Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Caleb Smith kept silent as well, though he, too, had serious reservations. John Usher, the assistant secretary of the Interior Department, later recalled Smith telling him that if Lincoln issued the proclamation, he would “resign and go home and attack the administration.”
The division of sentiment within the cabinet was manifest as Blair, Chase, and Seward spoke. Arriving late, after Lincoln’s announcement that he had already resolved to issue the proclamation, Blair spoke up vigorously in opposition and asked to file his objections. While he supported the idea of compensated, gradual emancipation linked to colonization, he feared that the president’s radical proclamation would cause such an outcry among conservatives and Democrats that Republicans would lose the fall elections. More important, it would “put in jeopardy the patriotic element in the border States, already severely tried,” and “would, as soon as it reached them, be likely to carry over those States to the secessionists.” Lincoln replied that while he had considered these dangers, he had tried for months to get the border states “to move in this matter, convinced in his own mind that it was their true interest to do so, but his labors were in vain.” The time had come to move ahead. He would, however, willingly let Blair file his written objections.
Perhaps the most astonishing response came from Salmon Chase. No cabinet member had more vehemently promoted emancipation, and none could match his lifelong commitment to the abolitionist cause. Yet when faced with a presidential initiative that, he admitted, went “beyond anything I have recommended,” he recoiled. According to Stanton’s notes, Chase argued that it was “a measure of great danger—and would lead to universal emancipation.” He feared that widespread disorder would engulf the South, leading to “depredation and massacre on the one hand, and support to the insurrection on the other.” Chase recommended a quieter, more incremental approach, “allowing Generals to organize and arm the slaves” and “directing the Commanders of Departments to proclaim emancipation within their Districts as soon as practicable.” Still, since he considered the proclamation better than no action at all, he would support it.
Although Chase’s argument that the army might better control the pace of emancipation was legitimate, it is difficult not to suspect personal considerations behind his failure to wholeheartedly endorse the president’s proclamation. Chase had seen his bright hopes for the presidency vanish in 1856 and 1860. No president since Andrew Jackson had been reelected, and the next election was only two years away. Chase’s strongest claim to beat Lincoln for the nomination in 1864 lay with the unswerving support he had earned among the growing circle of radical Republicans frustrated by Lincoln’s slowness on the slavery issue. The bold proclamation threatened to undercut Chase’s potential candidacy, for, as Welles astutely recognized, it “placed the President in advance of [Chase] on a path which was his specialty.”
Stanton feared that Chase’s arguments would deter Lincoln from issuing his proclamation, letting the “golden moment” slip away. Should this come to pass, Stanton’s brother-in-law, Christopher Wolcott, wrote, then “Chase must be held responsible for delaying or defeating the greatest act of justice, statesmanship, and civilization, of the last four thousand years.” Lincoln later maintained, however, that not a single argument had been presented that he “had not already fully anticipated and settled in [his] own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke.”
William Henry Seward’s mode of intricate analysis produced a characteristically complex reaction to the proclamation. After the others had spoken, he expressed his worry that the proclamation might provoke a racial war in the South so disruptive to cotton that the ruling classes in England and France would intervene to protect their economic interests. As secretary of state, Seward was particularly sensitive to the threat of European intervention. Curiously, despite his greater access to intelligence from abroad, Seward failed to grasp what Lincoln intuitively understood: that once the Union truly committed itself to emancipation, the masses in Europe, who regarded slavery as an evil demanding eradication, would not be easily maneuvered into supporting the South.
Beyond his worries about intervention, Seward had little faith in the efficacy of proclamations that he considered nothing more than paper without the muscle of the advancing Union Army to enforce them. “The public mind seizes quickly upon theoretical schemes for relief,” he pointedly told Frances, who had long yearned for a presidential proclamation against slavery, “but is slow in the adoption of the practical means necessary to give them effect.” Seward’s position, in fact, was nearly identical to that held by Chase. His preference, he said, “would have been to confiscate all rebel property, including slaves, as fast as the territory was conquered.” Only an immediate military presence could assure escaped slaves of protection. Yet Seward’s practical focus underestimated the proclamation’s power to unleash the moral fervor of the North and keep the Republican Party united by making freedom for the slaves an avowed objective of the war.
Despite his concerns about the effect of the proclamation, Seward had no thought of opposing it. Once Lincoln had made up his mind, Seward was steadfast in his loyalty to him. He demurred only on the issue of timing. “Mr. President,” he said, “I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I fear…it may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help…our last
shriek,
on the retreat.” Better to wait, he grandiloquently suggested, “until the eagle of victory takes his flight,” and buoyed by military success, “hang your proclamation about his neck.” Seward’s argument was reinforced later that day by Thurlow Weed, who met with Lincoln on a visit to Washington.
“The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with very great force,” Lincoln later told the artist Francis Carpenter. “It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, waiting for a victory.”
