A Just and Generous Nation

by Harold Holzer

  45 expressed his personal conviction: George Washington to Robert Morris, April 12, 1786, W. W. Abbott, ed., The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992–1997), 4:15–17.

  45 With no researchers to assist him: Leonard W. Volk, “The Lincoln Life-Mask and How It Was Made,” Century Magazine, December 1881, 223–228.

  45 “[B]ut he has no right,” Lincoln wrote: Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union, 53.

  46 “Such is Abraham Lincoln”: New York Tribune, February 24, 1860.

  46 he quoted the words used by Douglas: CW, 3:522.

  48 “Neither let us be slandered”: CW, 3:550.

  49 “yielding and accommodating”: Francis Fisher Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: N. D. Thompson, 1886), 737.

  49 Greeley’s Tribune agreed: New York Tribune, February 28, 1860.

  49 Bryant’s antislavery New York Evening Post: New York Evening Post, February 28, 1860.

  49 “Right makes might”: CW, 3:541.

  50 The “‘equality of man’ principle”: Speech at Hartford, Connecticut, March 5, 1860, CW, 4:3.

  50 he offered his most direct synthesis: Speech at New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1860, CW, 4:24–25.

  50 As the New York Tribune reported: New York Tribune, February 28, 1860.

  51 the “wildest enthusiasm” erupted: J. G. Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Gurdon Bill, 1866), 223.

  52 He would not “write, or speak”: CW, 4:93.

  52 his “positions were well known”: CW, 4:60.

  52 Lincoln was already on record: Speech at Chicago, March 1, 1859, CW, 3:366, 370. Voters could find Lincoln’s views on these questions in the best-selling editions in circulation of both the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Cooper Union address.

  52 Lincoln remained willing to “tolerate” it: Lincoln’s address at Chicago, July 10, 1858, CW, 2:488, 491.

  52 slavery could be destroyed by simply hemming it in: See Oakes, Scorpion’s Sting, esp. Chapter 1, “‘Like a Scorpion Girt by Fire.’”

  53 slavery would not completely disappear: See Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, in which he admits that full freedom—extended to border states through a system of gradual compensated emancipation—might require another thirty-seven years, until 1900. CW, 5:531.

  53 “This is the same old trick”: John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: Century, 1890), 3:280–281.

  53 As for “those who will not read, or heed”: Lincoln to William S. Speer, October 23, 1860, CW, 4:130.

  53 “What is it I could say”: Lincoln to George T. M. Davis, October 27, 1860, CW, 4:132–133.

  Notes to Chapter Three

  58 Lincoln’s logic-driven conviction: As recently as 2007, historian William C. Harris argued in an excellent new study that Lincoln took “a sanguine view of the impact of his election on Southerners.” See Harris, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 248. Richard Carwardine similarly wrote of “Lincoln’s larger misreading of the southern surge toward secession,” though he conceded that “Lincoln’s general policy of silence was not unwise.” See Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 140–141.

  59 “I could say nothing”: Lincoln to Truman Smith, November 10, 1860, Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 4:138.

  59 “Every newspaper he opened”: Harold G. Villard and Oswald Garrison Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of ’61: A Journalist’s Story by Henry Villard (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941), 23.

  59 “I want the slaveholders”: Philip S. Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Library of Black America Series (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000); Douglass’ Monthly, January 1861.

  60 “Mr. Lincoln is not pledged”: Lincoln to Henry J. Raymond, December 18, 1860, CW, 4:156.

  61 “I am for no compromise”: Lincoln to William H. Seward, February 1, 1861, CW, 4:183.

  62 he made his views clear: Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 167.

  62 “Let there be no compromise”: Lincoln to Lyman Trumbull, December 10, 1860, CW, 4:149–150.

  62 Lincoln employed the same emphatic phrase: William Kellogg to Lincoln, December 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress.

  62 “The tug has to come”: Lincoln to Kellogg, December 11, 1860, CW, 4:150. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, who did not meet him until after writing these letters, Edward Bates had expressed the same view (privately, to his diary) a few weeks earlier, on November 22: “If we must have civil war, perhaps it is better now than at a future date.” It is reasonable to assume the two men discussed the potential for war when they conferred in Springfield. Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1933), 158.

  62 “Prevent, as far as possible”: CW, 4:151.

  62 “My opinion is that no state”: Lincoln to Thurlow Weed, December 17, 1860, CW, 4:154.

  63 “resume a separate, equal rank”: New York Times, December 22, 1860.

  63 Secession fever had grown incurable: David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 491–496. Based on a study by Michael P. Johnson, “A New Look at the Popular Vote for Delegates to the Georgia Secession Convention,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 56 (1972): 259–275. Potter and Fehrenbacher estimate that popular support for secession amounted to only 50 to 51 percent.

  63 Lincoln had achieved his objectives: William H. Seward, An Autobiography (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891), 479.

