EMANCIPATION
When the news of a second battle of Bull Run reached England it seemed
at first to Lord John Russell that the failure of the North was
certain, and he asked Palmerston and his colleagues to consider whether
they must not soon recognise the Confederacy, and whether mediation in
the interest of peace and humanity might not perhaps follow. But
within two months all thoughts of recognising the Confederacy had been
so completely put aside that even Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville
caused no renewal of the suggestion, and an invitation from Louis
Napoleon to joint action of this kind between England and France had
once for all been rejected. The battle of Antietam had been fought in
the meantime. This made men think that the South could no more win a
speedy and decisive success than the North, and that victory must rest
in the end with the side that could last. But that was not all; the
battle of Antietam was followed within five days by an event which made
it impossible for any Government of this country to take action
unfriendly to the North.
On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln set his hand to a Proclamation
of which the principal words were these: "That, on the first day of
January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated
part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against
the United States, shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."
The policy and the true effect of this act cannot be understood without
some examination. Still less so can the course of the man who will
always be remembered as its author. First, in regard to the legal
effect of the Proclamation; in normal times the President would of
course not have had the power, which even the Legislature did not
possess, to set free a single slave; the Proclamation was an act of war
on his part, as Commander-in-Chief of the forces, by which slaves were
to be taken from people at war with the United States, just as horses
or carts might be taken, to subtract from their resources and add to
those of the United States. In a curiously prophetic manner,
ex-President John Quincy Adams had argued in Congress many years before
that, if rebellion ever arose, this very thing might be done. Adams
would probably have claimed that the command of the President became
law in the States which took part in the rebellion. Lincoln only
claimed legal force for his Proclamation in so far as it was an act of
war based on sufficient necessity and plainly tending to help the
Northern arms. If the legal question had ever been tried out, the
Courts would no doubt have had to hold that at least those slaves who
obtained actual freedom under the Proclamation became free in law; for
it was certainly in good faith an act of war, and the military result
justified it. A large amount of labour was withdrawn from the industry
necessary to the South, and by the end of the war 180,000 coloured
troops were in arms for the North, rendering services, especially in
occupying conquered territory that was unhealthy for white troops,
without which, in Lincoln's opinion, the war could never have been
finished. The Proclamation had indeed an indirect effect more
far-reaching than this; it committed the North to a course from which
there could be no turning back, except by surrender; it made it a
political certainty that by one means or another slavery would be ended
if the North won. But in Lincoln's view of his duty as President, this
ulterior consequence was not to determine his action. The fateful step
by which the end of slavery was precipitated would not have taken the
form it did take if it had not come to commend itself to him as a
military measure conducing to the suppression of rebellion.
On the broader grounds on which we naturally look at this measure, many
people in the North had, as we have seen, been anxious from the
beginning that he should adopt an active policy of freeing Southern
slaves. It was intolerable to think that the war might end and leave
slavery where it was. To convert the war into a crusade against
slavery seemed to many the best way of arousing and uniting the North.
This argument was reinforced by some of the American Ministers abroad.
They were aware that people in Europe misunderstood and disliked the
Constitutional propriety with which the Union government insisted that
it was not attacking the domestic institutions of Southern States.
English people did not know the American Constitution, and when told
that the North did not threaten to abolish slavery would answer "Why
not?" Many Englishmen, who might dislike the North and might have
their doubts as to whether slavery was as bad as it was said to be,
would none the less have respected men who would fight against it.
They had no interest in the attempt of some of their own seceded
Colonists to coerce, upon some metaphysical ground of law, others who
in their turn wished to secede from them. Seward, with wonderful
misjudgment, had instructed Ministers abroad to explain that no attack
was threatened on slavery, for he was afraid that the purchasers of
cotton in Europe would feel threatened in their selfish interests; the
agents of the South were astute enough to take the same line and insist
like him that the North was no more hostile to slavery than the South.
If this misunderstanding were removed English hostility to the North
would never again take a dangerous form. Lincoln, who knew less of
affairs but more of men than Seward, was easily made to see this. Yet,
with full knowledge of the reasons for adopting a decided policy
against slavery, Lincoln waited through seventeen months of the war
till the moment had come for him to strike his blow.
Some of his reasons for waiting were very plain. He was not going to
take action on the alleged ground of military necessity till he was
sure that the necessity existed. Nor was he going to take it till it
would actually lead to the emancipation of a great number of slaves.
