Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Congress’s legislative response to Lincoln’s plan was at first positive. Among the many bills introduced during the early weeks of session, the most important was offered by Representative James M. Ashley, a Radical from Ohio. It contained most of the president’s suggestions—including the loyalty oath, the Ten Percent formula, the requirement that state constitutions abolish slavery, and the use of military governors—but stipulated that suffrage would be granted to loyal males (which would include blacks) but denied to Rebel officials and soldiers. Abandoning his earlier championship of the state suicide theory, Ashley grounded his proposal on the Constitution’s guarantee that all states would have a republican form of government. In most regards (except for the suffrage qualifications), his bill appeared to be a detailed implementation of the framework Lincoln suggested. So it seemed to many at the time, including the editors of the New York Evening Post and New York Times. Ashley’s bill was referred to a special committee on Reconstruction, which had been established in response to the president’s message. In moving the creation of such a committee, Thaddeus Stevens was not declaring war on Lincoln’s plan but merely carrying out a routine procedure followed by the House for decades. The committee would eventually become an enemy of the administration, but it was not so conceived.

  The executive-legislative honeymoon was short-lived, for Radicals quickly grew disenchanted with Lincoln’s approach to Reconstruction. Even on December 9, the Chicago Tribune reported that “as they began to scan it more closely,” Radicals “became more cautious in their praise.” The “intense radicals” argued “that it owes its apparent popularity to its avoidance of points on which he knew that anything he would say would arouse differences among his supporters.”84 Maine Senator William Pitt Fessenden called the amnesty proclamation “silly” because it told “the rebels they may fight as long as they can, and take a pardon when they have had enough of it.”85 Henry Winter Davis agreed, but he and Fessenden were in a distinct minority, at least in December 1863.

  Maintaining that the “Administration has put the negro, his liberty, his future, into the hands of the Supreme Court,” Benjamin Butler exclaimed to Wendell Phillips: “God help him if he have no other refuge!” and lamented that “no one seems to see the point.”86 Phillips, however, did. He replied to Butler that the president’s scheme “leaves the large landed proprietors of the South still to domineer over its politics, and make the negro’s freedom a mere sham. Until a large share of those estates are divided, the aristocracy is not destroyed, neither is any fair chance given for the development of a system of free labor.”87 To an audience at New York’s Cooper Union, Phillips denounced Lincoln’s proposal as “neither wise, safe, nor feasible.” The country “owes to the negro, not merely freedom; it owes him land, and it owes him education also.” Passionately he urged the president to ask Congress for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery everywhere.88

  Frederick Douglass was equally impatient with Lincoln, who he said “has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice, right from necessity.” The Ten Percent plan, Douglass protested, was “an entire contradiction of the constitutional idea of the Republican government.” By failing to support black suffrage, Lincoln betrayed black soldiers. “Our Government asks the Negro to espouse its cause; it asks him to turn against his master, and thus fires his master’s hate against him. Well, when it has attained peace, what does it propose? Why this, to hand the Negro back to the political power of his master, without a single element of strength to shield himself from the vindictive spirit sure to be roused against the whole colored race.”89

  Implementing the Ten Percent Plan: Florida and Louisiana

  The implementation of Lincoln’s plan got off to a rocky start. In January 1864, to bring Florida back into the Union, the president dispatched John Hay with instructions to enroll enough voters to meet the Ten Percent threshold established in the Reconstruction Proclamation. Some Republicans thought the assistant private secretary lacked sufficient gravitas. A Philadelphia editor remarked that Hay’s “young, almost beardless, and almost boyish countenance” suggested that he was too young for the “official responsibilities and the tumult of action in time of pressure.”90 An Ohio journalist described him as “that fellow five feet tall, that walks like lightning down the street” wearing “a turtle-backed hat, just the shape of his cranium, with well oiled locks, and handsome kid gloves.” A “stranger might mistake him for a stray Englishman,” and a “close observer will notice at once the air of weighty secrets by which he is surrounded.” Hay spoke “in the choice and expressive language which prevails at the ‘Chebang,’ as he pleasantly terms the White House. Inquire affectionately after the health of the President of the mightiest nation on the earth, and John will inform you that the ‘old Tycoon is in high feather.’ ”91

  Union military authorities in Florida had been planning a campaign in the northeast portion of the state, designed to cut off the peninsula from the rest of the Confederacy. In January 1864, after authorizing General Quincy A. Gillmore to launch that offensive, Lincoln had Hay commissioned as a major and sent him to join it. At first, Hay expressed optimism about his mission. “I think we will soon have the state back in the Union,” he wrote on February 8. “If we get the ‘President’s Tithe’ it will be fully half the voters in the state, as the poor old carcass of a neighborhood has been plucked to the bone, by North & South.”92 To Lincoln he described Floridians as “ignorant and apathetic,” seeming “to know nothing and care nothing about the matter.” They vaguely objected “to being shot and having their houses burned,” but they did not understand “why it is done” and “will be very glad to see a government strong enough to protect them against these everyday incidents of the last two years.” Hay received “the best assurances that we will get the tenth required: although so large a portion of the rebel population is in the army & so many of the loyal people, refugees in the North, that the state is well-nigh depopulated. We will have almost a clean slate to begin with.”93

