Team Of Rivals Part 37

For the soldiers, the need to communicate with their families was tantamount to their need to survive. Alcott told the story of a valiant soldier named John, a young man of "commanding stature," with a handsome face and "the serenest eyes" she had ever seen. A ball had pierced his left lung, making it almost impossible for him to breathe. Although the doctors deemed his condition hopeless, he clung to life for days, hoping to hear from home. "Unsubdued by pain," he never uttered a complaint, "tranquilly [observing] what went on about him." When he died, "many came to see him," paying respect to the quiet courage that had impressed both the hospital staff and his fellow soldiers. While Louisa May Alcott stood by his bed, the ward master handed her a letter from John's mother that had arrived the night before, "just an hour too late to gladden the eyes that had longed and looked for it so eagerly."

The emotional narratives of Whitman and Alcott testify to the enormous fort.i.tude demanded by hospital work. Whitman told his mother that while he kept "singularly cool" during the days, he would "feel sick and actually tremble" at night, recalling the "deaths, operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of maggots)," and the "heap of feet, arms, legs" that lay beneath a tree on some hospital grounds. Alcott confessed that she found it difficult to keep from weeping at "the sight of several stretchers, each with its legless, armless, or desperately wounded occupant" coming into her ward. Workers and visitors were also exposed to contagion, as soldiers with typhoid lay side by side with patients dying of pneumonia or diphtheria. The thirty-year-old Alcott developed a severe case of typhoid after only two months and was forced to return to her home in Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts.

Watching the countless young men suffer and die around her, Mary must have found it difficult to dwell solely upon the loss of her own child. "Death itself has lost all its terrors," Whitman wrote. "I have seen so many cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Yet somehow the triumphs of life, humor, and love were also evident amid the horrors of the hospitals. One soldier, whose body "was so blackened and burned by a powder explosion that some one remarked, 'There is not much use bringing him in,'" showed such a fierce determination to live that he eventually recovered. Another youth, who had lost one leg and was soon to lose an arm, amazed onlookers when he joked about his condition, imagining the "scramble there'll be for arms and legs, when we old boys come out of our graves, on the Judgment Day." In ward after ward, recovering patients even organized impromptu bands to entertain their fellow bedmates with music and song.

Observing Mary as she departed for her regular round of hospital visits, William Stoddard wondered why she didn't publicize her efforts. "If she were worldly wise she would carry newspaper correspondents, from two to five, of both s.e.xes, every time she went, and she would have them take shorthand notes of what she says to the sick soldiers and of what the sick soldiers say to her." This, more than anything, he surmised, would "sweeten the contents of many journals" that had frequently derided the first lady's receptions and redecorating projects. The New York Independent had been particularly relentless in its attacks on Mary. "While her sister-women sc.r.a.ped lint, sewed bandages, and put on nurses' caps," Mary Clemmer Ames wrote, "the wife of its President spent her time in rolling to and fro between Washington and New York, intent on extravagant purchases for herself and the White House."

Yet Mary continued her hospital trips without any publicity. Some physicians objected to further interruption in an already chaotic situation, while others thought it improper for ladies to a.s.sociate with common soldiers in various states of undress. Under such circ.u.mstances, Mary decided to carry on her work discreetly.

So it happened that while newspapers regularly praised the work of other society women, referring to Mrs. Caleb Smith as "our ever-bountiful benefactress & friend," and to Mrs. Stephen Douglas, who had converted her mansion into a hospital, as "an angel of mercy," Mary Lincoln received scant credit for her steadfast attempts to comfort Union casualties. She found something more gratifying than public acknowledgment. For in the hours she spent with these soldiers she must have sensed their unwavering belief in her husband and in the Union for which they fought. Such a faith was not readily found elsewhere-not in the cabinet, the Congress, the press, or the social circles of the city.

WHILE WASHINGTON SWELTERED through the long, hot summer, Lincoln made the momentous decision on emanc.i.p.ation that would define both his presidency and the course of the Civil War.

