President Lincoln- The Duty of a Statesman

by William Lee Miller

  Here is what he argued, plainly enough, in the second Robinson draft (August 17, 1864):

  Take from us, and give to the enemy, the hundred and thirty, forty, or fifty thousand colored persons now serving us as soldiers, seamen, and laborers, and we can not longer maintain the contest. The party who could elect a President on a War & Slavery Restoration platform, would, of necessity, lose the colored force; and that force being lost, would be as powerless to save the Union as to do any other impossible thing. It is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force, which may be measured, and estimated as horsepower, and steam power, are measured and estimated.

  But preceding that stark physical calculation there was an appeal, still utterly practical, in which a certain moral appreciation of a black man’s position was interwoven—he wrote “And rightfully too” and used the strong moral word “betray”:

  As matter of policy, to announce such a purpose [to abandon emancipation], would ruin the Union cause itself. All recruiting of colored men would instantly cease, and all colored men now in our service, would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?

  And preceding that appeal—we are working backward through his draft—initiating the whole argument, he had made a forthright argument in unabashed moral terms. He had begun by quoting the paragraph from his letter the year before to the Springfield Unionists about the promise that must be kept. He then wrote a paragraph of earnest moral reasoning that implied all that a moral theorist might expound in explaining the element of trust in the making and keeping of promises:

  I am sure you will not, on due reflection, say that the promise being made, must be broken at the first opportunity. I am sure you would not desire me to say, or to leave an inference, that I am ready, whenever convenient, to join in re-enslaving those who shall have served us in consideration of our promise. As matter of morals, could such treachery by any possibility, escape the curses of Heaven, or of any good man?

  In the other autumn 1864 draft that would not be sent, the mid-September effort requested by people in Buffalo, he repeated his argument that no administration could retain the service of black Americans with the express or implied understanding that “upon the first convenient occasion they are to be re-enslaved,” and then he would add: “It can not be, and it ought not to be.” A certain satirical exaggeration suggests the moral absurdity (“upon the first convenient occasion”), and then explicit moral affirmations keep abruptly breaking through: “and rightly so…and ought not to be.”

  Lincoln, the writer and the moral man, significantly kept coming up with phrases that were not only forceful but also freshly minted. Any return of these men to slavery would be treachery and betrayal; it could not “escape the curses of Heaven, or any of good man” he would be “damned in time and eternity” if he did any such thing. Plainly when there was any suggestion that black Union soldiers be reenslaved, Lincoln heard Duty, the stern daughter of the voice of God, shouting in his ear.

  He felt the whiplash of the absolute also with respect to the reenslaving of anyone freed by the Emancipation Proclamation: that would have been a cruel and astounding breach of faith. These were quite specific and personal moral claims, by human beings who had acted in response to specific actions of his own, and to whom he now had a particular categorical duty.

  In his annual message for 1863, looking backward to the proclamation, Lincoln had mentioned the cruel breach of faith: “To now abandon them [the laws and proclamations about slavery]…would…be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.” He then added a strong personal pledge: “I may add at this point, that while I remain in my present position 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 acts of Congress.”

  In these compositions of the late summer and early fall of 1864 Lincoln repeated himself, sometimes in almost the same words. In the first draft, in pencil, of the letter to Robinson, Lincoln put sharply his refusal personally to be the agent of any reenslavement:

  But if the rebels would only cease fighting & consent to reunion on condition that I would stipulate to aid them in re-enslaving the blacks, I could not do that…I never could be their agent to do it—For such a work, another would have to be found.

  Then, in what would prove to be his last annual message, in December 1864, he made this pledge public:

  I repeat the declaration made a year ago, that “while I remain in my present position 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 Acts of Congress.” If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it any Executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.

  Get somebody else, not me.

  WHEN THE PINCH CAME, and it appeared that he would be defeated in the coming election if he did not drop emancipation as a war aim, he nevertheless refused to do it. One is reminded of the great moment in the best book by Lincoln’s near contemporary and fellow humorist Mark Twain when Huck Finn confronts his great sin of helping the slave Jim escape, and then, considering his tie to Jim, says—“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

  It is part of the power of Twain’s satire that the world Huck grew up in causes him to reverse the formal moralities—he thinks he ought to return Jim to slavery, that helping him flee is sinful—but that because of the strength of his human connection he nevertheless gets the decision right. Lincoln’s world had a more mixed moral teaching, but he got the decision right also: if they propose to reenslave anybody, “another, and not I, must be their instrument.”