  63 “Compromise has gone up the spout”: Springfield (MA) Daily Republican, December 28, 1860, quoted in Carroll C. Arnold, “The Senate Committee of Thirteen, December 6–31, 1860,” J. Jeffery Auer, ed., Antislavery and Disunion, 1858–1861: Studies in the Rhetoric of Compromise and Conflict (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 327.

  64 “Without the Constitution and the Union”: Fragment on the Constitution and the Union, January 1861, CW, 4:168–169.

  65 “This middle-class country”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, remarks at the funeral services of the president, Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1865, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fireside Edition, 12 vols. (Boston and New York, 1909), 11:312, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1961#Emerson_1236–11_328.

  65 “adherence to the Union and the Constitution”: Speech at Trenton, New Jersey, February 21, 1861, CW, 4:26.

  66 “a task before me”: Farewell address to Springfield, Illinois, “A” version (rewritten by Lincoln on the train), February 11, 1861, CW, 4:190.

  66 “[A]way back in my childhood”: Speech to the New Jersey state senate, February 21, 1861, CW, 4:235–236.

  67 Lincoln planned to use this message: All these and subsequent quotes from the first printed draft of the Inaugural Address, Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, reprinted in CW, 4:249–262.

  67 “Having been so elected”: Draft for the Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, CW, 4:250.

  68 “One section of our country”: Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, CW, 4:268–270. President Obama quoted this phrase—perhaps equally in vain, some might say—when he declared victory in Grant Park, Chicago, after his first race for the presidency.

  68 “to shift the ground”: CW, 4:200–201.

  68 “Fellow citizens of the United States”: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Intimate Memories of Lincoln (Elmira, NY: Primavera Press, 1945), 366.

  69 Lincoln delivered a stern warning: Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword (New York: Vintage, 2007), 50.

  69 “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen”: CW, 4:261.

  69 “We are not enemies”: First Inaugural Address, CW, 4:249–271.

  70 commander in chief responded within hours: Proclamation 15, 1861
, CW, 4:332.

  70 denounced Lincoln as a “military dictator”: New Orleans Daily Picayune, April 17, 1861.

  70 likened his threat to “save the Union”: New York Evening Day-Book, April 16, 1861.

  71 “maintain its own existence”: Special Message to Congress, July 4, 1861, CW, 4:426.

  71 In one particularly sublime passage: Message to Congress, July 4, 1861, CW, 4:438.

  72 “the day when slavery can no longer extend itself”: John Stuart Mill, “The Contest in America,” Fraser’s Magazine, February 1862.

  Notes to Chapter Four

  75 “The legitimate object of government”: Fragment on government, July 1, 1854[?], Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 2:220–221.

  77 “I have never had a feeling politically”: Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861, CW, 4:240.

  77 Republicans assumed large majorities in both houses: David Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), 304–305.

  78 “a blueprint for modern America”: Leonard P. Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968).

  79 “Mr. Lincoln listened with earnest attention”: Frederick Douglass in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Reviews, 1886), 187–188.

  81 “It is not needed, nor fitting here”; “Again”: Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, CW, 5:51–53.

  83 “Fellow-citizens,” he declared: Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, CW, 5:537.

  84 They were originally scheduled to remain: New York State, Annual Report of the Adjutant General (Albany, January 15, 1862).

  85 “In no other way”: CW, 7:522.

  85 By 1864 the gross national product: American Railroad Journal 37 (October 8, 1864): 486, 989. For a detailed discussion of the economic boom in the Northern states during the Civil War, see Allan Nevins, The War for the Union (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), 3:212–270.

  86 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1863: CW, 6:496.

  87 “It is easy to see”: Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1863, CW, 7:10.

  87 A year later he reported: CW, 7:40.

  87 “We do not approach exhaustion”: CW, 8:146, 150–151.

  87 The total number of new immigrants: Thomas Brinley, Migration and Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 93.

  87 1 out of 10 immigrants in 1864: Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 173.

  87 wages in the US Northern states: American Railroad Journal 37 (August 13, 1864): 1478.

  88 “Agriculture,” as he lamented in December 1861: Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, CW, 5:46.

  89 “peculiarly the people’s Department”: Annual Messages to Congress, December 1, 1862, December 6, 1864, CW, 5:526–527; 8:147–148. See also Wayne D. Rasmussen, “Lincoln’s Agricultural Legacy,” US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library, http://www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-agricultural-legacy.

  89 The Department of Agriculture reported: Monthly report of the US Department of Agriculture, February 1865, 31.

  89 resulted in raising the national income: Nevins, War for the Union, 3:212–270; Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1864, CW, 8:146.

  89 750,000 Union and Confederate soldiers: See David Hacker, “A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57 (December 2011).

  90 “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity”: First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, CW, 4:271.

  90 “Let us diligently apply the means”: Speech to a Union rally at Springfield, Illinois, written as a letter to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863, CW, 6:410.

  Notes to Chapter Five

  91 “I am naturally anti-slavery”: Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 7:281.

  92 “Fair play is a jewell”: Lincoln to Simon Cameron, August 10, 1861, CW, 4:480.

