The Fiery Trial (57 page)
“Liberty has been won,” Charles Sumner proclaimed in a eulogy after Lincoln’s death. “The battle for Equality is still pending.”
27
Unlike Sumner and other Radicals, Lincoln did not see Reconstruction as an opportunity for a sweeping political and social revolution beyond emancipation. He had long made clear his opposition to the confiscation and redistribution of land. He believed, as most Republicans did in April 1865, that voting requirements should be determined by the states. He assumed that political control in the South would pass to white Unionists, reluctant secessionists, and forward-looking former Confederates. But time and again during the war, Lincoln, after initial opposition, had come to embrace positions first advanced by abolitionists and Radical Republicans. Had he died early in 1862, it would be quite easy to argue today that Lincoln would never have issued a proclamation of emancipation, enrolled black solders in the Union army, or advocated allowing some black men to vote. Whatever the makeup of the new southern governments established during a second Lincoln term, had they passed laws, as those established by Johnson did, severely limiting the ability of the former slaves to choose their employment, acquire property, and enjoy the other basic rights Republicans believed essential to freedom, Lincoln undoubtedly would have listened carefully to the outcry for further protection for the former slaves.
Despite their differences, Lincoln had always tried to find common ground with the Republican majority in Congress. It is entirely plausible to imagine Lincoln and Congress agreeing on a Reconstruction policy that encompassed federal protection for basic civil rights plus limited black suffrage, along the lines Lincoln proposed just before his death. Radicals would have demanded more, but this would have been a far cry from what Lincoln’s successor was willing to tolerate. Perhaps, confronted by a united Republican party and a president willing to enforce the law, white southerners would have learned to acknowledge the rights of the former slaves. Had they done so, blacks and the nation might have been spared the long nightmare of disenfranchisement, segregation, and racial violence that followed the end of Reconstruction. Or, perhaps, even this Reconstruction plan would have aroused violent opposition in the South. Lincoln would then have faced the alternative that in fact came to confront Congress: whether to move forward to full black suffrage and a vigorous federal commitment to protect blacks’ rights as citizens, or relegate the freedpeople to quasi-freedom under the domination of their former masters. No one can say what would have happened then, for by now we have advanced far into the realm of the purely speculative.
Lincoln did not enter the White House expecting to preside over the destruction of slavery. A powerful combination of events, as we have seen, propelled him down the road to emancipation and then to a reconsideration of the place blacks would occupy in a post-slavery America. Of course, the unprecedented crisis in which, as one member of Congress put it, “the events of an entire century transpire in a year,” made change the order of the day. Yet as the presidency of his successor demonstrated, not all men placed in a similar situation possessed the capacity for growth, the essence of Lincoln’s greatness. “I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln,” the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote one week before his death. “With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continuously; and considering how slavery had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole country, it was great good luck to have the people elect a man who was
willing
to grow.”
28
Two months after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, one abolitionist wrote that “to make the proclamation a success, we must make freedom a blessing to the freed.”
29
The question of how to do so would long outlive Lincoln and the Civil War.
B
EGINNING WITH MY FIRST WORK OF HISTORY,
a study of the ideology of the Republican party before the Civil War published four decades ago, Abraham Lincoln has played an important part in my historical scholarship. But until now, he has not occupied center stage. Nonetheless, like so many other students of the American past, I have always been fascinated by Lincoln and what his life tells us about our society and its history.
In writing this book, I owe my greatest debt to the legions of historians who have studied, from every possible angle, Lincoln and his era. I want to single out for special thanks a number of scholars who have published books during the past decade or so that make available previously inaccessible documentary sources related to Lincoln: Michael Burlingame, for editing a series of volumes of writings by persons close to Lincoln; Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, for compiling and evaluating later recollections of Lincoln’s words; Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, for gathering and publishing the interviews conducted by Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon; and the staff of the Lincoln Legal Papers project, who have produced in digital form the records of Lincoln’s law career.
Indeed, thanks to the digital revolution of the past decade, a vast array of primary sources relevant to the study of Lincoln are now readily available online, making the task of the researcher immeasurably less onerous. I thank John Tofanelli of the Columbia University Libraries for assisting me with research on digital sources. Incongruous as it may seem, much of the research for this book in online resources such as the
Official Records
of the Civil War, the
Congressional Globe
, and the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, as well as Lincoln’s
Collected Works
at the website of the Abraham Lincoln Association, was conducted in the spring of 2008 when I was fortunate enough to serve as a Leverhulme Visiting Scholar at Queen Mary University, University of London. I thank the Leverhulme Trust and my colleagues at Queen Mary for making this possible. Thanks, too, to the American Civilization Department at Harvard University, which invited me to deliver the 2009 William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in the History of American Civilization, where I presented some of the ideas in this book, and to Columbia University, whose Tenured Faculty Research Program helped to defray research expenses.
