The Fiery Trial (40 page)

Moderate Republicans hailed Lincoln’s response to Greeley’s “impertinent” letter as the “best enunciation” yet of slavery’s relationship to the war effort. Because of what he considered its indifference to the fate of slavery, Wendell Phillips called it, in a letter to the managing editor of the
New York Tribune
, abolitionist Sydney Howard Gay, “the most disgraceful document that ever came from the head of a free people.” But Gay himself congratulated Lincoln. The “general impression” in the North, Gay wrote, was that Lincoln would soon announce the “destruction of slavery” as necessary to save the Union.

Gay’s response was insightful. There is no question that winning the war and preserving the Union were uppermost in Lincoln’s mind, and that as far back as his law career he had always maintained a distinction between professional responsibilities and personal beliefs. Yet the response to Greeley should be understood not as a statement of principle from which Lincoln was determined never to depart so much as a way of preparing northern public opinion for a change in policy on which he had already decided. Certainly, it suggested that freeing all the slaves was now a real option, something that had not been the case a year or even six months earlier. But perhaps the most telling comment came from the
Springfield Republican
. The editors praised Lincoln’s position but pointed out that the very notion of “saving” the Union required rethinking: the prewar Union was gone forever.
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One indication of vast changes on the horizon was the administration’s movement in the summer of 1862 toward the use of black soldiers. The War Department’s call for 300,000 volunteers in July produced disappointing results; on August 4 it asked for another 300,000 and threatened to draft members of state militias if necessary. Leading members of Congress had been advocating black enlistment for months, and the militia and confiscation acts had opened the door, should Lincoln desire to cross the threshold. But for the time being, he authorized the employment of blacks only as “laborers.” Lincoln had long resisted calls to enroll black soldiers. He knew the border states, most of the officer corps, and many white soldiers bitterly opposed such a move. He remained unsure of blacks’ military capacity. “If we were to arm them,” he told the Chicago clergymen, “I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels.”
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The beginnings of a change in policy came in August 1862. Lincoln preferred to let local commanders lead the way, so long as they did so quietly. The irrepressible General John W. Phelps requested arms from Benjamin F. Butler for black units he had been drilling in Louisiana without permission. Butler refused and Phelps resigned. But Secretary of the Treasury Chase warned Butler that the enlistment of blacks was inevitable. “Phelps’s policy prevails instead of yours,” Butler’s politically astute wife, Sarah, wrote him on August 8. Sensing a shift in the political winds, Butler informed Stanton that he was enlisting into Union service the First Native Guards, the free black militia units of Louisiana that had previously served the Confederacy. But not all the enrollees were free, since, as a Treasury official in New Orleans noted, “nobody inquires whether the recruit is (or has been) a slave.”

Ironically, the first blacks to take part in Civil War battles did so in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. In November and December 1861, Unionists from the Creek and Seminole nations who repudiated treaties of alliance their tribal leaders had signed with the Confederacy fought pitched battles against pro-southern forces, after which they retreated into Kansas. In these encounters, some three hundred black men—former slaves and free men who lived with the Indians—fought on the Union side. Senator James H. Lane of Kansas immediately advocated the enlistment of Indians into the Union army, but fearing an adverse reaction among white residents of the West, the War Department held back. But in May 1862, the First Indian Home Guard was mustered into the Union army. Despite its name this was a triracial unit. Whites from Kansas, Indians, and blacks fought side by side when the unit invaded Indian Territory in July 1862 in an unsuccessful effort to wrest it from Confederate control.
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Meanwhile, Lane, without explicit permission, was also recruiting soldiers in Kansas for a black unit. According to the
New York Tribune
’s Washington correspondent, both Secretary of War Stanton and Lincoln told Lane they would not interfere, although for months Lane felt obliged to “keep [the soldiers] from public view.” On August 25, Stanton authorized General Rufus Saxton in South Carolina to recruit up to 5,000 black soldiers. Stanton attached a note to his order: “This must never see daylight, because it is so much in advance of public opinion.” These steps were meant to ease manpower shortages in specific areas, not to initiate a general policy of black enlistment. But the military’s ever-increasing need for men suggested that the widespread recruitment of black troops could not be postponed forever.
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III