  THE POLITICAL CLIMATE changed markedly with Sherman’s capture of Atlanta at the start of September, reinforced by Sheridan’s victory in the valley in midmonth. In November Lincoln was reelected rather handily. One may attribute his political victory to his generals’ military victories, or one may broaden the lens and say Lincoln shaped, put in place, and supported the armies that won those victories, so that his reelection was not altogether a gift from Sherman and Sheridan.

  Lincoln had insisted that Republicans insert in their platform for the 1864 election a plank supporting an amendment to the Constitution as the only certain way to ensure slavery’s definite nationwide termination. He might have waited to press for the passage of an amendment until the convening of the more Republican Congress that was elected with him in 1864, but he made instead a significant choice that indicated his seriousness about ending slavery. He worked for the amendment’s immediate passage by the sitting Congress; to wait would have postponed the glorious moment of freedom. Indeed, he worked harder for the passage of the slavery-ending Thirteenth Amendment than he had worked for any other piece of legislation in his presidency, even to the point of twisting arms and doling out projects, dangling offices in front of congressmen to help them make up their minds. During the effort to persuade the last few Democrats to switch votes in order to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, a devastating rumor circulated, ruinous to the chances of passage if believed, that Southern commissioners were headed for Washington to sue for peace. When the manager of the amendment effort appealed to the president, Honest Abe responded, on January 31, 1864, with this statement: “So far as I know there are no peace commissioners in the City, or likely to be in it.” In fact, there were commissioners on the way to confer with him, not headed for “the City” but for Fort Monroe. Before they arrived, the peace rumor evaporated.

  On the last day of January the amendment did receive, just barely, the required two-thirds vote. The Congressional Globe recorded the response when the Speaker announced the result:

  The announcement was received by the House and by the spectators with an outburst of enthusiasm. The members on the Republican side of the House instantly sprang up to their feet and, regardle
ss of parliamentary rules, applauded with cheers and clapping of hands. The example was followed by male spectators in the galleries, which were crowded to excess, who waved their hats and cheered loud and long, while the ladies, hundreds of whom were present, rose in their seats and waved their handkerchiefs, participating in and adding to the general excitement and intense interest of the scene. This lasted for several minutes.

  The ratification by the states followed rapidly during the next year, and slavery in the United States was abolished.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Almighty Has His Own Purposes

  MARCH 4, 1865. Saturday. Still wartime, but nearing the end. A president of the United States to be inaugurated a second time. Cloudy, rainy, much like four years earlier. Procession up Pennsylvania Avenue. Crowds. Mud on skirts, mud on boots. In the procession, for the first time, black troops, members of a black lodge.

  Four years ago “soldiers clad in all the panoply of war…aided greatly in keeping up the feelings of insecurity and danger that were so prevalent among the white residents of the city.” This time “four companies of colored troops formed the military escort.” One feature in the procession is “the colored troops and the Odd-Fellows, with their band of music.”

  Four years ago the New York Times reported “a dense mass of armed cavalrymen eight deep…drawn sabres…carbines clanking at their sides,…sharp-shooters stationed at every corner.” This time there were “no soldiers, only a lot of civilians on horseback, with huge yellow scarfs over their shoulders.”

  Four years ago the new president, scarcely known in official Washington, had presented an appearance “full of life, of energy, of vivid aspiration.” This time he had “a look of one on whom sorrow and care have done their worst.”

  Inside the Capitol an embarrassing scene was taking place. The president, the cabinet, and various ambassadors, governors, and dignitaries are assembled; the new vice president, exhausted from travel, ill, and fortified by too many whiskies, rambles, fumbles, brags, extemporizes, and goes on. And on. Much looking at the floor, throat clearing, eye rolling. The president says quietly to a marshal, “Don’t let Johnson speak outside.”

  The presidential party moved out to the East Front of the Capitol, now with the great bronze statue of freedom (Genius of Liberty) at the top of the iron dome. Four years earlier, not yet elevated to her pedestal, she had waited with exquisite symbolic aptness spread flat upon the ground. Now the symbolism was completed as Liberty herself stretched toward the heavens.

  On March 4, 1861, Congress had just passed a proposed thirteenth amendment that would have protected slavery in the slave states; it had been beyond imagining that just four years later Congress would already have passed and sent to the states the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.

  The tall, bearded president appeared on the platform. Cheers, flags, music. “Hail to the Chief.” The Senate sergeant at arms quieted the crowd. On this occasion, as not four years earlier, the president took the oath before he delivered the address. Then the oath had been administered by the old secessionist Chief Justice Roger Taney; now the oath was administered by the newly appointed abolitionist Chief Justice Salmon Chase.

  As he took the oath, the sun furnished another improbably punctual symbol, suddenly breaking through the clouds.

