Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Radicals objected to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on more than stylistic grounds. Although William Lloyd Garrison publicly declared its issuance was a “matter for great rejoicing,” an “important step in the right direction,” and “an act of immense historic consequence,” he objected to its limited scope, its contradictory “jumble of words,” and “its mean, absurd and proscriptive devices to expatriate the colored population.”293 Privately, he remarked that Lincoln “can do nothing for freedom in a direct manner, but only by circumlocution and delay.”294 The Rev. Dr. George B. Cheever of New York detected in the Proclamation no “justice, nobleness, or humanity,” but rather “the most unreserved national selfishness.”295 To him it seemed “a measure of mere political expediency” and little more than “a bribe to win back the slaveholding States to loyalty by giving and confirming to them the privilege of tyrannizing over millions of their fellow creatures in perpetual slavery. … So stupendous a bribe, so truly hellish in its nature, never before was imagined.” Lincoln was, Cheever scornfully remarked, “nothing but a nose of wax,” and abolitionists “had as good a right to pull that nose as Kentucky.”296 In scolding Lincoln, he urged that the Proclamation be made to apply to all slaves unconditionally.

  But many other Radicals agreed with Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew’s conclusion that it was “a mighty act” though a “poor document,” “slow, somewhat halting, wrong in its delay till January, but grand and sublime after all.”297 The firebrand Samuel J. May, Jr., wished that the emancipation had been immediate and had come much earlier, but he confessed that “I cannot stop to dwell on these. Joy, gratitude, thanksgiving, renewed hope and courage fill my soul.”298 The National Anti-Slavery Standard greeted the Proclamation “with an unspeakable joy.”299 Theodore Tilton laughed and cried “in a bewilderment of joy” and was “half crazy with enthusiasm!”300 “We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree,” wrote Frederick Douglass. The president might be slow, but Douglass was sure that he was “not the man to reconsider, retract and contradict words and purposes solemnly proclaimed over his official signature.”301 Other blacks were equally enthusiastic. The editor of the New York Anglo-African said: “joy sits enthroned upon our heart,” for Lincoln’s proclamation was “a bridge of gold” and “a glorious harbinger of the future.”302 The abolitionist Boston Commonwealth relished the way that Lincoln turned the tables on critics who insisted that the war be fought solely to preserve the Union. The editor remarked to such carpers: “We complained bitterly that the President was slow; but now we see that his slowness has been the means of committing the whole flock of you to a rule of loyalty, which you cannot abandon without making it appear that in all your previous course you were liars and hypocrites. … Those who do not stand by the Proclamation will be branded as those who would rather see the United States Government overthrown than the end of Human Bondage on this continent.”303

  To Charles Sumner the “skies are brighter and the air is purer now that Slavery is handed over to judgment.”304 Hannibal Hamlin told the president that the Proclamation would “stand as the great act of the age,” would “prove to be [as] wise in Statesmanship, as it is Patriotic,” and would “be enthusiastically approved and sustained.” Future generations, he predicted, “will, as I do, say God bless you for the great and noble act.”305 Horace Greeley called the issuance of the Proclamation the “beginning of the end of the rebellion,” the “beginning of a new life for the nation,” and “one of those stupendous facts in human history which marks not only an era in the progress of the nation, but an epoch in the history of the world.” That cantankerous editor, who had scolded the president a month earlier in “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” now said: “God bless Abraham Lincoln.” Extravagantly Greeley’s paper announced: “Let the President know that everywhere throughout all the land he is hailed as Wisest and Best, and that by this great deed of enfranchisement of an oppressed people—a deed, the doing of whereof was never before vouchsafed to any mortal ruler—he re-creates a nation.”306

  Others heaped similar praise on the document. John W. Forney called it a “second Declaration of Independence.”307 The Pittsburgh Gazette editorialized that the Proclamation was “the most important document in the world’s history. Magna Charta is as nothing to it. It is, in fact, a new Magna Charta, before the light of which the other must pale.”308 The New York Evening Post deemed it “the most solemn and momentous declaration the world ever witnessed,” which “puts us right before Europe,” “brings us back to our traditions,” and “animates our soldiers with the same spirit which led our forefathers to victory under Washington.”309 The New York Times more moderately acclaimed it as “one of the great events of the century.”310 Lincoln’s hometown paper, the Illinois State Journal, grandly asserted that “no event in the history of this country since the Declaration of Independence itself has excited so profound attention either at home or abroad.”311 The Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican sensibly commented that Lincoln’s “action is timely—neither too soon nor too late. … it will be sustained by the great mass of the loyal people, North and South, and thus by the courage and prudence of the president the greatest social and political revolution of the age will be triumphantly carried through in the midst of a civil war.”312

