Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  On New Year’s Eve, leading champions of statehood from western Virginia (including Senator Waitman T. Willey and Congressmen Jacob B. Blair and William G. Brown) called on Lincoln by invitation. At his request, they presented the various arguments in favor of statehood. He then read aloud the opinions of the cabinet and part of his own. They liked what he had written, which seemed to favor statehood. But he stopped before reaching the conclusion. Using imagery from card playing, he teased them about their evident optimism. “I suppose you think this is the odd trick,” meaning that his positive opinion would result in a cabinet vote of four to three in favor of statehood. But they were disappointed that he would not definitely assure them he would sign the bill. He urged them to come the next morning to learn his decision. Jacob Blair recalled that on New Year’s Day, before 10 A.M., “I presented myself at the White House, but found the doors locked. I raised the sash of one of the large windows, gained an entrance, and went directly to the President’s room. When I was ushered in I found Secretaries Seward and Stanton with him, but the President went directly to his desk and, taking out the West Virginia bill, held it up so that I read the signature, Approved: Abraham Lincoln.” The president manifested “the simplicity and joyousness of a child, when it feels it has done its duty, and gratified a friend.” The bill admitted West Virginia, with the stipulation that the voters of the new state would have to approve a clause in its constitution providing for compensated emancipation. They did so promptly, and the state was officially admitted to the Union in June 1863.309

  Later, the president told Pierpont that the governor’s telegram “was the turning point in my mind in signing the bill. I said to myself, [‘]here, this is not a constitutional question, it is a political question. The government has been fighting nearly two years for its existence. The friends of the bill say it will strengthen the Union cause and will weaken the cause of the Rebels. It is a step and is political. I will not trouble myself further about the constitutional point,[’] so I determined to sign the bill.”310

  Condoler-in-Chief: Comforting Fanny McCullough

  In the midst of the turmoil created by the cabinet crisis, the defeat at Fredericksburg, the impending issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the debate over statehood for West Virginia, Lincoln took time to pen a letter of condolence to Fanny McCullough, the grief-stricken daughter of his friend, Lieutenant Colonel William McCullough. The colonel, who had served as sheriff and clerk of the courts in Bloomington, Illinois, was killed in action on December 5. His 21-year-old daughter, “a guileless, truthful, warm hearted, noble girl” who suffered from a nervous condition, was shattered by the bad news, and spent her days either pacing back and forth violently or lethargically sitting without uttering a word.311

  When the president, who felt the loss of his good friend McCullough keenly, learned of her condition, he offered her moving and revealing advice and comfort: “It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.”312 A friend of Fanny reported that the “beautifully written” letter “had a very good effect in soothing her troubled mind.”313

  Modifying the Emancipation Proclamation

  Lincoln had many things on his mind that busy New Year’s Eve, most notably the Emancipation Proclamation, due to be issued the following day. On December 29 and 31, the cabinet discussed a draft of the final version of the momentous document. The president had modified the preliminary version somewhat, toning down its pledge that the government “will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons [freed slaves], and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.” Lincoln inserted the word suitable before any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. He had doubts about the word maintain. As he later remarked: “It was Seward’s persistence which resulted in the insertion of the word ‘maintain,’ which I feared under the circumstances was promising more than it was quite probable we could carry out.”314

  Chase argued that no areas in the Confederacy should be exempted, save West Virginia. The president understandably rejected this suggestion, fearing that slaveholders in areas under Union control might successfully argue in court that the government had no right to seize their slaves. Lincoln also hoped to placate Northern Conservatives, Border State residents, and Southern Unionists. The treasury secretary proposed a closing sentence that echoed the Declaration of Independence: “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Constitution, and of duty demanded by the circumstances of the country, I invoke the considerate judgement of Mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.” Lincoln adopted the sentence, substituting upon military necessity for of duty demanded by the circumstances of the country.

  Montgomery Blair thought the freedmen should be enjoined “to show themselves worthy of freedom by fidelity & diligence in the employments which may be given to them by the observance of order & by abstaining from all violence not required by duty or for self-defence. And whilst I appeal & & it is due to them to say that the conduct of large numbers of these people since the war began justifies confidence in their fidelity & humanity generally.”315 In keeping with this advice, Lincoln altered his version to read: “I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”

  Curiously, Lincoln dropped the word forever from his earlier drafts, which stated that the slaves of disloyal masters “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The final draft merely read that those slaves “are, and henceforward shall be free.” He may have feared that the courts would take a dim view of such an extravagant claim. Unlike the preliminary version announced in September, the final Emancipation Proclamation said nothing about colonization.