The great question of what to do about slavery had provoked increasingly bitter debates on Capitol Hill for many months. Back in March, as foreshadowed in a message to Congress, Lincoln had asked the legislature to pa.s.s a joint resolution providing federal aid to any state willing to adopt a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery. The resolution called upon states to stipulate that all slaves within their borders would be freed upon attaining a certain age or specify a date after which slavery would no longer be allowed. Lincoln had calculated that "less than one half-day's cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars per head," and that eighty-seven days' expenses would buy all the slaves in all the other border states combined. He believed that nothing would bring the rebellion to an end faster than a commitment by the border slave states "to surrender on fair terms their own interest in Slavery rather than see the Union dissolved." If the rebels were deprived of hope that these states might join the Confederacy, they would lose heart.

The proposal depended upon approval by the border-state representatives, who would have to promote the plan in their state legislatures. Except for Frank Blair, however, who had long advocated compensated emanc.i.p.ation coupled with colonization, they refused to endorse the proposal. Even when Lincoln personally renewed his plea to them on July 12, they argued that "emanc.i.p.ation in any form" would lengthen, not shorten, the war; it "would further consolidate the spirit of rebellion in the seceded states and fan the spirit of secession among loyal slaveholders in the Border States." They insisted that the measure would unjustly punish those who remained loyal to the Union, forcing them to relinquish their slaves while the rebellious states retained theirs. They would face an uproar among their own citizens, and the proposal would cost far more than the federal government could pay.

Meanwhile, the Republican majority in Congress, freed from the domination of the Southern bloc, began to push their own agenda on slavery. In April, Congress pa.s.sed a bill providing for the compensated emanc.i.p.ation of slaves in the District of Columbia. The bill met Lincoln's wholehearted approval, for he had "never doubted the const.i.tutional authority of congress to abolish slavery" in areas that fell under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and, indeed, Lincoln had drafted his own proposal to free slaves in the District when he had been in Congress fourteen years earlier. Frederick Dougla.s.s was ecstatic. "I trust I am not dreaming," he wrote Charles Sumner, "but the events taking place seem like a dream." As slaves in the District gained their freedom, slaveholders in surrounding Maryland and northern Virginia, fearful that their own slaves would grow restive, began selling them to owners farther south.

Francis Blair, Sr., who had already a.s.sured his slaves that they could "go when they wished," proudly affirmed that "all but one declined the privilege," electing to stay on as servants at Silver Springs, where they lived together in their own "quarters" that resembled those on Southern plantations. One servant, Henry, declared he "was used to quality all his days" and wanted to remain with the Blairs for the rest of his life. Nanny, another servant, agreed. She was "well off," had no thought of moving on, but was "delighted that her children are free."

The situation became more complex when the radical bloc in Congress began to address slavery in the seceded Southern states where it already existed and was protected by the Const.i.tution. In July, despite the vehement protests of Democrats and conservative Republicans, the radical majority pa.s.sed a new confiscation bill. Broader than the bill pa.s.sed the previous year, which had limited the federal government to confiscating and freeing only those fugitive slaves employed by rebels in the field, the new act emanc.i.p.ated all slaves of persons engaged in rebellion, regardless of involvement in military affairs. The bill was ill considered, providing no workable means of enforcement and no procedure to determine whether the owner of a slave crossing Union lines was actually engaged in insurrection. "It was," the historian Mark Neely writes, "a dead letter from the start." But it stirred the hearts of all those, like Charles Sumner, who believed that slavery was a "disturbing influence which, so long as it exists, will keep this land a volcano, ever ready to break anew."

It was rumored in Washington that Lincoln would veto the controversial bill. Indeed, Browning carried a copy of it to the White House as soon as it pa.s.sed, pleading with Lincoln to veto it. If approved, he warned, "our friends" in the border states "could no longer sustain themselves there." The bill would "form the basis upon which the democratic party would again rally, and reorganize an opposition to the administration." Lincoln's decision, Browning insisted, would "determine whether he was to control the abolitionists and radicals, or whether they were to control him." The key moment had arrived when "the tide in his affairs had come and he ought to take it at its flood."