  The proclamation warmed the hearts of New England intellectuals. A former critic of the administration, Ralph Waldo Emerson, changed his tune after the announcement of the Proclamation. In the Atlantic Monthly he ranked it with such milestones in the history of liberty as “the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic Ocean-Telegraph,” and the enactment of the homestead bill by Congress earlier in 1862. Lincoln, said the Sage of Concord, “has been permitted to do more for America than any other American man.” The nation was redeemed, he declared: “With this blot removed from our national honor, this heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be such.”313 The abolitionist and transcendentalist William Henry Furness expected that the Proclamation would open a “new world,” which was “coming into existence arrayed in millennial splendor, wherein the distinctions of race, which have always been such active causes of contempt and hatred and war shall be obliterated, and men shall live together in the relations of a Christian brotherhood.”314 “God be praised!” exclaimed Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis. “I can hardly see to write,—for when I think of this great act of Freedom, and all it implies, my heart and my eyes overflow with the deepest, most serious gladness.”315 Curtis declared that there “was a time, not very long since, when a large majority of the Northern people would have opposed it strenuously—not so much from any admiration for slavery, as from the belief that, under the Constitution, we had no right to meddle with it, and that its abolition involved dangers and inconveniences perhaps as formidable as those which were created by its existence.” But educated people had been radicalized and the working class was sure to follow.316

  More than a dozen Northern governors who had gathered in Altoona, Pennsylvania, also congratulated the president. Their original purpose in coming together had been to discuss the parlous military situation as Lee invaded the North, and to urge a more vigorous prosecution of the war. On September 6, Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania had asked some of his counterparts if it would not “be well that the loyal governors should meet at some point in the Border States to take measures for the more active support of the Government?”317 Especially enthusiastic in promoting the conclave was Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, who argued that something must be done “to save the Presdt. from the infamy of ruining his country.”318 Andrew favored replacing McClellan with Frémont. Ot
her Radical governors, notably Richard Yates of Illinois, insisted that Lincoln must be goaded to take vigorous action against slavery. But on September 14, Moderates (Curtin, David Tod of Ohio, and Francis H. Pierpont of Virginia) rather than Radicals issued the call inviting fellow governors to join them at Altoona ten days later.

  After receiving a letter from Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan stating that “nothing will save us but a demand of the loyal governors, backed by a threat—that a change of policy and men shall instantly be made,” Lyman Trumbull warned Yates and his colleagues against dictating policy to the president. Such a step would violate the spirit of the Constitution, he argued. Moreover, Trumbull said with uncharacteristic charity for Lincoln, none of the governors, though “men of great ability and far-seeing comprehension,” was as capable as the president. “I know of no governor in any state who I believe equal in ability to Mr. Lincoln, and in high moral integrity—besides he has in his councils as great men as the Republic can produce. With this combination of talent and experience, I feel that our cause is doing the best it can under the circumstances.”319

  Before the Altoona meeting, Curtin, Andrew, and David Tod called on the president, who advised them to expect a new pronouncement on slavery. The president said that he approved of the conclave, and the governors gave him assurances that they would support the forthcoming change in policy. The mood at the Altoona meeting was soothed by the quasi-victory at Antietam a week earlier. Despite the outcome of that battle, some of the thirteen governors criticized McClellan, most notably Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa, who said the general “had done wrong in allowing bad men and bad newspapers who were doing all in their power to help the rebellion to success, to be his peculiar champions, although he knew that ten words from his lips would send them to hell, where they belonged.”320 Ohio’s Governor Tod defended McClellan, as did Curtin and Maryland Governor Augustus Bradford. Half a dozen governors expressed indignation that Frémont had been offered no command since his petulant resignation that summer. All save Bradford approved of the Emancipation Proclamation. Curtin and Andrew drew up an address expressing “heartfelt gratitude” to Lincoln for that momentous document, which they predicted would inspire “new vigor” as well as “new life and hope” among their constituents. They also urged that 100,000 reserve troops be organized to respond to future emergencies like the recent Confederate incursion across the Potomac.

  In reply, the president invited them to the White House, where he gratefully declared that “no fact had assured him so thoroughly of the justice of the conclusion at which he had arrived as that the Executives of loyal States gave it their hearty approbation.”321 The friendly tone of the meeting was disturbed briefly by Kirkwood’s interjection that the people of Iowa thought that McClellan “was unfit to command his army that his army was well clothed, well armed, well disciplined,” that his troops “were fighting in a cause as good as men ever fought for, and fought as bravely as men ever fought, yet were continually whipped.” Then Kirkwood brashly added: “There is an impression out west, Mr. President, that you do not dare to remove McClellan.” Stung by this remark, Lincoln replied: “if I believed our cause would be benefited by removing Gen. McClellan to-morrow, I would remove him to-morrow. I do not so believe to-day, but if the time shall come when I shall so believe I will remove him promptly, and not till then.”322 Several governors at Altoona had criticized cabinet members, but it was decided not to raise that delicate subject with Lincoln at their White House meeting. Instead, Andrew, Tod, and Pierpont would speak to him individually.

