Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  With gentle sarcasm Lincoln responded to a Chicago clergyman who claimed he was delivering the word of the Lord: “open the doors of bondage that the slave may go free!” “That may be, sir,” said the president, “but if it is, as you say, a message from your Divine Master, is it not odd that the only channel he could send it by was that roundabout route by that awfully wicked city of Chicago?”229 To another presumptuous clergyman, Lincoln said: “Perhaps you had better try to run the machine a week.” (This was a tactic he used on laymen as well. He put down an impudent caller who was excoriating a government official. “Now,” said the president, “you are just the man I have been looking for. I want you to give me your address, and tell me, if you were in my place, and had heard all you’ve been telling, and didn’t believe a word of it, what would you do?”)230

  The most dramatic and widely circulated appeal for emancipation came from the pen of Horace Greeley, who had been growing ever more impatient with Lincoln. On August 7, that controversial editor asked Charles Sumner: “Do you remember that old theological book containing this: ‘Chapter One—Hell; Chapter Two—Hell Continued.’ ” Well, Greeley added, “that gives a hint of the way Old Abe ought to be talked to in this crisis.”231 Understandably worried that Greeley might publish something rash, journalist James R. Gilmore and former Secretary of the Treasury Robert J. Walker attempted to soothe him. Walker and Gilmore had learned that Lincoln would soon issue an emancipation decree and that he wished to inform the Tribune editor. (The president had uncharacteristically revealed his intention to several other people, among them Owen Lovejoy, Hannibal Hamlin, Orville H. Browning, James Speed, Leonard Swett, and Hiram Barney.) Gilmore and Walker obtained Lincoln’s permission to do so, with the understanding that the paper would not leak the news. But it was too late. Gilmore informed Greeley on August 20, the very day that the Tribune ran the editor’s blast at the administration, titled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” The next day, in violation of the understanding that Gilmore and Walker had reached with Lincoln, the paper ran a news item about the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation.

  “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” scolded the president, alleging that many of his early supporters were now “sorely disappointed and deeply pained” by his foot-dragging on emancipation. Greeley demanded that Lincoln enforce the Confiscation Acts, ignore the counsels of “fossil politicians hailing from the Border States,” stop deferring to slaveholders, adopt some consistent policy with regard to slavery, and employ runaway bondsmen as “scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers and choppers.”232 Wendell Phillips applauded Greeley’s handiwork as “superb” and “terrific.”233 Moderates, however, condemned the editor’s “impudence,” his “insolence and dictatorial tone,” along with his “arrogant” and “acrimonious” spirit.234 Greeley’s letter, noted the Philadelphia Ledger, constituted “a severe lecture” written “in the style of a pedagogue dictating to a pupil.”235 An Indiana editor likened Greeley to “a shrewish housekeeper” chastising “a careless servant.”236

  Lincoln responded swiftly with a letter that soon became famous. He had been looking for an occasion to explain his approach to emancipation and thus pave the way for the Proclamation. Tactfully, he assured Greeley that he took no offense at what might be considered the editor’s “impatient and dictatorial tone.” Nor would he controvert any seemingly erroneous “statements, or assumptions of fact” or false inferences in the editorial. Rather he would ignore them in “deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.”

  In dealing with the charge that he only seemed to have a policy dealing with slavery, Lincoln tersely described the course he had been pursuing all along: “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ ” (At this point, Lincoln included a sentence that he later struck out at the urging of the editors of the Washington National Intelligencer, in which the document first appeared: “Broken eggs can never be mended, and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.” By having his letter published in a Washington paper and by not forwarding it to Greeley, he let that truculent editor know that finger-wagging lectures were not appreciated.) “If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”237 In this final sentence, he made clear what anyone familiar with his speeches and actions in the 1850s already knew: that he hated slavery. Still, he emphasized that as a president bound by an oath, he could not ignore constitutional and political constraints.

