Cameron's Report--Lincoln's Letter to Bancroft--Annual Message on
Slavery--The Delaware Experiment--Joint Resolution on Compensated
Abolishment--First Border State Interview--Stevens's Comment--District
of Columbia Abolishment--Committee on Abolishment--Hunter's Order
Revoked--Antislavery Measures of Congress--Second Border State
Interview--Emancipation Proposed and Postponed
The relation of the war to the institution of slavery has been touched
upon in describing several incidents which occurred during 1861, namely,
the designation of fugitive slaves as "contraband," the Crittenden
resolution and the confiscation act of the special session of Congress,
the issuing and revocation of Frémont's proclamation, and various orders
relating to contrabands in Union camps. The already mentioned
resignation of Secretary Cameron had also grown out of a similar
question. In the form in which it was first printed, his report as
Secretary of War to the annual session of Congress which met on December
3, 1861, announced:
"If it shall be found that the men who have been held by the rebels as
slaves are capable of bearing arms and performing efficient military
service, it is the right, and may become the duty, of the government to
arm and equip them, and employ their services against the rebels, under
proper military regulation, discipline, and command."
The President was not prepared to permit a member of his cabinet,
without his consent, to commit the administration to so radical a policy
at that early date. He caused the advance copies of the document to be
recalled and modified to the simple declaration that fugitive and
abandoned slaves, being clearly an important military resource, should
not be returned to rebel masters, but withheld from the enemy to be
disposed of in future as Congress might deem best. Mr. Lincoln saw
clearly enough what a serious political rôle the slavery question was
likely to play during the continuance of the war. Replying to a letter
from the Hon. George Bancroft, in which that accomplished historian
predicted that posterity would not be satisfied with the results of the
war unless it should effect an increase of the free States, the
President wrote:
"The main thought in the closing paragraph of your letter is one which
does not escape my attention, and with which I must deal in all due
caution, and with the best judgment I can bring to it."
This caution was abundantly manifested in his annual message to Congress
of December 3, 1861:
"In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the
insurrection," he wrote, "I have been anxious and careful that the
inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent
and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every
case, thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as
the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions
which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action
of the legislature.... The Union must be preserved; and hence all
indispensable means must be employed. We should not be in haste to
determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal
as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
The most conservative opinion could not take alarm at phraseology so
guarded and at the same time so decided; and yet it proved broad enough
to include every great exigency which the conflict still had in store.
Mr. Lincoln had indeed already maturely considered and in his own mind
adopted a plan of dealing with the slavery question: the simple plan
which, while a member of Congress, he had proposed for adoption in the
District of Columbia--the plan of voluntary compensated abolishment. At
that time local and national prejudice stood in the way of its
practicability; but to his logical and reasonable mind it seemed now
that the new conditions opened for it a prospect at least of initial
success.
In the late presidential election the little State of Delaware had, by a
fusion between the Bell and the Lincoln vote, chosen a Union member of
Congress, who identified himself in thought and action with the new
administration. While Delaware was a slave State, only the merest
remnant of the institution existed there--seventeen hundred and
ninety-eight slaves all told. Without any public announcement of his
purpose, the President now proposed to the political leaders of
Delaware, through their representative, a scheme for the gradual
emancipation of these seventeen hundred and ninety-eight slaves, on the
payment therefore by the United States at the rate of four hundred
dollars per slave, in annual instalments during thirty-one years to that
State, the sum to be distributed by it to the individual owners. The
President believed that if Delaware could be induced to take this step,
Maryland might follow, and that these examples would create a sentiment
that would lead other States into the same easy and beneficent path. But
the ancient prejudice still had its relentless grip upon some of the
Delaware law-makers. A majority of the Delaware House indeed voted to
entertain the scheme. But five of the nine members of the Delaware
Senate, with hot partizan anathemas, scornfully repelled the "abolition
bribe," as they called it, and the project withered in the bud.
Mr. Lincoln did not stop at the failure of his Delaware experiment, but
at once took an appeal to a broader section of public opinion. On March
6, 1862, he sent a special message to the two houses of Congress
recommending the adoption of the following joint resolution:
"_Resolved_, that the United States ought to coöperate with any State
which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State
pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to
compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such
change of system."
"The point is not," said his explanatory message, "that all the States
tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation;
but that while the offer is equally made to all, the more northern
shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the more southern that in
no event will the former ever join the latter in their proposed
Confederacy. I say 'initiation' because, in my judgment, gradual, and
not sudden, emancipation is better for all.... Such a proposition on the
part of the general government sets up no claim of a right by Federal
authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as
it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State
and its people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of
perfectly free choice with them. In the annual message last December I
thought fit to say, 'The Union must be preserved; and hence, all
indispensable means must be employed.' I said this, not hastily, but
deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable
means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national
authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease.
