views to Browning, who was advising Singleton; he declared “that he had never entertained the purpose of making the abolition of slavery a condition precedent to the termination of the war, and the restoration of the Union.”
If these conversations can be believed, the President of the United States who had demanded emancipation as a precondition for negotiations in July 1864, who had insisted that his party’s platform include a call for abolition, who had pledged that he would never retract a word of his proclamations or send a man back into slavery, who had just been working closely with Congress to secure the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, had now changed his mind about eradicating slavery. Since Lincoln himself left no record of any of these interviews, it is possible that all the witnesses distorted his message. But it is more likely—though this can only be a speculation—that Lincoln’s remarks stemmed from his realization that slavery was already dead. His principal concern now was that the war might drag on for at least another year. His purpose was to undermine the Jefferson Davis administration by appealing to those “followers” mentioned in his annual message to Congress. He wanted to raise their hopes, if necessary through a campaign of misinformation. Clearly the three Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads would have an easier task in persuading other Southerners to lay down their arms if they promised that at least the remnants of their “peculiar institution” could still be saved.
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