card and must change our tactics or lose the game; and I now determined
upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and, without consultation
with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of
the proclamation."
On July 22, 1862, he read to his Cabinet the first draft of a
proclamation, not for the purpose of asking their advice, he told them,
but for their information. But every man was pledged to confidence,
and the secret was so well kept that the public had no suspicion of
his intention, and the radical newspapers and abolitionists continued
to criticise and attack him in a most abusive manner. A committee of
clergymen from Chicago came to Washington to urge him to issue an
emancipation proclamation. He received them respectfully, but did not
tell them that their wishes would have been anticipated but for the
defeat of the Union army at the second battle of Bull Run. He made
them an eloquent but evasive speech, and appealed to their good sense.
"Now, gentlemen," he said, "if I cannot enforce the Constitution down
South, how can I enforce a mere Presidential proclamation? 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."
Mr. Colfax, who accompanied the delegation, says that "one of these
ministers felt it his duty to make a more searching appeal to the
President's conscience. Just as they were retiring, he turned and said
to Mr. Lincoln,--
"'What you have said to us, Mr. President, compels me to say, in
reply, that it is a message to you from our Divine Master, through me,
commanding you, sir, to open the doors of bondage that the slave may go
free!'
"Mr. Lincoln replied instantly, 'That may be, sir, for I have studied
this question by night and by day for weeks and for months; but if it
is, as you say, a message from your Divine Master, is it not odd that
the only channel he could send it by was that roundabout route by that
awfully wicked city of Chicago?'
"In discussing the question, he used to liken the case to that of the
boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called his
tail a leg, replied, 'Five.' To which the prompt response was made that
_calling_ the tail a leg would not _make_ it a leg.
"He sought to measure so accurately, so precisely, the public sentiment
that, whenever he advanced, the loyal hosts of the nation would keep
step with him. In regard to the policy of arming the slaves against the
Rebellion, never, until the tide of patriotic volunteering had ebbed and
our soldiers saw their ranks rapidly melting away, could our colored
troops have been added to their brigades without perilous discontent, if
not open revolt. Against all appeals, all demands, against even threats
of some members of his party, Lincoln stood like a rock on this question
until he felt that the opportune moment had arrived."
Not only was he denounced by the abolitionists, but by the foremost
leaders of the Republican party, such as Benjamin F. Wade and Horace
Greeley, and received appeals from loyal people of the South, to whom he
replied, with his usual patience, "What is done and omitted about the
slaves is done and omitted on the same military necessity. I shall not
do more than I can, and shall do all that I can, to save the government."
In his view, military necessity was the only justification for the
violation of the Constitution, which protected the slaves. In the
second place, his delay was due to a doubt whether public sentiment in
the North was prepared for a measure so radical and far-reaching; by
his hope that the people of the border States would soon be willing
to accept the act as a friendly as well as a necessary solution of
a dilemma; and, finally, because of his profound respect for the
Constitution which he had sworn to maintain. He would not free the negro
because the Constitution stood in his way, and only for the sake of the
Union was he willing to override that sacred instrument. This purpose
was tersely expressed when, under great provocation, he allowed himself
to violate his own rule and reply to Horace Greeley, who had attacked
him in an open letter of unjust censure, accusing him of neglecting his
duty.
"I would save the Union," he said, frankly. "I would save it in the
shortest way under the Constitution. If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not
agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless
they could, at the same time, destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, 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. What I do about slavery and
the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union;
and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to
save the Union. I shall do less whenever I believe what I am doing hurts
the cause, and I shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help
the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I
shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."
Contemplating the events in the history of emancipation in a perspective
of forty years, it is difficult to say whether we admire more the skill
with which President Lincoln led public sentiment along with him or the
reticence and dignity with which he restrained his own desire to yield
to the influence of the good people of the North and protect himself
from the clamor of his critics. His letter to Mr. Greeley was not an
argument in a controversy, nor an apology for or defence of his policy;
but he intended it to be a warning to prepare the slave-holders of the
border States and the South for an event which only he and his Cabinet
knew was about to happen, and, at the same time, to divert the attention
of the Union people of the North until a favorable opportunity arrived
for proclaiming freedom.
Mr. Greeley was not satisfied with the assurances contained in the
letter, and continued to attack the President in a persistent manner.
He was invited to come to Washington and "fight it out in private," but
sent his managing editor instead, who spent an interesting evening and
had an animated argument with the President; but the latter could not
trust him with the momentous secret, and was compelled to wait until
a Union victory offered a favorable opportunity to take the step he
contemplated. As he told the Chicago pastors, he had not decided against
a proclamation of liberty for the slaves, but held the matter under
advisement. "And I can assure you," he added, "that the subject is on my
mind by day and by night; more than any other. Whatever shall appear to
be God's will I will do."
