EMANCIPATION COMPLETED
On January 1, 1863, when the President issued the Proclamation of
Emancipation, he stepped to the uttermost boundary of his authority in
the direction of the abolition of slavery. Indeed a large proportion of
the people believed that he had trespassed beyond that boundary; and
among the defenders of the measure there were many who felt bound to
maintain it as a legitimate exercise of the war power, while in their
inmost souls they thought that its real basis of justification lay in
its intrinsic righteousness. Perhaps the President himself was somewhat
of this way of thinking. He once said: "I felt that measure, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the
Union.... 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." Time, however, proved that
the act had in fact the character which Mr. Lincoln attributed to it as
properly a war measure. It attracted the enlistment of negroes, chiefly
Southern negroes, in the army; and though to the end of the war the
fighting value of negro troops was regarded as questionable, yet they
were certainly available for garrisons and for many duties which would
otherwise have absorbed great numbers of white soldiers. Thus, as the
President said, the question became calculable mathematically, like
horse-power in a mechanical problem. The force of able-bodied Southern
negroes soon reached 200,000, of whom most were in the regular military
service, and the rest were laborers with the armies. "We have the men,"
said Mr. Lincoln, "and we could not have had them without the measure."
Take these men from us, "and put them in the battlefield or cornfield
against us, and we should be compelled to abandon the war in three
weeks."
But the proclamation was operative only upon certain individuals. The
President's emancipatory power covered only those persons (with,
perhaps, their families) whose freedom would be a military loss to the
South and a military gain to the North in the pending war. He had no
power to touch the _institution of slavery_. That survived, for the
future, and must survive in spite of anything that he alone, as
President, could do. Nevertheless, in designing movements for its
permanent destruction he was not less earnest than were the radicals and
extremists, though he was unable to share their contempt for legalities
and for public opinion. It has been shown how strong was his desire
that legislative action for abolition should be voluntarily initiated
among the border slave States themselves. This would save their pride,
and also would put a decisive end to all chance of their ever allying
themselves with the Confederacy. He was alert to promote this purpose
whenever and wherever he conceived that any opportunity offered for
giving the first impulse. In time rehabilitated governments of some
States managed with more or less show of regularity to accomplish the
reform. But it was rather a forced transaction, having behind it an
uncomfortably small proportion of the adult male population of the
several States; and by and by the work, thus done, might be undone; for
such action was lawfully revocable by subsequent legislatures or
conventions, which bodies would be just as potent at any future time to
reëstablish slavery as the present bodies were now potent to
disestablish it. It was entirely possible that reconstruction would
leave the right of suffrage in such shape that in some States
pro-slavery men might in time regain control.
In short, the only absolute eradicating cure was a constitutional
amendment;[77] and, therefore, it was towards securing this that the
President bent all his energies. He could use, of course, only personal
influence, not official authority; for the business, as such, lay with
Congress. In December, 1863, motions for such an amendment were
introduced in the House; and in January, 1864, like resolutions were
offered in the Senate. The debate in the Senate was short; it opened on
March 28, and the vote was taken April 8; it stood 38 ayes, 6 noes. This
was gratifying; but unfortunately the party of amendment had to face a
very different condition of feeling in the House. The President, says
Mr. Arnold, "very often, with the friends of the measure, canvassed the
House to see if the requisite number could be obtained, but we could
never count a two-thirds vote." The debate began on March 19; not until
June 15 was the vote taken, and then it showed 93 ayes, 65 noes, being a
discouraging deficiency of 27 beneath the requisite two thirds.
Thereupon Ashley of Ohio changed his vote to the negative, and then
moved a reconsideration, which left the question to come up again in the
next session. Practically, therefore, at the adjournment of Congress,
the amendment was left as an issue before the people in the political
campaign of the summer of 1864; and in that campaign it was second only
to the controlling question of peace or war.
Mr. Lincoln, taking care to omit no effort in this business, sent for
Senator Morgan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, which
was to make the Republican nomination for the presidency and to frame
the Republican platform, and said to him: "I want you to mention in your
speech, when you call the convention to order, as its keynote, and to
put into the platform, as the keystone, the amendment of the
Constitution abolishing and prohibiting slavery forever." Accordingly
the third plank in that platform declared that slavery was the cause and
the strength of the rebellion, that it was "hostile to the principle of
republican government," and that the "national safety demanded its utter
and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic," and that to
this end the Constitution ought to be so amended as to "terminate and
forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits or the
jurisdiction of the United States." Thus at the special request of the
President the issue was distinctly presented to the voters of the
country. The Copperheads, the conservatives, and reactionaries, and many
of the war Democrats, promptly opened their batteries against both the
man and the measure.