  That change pleased Radicals, but the Proclamation’s legalistic language did not. “It must have required considerable ingenuity to give two and a half millions of human beings the priceless boon of Liberty in such a cold ungraceful way,” remarked the Boston Commonwealth. “The heart of the Country was anticipating something warm and earnest. One could scarcely imagine that the herald of so blessed a dawn should have caught none of its glow. Was it not a time when some word of welcome, of sympathy, of hospitality for these long-enslaved men and women, might have been naturally uttered?”316 James Freeman Clarke, an ultra-Radical Unitarian minister, told his parishioners that the document should have been “put on principles of justice and right, not on mere war necessity.”317

  Sable Warriors: Enlisting Black Troops

  A striking feature of the revised document was a provision that blacks might serve in the military: “And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” This represented a reversal of Lincoln’s earlier stand on the enlistment of blacks. On July 1, he told Orville H. Browning that no blacks “are to be armed. It would produce [a] dangerous & fatal dissatisfaction in our army, and do more injury than good.”318 Later that month, during a
cabinet meeting, he “expressed himself as averse to arming negroes” and said nothing about that subject in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Halleck, too, was unenthusiastic about the use of black troops. “I do not think much of the negro,” he told the cabinet.319 Many others shared General Samuel R. Curtis’s belief that if blacks were enrolled in the service, “some of them might adopt Savage cruelty, repugnant to honorable modern warfare. It might also reduce the esprit du Corps of free man.”320

  Politically, Lincoln had to contend with fierce popular resistance to recruiting blacks, especially in the Midwest and Border States. His Illinois friend, Colonel W. W. Orme, confided that “I don’t want to mingle in an army of Negroes. And if it has come at last to the point that the white race of the North cannot successfully contend in arms with the white race of the South, then let us quit the contest and stop the war.”321 Presciently one Democratic congressman from Ohio warned colleagues that the “question is one of political and social equality with the negro everywhere. If you make him the instrument by which your battles are fought, the means by which your victories are won, you must treat him as a victor is entitled to be treated, with all decent and becoming respect.”322 In 1862, the Republican governor of the Buckeye State rhetorically asked John Mercer Langston, a black man who wished to raise a regiment: “Do you not know, Mr. Langston, that this is a white man’s government; that white men are able to defend and protect it, and that to enlist a negro solider would be to drive every white man out of the service? When we want you colored men we will notify you.”323

  In July, Congress had paved the way for the administration’s new departure by approving Senator Henry Wilson’s amendment to the Militia Act which authorized the president “to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service, or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent, and such persons shall be enrolled and organized under such regulations, not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws, as the President may prescribe.”324 The Second Confiscation Act contained a similar provision.

  The changing mood of the voters had affected the thinking of Congress and the president about enlisting blacks. Many Northerners shared the view of an Ohioan who maintained that “we have the same right to employ Black men on our side as they [the Confederates] have to use them against us.”325 In May, another Buckeye informed Chase that the “very timid course of the President as to slavery, and the strange conduct of certain generals, are fast bringing public opinion to the fearful alternative of an armed intervention of the slaves themselves. Those of you who have been in Washington for the last year can have no idea of the rapid change which is taking place in public opinion. I have heard the most ultra democrats of former times advocate the confiscation of all rebel property and the arming of the slaves.”326

  Though authorized to enlist blacks as combat troops, Lincoln decided to employ them only in support roles. He feared alienating the Border States and was aware of opposition in the army to the use of blacks as fighters. An Iowa colonel spoke for many officers when he wrote: “I have now sixty men on extra duty as teamsters &c. whose places could just as well be filled with niggers. We do not need a single negro in the army to fight but we could use to good advantage about one hundred & fifty with a regiment as teamsters & for making roads, chopping wood, policing camp &c.”327

  On August 4, Lincoln refused the offer of two black regiments recruited in the West, explaining to Senators James Harlan and Samuel C. Pomeroy that “he had made up his mind not to accept at present the service of armed negroes. He would use them as teamsters, cooks, laborers on entrenchments and in every capacity save fighting. He declared that to accept regiments of armed negroes would be to lose forty thousand white soldiers now in the army, and would drive some of the border States out of the Union.” The employment of black troops in combat was premature; he decided that “he should wait till such a course seemed to be a direct command of Providence before adopting it.”328 He concluded by saying, “Gentlemen, you have my decision. I have made my mind up deliberately and mean to adhere to it. It embodies my best judgment, and if the people are dissatisfied, I will resign and let Mr. Hamlin try it.” Pomeroy, laboring under the impression that the president was backing away from his earlier support of enlisting blacks, snapped: “I hope in God’s name, Mr. President, you will.”329