Above all, he would not act till he felt that the North generally would
sustain his action, for he knew, better than Congressmen who judged
from their own friends in their own constituencies, how doubtful a
large part of Northern opinion really was. We have seen how in the
summer of 1861 he felt bound to disappoint the advanced opinion which
supported Frémont. He continued for more than a year after in a course
which alienated from himself the confidence of the men with whom he had
most sympathy. He did this deliberately rather than imperil the
unanimity with which the North supported the war. There was indeed
grave danger of splitting the North in two if he appeared unnecessarily
to change the issue from Union to Liberation. We have to remember that
in all the Northern States the right of the Southern States to choose
for themselves about slavery had been fully admitted, and that four of
the Northern States were themselves slave States all this while.
But this is not the whole explanation of his delay. It is certain that
apart from this danger he would at first rather not have played the
historic part which he did play as the liberator of the slaves, if he
could have succeeded in the more modest part of encouraging a process
of gradual emancipation. In his Annual Message to Congress in
December, 1861, he laid down the general principles of his policy in
this matter. He gave warning in advance to the Democrats of the North,
who were against all interference with Southern institutions, that
"radical and extreme measures" might become indispensable to military
success, and if indispensable would be taken; but he declared his
anxiety that if possible the conflict with the South should not
"degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle," for
he looked forward with fear to a complete overturning of the social
system of the South. He feared it not only for the white people but
also for the black. "Gradual and not sudden emancipation," he said, in
a later Message, "is better for all." It is now probable that he was
right, and yet it is difficult not to sympathise with the earnest
Republicans who were impatient at his delay, who were puzzled and
pained by the free and easy way in which in grave conversation he would
allude to "the nigger question," and who concluded that "the President
is not with us; has no sound Anti-slavery sentiment." Indeed, his
sentiment did differ from theirs. Certainly, he hated slavery, for he
had contended more stubbornly than any other man against any concession
which seemed to him to perpetuate slavery by stamping it with approval;
but his hatred of it left him quite without the passion of moral
indignation against the slave owners, in whose guilt the whole country,
North and South, seemed to him an accomplice. He would have classed
that very natural indignation under the head of "malice"--"I shall do
nothing in malice," he wrote to a citizen of Louisiana; "what I deal
with is too vast for malicious dealing." But it was not, as we shall
see before long, too vast for an interest, as sympathetic as it was
matter of fact, in the welfare of the negroes. They were actual human
beings to him, and he knew that the mere abrogation of the law of
slavery was not the only thing necessary to their advancement. Looking
back, with knowledge of what happened later, we cannot fail to be glad
that they were emancipated somehow, but we are forced to regret that
they could not have been emancipated by some more considerate process.
Lincoln, perhaps alone among the Americans who were in earnest in this
matter, looked at it very much in the light in which all men look at it
to-day.
In the early part of 1862 the United States Government concluded a
treaty with Great Britain for the more effectual suppression of the
African slave trade, and it happened about the same time that the first
white man ever executed as a pirate under the American law against the
slave trade was hanged in New York. In those months Lincoln was
privately trying to bring about the passing by the Legislature of
Delaware of an Act for emancipating, with fit provisions for their
welfare, the few slaves in that State, conditionally upon compensation
to be paid to the owners by the United States. He hoped that if this
example were set by Delaware, it would be followed in Maryland, and
would spread later. The Delaware House were favourable to the scheme,
but the Senate of the State rejected it. Lincoln now made a more
public appeal in favour of his policy. In March, 1862, he sent a
Message to Congress, which has already been quoted, and in which he
urged the two Houses to pass Resolutions pledging the United States to
give pecuniary help to any State which adopted gradual emancipation.
It must be obvious that if the slave States of the North could have
been led to adopt this policy it would have been a fitting preliminary
to any action which might be taken against slavery in the South; and
the policy might have been extended to those Southern States which were
first recovered for the Union. The point, however, upon which Lincoln
dwelt in his Message was that, if slavery were once given up by the
border States, the South would abandon all hope that they would ever
join the Confederacy. In private letters to an editor of a newspaper
and others he pressed the consideration that the cost of compensated
abolition was small in proportion to what might be gained by a quicker
ending of the war. During the discussion of his proposal in Congress
and again after the end of the Session he invited the Senators and
Representatives of the border States to private conference with him in
which he besought of them "a calm and enlarged consideration, ranging,
if it may be, far above, personal and partisan politics," of the
opportunity of good now open to them. The hope of the Confederacy was,
as he then conceived, fixed upon the sympathy which it might arouse in
the border States, two of which, Kentucky and Maryland, were in fact
invaded that year with some hope of a rising among the inhabitants.
