by James Oakes
Lincoln’s famous response to Greeley did little to silence the speculation. To be sure, Lincoln insisted that Greeley’s “assumptions” were “erroneous” and that his “inferences” were “falsely drawn,” implicitly denying that his delay in issuing the proclamation was grounded in reluctance to emancipate slaves. Rather, Lincoln repeated what he had claimed from the beginning—that the purpose of the war was the restoration of the Union—a position Greeley himself had endorsed and from which Lincoln would never deviate. “I would save the Union,” Lincoln explained, in “the shortest way under the Constitution. . . . 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.”19 Like all Republicans and growing numbers of northern Democrats, Lincoln believed that he could constitutionally emancipate slaves in order to restore the Union. Yet hardly anybody believed that “under the Constitution” the federal government could wage a war whose “purpose” was the overthrow of slavery. Lincoln was careful to explain that this was his understanding of his responsibility as president, but that it in no way diminished his long-standing personal desire to see slavery abolished everywhere.
Lincoln’s reply to Greeley fascinated readers at the time and has mystified scholars ever since. What did the letter reveal about Lincoln’s intentions? The radical abolitionist Wendell Phillips denounced it as “the most disgraceful document that ever came from the head of a free people.”20 Not all abolitionists agreed. Gerrit Smith, who always believed that legislative emancipation—by Congress—was constitutional, agreed with Lincoln that the only constitutional justification for the war was the restoration of the Union. Smith then scolded his fellow abolitionists who “found great fault with the tenor of the president’s Reply to Horace Greeley.” Smith, by contrast, thought Lincoln’s letter was “sound in doctrine and argument and admirable in style.”21 But opponents of emancipation also approved of the Greeley letter. A Missouri unionist congratulated the president for standing firm against pressure from Greeley. “Emancipation proclamations can only serve to make things worse,” he wrote. “Your course is correct.”22 Still others read the Greeley letter in exactly the opposite way, as the first public indication that Lincoln thought universal emancipation was a reasonable possibility. The “general impression,” Sydney Howard Gay wrote, is that Lincoln was about to declare that the “destruction of slavery” was necessary to suppress the rebellion.23
In some ways the Greeley letter was perfectly straightforward. Lincoln had always hated slavery, but he never believed his personal feelings allowed him to override the Constitution, which protected slavery in the states. Unless the Constitution was rewritten, the federal government could not constitutionally wage a war for the purpose of destroying slavery. Only the “military necessity” of suppressing the rebellion could legally justify emancipation. That, at least, was the standard Republican Party position all through the war, and Lincoln’s answer to Greeley merely restated it.
On the other hand, Lincoln’s reply to Greeley had a Delphic quality that allowed different people to read very different messages into it. On the face of it, for example, Lincoln seemed to be reciting his three straightforward options regarding emancipation: he could free all the slaves, some of the slaves, or none of the slaves. If that’s what Lincoln meant to suggest, it was deliberately misleading because two of those three “options” were already foreclosed. Slavery had already been abolished in the territories and in Washington, thousands of slaves had already been emancipated in various parts of the South, and Lincoln had said more than once that slaves freed by the war could never be re-enslaved. So restoring the Union without freeing any slaves was simply not an option. Lincoln did not actually believe he had the power to restore the Union by freeing all the slaves. Under the Constitution, as he and most people understood it, the federal government had no power to abolish slavery anywhere, nor did Lincoln believe that universal military emancipation could be imposed in areas that were loyal to the Union. Lincoln, then, did not have the option of restoring the Union by freeing all of the slaves. Of all the ways of reading the Greeley letter, a straightforward description of Lincoln’s three options is among the least compelling. No doubt speculation as to the president’s true meaning would have gone on indefinitely had Lincoln not made his intentions clear a few weeks later after the battle of Antietam.