  Lincoln’s unprecedented public letter caused a sensation. “So novel a thing as a newspaper correspondence between the President and an editor excites great attention,” noted a journalist; but “Mr. Lincoln does so many original things that everybody has ceased to be surprised at him, and hence the violation of precedent in this matter does not provoke so much comment as might be expected.”238 A Washington correspondent reported that people “who insist on precedent, and Presidential dignity, are horrified at this novel idea of Mr. Lincoln’s, but there is unanimous admiration of the skill and force with which he has defined his policy.”239 George Ashmun told Lincoln that the “first feeling of all your friends was, that it would be, to some extent, lessening the grave importance of your office, & the dignity with which you had performed all its functions. But an enlarged consideration of the surrounding circumstances, & the triumphant manner in which you have so modestly & so clearly set forth the justification of your fixed purpose dispels all doubts of the expediency & wisdom of your course.”240 The letter struck other moderate Republicans, like ex-Governor William Dennison of Ohio and Supreme Court Justice Noah Swayne, “as an advance step in the right direction—as a stronger official declaration of his determination to tread out the ‘institution’ if the Union can be no[t] otherwise preserved, than the President has yet given to the public.”241 Missouri Senator John B. Henderson assured Lincoln that the position spelled out in the Greeley letter “is the only one through which we can win for the Union. Emancipation proclamations can only serve to make things worse in the border states, without reaching the rebellious district.”242 The New York Times observed that Lincoln’s reply “exhibits the peculiarities of his mind and style; but the logical sequence and precision, and the grammatical accuracy of this, is greatly in advance of any previous effort.”243 Thurlow Weed, who had been badly discouraged about the military situation, took “heart and hope” from the letter, which he said “clears the atmosphere, and gives ground to stand on. The ultras were. … getting the Administration into [a] false position. But it is all right now.”244 Senator Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin deemed the letter “the best enunciation of the best platform we have had since the Chicago convention.”245 Lincoln’s reply, said the Indianapolis Journal, “is admirable in temper, and takes the only ground he can take in regard to the bearing of the war upon slavery.”246

  Greeley himself considered
Lincoln’s response “a sign of progress,” as did Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, who said, “hope rises of a vigorous, large, bold and hopeful policy.”247 Sydney Howard Gay wrote Lincoln: “your letter to Mr. Greeley has infused new hope among us at the North who are anxiously awaiting that movement on your part which they beleive will end the rebellion by removing its cause. I think the general impression is that as you are determined to save the Union tho’ Slavery perish, you mean presently to announce that the destruction of Slavery is the price of our salvation.”248 There was good reason for such optimism. Lincoln told his friend Congressman Isaac N. Arnold “that the meaning of his letter to Mr. Greeley was this: that he was ready to declare emancipation when he was convinced that it could be made effective, and that the people were with him.”249

  Democrats, too, were impressed. A correspondent of Francis P. Blair, Sr., told the venerable gentleman that Lincoln’s letter “meets with universal approbation. I have heard scores of Douglas Democrats declare that they would now support Lincoln for Dictator.”250 In New York, former lieutenant-governor Sanford E. Church, a leading Democrat, thought “Mr Lincoln has ‘hit the nail on the head’ this time in his answer to Greeley. While it looks a little humiliating to answer it at all, the effect of the answer will be good.”251

  Some abolitionists, like Owen Lovejoy and Gerrit Smith, praised Lincoln’s “excellent Letter.”252 Others, like Wendell Phillips, condemned it as “cold, low, brutal” and “the most disgraceful document that ever came from the head of a free people.” Phillips contemptuously remarked that Lincoln “can only be frightened or bullied into the right policy. … If the proclamation of Emanc[ipation] is possible at any time from Lincoln (which I somewhat doubt) it will be wrung from him only by fear. He’s a Spaniel by nature—nothing broad, generous, or highhearted about him.”253 Echoing Phillips, another abolitionist asked rhetorically: “Was ever a more heartless policy announced? … With the President public policy is everything, humanity and justice nothing.”254 Beriah Green indignantly denounced Lincoln’s willingness to leave slavery intact if the Union could be preserved without touching it. “What sort of a Union is Mr. Lincoln & his supporters & admirers fighting for?” he asked. Answering his own question, Green called the Union “the very sty of pollution—the very den of the grimmest oppression—the vestibule of Hell!”255 Equally contemptuous of Lincoln’s letter to Greeley was a young conservative, Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., who found a “humiliating contrast between his state papers and those of [Jefferson] Davis, who can at least write good English & express himself with dignity & firmness.” Winthrop admired the president’s honest intentions but deemed him “cruelly unfit for his place.”256

  Less hostile abolitionists feared not that Lincoln would fail to “reach the right conclusion, but that he will reach it too late.”257 Frederick Douglass said that he would “prefer the Union even with Slavery than to allow the Slaveholders to go off and set up a Government.”258 The president’s hint that he might save the Union by freeing all the slaves impressed the editors of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, who sensibly observed that he was constrained by the Constitution and therefore “is not to be expected to act upon motives of mere morality and humanity. In a certain political sense it may be said that he had no right to do so.”259

