THE STRUGGLE FOR EMANCIPATION
In the meantime great events were occurring which were in some respects
more important in their bearing on the war than battles would have
been. In these events the war recognized itself and adapted itself to
its conditions.
From the beginning the abolitionists had clamorously and ceaselessly
demanded of Mr. Lincoln that he should recognize the actual cause of
the war by proclaiming freedom for the slaves at the South. There was
no doubt in anybody's mind that the war was simply the culmination of
that "irrepressible conflict" between the systems and sentiments of
free and slave labor which had constituted the burden of the country's
history for nearly half a century. If there had been no slavery there
would have been no war.
It is true that a very large proportion of the Southern people
regretted slavery, deprecated its existence, and earnestly desired to
be rid of it. It is also true that the great mass of the Southerners
were non-slaveholders, and that their fighting was done not for the
perpetuation of that institution, in which they had no interest, but in
assertion of those reserved rights of the individual states upon the
maintenance of which they sincerely believed that the liberty of the
people depended. These people desired to take their states out of the
Union, not for the sake of slavery, but for the sake of that right of
local self-government which they regarded as the fundamental condition
of liberty among men.
On the other hand a large proportion of the Northern people cared
little or nothing about slavery--many of them even approving the
institution as the only practicable arrangement under which blacks and
whites could live peaceably together, and as a condition eminently
proper for the incapable black man. But these believed in the
maintenance of the Union as a condition of liberty and progress, and
were ready to sacrifice their lives and their possessions in behalf of
that end.
Nevertheless it was clear from the beginning that in the last analysis,
the war involved as its issue the maintenance of slavery, or the
destruction of that system root and branch.
Personally Mr. Lincoln hated slavery and very earnestly desired its
extermination. But, as he reminded those who beset him with unsolicited
advice, he was restrained by his oath of office while they were free to
advocate any principle or policy that might seem good in their eyes.
Moreover, he had upon him the tremendous task of preserving the Union
and in aid of that supreme purpose he was ready to sacrifice all other
considerations of what kind soever. In answer to an impassioned appeal
from Horace Greeley in August, 1862, Mr. Lincoln set forth his attitude
in these words:
"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave,
I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do
it. And if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I
would also do that."
At the beginning Mr. Lincoln had clearly seen the necessity of winning
all the support he could to his war measures. He had seen that while
practically the whole population of the North would stand by him in a
war for the preservation of the Union, there must be a very great and
dangerous defection, should he make the war one for the extirpation
of slavery in those states in which the institution existed under
protection of the Federal Constitution. By thus resolutely refusing
to make the war a crusade against slavery, and declaring--as he did
in his official utterances--that it was no part of his purpose to
interfere with the domestic institutions of any state, Mr. Lincoln had
drawn to his support a vast body of influential citizens who would
otherwise have opposed, and whose influence was great enough perhaps,
if it had been offended, to have robbed him of the means of restoring
the disrupted Union. Had he adopted the policy of the extremists at
the North, had he begun by declaring war upon slavery rather than upon
disunion, there is little doubt that Maryland, Kentucky and the whole
strength of Missouri would have been thrown into the Confederate side
of the scale with disastrous effect. Even New York, the financially and
otherwise dominant Northern state, would have given him at best only
a divided and ineffective allegiance, while in all the other states
of the North, heavy minorities, and in some cases perhaps commanding
majorities, would have opposed his measures and deprived him of that
support in Congress and the country upon which depended his success in
his effort to restore and perpetuate the Union.
By his policy of waging war at the outset only for the salvation of
the nation's integrity he won to his measures the support of hundreds
of thousands whose antagonism, or whose dissatisfied inactivity,
would have threatened the National arms with defeat and disaster. So
far-reaching indeed was the effect of his wiser policy that it gave to
the country in its hour of sorest need the services of the great War
Minister, Edwin M. Stanton, with all that his inclusion in the cabinet
implied.
Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln were not friends. They were very nearly
enemies. Stanton was a Democrat of very pronounced views; Mr. Lincoln
represented a party which Stanton had strongly and even bitterly
assailed, holding it to be sectional in origin, impulse and purpose,
and therefore scarcely less than a treasonable conspiracy against the
Nation. But when Mr. Lincoln resolutely formulated his policy, as one
that had for its sole object the restoration of the American Union of
States and the preservation of the Nation from disruption, Mr. Stanton
gladly consented to bear his share in the conduct of affairs with that
end in view.
It was a daring thing for Mr. Lincoln to do, thus to place at the
head of the War Department when actual war was on, a Democrat whose
Democracy was everywhere known to be pronounced and aggressive. Mr.
