Lincoln (113 page)

Campbell then asked what terms of reconstruction would be offered if the Confederate states agreed to return to the Union. Lincoln replied that once resistance to the national authority ceased, “the States would be immediately restored to their practical relations to the Union”—a phrase that he used repeatedly. But he made it clear that he would not enter into negotiations while Southerners were in arms against the United States. When Hunter attempted to show that governments had often entered into agreements with rebels and pointed out that Charles I of England had frequently negotiated with those who were fighting against him, the President responded tartly: “I do not profess to be posted in history. On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I, is, that he lost his head in the end.”

As to slavery, Seward reminded the Confederates of Lincoln’s pledge, made most recently in his annual message to Congress: “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.” The Secretary then dropped a bombshell by telling the commissioners that Congress had just submitted the Thirteenth Amendment to the states for ratification. Seeing that the Confederates were rattled by the news, Lincoln turned to Stephens: “I’ll tell you what I would do if I were in your place: I would go home and get the Governor of the State [of Georgia] to call the Legislature together, and get them to recall all the State troops from the war; elect Senators and Members to Congress, and ratify this Constitutional Amendment
prospectively,
so as to take effect—say in five years. Such a ratification would be valid in my opinion.”

Hunter gagged at Lincoln’s terms, which he saw as nothing but “an unconditional surrender on the part of the Confederate States and their people.” Shortly afterward Stephens concluded that it was “entirely fruitless” to have further discussion of a peace settlement, and he turned to the vexed problem
of the exchange of prisoners, which Lincoln said he had placed entirely in Grant’s hands. On leaving the
River Queen,
the Confederate Vice President urged the President to think again about his plan for an armistice and a Mexican adventure, and Lincoln replied, “Well, Stephens, I will re-consider it, but I do not think my mind will change, but I will re-consider.”

The Hampton Roads conference, as Lincoln reported to Congress, “ended without result.” It was a failure, as he had expected it to be, because he would not negotiate with Jefferson Davis. But in the course of the conversations Lincoln made two remarkable suggestions that showed the direction of his thinking about ending the war. Discussing possible terms of reconstruction, Stephens asked what would be the status of the Southern slaves who had not been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. He and Seward agreed that only about 200,000 slaves had up to that point gained their freedom. According to Campbell, Lincoln said that there were different opinions about the effects of his proclamation: “Some believed that it was not operative at all; others that it operated only within the circle which had been occupied by the army and others believed that it was operative everywhere in the States to which it applied.” This was a question that only the courts could decide, but, if Stephens’s later report can be credited, the President added: “His own opinion was, that as the Proclamation was a
war measure,
and would have effect only from its being an exercise of the war power, as soon as the war ceased, it would be inoperative for the future. It would be held to apply only to such slaves as had come under its operation while it was in active exercise.”

Stephens’s record would be highly suspect were it not confirmed by other, more contemporary evidence that Lincoln did not now insist upon the end of slavery as a precondition for peace. He told Representative Singleton that his “To Whom It May Concern” letter to the Confederate commissioners at Niagara Falls had “put him in a false position—that he did not mean to make the abolition of slavery a condition” of peace and that “he would be willing to grant peace with an amnesty, and restoration of the union, leaving slavery to abide the decisions of judicial tribunals.” On the day before Christmas, Lincoln repeated these views to Browning, who was advising Singleton; he declared “that he had never entertained the purpose of making the abolition of slavery a condition precedent to the termination of the war, and the restoration of the Union.”

If these conversations can be believed, the President of the United States who had demanded emancipation as a precondition for negotiations in July 1864, who had insisted that his party’s platform include a call for abolition, who had pledged that he would never retract a word of his proclamations or send a man back into slavery, who had just been working closely with Congress to secure the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, had now changed his mind about eradicating slavery. Since Lincoln himself left no record of any of these interviews, it is possible that all the witnesses distorted his message. But it is more likely—though this can only be a speculation—
that Lincoln’s remarks stemmed from his realization that slavery was already dead. His principal concern now was that the war might drag on for at least another year. His purpose was to undermine the Jefferson Davis administration by appealing to those “followers” mentioned in his annual message to Congress. He wanted to raise their hopes, if necessary through a campaign of misinformation. Clearly the three Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads would have an easier task in persuading other Southerners to lay down their arms if they promised that at least the remnants of their “peculiar institution” could still be saved.

A second suggestion that Lincoln made to the Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads reinforces this view of his intent. Pledging that he would be generous in restoring Southern property seized under the Confiscation Acts, he went on to say, according to Stephens and Hunter, “that he would be willing to be taxed to remunerate the Southern people for their slaves.” He had all along favored compensated emancipation, and he believed that many Northerners were “in favor of an appropriation as high as Four Hundred Millions of Dollars for this purpose.” Seward strongly dissented, showing his impatience by getting up and pacing the floor, exclaiming “that in his opinion the United States had done enough in expending so much money on the war for the abolition of slavery,” but Lincoln said that both sections were responsible: “If it was wrong in the South to hold slaves, it was wrong in the North to carry on the slave trade and sell them to the South.” He “could give no assurance—enter into no stipulation” on this subject, but he told the Confederates that he could mention persons, “whose names would astonish you, who are willing to do this, if the war shall now cease without further expense, and with the abolition of slavery as stated.”