The "lever" which the Confederates hoped to use in these States was the
interest of the slave owners there; "Break that lever before their
eyes," he urged. But the hundred and one reasons which can always be
found against action presented themselves at once to the
Representatives of the border States. Congress itself so far accepted
the President's view that both Houses passed the Resolution which he
had suggested. Indeed it gladly did something more; a Bill, such as
Lincoln himself had prepared as a Congressman fourteen years before,
was passed for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia;
compensation was paid to the owners; a sum was set apart to help the
settlement in Liberia of any of the slaves who were willing to go; and
at Lincoln's suggestion provision was added for the education of the
negro children. Nothing more was done at this time.
Throughout this matter Lincoln took counsel chiefly with himself. He
could not speak his full thought to the public, and apparently he did
not do so to any of his Cabinet. Supposing that the border States had
yielded to his persuasion, it may still strike us as a very sanguine
calculation that their action would have had much effect upon the
resolution of the Confederates. But it must be noted that when Lincoln
first approached the Representatives of the border States, the highest
expectations were entertained of the victory that McClellan would win
in Virginia, and when he made his last, rather despairing, appeal to
them, the decision to withdraw the army from the Peninsula had not yet
been taken. If a really heavy blow had been struck at the Confederates
in Virginia, their chief hope of retrieving their military fortunes
would certainly have lain in that invasion of Kentucky, which did
shortly afterwards occur and which was greatly encouraged by the hope
of a rising of Kentucky men who wished to join the Confederacy. This
part of Lincoln's calculations was therefore quite reasonable. And it
was further reasonable to suppose that, if the South had then given in
and Congress had acted in the spirit of the Resolution which it had
passed, the policy, of gradual emancipation, starting in the border
States, would have spread steadily. The States which were disposed to
hold out against the inducement that the cost of compensated
emancipation, if they adopted it, would be borne by the whole Union,
would have done so at a great risk; for each new free State would have
been disposed before long to support a Constitutional Amendment to
impose enfranchisement, possibly with no compensation, upon the States
that still delayed. The force of example and the presence of this fear
could not have been resisted long. Lincoln was not a man who could be
accused of taking any course without a reason well thought out; we can
safely conclude that in the summer of 1862 he nursed a hope, by no
means visionary, of initiating a process of liberation free from
certain evils in that upon which he was driven back.
Before, however, he had quite abandoned this hope he had already begun
to see his way in case it failed. His last appeal to the border States
was made on July 12, 1862, while McClellan's army still lay at
Harrison's Landing. On the following day he privately told Seward and
Bates that he had "about come to the conclusion that it was a military
necessity, absolutely essential to the salvation of the nation, that we
must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued." On July 22 he read to
his Cabinet the first draft of his Proclamation of Emancipation;
telling them before he consulted them that substantially his mind was
made up. Various members of the Cabinet raised points on which he had
already thought and had come to a conclusion, but, as he afterwards
told a friend, Seward raised a point which had never struck him before.
He said that, if issued at that time of depression, just after the
failure in the Peninsula, the Proclamation would seem like "a cry of
distress"; and that it would have a much better effect if it were
issued after some military success.
Seward was certainly right. The danger of division in the North would
have been increased and the prospect of a good effect abroad would have
been diminished if the Proclamation had been issued at a time of
depression and manifest failure. Lincoln, who had been set on issuing
it, instantly felt the force of this objection. He put aside his
draft, and resolved not to issue the Proclamation till the right
moment, and apparently resolved to keep the whole question open in his
own mind till the time for action came.
Accordingly the two months which followed were not only full of anxiety
about the war; they were full for him of a suspense painfully
maintained. It troubled him perhaps comparatively little that he was
driven into a position of greater aloofness from the support and
sympathy of any party or school. He must now expect an opposition from
the Democrats of the North, for they had declared themselves strongly
against the Resolution which he had induced Congress to pass. And the
strong Republicans for their part had acquiesced in it coldly, some of
them contemptuously. In May of this year he had been forced for a
second time publicly to repress a keen Republican general who tried to
take this question of great policy into his own hands. General Hunter,
commanding a small expedition which had seized Port Royal in South
Carolina and some adjacent islands rich in cotton, had in a grand
manner assumed to declare free all the slaves in South Carolina,
Georgia and Florida. This, of course, could not be let pass.
Congress, too, had been occupied in the summer with a new measure for
confiscating rebel property; some Republicans in the West set great
store on such confiscation; other Republicans saw in it the incidental
advantage that more slaves might be liberated under it. It was learnt
that the President might put his veto upon it. It seemed to purport,
contrary to the Constitution, to attaint the property of rebels after
their death, and Lincoln was unwilling that the Constitution should be
stretched in the direction of revengeful harshness. The objectionable
feature in the Bill was removed, and Lincoln accepted it. But the
suspicion with which many Republicans were beginning to regard him was
now reinforced by a certain jealousy of Congressmen against the
Executive power; they grumbled and sneered about having to "ascertain
the Royal pleasure" before they could legislate. This was an able,
energetic, and truly patriotic Congress, and must not be despised for
its reluctance to be guided by Lincoln. But it was reluctant.