  92 “I have always hated slavery”: Speech at Chicago, July 10, 1858, CW, 2:492.

  92 used the phrase ultimate extinction: See “house divided” address, June 16, 1858, and speech at Chicago, July 10, 1858, CW, 2:461, 490–493.

  93 “That is the issue that will continue”: Lincoln at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858, CW, 3:315.

  93 there should be “no war, no violence”: CW, 3:316.

  94 “founded on both injustice and bad policy”: Protest (with Dan Stone) to the Illinois Legislature, March 3, 1837, CW, 1:75.

  94 Lincoln’s speech reveals the limits: Lyceum address, January 27, 1838, CW, 1:109.

  95 Lincoln chose not “to recount the horrors”: CW, 1:109–110.

  95 the “mobocratic spirit”: CW, 1:111.

  95 Those happening in the State of Mississippi: CW, 1:109–110.

  96 “that offers them no protection”: CW, 1:111.

  96 “Let reverence for the laws”: CW, 1:112.

  97 “Whenever the vicious portion”: CW, 1:111.

  98 quick to answer in the affirmative: Lincoln to Usher F. Linder, March 22, 1848, CW, 1:458.

  98 its being “unnecessary and unconstitutional”: CW, 1:458.

  100 “So you are the little woman”: Annie Fields, ed., Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), 268–269.

  101 Lincoln was “boldly” avowing: Illinois State Register report of Lincoln’s Springfield speech of June 10, 1856, CW, 2:345.

  101 “extreme northern part of Illinois”: Stephen A. Douglas, opening speech at Galesburg debate, October 7, 1858, CW, 3:213.

  101 Lincoln denied such charges: Lincoln’s remarks at Charleston, September 18, 1858, CW, 3:145.

  102 “Did old Giddings”: Douglas at Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 1858, CW, 3:263.

  102 “He believed the attack of Brown wrong”: Speech at Elwood, Kansas, December 1 [November 30?], 1859, CW, 3:496.

  103 “You charge that we stir up insurrections”: Speech at Cooper Union, February 27, 1860, CW, 3:538.

  103 “John Brown’s effort was peculiar”: CW, 3:541.

  104 He distanced himself from Brown: Speech at New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1860, CW, 4:23.

  104 Lincoln distanced himself from Brown yet again: Speech at Bloomington, Illinois, April 10, CW, 4:23, 42.

  105 political cartoons of the day: See, for example, Currier & Ives, “Uncle Sam” Making New Arrangements and, conversely, “The Nigger” in the Woodpile, both published in 1860, Bernard F. Reilly Jr., American Political Prints, 1766–1876: A Catalog of the Collections in the Library of Congress (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1991), 441, 451.

  106 “If Mr. Lincoln were really an Abolitionist President”: Philip S. Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Library of Black America Series (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000); Douglass’ Monthly, December 1860.

  107 struck Douglass as “weak,” “revolting,” and “horrible”: Douglass’ Monthly, April 1861.

  107 “I have never understood that the presidency”: Lincoln to Hodges, April 4, 1864, CW, 7:281.

  Notes to Chapter Six

  111 the administration gave little guidance: Adam Goodheart, “How Slavery Really Ended in America,” New York Times, April 1, 2011.

  112 “then, thenceforward, and forever free”: Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862, Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 5:434.

  112 “We are waging war”: Craig L. Symonds, Stonewall of the West: Patrick Cleburne and the Civil War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997) 181–201.

  113 Lincoln’s reputatio
n as an antislavery leader: See, for example, Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson, 1999).

  113 revisionists have been debating: A good recent story that encompasses this phenomenon is John McKee Barr, Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014), esp. Chapter 5.

  113 “My paramount object in this struggle”: Lincoln to Greeley, August 22, 1862, CW, 5:388–389.

  113 “our government rests in public opinion”: Speech at Chicago, December 10, 1856, CW, 2:385.

  114 “[W]ith public sentiment, nothing can fail”: From Lincoln’s reply at the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, Ottawa, Illinois, August 21, 1858, CW, 3:27.

  115 Blair “deprecated the policy”: F[rancis]. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), 21.

  116 fretted that paying for compensated emancipation: New York Times, March 7, 1862.

  116 “Have you noticed the facts”: Lincoln to Henry J. Raymond, March 9, 1862, CW, 5:153.

  116 “I do not speak of emancipation”: Appeal to Border State Representatives on Compensated Emancipation, July 12, 1862, CW, 5:318.

  116 His appeal fell on profoundly deaf ears: “Stormy meeting” reported in Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), 109.

  117 “I would do it if I were not afraid”: Edward L. Pierce, Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner, 4 vols. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894), 4:185.

  117 peremptory, almost insubordinate letter: George B. McClellan to Lincoln, July 7, 1862, and to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 10, 1862, Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1889), 344–345, 348.

  117 It was then, Welles remembered: Gideon Welles, Diary, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 1:70–71.

  118 “weary, care-worn and troubled”: Theodore Calvin Pease, ed., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library), 1:559.