Accordingly, on September 22, 1862, after the battle of Antietam, he
called his Cabinet together and announced his intention to issue a
proclamation of emancipation. "I have gotten you together to hear what
I have written down," he said. "I do not want your advice about the
main matter, because I have determined that myself. This I say without
intending anything but respect for all of you. I alone must bear the
responsibility for taking the course which I feel I ought to take."
The preliminary proclamation was issued, and in his annual message to
Congress on December 1, 1862, Lincoln recommended the passage of a joint
resolution proposing a constitutional amendment providing compensation
for every State which would abolish slavery before the year 1900,
another guaranteeing freedom to all slaves that had been released by
the chances of war, and a third authorizing Congress to provide a plan
of colonization for them. His idea was to send them either to Africa,
to the West Indies, or to Central America, and he encouraged several
extensive plans of colonization, which, however, were not carried into
practical operation. In this connection it is interesting to recall
the reminiscences of General Butler, who says that shortly before the
assassination the President sent for him and said,--
"'General Butler, I am troubled about the negroes. We are soon to have
peace. We have got some one hundred and odd thousand negroes who have
been trained to arms. When peace shall come I fear lest these colored
men shall organize themselves in the South, especially in the States
where the negroes are in preponderance in numbers, into guerilla
parties, and we shall have down there a warfare between the whites and
the negroes. In the course of the reconstruction of the government it
will become a question of how the negro is to be disposed of. Would
it not be possible to export them to some place, say Liberia or South
America, and organize them into communities to support themselves?'
"General Butler replied, 'We have large quantities of clothing to clothe
them, and arms and everything necessary for them, even to spades and
shovels, mules, and wagons. Our war has shown that an army organization
is the very best for digging up the soil and making intrenchments.
Witness the very many miles of intrenchments that our soldiers have dug
out. I know of a concession of the United States of Colombia for a tract
of thirty miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama for opening a ship
canal. The enlistments of the negroes have all of them from two or three
years to run. Why not send them all down there to dig the canal? They
will withstand the climate, and the work can be done with less cost to
the United States in that way than in any other. If you choose, I will
take command of the expedition. We will take our arms with us, and I
need not suggest to you that we will need nobody sent down to guard us
from the interference of any nation. We will proceed to cultivate the
land and supply ourselves with all the fresh food that can be raised in
the tropics, which will be all that will be needed, and your stores of
provisions and supplies of clothing will furnish all the rest. Shall I
work out the details of such an expedition for you, Mr. President?'
"He reflected for some time, and then said, 'There is meat in that
suggestion, General Butler; there is meat in that suggestion. Go and
talk to Seward and see what foreign complications there will be about
it.'
"But that evening Secretary Seward, in his drive before dinner, was
thrown from his carriage and severely injured, his jaw being broken, and
he was confined to his bed until the assassination of Lincoln and the
attempted murder of himself by one of the confederates of Booth, so that
the subject could never be again mentioned to Mr. Lincoln."
The final proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. On the afternoon
of December 31, after the Cabinet meeting was over Lincoln rewrote the
document with great care, embodying in it several suggestions which
had been made by his Cabinet, but rigidly adhering to the spirit of
the original. In his judgment, the time had now come for adopting this
extreme measure, and "upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of
justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke
the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty
God."
The morning of New Year's day was occupied by the official reception,
and the President was kept busy until about three o'clock in the
afternoon, when he went to the Executive Chamber, took the manuscript
from a drawer in his desk, wrote his name, and closed a controversy that
had raged for half a century. He carefully laid away the pen he had used
for Mr. Sumner, who had promised to obtain it for George Livermore, of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, an old abolitionist and the author of a work
on slavery which had greatly interested Lincoln. It was a steel pen with
an ordinary wooden handle, such as is used by school-children and can
be bought for a penny at any stationery store. The end of the holder
showed the marks of Lincoln's teeth, for he had a habit of putting his
pen-holder into his mouth whenever he was puzzled in composition.
Lincoln's own commentary and explanation of the step which led to this
edict of freedom was written little more than a year later, to a friend,
and should be carefully studied before forming a judgment upon the
reasons for and the consequences of that act:
"I am naturally antislavery," he said. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing
is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and
yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an
unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.
It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I
could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view
that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using
the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration
this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract
judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this
many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done
no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling
on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the
Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of
preserving, by every indispensable means, that government, that nation,
of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose
the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and
limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a
life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that
measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming
indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the
preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and
now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had
even tried to preserve the Constitution if, to save slavery or any
minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and
Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Frémont
attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then
think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General
Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity.
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation,
I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable
necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest
and successive appeals to the border States to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military
emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that
measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment,
driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it
the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I
chose the latter."