Throughout August and September he had to deal in the country with
dread on the one side of any revolutionary action, and belief on the
other side that he was timid and half-hearted. The precise state of
his intentions could not with advantage be made public. To up-holders
of slavery he wrote plainly, "It may as well be understood once for all
that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card
unplayed"; to its most zealous opponents he had to speak in an entirely
different strain. While the second battle of Bull Run was impending,
Horace Greeley published in the _New York Tribune_ an "open letter" of
angry complaint about Lincoln's supposed bias for slavery. Lincoln at
once published a reply to his letter. "If there be in it," he said,
"any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be
erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them. If there be
perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in
deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be
right. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If
I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if
I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the
cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will
help the cause. I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear
to be true views."
It was probably easy to him now to write these masterful generalities,
but a week or two later, after Pope's defeat, he had to engage in a
controversy which tried his feelings much more sorely. It had really
grieved him that clergymen in Illinois had opposed him as unorthodox,
when he was fighting against the extension of slavery. Now, a week or
two after his correspondence with Greeley, a deputation from a number
of Churches in Chicago waited upon him, and some of their members spoke
to him with assumed authority from on high, commanding him in God's
name to emancipate the slaves. He said, "I am approached with the most
opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men who are equally
certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that either the
one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some
respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that, if
it is probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so
connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it
directly to me. What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me
do especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a
document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative
like the Pope's Bull against the comet. Do not misunderstand me,
because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the
difficulties that have thus far prevented my acting in some such way as
you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to
the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you
that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other.
Whatever shall appear to be God's will, I will do." The language of
this speech, especially when the touch is humorous, seems that of a
strained and slightly irritated man, but the solemnity blended in it
showed Lincoln's true mind.
In this month, September, 1862, he composed for his own reading alone a
sad and inconclusive fragment of meditation which was found after his
death. "The will of God prevails," he wrote. "In great contests each
party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be
and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at
the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that
God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party,
and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of
the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say
that this is probably true, that God wills this contest, and wills that
it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the
contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without
a human contest. Yet the contest began, and, having begun, He could
give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest
proceeds." For Lincoln's own part it seemed his plain duty to do what
in the circumstances he thought safest for the Union, and yet he was
almost of a mind with the deputation which had preached to him, that he
must be doing God's will in taking a great step towards emancipation.
The solution, that the great step must be taken at the first opportune
moment, was doubtless clear enough in principle, but it must always
remain arguable whether any particular moment was opportune. He told
soon afterwards how his mind was finally made up.
On the day that he received the news of the battle of Antietam, the
draft Proclamation was taken from its drawer and studied afresh; his
visit to McClellan on the battlefield intervened; but on the fifth day
after the battle the Cabinet was suddenly called together. When the
Ministers had assembled Lincoln first entertained them by reading the
short chapter of Artemus Ward entitled "High-handed Outrage at Utica."
It is less amusing than most of Artemus Ward; but it had just appeared;
it pleased all the Ministers except Stanton, to whom the frivolous
reading he sometimes had to hear from Lincoln was a standing vexation;
and it was precisely that sort of relief to which Lincoln's mind when
overwrought could always turn. Having thus composed himself for
business, he reminded his Cabinet that he had, as they were aware,
thought a great deal about the relation of the war to slavery, and had
a few weeks before read them a draft Proclamation on this subject.
Ever since then, he said, his mind had been occupied on the matter,
and, though he wished it were a better time, he thought the time had
come now. "When the rebel army was at Frederick," he is related to
have continued, "I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of
Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought
likely to be most useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made the
promise to myself and"--here he hesitated a little--"to my Maker. The
rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfil that promise. I
have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish
your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for
myself. This I say without intending anything but respect for any one
of you." He then invited their suggestions upon the expressions used
in his draft and other minor matters, and concluded: "One other
observation I will make. I know very well that many others might in
this matter, as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied
that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them
than by me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he could be put
in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But
though I believe I have not so much of the confidence of the people as
I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any
other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in
which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here; I must do
the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which
I feel I ought to take." Then he read his draft, and in the long
discussion which followed, and owing to which a few slight changes were
made in it, he told them further, without any false reserve, just how
he came to his decision. In his great perplexity he had gone on his
knees, before the battle of Antietam, and, like a child, he had
promised that if a victory was given which drove the enemy out of
Maryland he would consider it as an indication that it was his duty to
move forward. "It might be thought strange," he said, "that he had in
this way submitted the disposal of matters, when the way was not clear
to his mind what he should do. God had decided this question in favour
of the slaves."