If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is
impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the
ruin which may follow it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may
obviously promise great efficiency toward ending the struggle, must and
will come."
The Republican journals of the North devoted considerable discussion to
the President's message and plan, which, in the main, were very
favorably received. Objection was made, however, in some quarters that
the proposition would be likely to fail on the score of expense, and
this objection the President conclusively answered in a private letter
to a senator.
"As to the expensiveness of the plan of gradual emancipation, with
compensation, proposed in the late message, please allow me one or two
brief suggestions. Less than one half-day's cost of this war would pay
for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars per head....
Again, less than eighty-seven days' cost of this war would, at the same
price, pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky
and Missouri.... Do you doubt that taking the initiatory steps on the
part of those States and this District would shorten the war more than
eighty-seven days, and thus be an actual saving of expense?"
Four days after transmitting the message the President called together
the delegations in Congress from the border slave States, and in a long
and earnest personal interview, in which he repeated and enforced the
arguments of his message, urged upon them the expediency of adopting his
plan, which he assured them he had proposed in the most friendly spirit,
and with no intent to injure the interests or wound the sensibilities of
the slave States. On the day following this interview the House of
Representatives adopted the joint resolution by more than a two-thirds
vote; ayes eighty-nine, nays thirty-one. Only a very few of the border
State members had the courage to vote in the affirmative. The Senate
also passed the joint resolution, by about a similar party division, not
quite a month later; the delay occurring through press of business
rather than unwillingness.
As yet, however, the scheme was tolerated rather than heartily indorsed
by the more radical elements in Congress. Stevens, the cynical
Republican leader of the House of Representatives, said:
"I confess I have not been able to see what makes one side so anxious to
pass it, or the other side so anxious to defeat it. I think it is about
the most diluted milk-and-water-gruel proposition that was ever given to
the American nation."
But the bulk of the Republicans, though it proposed no immediate
practical legislation, nevertheless voted for it, as a declaration of
purpose in harmony with a pending measure, and as being, on the one
hand, a tribute to antislavery opinion in the North, and, on the other,
an expression of liberality toward the border States. The concurrent
measure of practical legislation was a bill for the immediate
emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, on the payment
to their loyal owners of an average sum of three hundred dollars for
each slave, and for the appointment of a commission to assess and award
the amount. The bill was introduced early in the session, and its
discussion was much stimulated by the President's special message and
joint resolution. Like other antislavery measures, it was opposed by the
Democrats and supported by the Republicans, with but trifling
exceptions; and by the same majority of two thirds was passed by the
Senate on April 3, and the House on April 11, and became a law by the
President's signature on April 16.
The Republican majority in Congress as well as the President was thus
pledged to the policy of compensated abolishment, both by the promise of
the joint resolution and the fulfilment carried out in the District
bill. If the representatives and senators of the border slave States had
shown a willingness to accept the generosity of the government, they
could have avoided the pecuniary sacrifice which overtook the slave
owners in those States not quite three years later. On April 14, in the
House of Representatives, the subject was taken up by Mr. White of
Indiana, at whose instance a select committee on emancipation,
consisting of nine members, a majority of whom were from border slave
States, was appointed; and this committee on July 16 reported a
comprehensive bill authorizing the President to give compensation at the
rate of three hundred dollars for each slave to any one of the States of
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, that
might adopt immediate or gradual emancipation. Some subsequent
proceedings on this subject occurred in Congress in the case of
Missouri; but as to the other States named in the bill, either the
neglect or open opposition of their people and representatives and
senators prevented any further action from the committee.
Meanwhile a new incident once more brought the question of military
emancipation into sharp public discussion. On May 9, General David
Hunter, commanding the Department of the South, which consisted mainly
of some sixty or seventy miles of the South Carolina coast between North
Edisto River and Warsaw Sound, embracing the famous Sea Island cotton
region which fell into Union hands by the capture of Port Royal in 1861,
issued a military order which declared:
"Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible;
the persons in these three States--Georgia, Florida, and South
Carolina--heretofore held as slaves are therefore declared forever
free."
The news of this order, coming by the slow course of ocean mails,
greatly surprised Mr. Lincoln, and his first comment upon it was
positive and emphatic. "No commanding general shall do such a thing,
upon my responsibility, without consulting me," he wrote to Secretary
Chase. Three days later, May 19, 1862, he published a proclamation
declaring Hunter's order entirely unauthorized and void, and adding:
"I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any
State or States free, and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall
have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the
government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under
my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel
justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These
are totally different questions from those of police regulations in
armies and camps."
This distinct reservation of executive power, and equally plain
announcement of the contingency which would justify its exercise, was
coupled with a renewed recital of his plan and offer of compensated
abolishment and reinforced by a powerful appeal to the public opinion of
the border slave States.
"I do not argue," continued the proclamation, "I beseech you to make the
arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the
signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of
them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partizan politics.