  A week later, however, Hay predicted that he would fail. On February 20, Gillmore’s offensive was repulsed at the battle of Olustee, making that prediction a certainty. A Union officer, Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut, called the attempt to restore Florida “a gigantic humbug. Besides the Floridians who were already with the Union forces at St. Augustine, Fernandina, Key West, etc., we have scarcely met a man who would be allowed to vote in Connecticut,—that is with sufficient intelligence and education. Not enough white men have we picked up to make one good country school district at the north. We have some prisoners, a good many deserters and a lot of stragglers, poor white-livered, fever-stricken, scrawny, ignorant creatures, with hardly intelligence enough to be made even the tool of a political intriguer.”94

  Hay acknowledged the truth of Hawley’s observation, explaining that “we must wait for further developments in military operations before we can hope for a reorganization of the state under a loyal government. I find nearly everybody willing to take the oath of allegiance prescribed by the President, but I find scarcely anyone left in the country. Whole counties seem almost thoroughly depopulated. The few that remain seem heartily tired of the war, and willing to swear allegiance in any terms to the power that will protect them, but there are really not enough, as it seems to me, to justify a movement just at present, for rehabilitation.”95

  The New York Herald also regarded Hay’s mission as a humbug. That paper, which was championing Grant for president, reported rumors “that the expedition was intended simply for the occupation of Florida for the purpose of securing the election of three Lincoln delegates to the National Nominating Convention, and that of John Hay to Congress. The cost of the operation to the government is estimated at about one million of dollars.”96 Greatly disturbed by that charge, Hay penned a response for the Washington National Republican asserting that the military offensive was planned and approved before he was given his assignment, which he had applied for
because he desired “a more active life.”97

  Criticism of the administration’s plan grew more intense after Lincoln altered his policy in Louisiana. Frustrated by the endless delays in setting up a new government there, caused in part by the legalistic approach of Thomas J. Durant, he decided to stop relying on the Free State Committee and to count instead on Nathaniel P. Banks to get things moving. Thus he abandoned his earlier insistence that the formation of new state governments should “be a movement of the people of the Districts, and not a movement of our military and quasi-military, authorities there.”

  Banks had a plan that strongly appealed to Lincoln. The “only speedy and certain method of accomplishing your object,” Banks told the president, would be to order the election “of a State Government, under the Constitution [of 1852] and Laws of Louisiana, except so much thereof as recognizes and relates to slavery, which should be declared by the authority calling the election, and in the order authorizing it, inoperative and void.” Within two months, voters could be registered in the manner that Lincoln had spelled out in his proclamation and an election could be held. Soon thereafter a convention to revise the 1852 constitution could be summoned. “The People of Louisiana will accept such a proposition with favor,” Banks predicted, for they “will prefer it to any arrangement which leaves the subject to them for an affirmative or negative vote. … Of course a government organized upon the basis of immediate and universal freedom, with the general consent of the people, followed by the adaptation of commercial and industrial interests to this order of things, & supported by the Army and Navy, the influence of the civil officers of the Government, and the Administration at Washington, could not fail by any possible chance, to obtain an absolute and permanent recognition of the principle of freedom upon which it would be based.” Such a strategy, Banks assured the president, “will be far more acceptable to the Citizens of Louisiana, than the submission of the question of slavery to the chances of an election. Their self-respect, their Amour propre will be appeased if they are not required to vote for or against it. Offer them a Government without slavery, and they will gladly accept it as a necessity resulting from the war.” Banks explained that he was “opposed to any settlement, and have been from the beginning, except upon the basis of immediate emancipation, but it is better to secure it by consent, than by force, better still by consent and force. It carries moral, as well as physical power with it.” Consideration of black suffrage could be postponed a year or more: “Other questions relating to the condition of the negro, may safely be deferred until this one is secured. If he gains freedom, education, the right to bear arms, the highest privileges accorded to any race and which none has yet proved itself worthy unless it be our own, his best friend may rest content for another year at least.”98

  It is not entirely clear if Lincoln knew the details of this plan before putting Banks in charge of Louisiana Reconstruction. The general had evidently written a letter, no longer extant, outlining his plans to George Boutwell, who read it to the president on December 21. Boutwell reported to Banks that the letter “made a deep impression upon the President and in no manner unfriendly to you. After some further consideration he said he should write to you saying that he understood and expected you to exercise supreme and undivided authority and to take the matter of State organization into your own hands.” Lincoln, wrote Boutwell, “is still anxious to have La. organized as a free State, and I believe he fully agreed with my suggestion that it could be well and speedily accomplished only by putting the power into your hands.”99