Such is the story of what we may now remember as one of the signal
events in the chequered progress of Christianity. We have to follow
its consequences a little further. These were not at first all that
its author would have hoped. "Commendation in newspapers and by
distinguished individuals is," he said in a private letter, "all that a
vain man could wish," but recruits for the Army did not seem to come in
faster. In October and November there were elections for Congress, and
in a number of States the Democrats gained considerably, though it was
noteworthy that the Republicans held their ground not only in New
England and in the furthest Western States, but also in the border
slave States. The Democrats, who from this time on became very
formidable to Lincoln, had other matters of complaint, as will be seen
later, but they chiefly denounced the President for trying to turn the
war into one against slavery. "The Constitution as it is and the Union
as it was" had been their election cry. The good hearing that they
got, now as at a later time, was due to the fact that people were
depressed about the war; and it is plain enough that Lincoln had been
well advised in delaying his action till after a military success. As
it was, there was much that seemed to show that public confidence in
him was not strong, but public confidence in any man is hard to
estimate, and the forces that in the end move opinion most are not
quickly apparent. There are little indications that his power and
character were slowly establishing their hold; it seems, for instance,
to have been about this time that "old Abe" or "Uncle Abe" began to be
widely known among common people by the significant name of "Father
Abraham," and his secretaries say that he was becoming conscious that
his official utterances had a deeper effect on public opinion than any
immediate response to them in Congress showed.
In his Annual Message of December, 1862, Lincoln put before Congress,
probably with little hope of result, a comprehensive policy for dealing
with slavery justly and finally. He proposed that a Constitutional
Amendment should be submitted to the people providing: first, that
compensation should be given in United States bonds to any State,
whether now in rebellion or not, which should abolish slavery before
the year 1900; secondly, that the slaves who had once enjoyed actual
freedom through the chances of the war should be permanently free and
that their owners should be compensated; thirdly, that Congress should
have authority to spend money on colonisation for negroes. Even if the
greater part of these objects could have been accomplished without a
Constitutional Amendment, it is evident that such a procedure would
have been more satisfactory in the eventual resettlement of the Union.
He urged in his Message how desirable it was, as a part of the effort
to restore the Union, that the whole North should be agreed in a
concerted policy as to slavery, and that parties should for this
purpose reconsider their positions. "The dogmas of the quiet past," he
said, "are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled
high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case
is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall
ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we
cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration
will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or
insignificance can spare one or another of us. We say we are for the
Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to
save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. In giving
freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free. We shall nobly
save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may
succeed, this could not fail." The last four words expressed too
confident a hope as to what Northern policy apart from Northern arms
could do towards ending the war, but it was impossible to exaggerate
the value which a policy, concerted between parties in a spirit of
moderation, would have had in the settlement after victory. Every
honest Democrat who then refused any action against slavery must have
regretted it before three years were out, and many sensible Republicans
who saw no use in such moderation may have lived to regret their part
too. Nothing was done. It is thought that Lincoln expected this; but
the Proclamation of Emancipation would begin to operate within a month;
it would produce by the end of the war a situation in which the country
would be compelled to decide on the principle of slavery, and Lincoln
had at least done his part in preparing men to face the issue.
Before this, the nervous and irritable feeling of many Northern
politicians, who found in emancipation a good subject for quarrel among
themselves and in the slow progress of the war a good subject of
quarrel with the Administration, led to a crisis in Lincoln's Cabinet.
Radicals were inclined to think Seward's influence in the
Administration the cause of all public evils; some of them had now got
hold of a foolish private letter, which he had written to Adams in
England a few months before, denouncing the advocates of emancipation.
Desiring his downfall, they induced a small "caucus" of Republican
Senators to speak in the name of the party and the nation and send the
President a resolution demanding such changes in his Cabinet as would
produce better results in the war. Discontented men of opposite
opinions could unite in demanding success in the war; and Conservative
Senators joined in this resolution hoping that it would get rid not
only of Seward, but also of Chase and Stanton, the objects of their
particular antipathy. Seward, on hearing of this, gave Lincoln his
resignation, which was kept private. Though egotistic, he was a clever
man, and evidently a pleasant man to work with; he was a useful
Minister under a wise chief, though he later proved a harmful one under
a foolish chief. Stanton was most loyal, and invaluable as head of the
War Department. Chase, as Lincoln said in private afterwards, was "a
pretty good fellow and a very able man"; Lincoln had complete
confidence in him as a Finance Minister, and could not easily have
replaced him. But this handsome, dignified, and righteous person was
unhappily a sneak. Lincoln found as time went on that, if he ever had
to do what was disagreeable to some important man, Chase would pay
court to that important man and hint how differently he himself would
have done as President. On this occasion he was evidently aware that
Chase had encouraged the Senators who attacked Seward. Much as he
wished to retain each of the two for his own worth, he was above all
determined that one should not gain a victory over the other.