I am deeply indebted to friends and colleagues who generously read the entire manuscript of this book and offered valuable corrections and suggestions: Alan Brinkley, Andrew Delbanco, Peter Field, Melinda Lawson, Olivia Mahoney, Bruce Miroff, Mark E. Neely Jr., and James Oakes. I have benefited from many conversations about the writing of history with Judith Stein on the way to and from our weekly tennis matches. I also wish to thank scholars who responded to my requests for information and shared the results of their own research: A. J. Aiseirithe, Gregory Baggett, Elizabeth Blackmar, Michael Burlingame, Eduardo Posada Carbo, Harold Holzer, Frank Safford, Lea VanderVelde, and John Witt. Thanayi Jackson and Benjamin Soskis tracked down elusive material for me at the Library of Congress and National Archives. Peter and Philip Kunhardt, Olivia Mahoney, and Susan Severtson helped me to assemble the images in this book.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my literary agent, Sandra Dijkstra (my classmate at Long Beach High School a number of years ago), for her encouragement, and to Steve Forman, my editor at W. W. Norton, who offered sage advice at every stage of this project. Thanks also to his able assistant, Rebecca Charney, and to Mary Babcock, the excellent copy editor for this book.
As always, my greatest debt is to my wife, Lynn Garafola, and daughter, Daria Rose Foner, not simply for being willing to live with Lincoln, as it were, for several years, but for serving as sounding boards for my ideas and, not least, reading the manuscript and making numerous valuable suggestions.
The book is dedicated to my uncle, Henry Foner, the last survivor of four remarkable brothers, including my late father, Jack D. Foner, who devoted their lives to advancing social justice in this country.
1787 | U.S. Constitution does not mention the word “slavery” but includes protections for the institution including the fugitive slave and three-fifths clauses. |
1808 | January: Congress prohibits the importation of slaves into the United States. |
1809 | February 12: Lincoln is born in Hardin County, Kentucky. |
1816 | December: Lincoln family moves to southwestern Indiana. |
| American Colonization Society is founded. |
1820 | Missouri Compromise prohibits slavery in Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36º30'. |
1828, 1831 | Lincoln takes part in two flatboat trips to New Orleans. |
1830 | March: Lincoln family moves to Macon County, Illinois. |
1831 | July: Lincoln settles in New Salem, Illinois. |
1833–38 | Great Britain abolishes slavery throughout its empire. |
1833 | December: American Anti-Slavery Society is founded. |
1834 | Lincoln is elected to first of four terms in Illinois House of Representatives. |
1837 | January: Votes against proslavery legislature resolutions. |
| March: With Dan Stone, issues “protest” explaining their votes. |
| April: Moves to Springfield, Illinois. |
| October: Illinois Anti-Slavery Society is formed. |
| November 7: Abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy is killed by a mob in Alton, Illinois. |
1838 | January 27: Lincoln gives his speech “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” at the Young Men’s Lyceum, Springfield. |
1841 | July: Successfully argues case of |
| September: Encounters twelve chained slaves during a boat trip on the Ohio River. |
1842 | February 22: Gives a speech before a temperance society in Springfield. |
| November 4: Marries Mary Todd. |
1846 | August 3: Wins election to the U.S. House of Representatives. |
1847 | October: Unsuccessfully represents Robert Matson, who seeks to retain ownership of slaves he has brought from Kentucky to Illinois. |
| December: Introduces a resolution in the House of Representatives asking President James K. Polk to identify the “spot” of American soil where Mexico allegedly launched war against the United States. |
1848 | Campaigns in New England for Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor. |
1849 | January 10: Reads to the House of Representatives a bill for gradual abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C., but does not introduce it. |
1852 | July 6: Gives a eulogy on Henry Clay. |
1853 | Illinois enacts a law barring African-Americans from entering the state. |
1854 | January: Stephen A. Douglas introduces the Nebraska bill which, when passed in May as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, repeals the Missouri Compromises and applies the principle of “popular sovereignty” to these territories. |
| October 16: Lincoln gives a speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Peoria. |
1855 | February: Fails in his bid for election to the U.S. Senate. |
1856 | May 29: Takes part in the Bloomington, Illinois, convention of the Republican party; delivers his “lost speech.” |
| September–October: Campaigns for John C. Frémont, Republican candidate for president. |
1857 | March 6: Supreme Court issues its |
| June 26: Lincoln gives a speech in Springfield criticizing the |
1858 | Serves on the Board of Managers of the Illinois Colonization Society. |
| June 16: Gives his House Divided speech at the Republican state convention in Springfield. |
| August–October: Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debate. |
| November: Democrats retain control of the Illinois legislature, ensuring defeat of Lincoln’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate. |
1860 | February 27: Lincoln gives a speech at Cooper Institute, New York City. |
| May 18: Is nominated for president by the Republican National Convention in Chicago. |
| November 6: Is elected the sixteenth president of the United States. |
| December 20: South Carolina secedes from the Union; six other southern states soon follow. |
1861 | February 4: Seceded states meet in Montgomery, form the Confederate States of America, and elect Jefferson Davis president. |
| March 2: U.S. Congress adopts the proposed Thirteenth Amendment forbidding future national action against slavery. |