SEPTEMBER 22, 1862
The military conditions that delayed Lincoln’s announcement in late July only worsened in late August. At a second battle at Bull Run, Union forces under the command of General John Pope were defeated by the skillful maneuvering of the Confederates led by Generals Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. Lee had daringly violated one of the basic rules of warfare when he divided his own troops, sending Jackson on a bold ride around Pope’s army into the Union rear. This set Pope on a fruitless chase in search of the rapidly moving Stonewall brigade until, on August 29, the two armies confronted one another along an unfinished rail line near the site of the previous year’s battle at Manassas Junction. Jackson held the Union troops at bay and Pope, with his superior numbers, prepared to counterattack the next morning. When morning came, however, it was Lee who countered Pope’s assault. Reinforced by troops under Confederate General James Longstreet, Lee’s army crushed Pope at this second battle at Bull Run, sending the northern troops back to the safety of the Washington defenses in another ignominious Union defeat. If Lincoln was waiting for a military success to release his proclamation, he was going to have to wait longer.24
Flush with victory, Lee turned his mighty army northward for the first Confederate invasion of the North. Meanwhile Lincoln brought back General George McClellan to lick the wounds of a Union army demoralized by the a second loss at Bull Run. McClellan quickly did what he always did best: he got the Union army into fighting shape. However, when it came time to repel Lee’s invasion on September 17, at the battle of Antietam, McClellan did what he did worst. He managed the battle disastrously, launching consecutive rather than concurrent attacks against enemy lines and holding back fresh Union troops when their presence in the field might have proved decisive. Still, the Confederates were badly mauled at Antietam, which turned out to be the bloodiest single day of the war. Unable to keep up the fight, much less sustain his invasion of the North, Lee retreated across the Potomac back into Virginia. With fresh troops still at his disposal, McClellan nevertheless refused to chase Lee down and, in effect, allowed the Confederate armies to escape. For all that, Antietam was a Union victory, the one Lincoln was waiting for.25
By then rumors were circulating wildly throughout the capital. Delano Smith, a clerk in the auditor’s office, “eagerly looked at the newspaper” in hopes that the talk of an impending emancipation proclamation would be confirmed.26
On Monday morning, September 22, a State Department messenger notified all the cabinet members that the president would meet with them at noon, at which time Lincoln told them the funny story by Artemus Ward, followed by his reading of the proclamation. Lincoln had not invited the cabinet to offer advice about the policy—he already knew what everyone’s opinion was—but to consider any suggestions about the precise wording of the document. Seward recommended a few changes to make it clear that slaves emancipated by the proclamation were freed forever and that emigration by the former slaves would be strictly voluntary and only at the invitation of the host country. All agreed to Seward’s suggestions. Chase gave the proclamation his full support, though he continued to believe it would be more effective to have individual generals issue local proclamations as they moved through the South. Blair said that while he agreed to the policy of emancipation in the seceded states per se, he still thought it was a bad time to issue it, that it would alienate the Border States and disturb the army. With a few changes in wording, Lincoln released the document that same day.27
The Preliminary Proclamation began by decl
aring once again that the “object” of the war had always been and would always be “restoring the constitutional relation” between the states and the national government. Lincoln would accomplish this object by attacking slavery in several different ways. First, he would once again urge Congress to endorse federal incentives encouraging the loyal states to abolish slavery on their own—gradual emancipation, federal compensation, and subsidies for former slaves who chose to emigrate. He reserved more radical assaults on slavery for the disloyal states. Taking his cue from the Second Confiscation Act on which it was based, Lincoln distinguished between military emancipation in the occupied and unoccupied areas of the Confederacy. Universal emancipation would commence in the parts of the South not occupied by the Union but still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. “Thenceforward,” Lincoln declared, slaves in rebel areas would be “forever free,” their freedom recognized and maintained by the federal government. The army and navy of the United States would do nothing, Lincoln declared, “to repress” the slaves “in any efforts they make for their actual freedom.” This was the “preliminary” element of the proclamation.28
The remainder of the proclamation was designed to be implemented immediately in areas already occupied by Union forces. Lincoln quoted the March 13 articles of war strictly prohibiting anyone in the army or navy from “returning fugitives” to their owners, making it clear that U.S. soldiers and sailors were not the enforcement agents for the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. Lincoln then quoted two entire sections of the Second Confiscation Act that he had signed on July 17. The first, Section 9, freed the slaves of all rebels who came within Union lines or those in areas formerly occupied by the Confederates. The second, Section 10, created the presumption of freedom for any slave escaping into Washington, even those coming from the loyal state of Maryland. Having quoted the statutes, Lincoln then ordered “all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service the act, and sections above recited.”29 This was more than a “preliminary” proclamation.
After two months of increasingly anxious anticipation, Lincoln’s announcement struck like a thunderbolt. Enthusiastic crowds serenaded the president outside the White House. A delegation of loyal governors meeting in Altoona, Pennsylvania, sped to Washington to congratulate the president “upon his proclamation, believing it will do good as a measure of justice and sound policy.”30 Letters of support, some brief and ecstatic, others long and sober, poured into the White House from all parts of the North. The response, Lincoln said, was all that a vain man could hope for.