Lincoln did not live to witness the consummation or the consequences of
the edict. The preliminary resolution for a constitutional amendment was
not secured until after a long struggle in Congress and against the most
determined opposition. Were it not for Lincoln's political skill and
tact, it might never have been adopted. The work of ratification by the
loyal States was not completed until December, 1865, when Mr. Seward,
still Secretary of State, issued a proclamation announcing that the
thirteenth amendment had been ratified by twenty-seven of the thirty-six
States then composing the Union, and that slavery and involuntary
servitude were from that time and forever impossible within the limits
of the United States.
Some one has arranged the Emancipation Proclamation so that its words
form an accurate profile of Abraham Lincoln's face. The picture is
perfect and not a letter of the document is wanting.
Lincoln's ideas concerning the enfranchisement of the negroes were
expressed in a letter to Governor Hahn congratulating him upon having
his name fixed in history as the first free Governor of the State of
Louisiana, and saying, "Now, you are about to have a convention which,
among other things, will probably define the elective franchise.
I barely suggest for your private consideration whether some of
the colored people may not be let in,--as, for instance, the very
intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our
ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep
the jewel of liberty safe within the family of freedom. But this is only
a suggestion--not to the public, but to you alone."
[Illustration: A LETTER TO HON. MICHAEL HAHN, FIRST FREE STATE GOVERNOR
OF LOUISIANA
By special permission of John M. Crampton, Esq., New Haven, Connecticut]
On April 11, 1865, he made his last speech. It was delivered from
the portico of the White House in response to an invitation from the
managers of a jubilee celebration over the surrender of Lee's army.
Twice before was he called out by serenading parties, and on both
occasions declined to give more than a few informal expressions of
congratulation and gratitude; but, being pressed by the committee, he
consented to deliver a formal address, and with great care prepared a
manuscript upon the reconstruction problem. It was undoubtedly intended
as a "feeler" to test public sentiment in the North, and that portion of
it which relates to negro suffrage is as follows:
"We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their
proper relations to the Union, and that the sole object of the
government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again
get them into their proper practical relation. I believe it is not
only possible, but in fact easier to do this without deciding, or even
considering, whether those States have ever been out of the Union,
than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us join in doing the
acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between those
States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own
opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without
the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been
out of it.
"It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is
not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now
conferred on the very intelligent and those who have served our cause as
soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government,
as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, Will it
be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it, or to reject and
disperse it?
"Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana
have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political
power of the State, held elections, organized a State government,
adopted a free State Constitution, giving the benefit of public schools
equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the
elective franchise upon the colored man. The Legislature has already
voted to ratify the constitutional amendment passed by Congress,
abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons
are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the
States--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the
nation wants--and they ask the nation's recognition and its assistance
to make good the committal.... We encourage the hearts and nerve the
arms of twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and
proselyte for it, fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it
to a complete success. The colored man, too, seeing all united for him,
is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring to the same end.
Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not obtain it
sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it than by running
backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only
as what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the
fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it."
We have the testimony of members of the Cabinet that the question of
suffrage was several times discussed, and that Lincoln and Mr. Chase
differed as to constitutional authority and limitations in that matter.
Mr. Chase held that Congress had the right and power to enact such laws
for the government of the people of the States lately in rebellion as
might be deemed expedient to the public safety, including the bestowal
of suffrage upon the negroes; but Lincoln held that the latter right
rested exclusively with the States. In his amnesty proclamation of
December 8, 1863, he said that any provision by which the States shall
provide for the education and for the welfare of "the laboring landless
and homeless class will not be objected to by the national Executive;"
and Mr. Usher, his Secretary of the Interior, says, "From all that
could be gathered by those who observed his conduct in those times, it
seemed his hope that the people in the insurgent States, upon exercising
authority under the Constitution and laws of the United States, would
find it necessary to make suitable provision, not only for the education
of the freedmen, but also for their acquisition of property and security
in its possession, and to secure that would find it necessary and
expedient to bestow suffrage upon them, in some degree at least."
Mr. Hugh McCulloch, who succeeded Mr. Chase as Secretary of the
Treasury, says, "There is nothing in his record to indicate that he
would have favored the immediate and full enfranchisement of those who,
having been always in servitude, were unfit for an intelligent and
independent use of the ballot. In the plan for the rehabilitation of
the South which he and his Cabinet had partially agreed upon, and which
Mr. Johnson and the same Cabinet endeavored to perfect and carry out,
no provision was made for negro suffrage. This question was purposely
left open for further consideration and for Congressional action, under
such amendments of the Constitution as the changed condition of the
country might render necessary. From some of his incidental expressions,
and from his well-known opinions upon the subject of suffrage and the
States' right to regulate it, my opinion is that he would have been
disposed to let that question remain as it was before the war; with,
however, such amendments of the Constitution as would have prevented
any but those who were permitted to vote in Federal elections from
being included in the enumeration for representatives in Congress, thus
inducing the recent Slave States, for the purpose of increasing their
Congressional influence and power, to give the ballot to black men as
well as white."
IX
A MASTER IN DIPLOMACY