| March 4: Lincoln gives his first inaugural address. |
| April 12: The attack on Fort Sumter begins the Civil War. |
| April 15: Lincoln calls for troops to put down the rebellion; four more states secede by May. |
| May 24: General Benjamin F. Butler declares that fugitive slaves at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, are “contraband of war” and will not be returned to their owners. |
| August 6: Lincoln signs the first Confiscation Act, which nullifies owners’ claims to slaves employed by the Confederate army. |
| September 11: Lincoln orders General John C. Frémont to modify the order in which he had declared slaves of Confederates in Missouri free. |
| November: Proposes his plan to Delaware for gradual, compensated emancipation. |
| December 3: Gives his annual message to Congress, recommending a program of compensated emancipation and colonization of freed slaves outside the United States. |
1862 | March 6: Sends a message to Congress calling for aid to states that adopt plans of gradual, compensated emancipation. |
| March 13: Signs an additional article of war passed by Congress, forbidding the army from returning fugitive slaves. |
| April 16: Signs a bill for immediate abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation to loyal owners and funds for colonization. |
| May 19: Nullifies the order of Major General David Hunter freeing slaves in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. |
| May 20: Signs the Homestead Act. |
| May–June: Peninsular campaign of General George B. McClellan fails. |
| June 19: Lincoln signs the bill for immediate, uncompensated abolition in the territories. |
| July 12: Meets with members of Congress from the border states to promote a plan for gradual, compensated emancipation with colonization. |
| July 13: Mentions his plan for general emancipation to cabinet members Gideon Welles and William H. Seward. |
| July 17: Signs the Second Confiscation Act freeing slaves owned by disloyal persons who come within Union lines and providing funds for colonization. |
| Signs the Militia Act authorizing enrollment of blacks in the war effort. |
| July 22: Presents to the cabinet an order for general emancipation in the Confederacy; issuance is postponed at the urging of Secretary of State Seward and others. |
| August 14: Meets at the White House with a black delegation and urges them to support the idea of colonization. |
| August 22: Releases his letter responding to Horace Greeley’s “Prayer of Twenty Millions.” |
| August 25: The War Department authorizes recruitment of black soldiers in the Sea Islands. |
| September 22: Five days after the battle of Antietam, Lincoln issues the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, warning that slaves in areas still in rebellion on January 1 will be freed, promising aid to states that adopt plans for gradual, compensated emancipation, and again referring to colonization. |
| November 29: Attorney General Edward Bates rules that free black persons born in the United States are American citizens. |
| December 1: Lincoln’s annual message to Congress reiterates his support for gradual, compensated emancipation with colonization. |
| December 31: Lincoln signs the bill admitting West Virginia to the Union. |
| Signs a contract with Bernard Kock for the transportation of freed slaves to Île à Vache, Haiti. |
1863 | January 1: Issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the Confederacy except certain exempted areas, and authorizing enlistment of blacks into armed forces. |
| February: West Virginia provides for gradual emancipation; immediate abolition is enacted early in 1865. |
| March 16: American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission is appointed to recommend policies regarding emancipated slaves. |
| May–July: Black soldiers take part in battles at Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, and Fort Wagner, South Carolina. |
| July 1–4: Union army wins battles at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. |
| July 30: Lincoln issues an order for retaliation for the mistreatment of black soldiers. |
| August 10: Meets with Frederick Douglass to discuss recruitment and treatment of black troops. |
| August 26: Lincoln’s public letter to James C. Conkling defends his emancipation policy. |
| November 19: Lincoln gives the Gettysburg Address. |
| December 8: Outlines his Ten Percent Plan of Reconstruction and issues the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. |
1864 | March 13: Sends letter to Michael Hahn, governor of Louisiana, favoring limited black suffrage. |
| March 16: Voters in Arkansas ratify the state constitution abolishing slavery. |
| April 8: The Senate approves the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. |
| May–June: General Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign in Virginia leads to enormous casualties. |
| June 15: The House fails to approve the Thirteenth Amendment. |
| June 15: Lincoln signs the bill providing partial retroactive equal pay for black soldiers; full retroactive equal pay is enacted in March 1865. |
| July 4: Pocket vetoes Wade-Davis Bill. |
| August 16: Meets with Frederick Douglass about ways to spread news of the Emancipation Proclamation among slaves. |
| September 2: General William T. Sherman occupies Atlanta. |
| September 5: Voters of Louisiana ratify the state constitution abolishing slavery. |
| October 13: Voters of Maryland ratify the state constitution abolishing slavery. |
| November 8: Lincoln is reelected president. |
1865 | January 11: Missouri constitutional convention provides for abolition; constitution is ratified in June. January 13: U.S. House of Representatives approves the Thirteenth Amendment. |
| January 16: General William T. Sherman issues Special Field Order No. 15 assigning plots of land to black families. |
| February: Illinois Black Laws are repealed. |
| February 3: Hampton Roads conference takes place. |
| February 22: Tennessee approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. |