  Delighted at the prospect of swift action, Lincoln wrote Banks on Christmas Eve 1863 endorsing his plan and authorizing him to carry it out. The president apologized for his sharp letter of December 6: “I have all the while intended you to be master, as well in regard to re-organizing a State government for Louisiana, as in regard to the military matters of the Department; and hence my letters on reconstruction have nearly if not quite all been addressed to you. My error has been that it did not occur to me that Gov. Shepley or any one else would set up a claim to act independently of you; and hence I said nothing expressly upon the point. Language has not been guarded at a point where no danger was thought of. I now tell you that in every dispute, with whomsoever, you are master. Gov. Shepley was appointed to assist the Commander of the Department, and not to thwart him, or act independently of him. Instructions have been given directly to him, merely to spare you detail labor, and not to supersede your authority. This, in it’s liability to be misconstrued, it now seems was an error in us. But it is past. I now distinctly tell you that you are master of all, and that I wish you to take the case as you find it, and give us a free-state re-organization of Louisiana, in the shortest possible time. What I say here is to have a reasonable construction. I do not mean that you are to withdraw from Texas, or abandon any other military measure which you may deem important. Nor do I mean that you are to throw away available work already done for re-construction; or that war is to be made upon Gov. Shepley, or upon any one else, unless it be found that they will not co-operate with you, in which case, and in all cases, you are master while you remain in command of the Department.”100

  Banks’s “confidence in the practicability of constructing a free state-government, speedily, for Louisiana,” and his “zeal to accomplish it” gratified Lincoln, who urged the general to “proceed with all possible dispatch.” To assist Banks, the president let it be known that all federal appointees in Louisiana should give him “full, and zealous co-operation.”101 The decision to place Banks in charge would profoundly affect the course of Reconstruction not only in Louisiana but throughout the South.

  True to his word, Banks delivered a free-state government in less than two months. Emboldened by his new authority, he scrapped the Free State Committee’s plan to hold a constitutional convention, and mandated that on February 22 elections be held for governor and other state officials based on the 1852 state constitution. To nullify provisions of that document sanctioning slavery, the general promulgated special orders. Michael Hahn, a Moderate, won the governorship, defeating the Radical Benjamin Flanders and the Conservative J. Q. A. Fellows. The turnout of more than 11,000 voters far exceeded the Ten Percent requirement. Lincoln congratulated Hahn for “having fixed your name in history as the first-free-state Governor of Louisiana.”102 Five weeks later, 6,000 voters participated in the election of delegates to a constitutional convention, which met from April through July. In September, the resulting document won ratification by a handsome majority (6,836 to 1,566). Lincoln and Banks had transformed the sputtering Reconstruction efforts of the Free State Committee and General Shepley into a successful movement restoring the Bayou State on the basis of liberty. By all rights, Radicals should have been pleased, but they were not.

  As 1864 began, a journalist rashly predicted that since “the republican party is a unit,” therefore “no quarrels between radicals and conservatives will be in order.”103 In fact, a quarrel quickly broke out over Louisiana Reconstruction. The man most responsible for creating this major rupture in the Republican coalition was 46-year-old Thomas J. Durant, the tall, emaciated, dyspeptic head of Louisiana’s Free State Committee. A follower of the French utopian socialist philosopher Francois Marie Charles Fourier, and an admirer of Thomas Jefferson, after whom he was named, Durant had campaigned for Stephen A. Douglas in 1860 and served briefly in the Confederate militia. Though he owned a few slaves and early in the war defended planters complaining about the Union troops’ practice of harboring runaway bondsmen, by 1863 he had become an ardent leader of the antislavery forces in New Orleans. In 1862, Durant, who eventually was to pick a fight with Lincoln and Banks over black suffrage, had formulated a Reconstruction plan based on white voters alone. As state attorney general and commissioner of voter registration, he had refused to enroll free blacks.

  Lincoln, on the other hand, had twice approved the enfranchisement of free blacks by February 1864, when Durant began his revolt against
the president’s Reconstruction policy. In August 1863, Stanton had directed Governor Shepley to register for voting “all the loyal citizens of the United States.” The word white, which Durant had used in defining eligible voters, was conspicuously absent. In early December, Durant abruptly changed course and recommended that some black males—those born free—be enfranchised.

  Chase told Durant that the administration meant to allow, but not insist upon, the enfranchisement of free-born blacks. “I am particularly gratified,” wrote the treasury secretary, “by your wise & courageous advocacy of the right of native free born colored citizens to participate in the reorganization of the State Governments. I informed the President of your views in this respect, and he said he could see no objection to the registering of such citizens [or to] their exercise of the right of suffrage. You will have observed doubtless that in his message & proclamation he does not limit reorganization to the precise forms or modes proposed by him, but is willing to accept any form or mode whereby the great ends of restoration to the Union with permanent free state institutions can be best secured.”104 To Lyman D. Stickney, a friend acting as tax commissioner in Florida, Chase praised Durant’s action regarding free-born blacks and added: “I told the President of it, and he said he could see no objection to their enrollment and voting.” Chase urged Stickney and others working to restore the government of Florida to “go further, and let all of full age vote who have borne arms for the country, or who can read and write, without any other distinctions at present.”105 When Lincoln received an appeal from a white Louisiana Unionist urging him to deny blacks the right to vote for constitutional convention delegates, he endorsed it as follows: “On very full consideration I do not wish to say more than I have publicly said.”106 Just as he would not openly support black voting yet, neither would he oppose it.