The Copperhead Democracy, as usual, went so far as to lose force; they
insisted that the Emancipation Proclamation should be rescinded, and all
ex-slaves restored to their former masters. This, in their opinion,
would touch, a conciliatory chord in Southern breasts, and might lead to
pacification. That even pro-slavery Northerners should urgently advocate
a proposition at once so cruel and so disgraceful is hardly credible.
Yet it was reiterated strenuously, and again and again Mr. Lincoln had
to repeat his decisive and indignant repudiation of it. In the message
to Congress, December, 1863, he said that to abandon the freedmen now
would be "a cruel and astounding breach of faith.... I shall not attempt
to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return
to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or
by any of the acts of Congress." In May, 1864, he spurned the absurdity
of depending "upon coaxing, flattery, and concession to get them [the
Secessionists] back into the Union." He said: "There have been men base
enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port
Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought.
Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come
what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe." He meant never to
be misunderstood on this point. Recurring to it after the election, in
his message to Congress in December, 1864, he quoted his language of the
year before and added: "If the people should, by whatever mode or means,
make it an executive duty to reinslave such persons, another, and not I,
must be their instrument to perform it." All this was plain and
spirited. But it is impossible to praise Mr. Lincoln for contemning a
course which it is surprising to find any person sufficiently ignoble to
recommend. It was, nevertheless, recommended by many, and thus we may
partly see what extremities of feeling were produced by this most
debasing question which has ever entered into the politics of a
civilized nation.
The anxieties of the war Democrats, who feared that Mr. Lincoln was
making abolition an essential purpose of the war, have already been set
forth. In truth he was not making it so, but by the drifting of events
and the ensnarlment of facts it had practically become so without his
responsibility. His many utterances which survive seem to indicate that,
having from the beginning hoped that the war would put an end to
slavery, he now knew that it must do so. He saw that this conclusion lay
at the end of the natural course of events, also that it was not a goal
which was set there by those to whom it was welcome, or which could be
taken away by those to whom it was unwelcome. It was there by the
absolute and uncontrollable logic of facts. His function was only to
take care that this natural course should not be obstructed, and this
established goal should not be maliciously removed away out of reach.
When he was asked why his expressions of willingness to negotiate with
the Confederate leaders stipulated not only for the restoration of the
Union but also for the enfranchisement of all slaves, he could only
reply by intimating that the yoking of the two requirements was
unobjectionable from any point of view, because he was entirely assured
that Mr. Davis would never agree to reunion, either with or without
slavery. Since, therefore, Union could not be had until after the South
had been whipped, it would be just as well to demand abolition also; for
the rebels would not then be in a position to refuse it, and we should
practically buy both in one transaction. To him it seemed an appalling
blunder to pay the price of this great war simply in order to cure this
especial outbreak of the great national malady, and still to leave
existing in the body politic that which had induced this dissension and
would inevitably afterward induce others like unto it. The excision of
the cause was the only intelligent action. Yet when pushed to the point
of declaring what he would do in the supposed case of an opportunity to
restore the Union, with slavery, he said: "My enemies pretend I am now
carrying on the war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am
President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the
Union." The duty of his official oath compelled him to say this, but he
often and plainly acknowledged that he had no fear of ever being brought
face to face with the painful necessity of saving both the Union and
slavery.
It is worth noticing that the persons who charged upon the President
that he would never assent to a peace which was not founded upon the
abolition of slavery as one of its conditions or stipulations, never
distinctly stated by what right he could insist upon such a condition or
stipulation, or by what process he could establish it or introduce it
into a settlement. Mr. Lincoln certainly never had any thought of
negotiating with the seceded States as an independent country, and
making with them a treaty which could embody an article establishing
emancipation and permanent abolition. He had not power to enter with
them into an agreement of an international character, nor, if they
should offer to return to the Union, retaining their slave institutions,
could he lawfully reject them. The endeavor would be an act of
usurpation, if it was true that no State could go out. The plain truth
was that, from any save a revolutionary point of view, the
constitutional amendment was the only method of effecting the
consummation permanently. When, in June, 1864, Mr. Lincoln said that
abolition of slavery was "a fitting and necessary condition to the final
success of the Union cause," he was obviously speaking of what was
logically "fitting and necessary," and in the same sentence he clearly
specified a constitutional amendment as the practical process. There is
no indication that he ever had any other scheme.