Accordingly, when a deputation of nine important Senators came to
Lincoln to present their grievances against Seward, they found
themselves, to their great annoyance, confronted with all the Cabinet
except Seward, who had resigned, and they were invited by Lincoln to
discuss the matter in his presence with these Ministers. Chase, to his
still greater annoyance, found himself, as the principal Minister
there, compelled for decency's sake to defend Seward from the very
attack which he had helped to instigate. The deputation withdrew, not
sure that, after all, it wanted Seward removed. Chase next day
tendered, as was natural, his resignation. Lincoln was able, now that
he had the resignations of both men, to persuade both of their joint
duty to continue in the public service. By this remarkable piece of
riding he saved the Union from a great danger. The Democratic
opposition, not actually to the prosecution of the war, but to any and
every measure essential for it, was now developing, and a serious
division, such as at this stage any important resignation would have
produced in the ranks of the Republicans, or, as they now called
themselves, the "Union men," would have been perilous.
On the first day of January, 1863, the President signed the further
Proclamation needed to give effect to emancipation. The small portions
of the South which were not in rebellion were duly excepted; the naval
and military authorities were ordered to maintain the freedom of the
slaves seeking their protection; the slaves were enjoined to abstain
from violence and to "labour faithfully for reasonable wages" if
opportunity were given them; all suitable slaves were to be taken into
armed service, especially for garrison duties. Before the end of 1863,
a hundred thousand coloured men were already serving, as combatants or
as labourers, on military work in about equal number. They were
needed, for volunteering was getting slack, and the work of guarding
and repairing railway lines was specially repellent to Northern
volunteers. The coloured regiments fought well; they behaved well in
every way. Atrocious threats of vengeance on them and their white
officers were officially uttered by Jefferson Davis, but, except for
one hideous massacre wrought in the hottest of hot blood, only a few
crimes by individuals were committed in execution of these threats. To
Lincoln himself it was a stirring thought that when democratic
government was finally vindicated and restored by the victory of the
Union, "then there will be some black men who can remember that with
silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet
they have helped mankind on to this great consummation." There was,
however, prejudice at first among many Northern officers against negro
enlistment. The greatest of the few great American artists, St.
Gaudens, commemorated in sculpture (as the donor of the new playing
fields at Harvard commemorated by his gift) the action of a brilliant
and popular Massachusetts officer, Robert Gould Shaw, who set the
example of leaving his own beloved regiment to take command of a
coloured regiment, at the head of which he died, gallantly leading them
and gallantly followed by them in a desperate fight.
It was easier to raise and train these negro soldiers than to arrange
for the control, shelter, and employment of the other refugees who
crowded especially to the protection of Grant's army in the West. The
efforts made for their benefit cannot be related here, but the
recollections of Army Chaplain John Eaton, whom Grant selected to take
charge of them in the West, throw a little more light on Lincoln and on
the spirit of his dealing with "the nigger question." When Eaton after
some time had to come to Washington, upon the business of his charge
and to visit the President, he received that impression, of versatile
power and of easy mastery over many details as well as over broad
issues, which many who worked under Lincoln have described, but he was
above all struck with the fact that from a very slight experience in
early life Lincoln had gained a knowledge of negro character such as
very few indeed in the North possessed. He was subjected to many
seemingly trivial questions, of which he was quick enough to see the
grave purpose, about all sorts of persons and things in the West, but
he was also examined closely, in a way which commanded his fullest
respect as an expert, about the ideas, understanding, and expectations
of the ordinary negroes under his care, and more particularly as to the
past history and the attainments of the few negroes who had become
prominent men, and who therefore best illustrated the real capacities
of their race. Later visits to the capital and to Lincoln deepened
this impression, and convinced Eaton, though by trifling signs, of the
rare quality of Lincoln's sympathy. Once, after Eaton's difficult
business had been disposed of, the President turned to relating his own
recent worries about a colony of negroes which he was trying to
establish on a small island off Hayti. There flourishes in Southern
latitudes a minute creature called _Dermatophilus penetrans_, or the
jigger, which can inflict great pain on barefooted people by housing
itself under their toe-nails. This Colony had a plague of jiggers, and
every expedient for defeating them had failed. Lincoln was not merely
giving the practical attention to this difficulty that might perhaps be
expected; the Chaplain was amazed to find that at that moment, at the
turning point of the war, a few days only after Vicksburg and
Gettysburg, with his enormous pre-occupations, the President's mind had
room for real and keen distress about the toes of the blacks in the Cow
Island. At the end of yet another interview Eaton was startled by the
question, put by the President with an air of shyness, whether
Frederick Douglass, a well-known negro preacher, could be induced to
visit him. Of course he could. Frederick Douglass was then reputed to
be the ablest man ever born as a negro slave; he must have met many of
the best and kindest Northern friends of the negro; and he went to
Lincoln distressed at some points in his policy, particularly at his
failure to make reprisals for murders of negro prisoners by Southern
troops. When he came away he was in a state little short of ecstasy.