  What would one say on this occasion? One would certainly refer to the first inauguration, four years earlier. The president began, sotto voce, with a contrast: “Fellow Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.”

  So this time apparently he was not going to say much. A special correspondent to the New York Times had reported on the previous day that the address would be “very brief, and as a consequence the ceremony short.” The Associated Press, mindful of its newspaper clients, had said that the address would probably be “no more than a column in length.” No one standing in the mud, but now also in the sunlight, could have anticipated that they were about to hear the most remarkable speech ever given by an American president.

  “Then [on the first occasion] a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be followed, seemed fitting and proper.” Yes indeed, he had then, a long, long four years ago, made such a statement. But it had been more than that. It had been a strong argument to his “dissatisfied countrymen” against the course they were following—the course they had promptly followed after his election in November 1860. He founded his refutation in general principles of all national governments, which do not provide for their own termination (“secession is the essence of anarchy”), and in American history—the nation preceded the states and made them states.

  BUT THAT extended address four years before had been more than a fundamental philosophical argument. It had also included a marked conciliatory pledge: “The government will not assail you, unless you first assail it…You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.”(In his own view he had then taken pains not only to keep that promise but also “to keep the case so free from the power of ingenious sophistry, as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it.”)

  So he had argued, powerfully and at length, on the first occasion, back on that day, only four years earlier by the calendar but an epoch away in memory and national experience.

  He had closed that extended address at his first appearing with a newly composed paragraph of warmth and shared life and common history, appealing to “the mystic chords of memory” that would “swell the chorus of the Union, when are again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

  But they wouldn’t be. No better angels had touched the mystic chords of memory in Charleston Harbor. There had been no swelling of the chorus of the Union in Montgomery, Alabama.

  “Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.” Sherman marching through South Carolina, Columbia burning, Richmond threatened, Charleston occupied, Fort Fisher taken and Wilmington occupied, Grant closing in on Lee in Virginia, Sheridan defeating Early in the valley—little that is new could be presented?

  “[P]ublic declarations had been constantly called forth on every point and phase.” It was true that those four years had called forth a steady stream of messages of many kinds. But did that mean he should not speak now? Should he not now, on this second appearing, conclude the fundamental argument he had commenced at the first and clinch the rejection of secession, the vindication of the unbroken Union? Should he not now add the immense fact that the nation was rejecting slavery? Who would have believed on his first appearing that Maryland and Missouri would by this short time later have abolished slavery?

  His own “public declarations” on that subject had been a key to that incredible transformation. Should he not now conclude the moral argument?

  He was the leader of one side in a terrible civil war, after four years of killing that the other side—ignoring all his pleas, promises, arguments, and most explicit warnings—had brought about. That war still was not quite finished. These words were not those merely of an observer, or a philosopher in his closet, or a preacher in his pulpit, or a poet with his muse; they did not come from someone detached and reflective, surveying the scene from some point safely above and outside it. These words were the sober expression of a central combatant—of the top combatant—on one side in a fierce and bloody contest of the highest importance and the largest meaning for a whole nation (and also, as this president had claimed with particular eloquence at a dedication of a cemetery a year and a half earlier, for the world).

  Suppose you had been in this president’s shoes. You, who did not like guns or shooting or killing even animals in the hunt; you, a gentle civilian professional who had never personally done battle against any enemy fierc
er than the mosquitoes in the Black Hawk War; who had been forced by your oath and your convictions and the persistent defiance of the rebels to send wave after wave of young men—and, for the first time in American history, conscripts torn away from the farm and the shop—to risk their lives, at Shiloh, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor. You had had to do this, they had had to do this, the country had had to go through this, because of the persistently defiant—you might have said arrogant and willful—secessionists. So you, at your second inauguration, drawing near to the end of this terrible, destructive rebellion—with the end in sight now—might have allowed yourself just a hint of vindication, just an undercurrent of I-told-you-so, looking back to the warnings and pleadings of four years earlier, just a trace of condemnation for these opponents who had endeavored to rend the Union to defend human slavery, just a suggestion of triumph now that it appeared that they would not succeed, that the heroic efforts of the Union forces would after all save the nation. So you would have done in this president’s place.

  The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

  “Reasonably satisfactory and encouraging”? “No prediction”? That is all he is going to say? Are there to be no anticipations of victory, no trumpets of triumph? Arkansas free, Louisiana free, Tennessee free, Maryland free, Missouri free, the Father of Waters flowing unvexed to the sea; the flag flying again over Fort Sumter, four terrible years, and now, at last, victory in sight, he is just going to say “reasonably satisfactory”?