In effect, in electing members of Congress in the autumn of 1864, the
people passed upon the amendment. Votes for Republicans were votes for
the amendment, and the great Republican gain was fairly construed as an
expression of the popular favor towards the measure. But though the
elections thus made the permanent abolition of slavery a reasonably sure
event in the future, yet delay always has dangers. The new Congress
would not meet for over a year. In the interval the Confederacy might
collapse, and abolition become ensnarled with considerations of
reconciliation, of reconstruction, of politics generally. All friends
of the measure, therefore, agreed on the desirability of disposing of
the matter while the present Congress was in the way with it, if this
could possibly be compassed. That it could be carried only by the aid of
a contingent of Democratic votes did not so much discourage them as
stimulate their zeal; for such votes would prevent the mischief of a
partisan or sectional aspect. In his message to Congress, December 6,
1864, the President referred to the measure which, after its failure in
the preceding session, was now to come up again, by virtue of that
shrewd motion for reconsideration. Intelligibly, though not in terms, he
appealed for Democratic help. He said:--
"Although the present is the same Congress and nearly the same members,
and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in
opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of
the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is
not changed; but an intervening election shows, almost certainly, that
the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not. Hence there is
only a question of _time_ as to when the proposed amendment will go to
the States for their action; and as it is so to go, at all events, may
we not agree that the sooner the better. It is not claimed that the
election has imposed a duty on members to change their views or their
votes, any further than, as an additional element to be considered,
their judgment may be affected by it. It is the voice of the people now
for the first time heard upon the question. In a great national crisis
like ours unanimity of action among those seeking a common end is very
desirable,--almost indispensable. And yet no approach to such unanimity
is attainable unless some deference shall be paid to the will of the
majority. In this case the common end is the maintenance of the Union,
and among the means to secure that end, such will, through the election,
is more clearly declared in favor of such a constitutional amendment."
In the closing sentence the word "maintenance" is significant. So far as
the _restoration_ of Union went, the proclamation had done nearly all
that could be done. This amendment was to insure the future
_maintenance_ of the Union by cutting out the cause of disunion.
The President did not rest content with merely reiterating sentiments
which every man had long known that he held. Of such influence as he
could properly exert among members of the House he was not chary. The
debate began on January 6, 1865, and he followed it closely and eagerly.
On the 27th it was agreed that the voting should take place on the
following day. No one yet felt sure of the comparative strength of the
friends and opponents of the measure, and up to the actual taking of the
vote the result was uncertain. We knew, says Arnold, "we should get some
Democratic votes; but whether enough, none could tell." Ex-Governor
English of Connecticut, a Democrat, gave the first Aye from his party;
whereupon loud cheers burst forth; then ten others followed his example.
Eight more Democrats gave their indirect aid by being absent when their
names were called. Thus both the great parties united to establish the
freedom of all men in the United States. As the roll-call drew to the
end, those who had been anxiously keeping tally saw that the measure had
been carried. The speaker, Mr. Colfax, announced the result; ayes 119,
noes 56, and declared that "the joint resolution is passed." At once
there arose from the distinguished crowd an irrepressible outburst of
triumphant applause; there was no use in rapping to order, or trying to
turn to other business, and a motion to adjourn, "in honor of this
immortal and sublime event," was promptly made and carried. At the same
moment, on Capitol Hill, artillery roared loud salutation to the edict
of freedom.
The crowds poured to the White House, and Mr. Lincoln, in a few words,
of which the simplicity fitted well with the grandness of the occasion,
congratulated them, in homely phrase, that "the great job is ended."
Yet, though this was substantially true, he did not live to see the
strictly legal completion. Ratification by the States was still
necessary, and though this began at once, and proceeded in due course as
their legislatures came into session, yet the full three quarters of the
whole number had not passed the requisite resolutions at the time of
his death. This, however, was mere matter of form. The question was
really settled when Mr. Colfax announced the vote of the
representatives.[78]
FOOTNOTES:
[77] A constitutional amendment requires for its passage a two thirds
vote in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and ratification by
three fourths of the States.
[78] Thirteenth Amendment. _First_: Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction. _Second_: Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.