This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no
reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it
contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or
wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been
done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of God it is
now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament
that you have neglected it."
This proclamation of President Lincoln's naturally created considerable
and very diverse comment, but much less than would have occurred had not
military events intervened which served in a great degree to absorb
public attention. At the date of the proclamation McClellan, with the
Army of the Potomac, was just reaching the Chickahominy in his campaign
toward Richmond; Stonewall Jackson was about beginning his startling
raid into the Shenandoah valley; and Halleck was pursuing his somewhat
leisurely campaign against Corinth. On the day following the
proclamation the victorious fleet of Farragut reached Vicksburg in its
first ascent of the Mississippi. Congress was busy with the multifarious
work that crowded the closing weeks of the long session; and among this
congressional work the debates and proceedings upon several measures of
positive and immediate antislavery legislation were significant "signs
of the times." During the session, and before it ended, acts or
amendments were passed prohibiting the army from returning fugitive
slaves; recognizing the independence and sovereignty of Haiti and
Liberia; providing for carrying into effect the treaty with England to
suppress the African slave trade; restoring the Missouri Compromise and
extending its provisions to all United States Territories; greatly
increasing the scope of the confiscation act in freeing slaves actually
employed in hostile military service; and giving the President
authority, if not in express terms, at least by easy implication, to
organize and arm negro regiments for the war.
But between the President's proclamation and the adjournment of Congress
military affairs underwent a most discouraging change. McClellan's
advance upon Richmond became a retreat to Harrison's Landing Halleck
captured nothing but empty forts at Corinth. Farragut found no
coöperation at Vicksburg, and returned to New Orleans, leaving its
hostile guns still barring the commerce of the great river. Still worse,
the country was plunged into gloomy forebodings by the President's call
for three hundred thousand new troops.
About a week before the adjournment of Congress the President again
called together the delegations from the border slave States, and read
to them, in a carefully prepared paper, a second and most urgent appeal
to adopt his plan of compensated abolishment.
"Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that
in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed
confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you
cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so
long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within
your own States. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly
done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I
know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their
faces, and they can shake you no more forever.... If the war continues
long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution
in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion--by
the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have
nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How
much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once
shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is
sure to be wholly lost in any other event. How much better to thus save
the money which else we sink forever in the war.... Our common country
is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to
bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved
to the world, its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated,
and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand. To
you, more than to any others, the privilege is given to assure that
happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith
forever."
Even while the delegations listened, Mr. Lincoln could see that events
had not yet ripened their minds to the acceptance of his proposition. In
their written replies, submitted a few days afterward, two thirds of
them united in a qualified refusal, which, while recognizing the
President's patriotism and reiterating their own loyalty, urged a number
of rather unsubstantial excuses. The minority replies promised to submit
the proposal fairly to the people of their States, but could of course
give no assurance that it would be welcomed by their constituents. The
interview itself only served to confirm the President in an alternative
course of action upon which his mind had doubtless dwelt for a
considerable time with intense solicitude, and which is best presented
in the words of his own recital.
"It had got to be," said he, in a conversation with the artist F.B.
Carpenter, "midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until
I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations
we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must
change our tactics, or lose the game. 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, and after much anxious thought called a cabinet meeting
upon the subject.... All were present excepting Mr. Blair, the
Postmaster-General, who was absent at the opening of the discussion, but
came in subsequently. I said to the cabinet that I had resolved upon
this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to
lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to
which would be in order after they had heard it read."
It was on July 22 that the President read to his cabinet the draft of
this first emancipation proclamation, which, after a formal warning
against continuing the rebellion, was in the following words:
"And I hereby make known that it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of
Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure for
tendering pecuniary aid to the free choice or rejection of any and all
States which may then be recognizing and practically sustaining the
authority of the United States, and which may then have voluntarily
adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, gradual abolishment of
slavery within such State or States; that the object is to practically
restore, thenceforward to be maintained, the constitutional relation
between the general government and each and all the States wherein that
relation is now suspended or disturbed; and that for this object the
war, as it has been, will be prosecuted. And as a fit and necessary
military measure for effecting this object, I, as commander-in-chief of
the army and navy of the United States, do order and declare 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 States
wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not then
be practically recognized, submitted to, and maintained, shall then,
thenceforward, and forever be free."
Mr. Lincoln had given a confidential intimation of this step to Mr.
Seward and Mr. Welles on the day following the border State interview,
but to all the other members of the cabinet it came as a complete
surprise. Blair thought it would cost the administration the fall
elections. Chase preferred that emancipation should be proclaimed by
commanders in the several military districts. Seward, approving the
measure, suggested that it be postponed until it could be given to the
country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would
be the case then, upon the greatest disasters of the war. Mr. Lincoln's
recital continues:
"The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with very
great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon
the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the
draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch for a picture,
waiting for a victory."