It was not because he now understood, as he did, Lincoln's policy.
Lincoln had indeed won his warm approval when he told him "with a
quiver in his voice" of his horror of killing men in cold blood for
what had been done by others, and his dread of what might follow such a
policy; but he had a deeper gratification, the strangeness of which it
is sad to realise. "He treated me as a man," exclaimed Douglass. "He
did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the
colour of our skins."
Perhaps the hardest effort of speech that Lincoln ever essayed was an
address to negroes which had to do with this very subject of colour.
His audience were men who had been free from birth or for some time and
were believed to be leaders among their community. It was Lincoln's
object to induce some of them to be pioneers in an attempt at
colonisation in some suitable climate, an attempt which he felt must
fail if it started with negroes whose "intellects were clouded by
slavery." He clung to these projects of colonisation, as probably the
best among the various means by which the improvement of the negro must
be attempted, because their race, "suffering the greatest wrong ever
inflicted on any people," would "yet be far removed from being on an
equality with the white race" when they ceased to be slaves; a
"physical difference broader than exists between almost any other two
races" and constituting "a greater disadvantage to us both," would
always set a "ban" upon the negroes even where they were best treated
in America. This unpalatable fact he put before them with that total
absence of pretence which was probably the only possible form of tact
in such a discussion, with no affectation of a hope that progress would
remove it or of a desire that the ordinary white man should lose the
instinct that kept him apart from the black. But this only makes more
apparent his simple recognition of an equality and fellowship which did
exist between him and his hearers in a larger matter than that of
social intercourse or political combination. His appeal to their
capacity for taking large and unselfish views was as direct and as
confident as in his addresses to his own people; it was made in the
language of a man to whom the public spirit which might exist among
black people was of the same quality as that which existed among white,
in whose belief he and his hearers could equally find happiness in
"being worthy of themselves" and in realising the "claim of kindred to
the great God who made them."
It may be well here, without waiting to trace further the course of the
war, in which at the point where we left it the slow but irresistible
progress of conquest was about to set in, to recount briefly the later
stages of the abolition of slavery in America. In 1863 it became
apparent that popular feeling in Missouri and in Maryland was getting
ripe for abolition. Bills were introduced into Congress to compensate
their States if they did away with slavery; the compensation was to be
larger if the abolition was immediate and not gradual. There was a
majority in each House for these Bills, but the Democratic minority was
able to kill them in the House of Representatives by the methods of
"filibustering," or, as we call it, obstruction, to which the procedure
of that body seems well adapted. The Republican majority had not been
very zealous for the Bills; its members asked "why compensate for a
wrong" which they had begun to feel would soon be abolished without
compensation; but their leaders at least did their best for the Bills.
It would have been idle after the failure of these proposals to
introduce the Bills that had been contemplated for buying out the loyal
slave owners in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, which was now
fast being regained for the Union. Lincoln after his Message of
December, 1862, recognised it as useless for him to press again the
principles of gradual emancipation or of compensation, as to which it
is worth remembrance that the compensation which he proposed was for
loyal and disloyal owners alike. His Administration, however, bought
every suitable slave in Delaware for service (service as a free man) in
the Army. In the course of 1864 a remarkable development of public
opinion began to be manifest in the States chiefly concerned. In the
autumn of that year Maryland, whose representatives had paid so little
attention to Lincoln two years before, passed an Amendment to the State
Constitution abolishing slavery without compensation. A movement in
the same direction was felt to be making progress in Kentucky and
Tennessee; and Missouri followed Maryland's example in January, 1865.