Chase presented the diametrically opposed prediction, which maintained that if Lincoln vetoed the bill, it "will be an end of him." The Republican majority in Congress would break ranks with the administration, and Lincoln would be openly castigated on the floor. Worried that he, too, might be tainted by a presidential veto, Chase told his friends to spread word that he had not been consulted, "nor so far as he knew [had] a single member of his cabinet" been involved. While he would willingly answer for his actions as treasury secretary, Chase refused to take the blame "for other people's blunders or errors of policy."

Rumors that Lincoln would veto the bill proved incorrect. The next morning, Browning found the president working in his library. He "looked weary, care-worn and troubled," Browning noted, "and there was a cadence of deep sadness in his voice." The president had made his decision, which he knew would distress his friend. Still, before signing the bill that would become known as the Second Confiscation Act, Lincoln listed his objections in writing and obtained a revised bill that made it more likely to pa.s.s const.i.tutional muster.

As was customary on the last day of the session, the president traveled to the Capitol, stationing himself in the vice president's office, where he signed the spate of bills rushed through in the final days of the term. It had been an extraordinarily productive session. Relieved of Southern opposition, the Republican majority was able to pa.s.s three historic bills that had been stalled for years: the Homestead Act, which promised 160 acres of free public land largely in the West to settlers who agreed to reside on the property for five years or more; the Morrill Act, providing public lands to states for the establishment of land-grant colleges; and the Pacific Railroad Act, which made the construction of a transcontinental railroad possible. The 37th Congress also laid the economic foundation for the Union war effort with the Legal Tender bill, which created a paper money known as "greenbacks." A comprehensive tax bill was also enacted, establishing the Internal Revenue Bureau in the Department of the Treasury and levying a federal income tax for the first time in American history.

At that time, the far-reaching impact of this epoch-making home front legislation was overshadowed by the continuing slavery controversy, which preoccupied both sides of the aisle. Referring to the endless hours the Republican stalwarts spent rehashing the issue, Seward jokingly told foreign diplomats over dinner that "he had lately begun to realize the value of a Cromwell," and sometimes longed for "a Coup d'etat for our Congress." As the summer progressed, his level of frustration with Congress grew. "I ask Congress to authorize a draft," he complained to Frances. "They fall into altercation about letting slaves fight and work. Every day is a day lost, and every day lost is a hazard to the whole country. What if I should say, that I concede all they want about negroes?...One party has gained another partisan; the country has lost one advocate."

Within the cabinet as well as on Capitol Hill, the rancor over slavery infected every discourse. The debates had grown "so bitter," according to Seward, that personal and even official relationships among members were ruptured, leading to "a prolonged discontinuance of Cabinet meetings." Though Tuesdays and Fridays were still designated for sessions, each secretary remained in his department unless a messenger arrived to confirm that a meeting would be held. Seward recalled that when these general discussions were still taking place, Lincoln had listened intently but had not taken "an active part in them." For Lincoln, the problem of slavery was not an abstract issue. While he concurred with the most pa.s.sionate abolitionists that slavery was "a moral, a social and a political wrong," as president, he could not ignore the const.i.tutional protection of the inst.i.tution where it already existed.

The devastating reverses on the Peninsula, which made it clear that extraordinary means were necessary to save the Union, gave Lincoln an opening to deal more directly with slavery. Daily reports from the battle-fields illuminated the innumerable uses to which slaves were put by the Confederacy. They dug trenches and built fortifications for the army. They were brought into camps to serve as teamsters, cooks, and hospital attendants, so that soldiers were freed to fight in the fields. They labored on the home front, tilling fields, raising crops, and picking cotton, so their masters could go to war without fearing that their families would go hungry. If the rebels were divested of their slaves, who would then be free to join the Union forces, the North could gain a decided advantage. Seen in this light, emanc.i.p.ation could be considered a military necessity, a legitimate exercise of the president's const.i.tutional war powers. The border states had refused his idea of compensated emanc.i.p.ation as a voluntary first step, insisting that any such action should be initiated in the slave states. A historic decision was taking shape in Lincoln's mind.