Lincoln foresaw that such an appointment would inevitably invite
hostile criticism and probably active opposition. But Mr. Lincoln
was a man of exalted moral courage. He needed the peculiar abilities
of Edwin M. Stanton at the head of the War Department at a time when
the war seemed almost everywhere to be going against the Union cause,
and he needed Stanton's influence in the country. He therefore risked
criticism and made the appointment as one that would tend better than
any other to marshal the Federal strength into an effective force and
perhaps extort victory at the last from a situation which had thus far
brought mainly disappointment.
Perhaps the sagacity of the President had still another object in
view in the appointment of Stanton. Mr. Lincoln was a shrewd and
far-seeing politician. By appointing Stanton, his personal enemy and a
distinguished Democrat, to the second most important place among his
Constitutional advisers, he did more than in any other way he could
have done, to reconcile Northern Democrats to his administration and to
make of them earnest supporters instead of active antagonists of his
measures for the preservation of the Union.
Mr. Lincoln had several opportunities to emphasize his attitude and
purpose. The best of these was furnished by Horace Greeley's article,
in reply to which he wrote the passages already quoted in this chapter.
But the matter was made more emphatic in other ways. When McClellan,
early in the war, advanced into Western Virginia, that general issued
a proclamation to all slaveholders there assuring them that it was
no part of the Government's purpose or policy to interfere with the
institution of slavery; that on the contrary the Federal forces would
promptly restore to their masters any fugitive slaves who might escape
to the Union lines, and that the Federal armies would themselves
suppress every attempt at slave insurrection which might be made in the
interest of the Union cause. "Notwithstanding all that has been said
by the traitors," he wrote, "to induce you to believe our advent among
you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand
one thing clearly; not only will we abstain from all such interference,
but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at
insurrection on their part."
There is not the smallest doubt that McClellan issued this proclamation
with Mr. Lincoln's full approval and even probably by his direction. In
any case it reflected the President's attitude and purpose at that time.
At an earlier date, in May, 1861, General B. F. Butler, then commanding
at Fortress Monroe, was appealed to for the return of three fugitive
slaves who had escaped into his lines. He refused upon a law point of
great subtlety. He contended that as negro slaves--chattels of their
owners--were capable of being made useful to the Confederates, not
only as producers of food for the support of the Southern armies,
but also as laborers upon the fortifications and the like, they were
properly "contraband of war" precisely as arms and ammunition and
foodstuffs are. From that time forward an escaping slave was called
a "contraband," and in view of the astonishing lies told by such
"contrabands," and the errors of judgment into which those imaginary
bits of information often led the Northern press and people, there was
at last a general ridiculing of all statements based upon the testimony
of "intelligent contrabands."
Mr. Lincoln did not interfere with General Butler's policy of holding
escaped slaves as merchandise "contraband of war." But in other cases
he did interfere with the strong hand. In August, 1861, General
Fremont, commanding in Missouri, issued a proclamation declaring free
the slaves of every Confederate engaged in war against the Union. Mr.
Lincoln repudiated the proclamation and himself abrogated its terms.
Seven months later, in March, 1862, Mr. Lincoln gravely asked Congress
to adopt a policy of compensated emancipation. The war had already cost
about a billion dollars, and it threatened to cost twice or thrice that
sum in addition, with an uncertain result as the outcome.
Accordingly, Mr. Lincoln planned to end the struggle by a business-like
negotiation. He asked Congress (March 6, 1862), to authorize the
Government to lend pecuniary aid to every state which should adopt
measures looking to the gradual abolition of slavery. He saw and felt
that it would be cheaper for the Government to buy every slave in the
land at twice his market value, than to prosecute the war upon the
enormously costly scale which it had assumed. Incidentally, also, the
making of such an arrangement, if it had been possible to make it,
would have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of men--the flower
of the country's youth on both sides of the line.
It was a business-like and humane thought, and Congress assented to
it. But it was based upon the mistaken notion that the Confederates
were fighting primarily for their property rights in slaves. It ignored
the supremely important fact that the war was costing the Southern
people incalculably more than double the value of all the slaves
owned in those states. It failed to recognize the equally important
fact that, rightly or wrongly, the Southern people sincerely believed
themselves to be contending for liberty, for the constitutional rights
of the states, for the principle of local self-government; that they
were contending against that basilar principle of imperialistic
oppression--the government of communities by a power outside of
themselves. To Mr. Lincoln's own dictum that "no man is good enough
to govern any other man without that other man's consent" they had
added the corollary that no community and no nation is good enough to
govern any other community without that other's consent. They were
fighting, as they confidently believed, for the fundamental principle
of self-government among men, and to that cause they were ready to
make sacrifice of slavery as cheerfully and as heroically as they were
already making sacrifice of all else that they held dear.