If there was an overarching theme to the expressions of support, it was that the restoration of the Union and the destruction of slavery were irrevocably joined. “We now have ‘Liberty and Union,’ one and inseparable, now and forever,” declared three citizens from Erie, Pennsylvania. “Slavery has declared the Union its enemy,” another wrote, and “all the friends of the Union must labor for the overthrow of Slavery.” A second, related theme noted the proclamation’s dual character “as a measure alike Military & Philanthropic,” a “sublime act of justice & humanity,” both “right” and “politic.” Gerrit Smith did not doubt that “as a man, [Lincoln] weeps over the wrongs of the Africans in this land,” but only the war power gives him the right, as commander in chief, to emancipate slaves. Smith fully endorsed the logic of military emancipation. “We cannot put down the Rebels and save the country,” he declared, “if we continue to let them have their slaves to help them carry on the Rebellion.” Lincoln was gratified by these shows of support in part because he hoped the proclamation would stiffen the North’s commitment to universal emancipation. But he also expected it to have a more immediate impact on a group of generals in the Mississippi Valley.31
THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
By expressly enjoining the army and navy to begin enforcing the emancipation clauses of the Second Confiscation Act, Lincoln intended his proclamation to be read as a military order, to be implemented at once. The transformation was literal and unambiguous. The War Department quickly printed fifteen thousand copies and began distributing them two days later to commanders in the field. Within the U.S. Army the Preliminary Proclamation became “General Orders No. 139.”32
The orders had their most dramatic effect on the generals who had most consistently resisted emancipation. On October 7, still resting near Antietam, McClellan issued his own cover letter to be distributed along with the president’s proclamation. In the United States, McClellan pointed out, civilians make policy; the military merely carries it out. There was to be no caviling about the emancipation orders beyond the respectful expression of a dissenting opinion. Disobedience was not the appropriate response to an order with which a soldier disagreed. “The proper remedy for political errors, if any are committed, is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls.”33 McClellan was all but inviting his troops to vote against Republicans in the upcoming elections. As an acknowledgment of the president’s emancipation order, this could scarcely have been more grudging, but it was an acknowledgment all the same.
The full impact of the Preliminary Proclamation was felt in the West, in Tennessee and Mississippi. Union occupation of the Mississippi Valley had begun in earnest with Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson in February of 1862. As with the occupation of Louisiana, Union military success in western Tennessee and northern Mississippi brought the federal armies into some of the richest plantation districts of the South, densely populated with slaves. If the Gulf States were a cotton kingdom, the Mississippi Valley was its throne. The cotton plantations lining the great river were among the most profitable in the South; measured by per capita wealth, the river counties were the richest in America. As Union troops arrived, planters began “refugeeing” their slaves, sometimes moving them short distances to plantations farther inland, sometimes as far away as Texas, in a determined effort to keep their slaves away from Yankee troops. By then everyone knew that runaway slaves and Union armies formed a nearly irresistible magnetic attraction.
When Grant invaded Tennessee in February of 1862, there was a great deal of confusion about what federal policy toward slavery actually was. On February 22, General Henry Halleck tried to reiterate General Orders No. 3 in a way that incorporated Republican criticism, but a few weeks later, on March 13, Lincoln signed the law banning Halleck’s policy.34 What replaced it was unclear, in part because Congress was well on its way to revising federal antislavery policy. Geography added another layer of ambiguity. Northern armies frequently moved back and forth between loyal and disloyal slave states. However impractical Halleck’s earlier approach to dealing with slavery in the Border States, it was supposed to be distinct from federal policy in the seceded states where slaves voluntarily coming within Union lines were accepted and emancipated. Union generals moving back and forth across the borders between the loyal slave state of Kentucky and the disloyal slave state of Tennessee could not conform consistently to either policy. Tennessee’s political situation compounded the uncertainty, for although the state had formally joined the Confederacy, it had a unionist military governor reporting directly to the president. By Lincoln’s standard a loyal government made Tennessee a loyal state.
The geographical and political vagaries facing the Union forces in the West meant that different commanding generals dealt with slavery in different ways. General Ulysses S. Grant tried to enforce the rules set by Washington policymakers as interpreted by General Halleck, but Grant could never be sure which policy applied and the policy itself was continually evolving. Sometimes he turned away fugitives, more often he protected them, depending on what he thought his commanding officers were asking him to do. In Louisiana, General Benjamin Butler responded the same way. Unsure of what federal policy applied, he excluded some slaves from Union lines while emancipating others. In April of 1862, one Union officer issued orders to expel all slaves “improperly retained or harbored�
�� within his camps, while at the same time offering employment to “fugitive slaves who have become free under the laws of Congress.”35 Another Union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, had no sympathy at all for emancipation. He sprinkled letters with racial epithets, though in truth he was nearly as contemptuous of reporters, secessionists, politicians, and “the people” as he was of blacks. But Sherman was also a professional soldier who, like Grant, believed that civilians made policy and that the army merely implemented it. It’s just that he was no more certain about which policy applied than Grant and Butler were. As Sherman’s troops moved deeper into the plantation belt of the Mississippi Valley, as more and more slaves came into his lines claiming their freedom, Sherman studied the congressional statutes, presidential proclamations, and military orders flying out of Washington, in an effort to discern official policy and adjust his treatment of slavery accordingly—though generally with a bias against emancipation. Among western commanding generals, however, it was Don Carlos Buell who displayed the most consistent hostility to emancipation. If the Union army was at war with itself over emancipation, ground zero for the infighting was central and eastern Tennessee, where Buell’s obnoxious orders protecting slavery provoked flagrant insubordination among his antislavery officers.