  Lincoln’s letter has been misunderstood by those who view it as a definitive statement of his innermost feelings about the aims of the war. Some deplored its insensitivity to the moral significance of emancipation. In fact, the document was a political utterance designed to smooth the way for the proclamation which he intended to issue as soon as the Union army won a victory. He knew full well that millions of Northerners as well as Border State residents would object to transforming the war into an abolitionist crusade. They were willing to fight to preserve the Union but not to free the slaves. As president, Lincoln had to make the mighty act of emancipation palatable to them. By assuring Conservatives that emancipation was simply a means to preserve the Union, Lincoln hoped to minimize the white backlash that he knew was bound to come. As he explained to General Lovell Harrison Rousseau and Kentucky Congressman Samuel L. Casey when they pressed for emancipation: “you are my friends—I can say and do what I please with you. But this other man I am in doubt about, yet it is important that I retain him in adhesion to our cause, so I go out of my way to please him, while I almost abuse you, who will stick by me, or the cause, come what will!”260

  Lincoln’s letter puzzled Greeley. “It is no answer to my ‘Prayer,’ ” the editor remarked. Indeed, the president had not addressed Greeley’s main complaint, viz., his failure to enforce the Confiscation Acts. Lincoln had drafted the main body of the letter well before “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” appeared. According to Whitelaw Reid, “days before Greeley’s letter was published the President read to a friend a rough draft of what now appears in the form of a reply to Greeley and asked his advice about publishing it.”261

  On August 23, in response to Orestes Brownson’s argument that colonization would not work unless preceded by emancipation, Lincoln “said that he was not fully persuaded that it was yet time to proclaim Emancipation.” When Brownson asked the president to specify just when he would emancipate the slaves, Lincoln referred him to the Greeley letter. Brownson prophetically surmised that “if the next battle in Virginia results in a decided victory,” Lincoln would then issue a proclamation freeing the slaves in all the Confederate states save Virginia and Tennessee.262 (But Brown-son had little faith in the president, for he thought that “nothing can be made of him, & no good can come of him.”)263 The letter to Greeley offered a preview of coming events. It announced that Lincoln might free some slaves and leave others in bondage, which is just what his Emancipation Proclamation would do.

  In dealing with other emancipationists, Lincoln frequently played devil’s advocate. As a New York Tribune correspondent observed, “it is one of the President’s peculiarities—to some degree the result of his legal education—that he always looks at both sides of every question at once; and that, far from arguing with himself in favor of those views which are most in accordance with his desires, he rather runs into the opposite extreme of magnifying and attaching undue weight to the obstacles which appear in his course.”264 The best-publicized episode of this sort occurred on September 13, 1862, when a delegation of clergy from Chicago presented a memorial calling on him to liberate the slaves. He told his visitors that he had long given the subject much thought and had “no objections against it on legal or constitutional grounds; for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy. Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view the matter as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.” The president said he was curious to know “[w]hat good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet!”

  Lincoln insisted that he lacked the power to free slaves in territory controlled by the Confederacy. “Would my word free the slaves,” asked he, “when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there? And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.”

  Even if slaves could be induced to flee to Union lines, Lincoln was perplexed to know “what should we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a multitude?” The blacks might, at least in theory, be accepted into the Union army, but Lincoln worried that
they would be captured and re-enslaved. “I am told that whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they immediately auction them off! They did so with those they took from a boat that was aground in the Tennessee river a few days ago. And then I am very ungenerously attacked for it! For instance, when, after the late battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from Washington under a flag of truce to bury the dead and bring in the wounded, and the rebels seized the blacks who went along to help and sent them into slavery, Horace Greeley said in his paper that the Government would probably do nothing about it. What could I do?” Moreover, the president said he was “not so sure we could do much with the blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels; and indeed thus far we have not had arms enough to equip our white troops.”

  Lincoln agreed with his callers that “slavery is the root of the rebellion, or at least its sine qua non.” Secession may have been the work of ambitious politicians, “but they would have been impotent without slavery as their instrument.” He acknowledged “that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition.” As for domestic opinion, emancipation “would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine. Still, some additional strength would be added in that way to the war.”

  The greatest practical advantage to be gained by freeing the slaves was that it would undermine the Confederate war effort, for “unquestionably it would weaken the rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance.” But that was offset by a grave disadvantage: “There are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union armies from the Border Slave States. It would be a serious matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they should go over to the rebels.”