Mr. Lincoln misunderstood them and misinterpreted their attitude and
their condition of mind. If they had been offered ten thousand dollars
apiece for all their slaves--worth on the average only a few hundreds
at most--they would have rejected the offer angrily as a tendered
bribe to induce them to give up and betray that cause of human liberty,
states' rights, and the right of local self-government, in behalf of
which they had taken up arms.
To such men, inspired by such beliefs and engaged in such a cause,
no price could offer the smallest temptation. Mr. Lincoln had
misunderstood the Southern people, as they had misunderstood him. Their
warfare had no element of commercialism or of greed in it, precisely
as his was directed not, as they supposed, to the destruction of State
autonomy, but to the sole object of restoring and perpetuating the
American Union. As fanaticism in antagonism to slavery could not swerve
him, so considerations of merely pecuniary advantage did not and could
not influence them. His proposal, which was in effect, to buy all the
negroes in the South, made no more impression upon the Southern mind
than would a proposal to purchase their wives and children, or their
right to sign their own names.
It was under this misapprehension of Southern sentiment that Mr.
Lincoln for a space rejected every suggestion of negro emancipation
and sought to hold his generals in the field to a policy of complete
non-interference with slavery in the Southern States.
We have seen in what fashion he dealt with General Fremont's
proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. On the twelfth of April,
1862, General David Hunter, in command of the forces on the South
Carolina coast, issued a general order to the effect that all slaves
within his immediate jurisdiction should be confiscated as contraband
of war, and instantly set free. On the ninth of May he issued another
general order in which he declared all negroes resident in South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida to be free men.
Ten days later Mr. Lincoln annulled these orders absolutely by
executive command, declaring that the question of the emancipation
of slaves was one which he reserved to himself, and forbidding all
generals in the field to deal with it in any way, direct or indirect.
Congress had legislated on the subject in a very cautious and
hesitating fashion. In August, 1861, it had passed an act authorizing
military commanders to seize and hold all negro slaves found actually
employed in the military service of the Confederacy with the knowledge
and consent of their owners. But the act stipulated that slaves so
confiscated, should not be set free but should be held subject to the
future disposal of the Federal courts.
The proceedings of military officers in the field with respect to this
matter varied according to the views and temper of each. Mr. Lincoln's
revocation of Fremont's orders led to that General's resignation.
General Hunter's act in enlisting a regiment of fugitive slaves who
had fled into his lines, gave great alarm in Congress and in the
country, lest the war should be diverted from its Union-saving purpose
and converted into a crusade for the forcible abolition of slavery,
involving all the horrors of a servile insurrection on the part of
slaves who, in many parts of the South, were scarcely better than half
savages.
General Williams, commanding the Department of the Gulf, sought to
solve the difficulty by the simple process of turning all fugitive
slaves out of his camps, thus avoiding the necessity of deciding
whether or not he would permit masters to come within his lines for the
purpose of recapturing their slaves. Two colonels refused to obey this
order, and were promptly removed from their commands in consequence.
Thus the "irrepressible conflict" of sentiment on the subject of
property in slaves divided the Federal army and sorely vexed the
country as it had done for nearly half a century before.
To Mr. Lincoln it brought perplexities of the gravest sort. It
embarrassed him very greatly in his effort to hold the war steadily
to the purpose he had marked out for it. It defeated all his hopes of
persuading the South to believe that the Government was trying to save
or restore the Union, and that the administration was sincere in its
declaration of a fixed purpose not to interfere with the institution
of slavery in states where it constitutionally existed or to impair
in any way the autonomy of those states. Such pledges could make no
appeal to the minds of Southern men in face of the actual interferences
attempted, often successfully, by commanders in the field.
Worse still, this irreconcilable division of opinion and diversity
of action, threatened to deprive the administration of that strong
support at the North which Mr. Lincoln deemed necessary to a successful
prosecution of the war. It threatened to alienate that great body
of men at the North who were implacably opposed to abolitionism and
who held firmly to the belief that the autonomy of the States was
necessary to the maintenance of liberty, but who were ready enough to
make sacrifice of blood and treasure in aid of a war waged solely for
the preservation of the Union.
In this embarrassing situation Mr. Lincoln made a second attempt to
cripple Southern resistance by securing emancipation by purchase in the
border states, thus cutting off all hope on the part of the South that
those states would ever secede, and at the same time in some degree
satisfying the clamor of the abolitionists. He called the border-state
Congressmen about him and earnestly, even passionately urged them to
vote in Congress for an act pledging the Government to pay to every
state that should decree emancipation the full value of all the slaves
held in such state at the time the census of 1860 was taken. He
especially besought these representatives of border slave states to
persuade their constituents to a willing acceptance of these terms.