  In early August, the president told a close friend that he had “no confidence” in blacks as fighters and predicted “that as much harm would come to us from the fact that we were arming negroes, as from a general proclamation of freedom.”330 On another occasion, Lincoln asked a congressman who was lobbying to have blacks enrolled in the military: “if I lose as many white men from the army of Virginia as I can enlist black men, will it pay?”331 (There was good reason to believe that white Kentuckians would quit the army if blacks were admitted to its ranks.) In mid-August, Orville H. Browning told him that many Illinoisans were speculating that if the president “will accept one black Regiment he will lose twenty white Regiments by it.” Browning declared that the “time may come for arming the negroes. It is not yet.”332

  Lincoln thought that time was late August. An informal effort by General David Hunter to raise black troops in the Sea Islands of South Carolina foundered because of that general’s ineptitude. On August 10, Hunter reported that he was disbanding his black regiment. Surprisingly, two weeks later the War Department authorized the enrollment of 5,000 blacks in the Sea Islands under Hunter’s replacement, General Rufus Saxton. Without official sanction, a modest number of black troops in Louisiana and Kansas were also mustered in. Some blacks had begun serving aboard Union warships as early as the fall of 1861. It was not clear that slaves thus employed would become free. Lincoln deliberately avoided an explicit policy statement for fear of antagonizing Border State sentiment. A journalist remarked apropos of the president’s calculated ambiguity, “[n]ever was a man more cat-like in stealthily feeling his way before him.”333

  The president evidently encouraged Kansas Senator James H. Lane to enlist blacks in his state and thereby induce slaves from neighboring Missouri to desert their plantations and farms, slip across the border, and join up. Missouri slaveowners might then see merit in Lincoln’s compensated emancipation scheme and press their legislators to adopt it.334 In July, when Lane told the president and Stanton that he intended to raise two black regiments in Kansas, he was not forbidden to do so. Six months earlier, Lane had planned to lead a column against Texas. According to one report, his instructions were, in effect, to “let slavery be disposed of by military necessities and the course of events. If slaves come within our lines from the plantations beyond the federal lines, use them. If they can work on fortifications use their services, clothe, feed and pay them. If absolutely necessary, arm them. If [they are] slaves of rebels, free them.” Lane’s “Southern Expedition” was eventually scrubbed after he and David Hunter quarreled about who should command it.335 When word of Lane’s instructions leaked out, an incredulous Democrat asked: “Can it be possible that a chief magistrate of a great nation has no settled policy? Can it be possible that he lets out his administration by contract to politicians who are to take turns in the management of it?”336

  After the Fredericksburg debacle, Maine Governor Israel Washburn recommended that the president “now quietly commence organizing colored regiments—they will fight & will save him if he will let them.” Why, Washburn asked, “are our leaders unwilling that Sambo should save white boys?”337 Another governor, Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa, told Halleck: “When this war is over & we have summed up the entire loss of life it has imposed on the country I shall not have any regrets if it is found that a part of the dead are niggers and that all are not white men.”338 Kirkwood could not “understand or appreciate the policy that insists that all the lives lost … shall be those of white men when black men are found willing to do the work
and take the risks.”339

  In fact, Lincoln was no longer unwilling to enroll blacks, as the Emancipation Proclamation made clear. At first, he wanted them in jobs and areas where they were unlikely to be captured. In July 1862, while discussing the Mississippi River and the many blacks living along it, Lincoln had told Orville H. Browning: “I am determined to open it, and, if necessary will take all these negroes to open it, and keep it open.”340 Shortly after issuing the Proclamation, he suggested to General John A. Dix that Fort Monroe be manned by blacks: “The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding—at best, were progressing too slowly—without it. Now, that we have it, and bear all the disadvantage of it, (as we do bear some in certain quarters) we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I therefore will thank you for your well considered opinion whether Fortress-Monroe, and York-Town, one or both, could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by colored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places, to be employed elsewhere.”341 Two months later, Lincoln encouraged Andrew Johnson, then serving as military governor of Tennessee, to recruit blacks into the army. “The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest?”342 He prodded General N. P. Banks to expedite the recruitment of Louisiana blacks: “To now avail ourselves of this element of force, is very important, if not indispensable. … I shall be very glad if you will take hold of the matter in earnest.”343 In the summer of 1863, Lincoln told U.S. Grant that black troops constituted “a resource which, if vigorously applied now, will soon close the contest. It works doubly, weakening the enemy and strengthening us.”344