  Democrats called the Altoona Conference a “second Hartford Convention” and claimed that the governors’ pressure had forced Lincoln to preempt them by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln denied their assertion, insisting to George Boutwell that he “never thought of the meeting of the governors” when deciding to issue the Proclamation.323

  Lincoln gracefully expressed gratitude to a group of serenaders who called at the Executive Mansion on September 24. Whitelaw Reid reported that the crowd, which was “honoring the great act that shall make Abraham Lincoln immortal among men,” cheered repeatedly, surged back and forth, and looked on the man whom “the people trust” with “a thousand expressions—delight, gratification, curiosity, rage.” When the cheering subsided, the president explained in a tone that was neither triumphant nor even confident that “[w]hat I did, I did after very full deliberation, and under a very heavy and solemn sense of responsibility. [Cries of “Good,” “Good,” “Bless you,” and applause.]” He added “reverently and humbly” that “I can only trust in God I have made no mistake. [Cries “No mistake—all right; you’ve made no mistakes yet. Go ahead, you’re right.”] I shall make no attempt on this occasion to sustain what I have done or said by any comment. [Voices—“That’s unnecessary; we understand it.”] It is now for the country and the world to pass judgment on it, and, maybe, take action upon it.” Reid thought the scene “well worth remembering—one that History will treasure up forever: the President of a great Republic … standing at his window, amid the clouds and gloom with which his decree of Universal Emancipation is ushered in, receiving the congratulations of his People for his bold word for Freedom and the Right, … hesitating as he thanks them, doubting even amid the ringing cheers of the populace, trusting in God he has made no mistake, tremulously (so tremulously that his utterance seems choked by his agitation) awaiting the judgment of the Country and the World.”324

  Some sneered at the Proclamation as an “inopportune paper weapon.”325 Even a sympathetic observer like George Templeton Strong predicted that it “will do us good abroad, but will have no other effect.”326 The Washington National Intelligencer spoke for many when it scornfully referred to “the inutility of such proclamations” and speculated that Lincoln’s might do more harm than good.327 The New York Herald argued that Lincoln thought the war would be over by year’s end and that the document was therefore a mere sop “to silence the clamors of our shrieking and howling abolition faction.” It could not “in any just sense be regarded as an emancipation or abolition measure. It is wholly conditional, and may never emancipate a single slave.”328

  Fear of slave revolts and the possible destruction of the cotton crop alarmed some European governments. England’s foreign secretary, Lord John Russell, viewed the Emancipation Proclamation as an attempt to arouse “the passions of the slave to aid the destructive progress of armies.” Even staunch English friends of the North like Richard Cobden feared that the Proclamation would transform the war into “one of the most bloody & horrible episodes in history.” In October, French foreign minister Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys issued a circular to the British and Russian governments alluding to the “irreparable misfortunes” of “a servile war” and calling for joint mediation of the American conflict. Based on a six-month armistice and suspension of the blockade, this proposal was tantamount to diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy. When it was rejected in London and St. Petersburg, France shelved it. Still, Queen Victoria’s government had misgivings about the Emancipation Proclamation and was predisposed to intervene somehow to end the war and obviate the threat of slave uprisings. Ominously, the influential chancellor of the exchequer, William Gladstone, told an enthusiastic English audience in October: “We may have our own opinions about slavery, we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation.”329

  Democratic papers called the Emancipation Proclamation “a nullity,” a “monstrous usurpation,” a “criminal wrong,” and an “act of national suicide” that would “excite the ridicule that follows impotency.”330 The New York Express protested that the human mind “never conceived a policy so well fitted, utterly to degrade and destroy while labor, and to reduce the white man to the level of the negro.”331 Reaction in the Border States was predictably negative. Th
e “mischievous, pestilent proclamation” reportedly “produced great despondency” in Kentucky.332 The Louisville Democrat objected that “the President has as much right to abolish the institution of marriage, or the laws of a State regulating the relation of parent and child, as to nullify the right of a State to regulate the relations of the white and black races.”333 The Louisville Journal decried the proclamation as “wholly unauthorized and wholly pernicious” and predicted that “Kentucky cannot and will not acquiesce in this measure. Never!”334 A Kentuckian warned Lincoln that if “Negroes be freed in any of the Southern States, which are in rebellion, they will at once, make their way to the loyal or ‘border States,’ and there become a pest to Society, an expense upon the public or be driven beyond the bounds by the bayonet, or exterminated in like manner as we Christians have ‘done unto’ the Indians.”335 In Missouri, the news was “received with serious head shakings by many.”336 A St. Louis admirer of the president appealed to Joseph Holt: “Stop him! Hold him!” Could Holt “not prevail on him to be entirely silent on ‘negro-ology’?” Lincoln’s “proclamations have paralized our armies; and given nerve & vigor to the rebels.”337 In western Virginia, the Wheeling Press engaged in hyperbole, arguing that the Proclamation was “more like the knell of freedom and the wail of the departing angel of peace” than any document since the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, which led to the persecution of French Protestants.338