The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (106 page)

Please ascertain at each place what is being done, if any thing, for reconstruction; how the amnesty proclamation works—if at all; what practical hitches, if any, there are about it; whether deserters come in from the enemy, what number has come in at each point since the amnesty, and whether the ratio of their arrival is any greater since than before the amnesty; what deserters report generally, and particularly whether, and to what extent, the amnesty is known within the rebel lines. Also learn what you can as to the colored people; how they get along as soldiers, as laborers in our service, on leased plantations, and as hired laborers with their old masters, if there be such cases. Also learn what you can
as to the colored people within the rebel lines. Also get any other information you may consider interesting, and from time to time, send me what you may deem important to be known here at once, and be ready to make a general report on your return.

Private Isaac P. Baird had been sentenced to the guardhouse for some minor offence. Lincoln writes here to Stanton9 instructing him to permit the boy to enlist for a new term so he might receive his pay.

Executive Mansion, March 1, 1864

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the army, that for some offense has been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most with very little pay. I do not like this punishment of withholding pay—it falls so very hard upon poor families. After he had been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful appeal of the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to enlist for a new term, on the same conditions as others. She now comes, and says she cannot get it acted upon. Please do it.

After Farragut had captured New Orleans in 1862, Michael Hahn, Louisiana politician, had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States Government and had gone to Congress the following year. He was inaugurated Governor of Louisiana early in March, 1864. Lincoln writes to him to give him advice about maintaining the new state government then being set up in Louisiana. Lincoln’s suggestions about Negro voters, first expressed here, were again
brought out in the last public speech he ever made—that of April 11 1865.

(
Private
)

Executive Mansion, March 13, 1864

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: I congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first free-State governor of Louisiana. Now you are about to have a convention, which, among other things, will probably define the elective franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the colored people may not be let in—as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone.

Civil war, even more than a war between nations, causes untold misery to those who are caught in its meshes. Lincoln pleads with the martinet who was his Secretary of War, for a more merciful treatment of the victims.

Executive Mansion, March 18, 1864

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: I am so pressed in regard to prisoners of war in our custody, whose homes are within our lines, and who wish to not be exchanged, but to take the oath and be discharged, that I hope you will pardon me for again calling up the subject. My impression is that we will not ever force the exchange of any of this class; that, taking the oath and being discharged, none of them will again go to the rebellion; but the rebellion again coming to them, a considerable percentage
of them, probably not a majority, would rejoin it; that, by a cautious discrimination, the number so discharged would not be large enough to do any considerable mischief in any event, will relieve distress in at least some meritorious cases, and would give me some relief from an intolerable pressure. I shall be glad, therefore, to have your cheerful assent to the discharge of those whose names I may send, which I will only do with circumspection.

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment’s sake. While we must by all available means prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society. These general remarks apply to several classes of cases, on each of which I wish to say a word.

First. The dismissal of officers when neither incompetency, nor intentional wrong, nor real injury to the service, is imputed. In such cases it is both cruel and impolitic to crush the man and make him and his friends permanent enemies to the administration if not to the government itself.…

Another class consists of those who are known or strongly suspected to be in sympathy with the rebellion. An instance of this is the family of Southern, who killed a recruiting officer last autumn in Maryland. He fled, and his family are driven from their home without a shelter or crumb, except when got by burdening our friends more than our enemies. Southern had no justification to kill the officer, and yet he would not have been killed if he had proceeded in the temper and manner agreed upon by yourself and Governor Bradford; but this is past. What is to be done with the family? Why can they not occupy the old home and excite much less opposition to the government than the manifestation of their distress is now doing? If the house is really needed for the public service, or
if it has been regularly confiscated and the title transferred, the case is different.

Again, the cases of persons, mostly women, wishing to pass our lines one way or the other. We have in some cases been apparently if not really, inconsistent upon this subject—that is, we have forced some to go who wished to stay, and forced others to stay who wished to go. Suppose we allow all females with ungrown children of either sex to go South, if they desire, upon absolute prohibition against returning during the war; and all to come North upon the same condition of not returning during the war, and the additional condition of taking the oath.…

At the very beginning of the War, at a meeting of women held in Cooper Union in New York City, a Women’s Central Association of Relief had been organized and from this grew up the voluntary sanitary commissions which were the forerunners of our present Red Cross. By holding fairs in various cities, these commissions raised money for medical supplies, delicacies and other conveniences, At the fairs people who could not give cash donated merchandise which was sold for the benefit of the soldiers. Nearly five million dollars were raised in this way. The President himself addressed several of these Sanitary Fairs in order to help draw a crowd.

March 18, 1864

L
ADIES AND
G
ENTLEMEN
: I appear to say but a word. This extraordinary war in which we are engaged falls heavily upon all classes of people, but the most heavily upon the soldier. For it has been said, all that a man hath will he give for his life; and while all contribute of their substance, the soldier
puts his life at stake, and often yields it up in his country’s cause. The highest merit, then, is due to the soldier.

In this extraordinary war, extraordinary developments have manifested themselves, such as have not been seen in former wars; and amongst these manifestations nothing has been more remarkable than these fairs for the relief of suffering soldiers and their families. And the chief agents in these fairs are the women of America.

I am not accustomed to the use of language of eulogy; I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. I will close by saying, God bless the women of America.

Lincoln, who was himself descended from a family of working people, and who had worked at manual labor in his youth, was always sympathetic to the working class. He addresses here a New York workingmen’s committee and takes the opportunity to impress its members with the importance of the War to the common people of the country.

March 21, 1864

G
ENTLEMEN OF THE
C
OMMITTEE
: The honorary membership in your association, as generously tendered, is gratefully accepted.

You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing rebellion means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of African slavery—that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working people.…

None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other working people.
²⁹
It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

The elections of 1862 had gone against the administration; those of 1863 had favored it because of the Union victories during the summer of that year; in 1864 the Presidential election was to be held. Lincoln had appointed Grant to the command of all the Union armies early in March, and it was hoped that Grant would win victories during the summer of 1864. Election talk was in the air; but none of the national conventions had yet been held. The border state of Kentucky had stood by the Union throughout the War, although her people were largely in favor of slavery. When Congress ordered that slaves should be enrolled for army service, the news was received with great indignation in that state. Governor Thomas E. Bramlette, ex-Senator Archibald Dixon and Colonel A. G. Hodges went to Washington to protest against this enrollment. Lincoln writes here what is ostensibly a letter to Hodges, but what is actually a public document intended to
interpret the President’s attitude on a question that might be expected to cause further trouble in other border states. Although no indication of it appears in the letter itself, the letter was intended to have a definite political influence on the coming election. It is in this letter that Lincoln makes his famous statement: “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”

Executive Mansion, April 4, 1864

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:

“I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using that power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government—that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet
often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assume this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and 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. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force—no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.