A
S
J
ULY GAVE WAY TO
A
UGUST,
however, Lincoln’s thoughts never strayed from his proclamation. Repeatedly, he returned to edit his draft, “touching it up here and there, anxiously watching the progress of events.” Having resolved to present it for publication upon the first military success, he set out to educate public opinion, to prepare the ground for its acceptance. Lincoln had long believed, as we have seen, that “with public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” He understood that one of the principal stumbling blocks in the way of emancipation was the pervasive fear shared by whites in both the North and the South that the two races could never coexist peacefully in a free society. He thought that a plan for the voluntary emigration of freed slaves would allay some of these fears, fostering wider acceptance of his proclamation.
On August 14, Lincoln invited a delegation of freed slaves to a conference at the White House, hoping to inspire their cooperation in educating fellow blacks on the benefits of colonization. “You and we are different races,” he began. “We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” Lincoln acknowledged that with slavery, the black race had endured “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people.” Still, he continued, “when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoy. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.” Meanwhile, the evil consequences of slavery upon the white race were manifest in a calamitous civil war that found them “cutting one another’s throats.” Far “better for us both, therefore, to be separated,” Lincoln reasoned, informing the delegates that “a sum of money had been appropriated by Congress, and placed at his disposition” to aid in establishing a colony somewhere in Central America. He needed a contingent of intelligent, educated blacks, such as the men present, to promote the opportunity among their own people.
A discussion followed and the meeting came to a close. “We were entirely hostile to the movement until all the advantages were so ably brought to our views by you,” the delegation chief wrote Lincoln two days later, promising to consult with prominent blacks in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston who he hoped would “join heartily in Sustaining Such a movement.” His hope was misplaced. The black leaders responded swiftly with widespread antipathy to the proposal. As the
Liberator
eloquently argued, the nation’s 4 million slaves “are as much the natives of the country as any of their oppressors. Here they were born; here, by every consideration of justice and humanity, they are entitled to live; and here it is for them to die in the course of nature.” One might “as well attempt to roll back Niagara to its source, or to cast the Allegheny mountains into the sea, as to think of driving or enticing them out of the country.” How pathetic, the
Liberator
noted, that the president of a country “sufficiently capacious to contain the present population of the globe,” a nation that “proudly boasts of being the refuge of the oppressed of all nations,” should consider exiling “the entire colored population…to a distant shore.”
Reports of Lincoln’s dialogue with the black delegation provoked Frederick Douglass to his most caustic assault yet on the president. While acknowledging that this was the first time blacks had been invited for a hearing at the White House, he accused Lincoln of making “ridiculous” comments showing a “pride of race and blood” and a “contempt for negroes.” The president “ought to know,” Douglass argued, “that negro hatred and prejudice of color are neither original nor invincible vices, but merely the offshoots of that root of all crimes and evils—slavery. If the colored people instead of having been stolen and forcibly brought to the United States had come as free immigrants, like the German and the Irish, never thought of as suitable objects of property, they never would have become the objects of aversion and bitter persecution.”
Lincoln’s remarkable empathy had singularly failed him in this initial approach to the impending consequences of emancipation. Though he had tried to put himself in the place of blacks and suggest what
he
thought was best for them, his lack of contact with the black community left him unaware of their deep attachment to their country and sense of outrage at the thought of removal. In time, Lincoln’s friendship with Frederick Douglass and personal contact with hundreds of black soldiers willing to give up their lives for their freedom would create a deeper understanding of his black countrymen that would allow him to cast off forever his thoughts of colonization.
Even as he addressed the black delegation that August, Lincoln may not have been convinced that colonization was a feasible option. He recognized, however, that the mere suggestion of the plan might provide the “drop of honey” to make the prospect of emancipation more palatable. Chase would accept no such concession. “How much better would be a manly protest against prejudice against color!—and a wise effort to give freemen homes in America!” he wrote in his diary after reading Lincoln’s colonization discussion. Count Gurowski was even harsher in his condemnation, characterizing Lincoln’s talk of racial incompatibility as cheap “clap-trap,” revealing a disturbing “display of ignorance or of humbug, or perhaps of both,” unworthy of a president.
The most sensational criticism, however, came from Horace Greeley. He published an open letter to the president in the
New York Tribune
on August 20, which he entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” Claiming to speak for his vast readership, he decried the policy Lincoln seemed “to be pursuing with regard to the slaves,” which, “unduly influenced by the counsels…of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States,” failed to recognize that “all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause [slavery] are preposterous and futile.”
Lincoln decided to reply to Greeley’s letter, seizing the opportunity to begin instructing the public on the vital link between emancipation and military necessity. “As to the policy I ‘seem to be pursuing’ as you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt,” he began. “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 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.”
Having already decided upon emancipation, Lincoln hoped that his letter would soften the public impact of what he knew would be a controversial proclamation. Abolitionists, unaware that Lincoln had already committed himself to a path that would “do
more”
than even they had hoped, were infuriated by his response. “I am sorry the President answered Mr. Greeley,” Frances Seward complained to her husband; “his letter hardly does him justice…he gives the impression that the mere keeping together a number of states is more important than human freedom.”