Meanwhile, Louisiana had been reconquered, and the Unionists in these
States, constantly encouraged and protected by Lincoln when Congress
looked upon them somewhat coldly or his generals showed jealousy of
their action, had banded themselves together to form State Governments
with Constitutions that forbade slavery. Lincoln, it may be noted, had
suggested to Louisiana that it would be well to frame some plan by
which the best educated of the negroes should be admitted to the
franchise. Four years after his death a Constitutional Amendment was
passed by which any distinction as to franchise on the ground of race
or colour is forbidden in America. The policy of giving the vote to
negroes indiscriminately had commended itself to the cold pedantry of
some persons, including Chase, on the ground of some natural right of
all men to the suffrage; but it was adopted as the most effective
protection for the negroes against laws, as to vagrancy and the like,
by which it was feared they might practically be enslaved again.
Whatever the excuse for it, it would seem to have proved in fact a
great obstacle to healthy relations between the two races. The true
policy in such a matter is doubtless that which Rhodes and other
statesmen adopted in the Cape Colony and which Lincoln had advocated in
the case of Louisiana. It would be absurd to imagine that the spirit
which could champion the rights of the negro and yet face fairly the
abiding difficulty of his case died in America with Lincoln, but it
lost for many a year to come its only great exponent.
But the question of overwhelming importance, between the principles of
slavery and of freedom, was ready for final decision when local opinion
in six slave States was already moving as we have seen. The Republican
Convention of 1864, which again chose Lincoln as its candidate for the
Presidency, declared itself in favour of a Constitutional Amendment to
abolish slavery once for all throughout America. Whether the first
suggestion came from him or not, it is known that Lincoln's private
influence was energetically used to procure this resolution of the
Convention. In his Message to Congress in 1864 he urged the initiation
of this Amendment. Observation of elections made it all but certain
that the next Congress would be ready to take this action, but Lincoln
pleaded with the present doubtful Congress for the advantage which
would be gained by ready, and if possible, unanimous concurrence in the
North in the course which would soon prevail. The necessary Resolution
was passed in the Senate, but in the House of Representatives till
within a few hours of the vote it was said to be "the toss of a copper"
whether the majority of two-thirds, required for such a purpose, would
be obtained. In the efforts made on either side to win over the few
doubtful voters Lincoln had taken his part. Right or wrong, he was not
the man to see a great and beneficent Act in danger of postponement
without being tempted to secure it if he could do so by terrifying some
unprincipled and white-livered opponents. With the knowledge that he
was always acquiring of the persons in politics, he had been able to
pick out two Democratic Congressmen who were fit for his
purpose--presumably they lay under suspicion of one of those
treasonable practices which martial law under Lincoln treated very
unceremoniously. He sent for them. He told them that the gaining of a
certain number of doubtful votes would secure the Resolution. He told
them that he was President of the United States. He told them that the
President of the United States in war time exercised great and dreadful
powers. And he told them that he looked to them personally to get him
those votes. Whether this wrong manoeuvre affected the result or not,
on January 31, 1865, the Resolution was passed in the House by a
two-thirds majority with a few votes to spare, and the great crowd in
the galleries, defying all precedent, broke out in a demonstration of
enthusiasm which some still recall as the most memorable scene in their
lives. On December 18 of that year, when Lincoln had been eight months
dead, William Seward, as Secretary of State, was able to certify that
the requisite majority of States had passed the Thirteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, and the cause of that "irrepressible conflict" which
he had foretold, and in which he had played a weak but valuable part,
was for ever extinguished.
At the present day, alike in the British Empire and in America, the
unending difficulty of wholesome human relations between races of
different and unequal development exercises many minds; but this
difficulty cannot obscure the great service done by those who, first in
England and later and more hardly in America, stamped out that cardinal
principle of error that any race is without its human claim. Among
these men William Lloyd Garrison lived to see the fruit of his labours,
and to know and have friendly intercourse with Lincoln. There have
been some comparable instances in which men with such different
characters and methods have unconsciously conspired for a common end,
as these two did when Garrison was projecting the "Liberator" and
Lincoln began shaping himself for honourable public work in the vague.
The part that Lincoln played in these events did not seem to him a
personal achievement of his own. He appeared to himself rather as an
instrument. "I claim not," he once said in this connection, "to have
controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
In 1864, when a petition was sent to him from some children that there
should be no more child slaves, he wrote, "Please tell these little
people that I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and
generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all
they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it
seems, He wills to do it." Yet, at least, he redeemed the boyish
pledge that has been, fancifully perhaps, ascribed to him; each
opportunity that to his judgment ever presented itself of striking some
blow for human freedom was taken; the blows were timed and directed by
the full force of his sagacity, and they were never restrained by
private ambition or fear. It is probable that upon that cool review,
which in the case of this singular figure is difficult, the sense of
his potent accomplishment would not diminish, but increase.