“F
ROM THE TENOR
of his remarks,” one reporter commented on Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley, “if the next battle in Virginia results in a decided victory for our army,” an emancipation proclamation “will be forthwith issued.” A few days later, Union forces suffered a humiliating defeat at Second Bull Run. Not until September 17 at Antietam, where George B. McClellan turned back the Confederate invasion of Maryland in the bloodiest day of fighting of the entire war, did the Union achieve the success for which Lincoln had been waiting. On September 22, 1862, he informed his cabinet that the decision to issue an emancipation edict postponed in July could no longer be delayed. “My mind has been much occupied with this subject,” he told them. “I think the time has come now.” Lincoln said he had promised God that if Robert E. Lee’s army were driven out of Maryland, he would issue the proclamation. Lincoln did not mention it, but the sixty-day notice given to rebels after the passage of the Second Confiscation Act expired the next day, so some further action seemed to be called for. In any event, the decision had been made, but he invited the cabinet to offer stylistic suggestions.
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Like the postponed order of July, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln presented to the cabinet gave the Confederate states until January 1 to cease the rebellion or see their slaves freed. It again offered the alternative of gradual emancipation and endorsed the colonization of freed slaves, although at Seward’s insistence, Lincoln revised the language to make clear that this would proceed only with the consent of the colonists and of Central American governments. Unlike its predecessor, however, the new edict quoted the Article of War of March and the Second Confiscation Act of July and directed military personnel to enforce their provisions regarding fugitive slaves and emancipation (as Greeley had demanded). The draft Lincoln presented to the cabinet stated that the freedom of the slaves would be sustained during the term of “the present incumbent,” an odd formulation for someone normally so precise in the use of language. What would be the status of these persons after Lincoln left office? Seward and Chase objected to this phrase, and Lincoln dropped it. The final version promised that those to whom it applied would be “forever free.”
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With the exception of Montgomery Blair, the cabinet endorsed Lincoln’s decision. “It is a despotic act in the cause of the Union,” Welles wrote, “and I may add of freedom.” The proclamation, a correspondent of New York Democratic leader Samuel L. M. Barlow reported from Washington, portended a “Northern Revolution.” “No one here,” he added, “talks conservatism any longer, or speaks of the old Constitution.” Overall, however, the announcement on September 22, 1862, of the preliminary proclamation launched a two-pronged approach to ending slavery. It envisioned general emancipation in the rebel states, but adhered to the program of gradual, compensated emancipation for the border. To be sure, abolition in the Confederacy would fatally undermine slavery everywhere. Once slavery died in the Deep South,
Harper’s Weekly
pointed out, it was “utterly impossible that Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri can continue to maintain the institution.” Thus, wrote the
Springfield Republican
, the proclamation offered a glimpse of a “stirring” future, whose exact contours remained to be determined: “[A] great social, political, and financial revolution is to be effected in every rebellious state.”
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The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, one newspaper noted, had been “somewhat anticipated, from recent rumors and unofficial reports.” Nonetheless, public reaction was intense. The announcement, the
New York Tribune
predicted, would “separate the sheep from the goats.” Certainly this seemed to be the case in the border states and occupied South, where it drove a wedge into the Unionist coalition. Thomas A. R. Nelson, a former Whig congressman and one of Tennessee’s most prominent Unionists, accused Lincoln of setting out to “destroy the last vestige of freedom among us,” and switched his allegiance to the Confederacy. Although the proclamation did not apply to the border states, the reaction there was mostly hostile. “The measure is wholly unwarrantable and wholly pernicious,” wrote the
Louisville Journal
. “Kentucky cannot and will not acquiesce in this measure. Never!” On the other hand, Missouri Radicals, who had been calling for emancipation as part of a battle with the Blairs for control of state politics, hailed the announcement. It was “the noblest act of the age on this continent,” one of their leaders, B. Gratz Brown, wrote from St. Louis.
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Most northern Republicans welcomed the proclamation. Twelve governors were meeting at Altoona, Pennsylvania, to discuss war policy when it was released. They voted to adjourn and sent a delegation to Washington to offer congratulations. “Men vastly more conservative than I have ever been,” reported Senator Ira Harris of New York, embraced Lincoln’s policy. So did many War Democrats. “If they lose their negroes it is their own fault not ours,” one wrote from Illinois. Some abolitionists and Radicals lamented the absence of any moral statement against slavery in the document. It was “merely a war-measure,” complained Lydia Maria Child, with “no recognition of principles of justice or humanity.” But most were overjoyed, including some of Lincoln’s harshest critics. “Hurrah for Old Abe and the
proclamation
,” exulted Benjamin F. Wade. “From the date of this proclamation,” declared the
Chicago Tribune
, “begins the history of this Republic as…the home of freedom.” A month after excoriating the president for his embrace of colonization, Frederick Douglass called the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation the most important document ever issued by an American president, the “first chapter” in a new national history. Lincoln, Douglass assured his readers, “will take no backward step.” Commendations poured into the White House (“all that a vain man could hope for,” Lincoln wrote).
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“The liberated men are to have rights before the law,” declared the
Springfield Republican
. But the preliminary proclamation left unresolved their future status. Lincoln still assumed that large numbers would agree to be colonized outside the country. On September 24—two days after they considered the proclamation—and again on the twenty-sixth, the cabinet discussed colonization. Lincoln, according to Secretary of the Navy Welles, thought it essential “to provide an asylum for a race which we had emancipated but which could never be recognized or admitted to be our equals.” He thought a treaty could be worked out with a government in West Africa or Central America “to which the Negroes could be sent.” It was “distinctly understood,” Welles recorded in his diary, that emancipation and colonization were linked. Attorney General Bates again proposed compulsory deportation (“the more the better,” he thought), but Lincoln demurred: “Their emigration must be voluntary and without expense to themselves.”
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By the time of the cabinet discussion, numerous questions had arisen about the validity of Ambrose W. Thompson’s land grant in Colombia, his grandiose accounts of the region’s natural resources, and the attitude of the local government. Welles considered the entire plan “a rotten remnant of an intrigue of the last administration.” The House Ways and Means Committee had determined that the area was “uninhabitable” and that in any event, Thompson “had not a particle of a title to an inch of it.” The Smithsonian Institution reported that samples of Chiriqui coal examined by a leading scientist were worthless. If loaded onto naval vessels, the coal “would spontaneously take fire.” Since 1860, Colombia had been engaged in its own civil war, albeit one less bloody than that of the United States, making it uncertain who possessed the authority to sign an agreement to settle emancipated slaves in Chiriqui. Moreover, other Central American governments had been complaining to Secretary of State Seward about public discussion of colonies on their soil. The cabinet agreed that colonization could not go forward without the agreement of the relevant governments. On September 24, the administration suspended Pomeroy’s colonization expedition, which had been set to embark the following week.
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