Nothing of any practical value came of this effort. It resulted only in
stimulating on the part of the Abolitionists that aggressive insistence
upon universal emancipation by military force which was so sorely
embarrassing to the President.
It was soon afterwards (August 19, 1862), that Horace Greeley published
his open letter entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" to which
Mr. Lincoln replied, setting forth his policy and purpose, in words
already quoted in this chapter: "My paramount object is to save the
Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could do it by freeing
some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."
But all this while Mr. Lincoln contemplated the emancipation of the
slaves by executive proclamation as a war measure to be resorted to
whenever it should seem to him likely to be effective. In the preceding
month of July he had drawn up a proclamation of emancipation, and had
read it to his cabinet. But he had laid it aside, believing that the
time was not yet ripe. The Confederates seemed at that time at high
tide of military success. Their armies, victorious and aggressive, were
overthrowing one Federal force after another, and putting Washington
itself upon an uncertain defense. It was the conviction both of Mr.
Lincoln and of Mr. Seward, that to issue an emancipation proclamation
under such circumstances would not only seem ridiculous in the eyes
of the world but would be everywhere interpreted as a despairing
manifestation of conscious weakness, the futile outcry of failure. He
must wait for victories before taking this step.
But when after Antietam, Lee withdrew from Maryland and abandoned his
campaign against the national capital, Mr. Lincoln decided to assume
the rôle of a victor, dictating terms which he held himself strong
enough to enforce.
Accordingly on September 22, 1862, he issued a proclamation declaring
that on the first of January, 1863, all slaves held in those states or
parts of states which should at that time be still in rebellion should
be then and forever afterwards free.
This was at once a threat and a promise.
It is a matter of curious speculation to consider what would have been
the situation if the Southern States had submitted themselves before
the beginning of 1863. In that event the proclamation of freedom to
slaves within their borders would have been of no effect, inasmuch
as it applied only to states remaining at war. A second executive
proclamation of emancipation would have had no war necessity to justify
or even to excuse it. For the Constitution conferred upon the President
no power to emancipate slaves. It was only on the plea of war necessity
that this power could be remotely and speculatively inferred, and that
war necessity would have passed completely away had the war itself come
to an end before the date set for the enforcement of the threat.
Perhaps it was in view of this very remote contingency that Mr. Lincoln
at that time urged upon Congress the adoption of a constitutional
amendment forbidding slavery anywhere within the borders of the Union.
Congress did not act upon the recommendation at that time, and on the
first of January, 1863, Mr. Lincoln issued his final proclamation
of emancipation, naming the states and parts of states in which
rebellion was held then to exist, and declaring free all the slaves
within those states and parts of states. It did not apply to those
slave states which had not joined the Confederacy, and, except that
Maryland voluntarily freed her slaves near the end of the war, the
institution remained lawful in such states as had not seceded, and
actually continued to exist there until December 18, 1865, when the
ratification of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was
officially proclaimed by Mr. Lincoln's successor.
So far as securing actual liberty to slaves within the Confederate
lines was concerned, the emancipation proclamations had no effect
whatever. They were probably not expected to have any. But they had
an important bearing upon the conduct of the war and the state of
the public mind. They made an end of all doubt about what Federal
commanders in the field should do with slaves escaping to their
lines. They satisfied the strong and growing abolitionist sentiment
at the North, and they had some effect in alienating war Democrats
and a considerable number of Republicans from the Federal cause,
thus checking enlistments in some quarters, and impairing the
administration's support.
This effect was far less marked than it would have been had Mr. Lincoln
issued an emancipation proclamation earlier in the war when he was
first urged to do so. Nevertheless the political effect was notable.
In the autumn elections there was a heavy falling off in Republican
majorities, while in some important states Democrats relentlessly
opposed to the administration and all its policies were elected to
replace Republicans in office. This was notably the case in New York,
where Horatio Seymour succeeded the Republican governor, E. D. Morgan,
and a sentiment in hostility to the administration and to the war
itself grew up, which was afterwards reflected in bloody riots when the
time came for a draft of men for the army.
In Europe and particularly in England, the emancipation proclamation
went far to change a former friendship for the Confederacy, which had
at times threatened danger, into a strong moral support for the Federal
cause.
But whatever moral and political results, for or against the Lincoln
administration, this act may have produced, it had no perceptible
effect upon the actual conduct of the war. That was still to be fought
out at the cost of millions of treasure and multitudes of lives. Many
of its greatest battles were still to come and its most important
campaigns were yet to be fought out.