That this proposal was not a figment of the Confederates’ imagination is attested by the proposal that Lincoln drew up when he returned to Washington, which asked Congress to appropriate $400,000,000 to be distributed to the Southern states in proportion to their slave population. Half would be paid by April 1, if all resistance to the national authority ceased, and the remaining half by July 1, provided that the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. This astonishing document told much of Lincoln’s generosity of spirit and of his understanding of the problems the South faced in making the transition from a slave society to a free society. But it revealed even more his almost desperate sense of urgency to bring the war to a speedy end.

The President laid his plan before the cabinet at an evening session on February 5, earnestly defending it “as a measure of strict and simple economy.” “How long has this war lasted, and how long do you suppose it will still last?” he asked his advisers. Answering his own question, he told them: “We cannot hope that it will end in less than a hundred days. We are now spending three millions a day, and that will equal the full amount I propose to pay, to say nothing of the lives lost and property destroyed.” But his colleagues were not convinced. Welles thought the President’s wish to conciliate
the South was commendable, “but there may be such a thing as so overdoing as to cause a distrust or adverse feeling.” “The Rebels,” he predicted, “would misconstrue it if [the offer was] made,” doubtless taking it as evidence of Northern weakness or war-weariness. Anyway, as Fessenden noted, it was “not advisable” to submit the proposal to Congress now, “because there would probably be no chance of its being adopted before the adjournment.” The cabinet members felt strongly “that the only way to effectually end the war was by force of arms, and that until the war was thus ended no proposition to pay money would come from us.” “You are all against me,” Lincoln said sadly, and he reluctantly gave up his proposal, noting, as he folded the papers away, that they “were drawn up and submitted to the Cabinet and unanimously disapproved by them.”

All along Lincoln believed that the surest way to undermine the Confederacy was by setting up loyal governments in the Southern states as they fell under the control of the Union armies. His terms for reconstruction were both generous and vague, for he was thinking less of the status of the South after the war than of means to stop the fighting. For this reason he was not greatly troubled when his military commanders failed to follow the letter of the law in setting up new Unionist regimes in the Southern states, nor was he interested in the details of registration and voting requirements. What he wanted was a series of seemingly viable loyal governments in several Southern states that could present a believable alternative to the Confederacy.

That focus had led to fierce disputes with Radicals in his own party, who were worried about what would happen in the South after the war—about the continuing economic and political power of the Southern planter class, the protection of the civil rights of the freedmen, and the status of black labor in the postwar South. The President was not indifferent to any of these concerns, but he preferred to postpone discussion of such divisive issues until the defeat of the Confederacy. In July these differences between President and Congress had come to a head when the legislators refused to recognize the reconstruction governments he had set up in Louisiana and Arkansas and, instead, insisted on their own program in the Wade-Davis bill, which the President vetoed.

Now, during the winter of 1864–1865, the President and the Congress faced precisely the same issues—but the outcome was remarkably different. As the Congress assembled, Lincoln let it be known that he would veto any reconstruction bill that did not recognize the free-state government he had been carefully nurturing in Louisiana. Instead of leading to a crisis, his insistence produced a compromise. On December 15, Representative Ashley, who was also in charge of the Thirteenth Amendment, introduced a bill designed to please both Conservatives and Radicals, one that he hoped the Congress would approve and the President sign. It extended congressional
recognition to Lincoln’s 10 percent government in Louisiana but required the other Southern states to follow the procedures announced in the ill-fated Wade-Davis bill—namely, that voters must take the “iron-clad” oath that they had never supported the rebellion and that more than 50 percent of the eligible voters must favor any new, reconstructed government. In addition, Ashley’s bill called for Negro suffrage, a provision that Radicals increasingly insisted was the only way to ensure the loyalty of the Southern states.

Over the next weeks Ashley’s compromise measure underwent intense scrutiny from all parties. For the more extreme Radicals, Charles Sumner accepted the proposal, grumbling about the readmission of Louisiana—“which ought not to be done”—but rejoicing that giving suffrage to blacks in the other Southern states was “an immense political act.” Montgomery Blair and N. P. Banks, both Conservatives, went over the measure with the President, who thought the provision for black jurors and voters “might be objectionable to some.” Agreeing that this clause “would simply throw the Government into the hands of the blacks, as the white people under that arrangement would refuse to vote,” Banks promised that the objectionable juror clause would be removed. Congressmen of various persuasions weighed in with suggestions for change, which ranged from simply admitting Louisiana and Arkansas to insisting that all new Southern state constitutions must guarantee “equality of civil rights before the law... to all persons.”

Obligingly Ashley amended his bill again and again in the hope of attracting a majority. He even added one remarkable provision that would recognize the existing Confederate governments in the Southern states as legitimate if they submitted to the United States, repudiated the Confederate debt, and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. But no combination worked, and on February 21, Ashley was obliged to give up, conceding that “no bill providing for the reorganization of loyal State government in the rebel States can pass this Congress.”

The defeat of Ashley’s bill was a major victory for Lincoln. Seven months earlier every Republican in the Senate and all but six Republicans in the House had voted for the Wade-Davis bill, to take the process of reconstruction out of the President’s hands. Only Lincoln’s pocket veto had kept the reconstruction process under the control of the executive branch. Now, in a remarkable turnabout, the Congress failed to adopt any reconstruction legislation. The approaching end of the congressional session left the reconstruction entirely in Lincoln’s hands. Lamenting the change, Henry Winter Davis, the arch-Radical who was now a lame-duck congressman, mourned: “Sir, when I came into Congress ten years ago, this was a Government of law. I have lived to see it a Government of personal will. Congress has dwindled from a power to dictate law and the policy of the Government to a commission to audit accounts and appropriate moneys to enable the Executive to execute his will and not ours.”