Lincoln revealed his preliminary thinking to Seward and Welles in the early hours of Sunday, July 13, as they rode together in the president's carriage to the funeral of Stanton's infant son. The journey to Oak Hill Cemetery, where Stanton's child was to be buried, must have evoked painful memories of Willie, whose body remained there in the private vault awaiting final interment in Springfield. Despite such personal torment, the country's peril demanded Lincoln's complete concentration. During the journey, Welles recorded in his diary, the president informed them that he was considering "emanc.i.p.ating the slaves by proclamation in case the Rebels did not cease to persist in their war." He said that he had "dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance, and delicacy" of the subject and had "come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued." Thus, the const.i.tutional protection of slavery could and would be overridden by the const.i.tutionally sanctioned war powers of the president.

This was, Welles clearly recognized, "a new departure for the President, for until this time, in all our previous interviews...he had been prompt and emphatic in denouncing any interference by the General Government with the subject." The normally talkative Seward said merely that the "subject involved consequences so vast and momentous that he should wish to bestow on it mature reflection before giving a decisive answer," though he was inclined to think it "justifiable."

So the matter rested until Monday morning, July 21, when messengers were dispatched across Washington with notices of a special cabinet meeting to be held at 10 a.m. "It has been so long since any consultation has been held that it struck me as a novelty," Chase wrote in his diary. Earlier that day, Chase had shared breakfast in his home with Count Gurowski, whose acute frustration with Lincoln's hesitancy regarding emanc.i.p.ation had been evident for many months. In Gurowski's mind, Seward was the primary obstacle to progress, while Chase represented the best hope for spurring Lincoln forward. An inveterate gossip, Gurowski related to Chase the story of Seward's comments on Cromwell and the Congress, which, he claimed, had been received with marked disapproval by the diplomats in attendance.

When the cabinet convened, all members save the postmaster general were in attendance. Montgomery Blair was in Maryland, where he had recently built an elegant country estate, Falkland, in Silver Spring near his parents' estate. For this special meeting, the cabinet was summoned to the second-floor library rather than the president's official office. There, surrounded by the curved bookshelves that Mary had recently filled with splendidly bound sets of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott's novels, the president began with an admission that he was "profoundly concerned at the present aspect of affairs, and had determined to take some definitive steps in respect to military action and slavery." The members listened as Lincoln read several orders he was contemplating. One would authorize Union generals in Confederate territory to appropriate any property necessary to sustain themselves in the field; another would sanction the payment of wages to blacks brought into the army's employ. Taken together, these orders signaled a more vigorous prosecution of the war. When the discussion moved to address the possible arming of those blacks in the army's employ, Stanton and Chase were in favor. Lincoln, Chase recorded, was "not prepared to decide the question."

When the preliminary discussions had run long, the president scheduled another cabinet session the following day, July 22, to reveal his primary purpose in calling the meeting. This second session was likely held in Lincoln's office, as depicted in Francis Carpenter's famous painting, First Reading of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. There, surrounded by evidence of the ever-expanding war, with battlefield maps everywhere-rolled in standing racks, placed in folios on the floor, and reclining up against the walls-the conversation from the previous day continued.

The desultory talk abruptly ended when Lincoln took the floor and announced he had called them together in order to read the preliminary draft of an emanc.i.p.ation proclamation. He understood the "differences in the Cabinet on the slavery question" and welcomed their suggestions after they heard what he had to say; but he wanted them to know that he "had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice." Then, removing two foolscap sheets from his pocket and adjusting his gla.s.ses on his nose, he began to read what amounted to a legal brief for emanc.i.p.ation based on the chief executive's powers as commander in chief.

His draft proclamation set January 1, 1863, little more than five months away, as the date on which all slaves within states still in rebellion against the Union would be declared free, "thenceforward, and forever." It required no c.u.mbersome enforcement proceedings. Though it did not cover the roughly 425,000 slaves in the loyal border states-where, without the use of his war powers, no const.i.tutional authority justified his action-the proclamation was shocking in scope. In a single stroke, it superseded legislation on slavery and property rights that had guided policy in eleven states for nearly three quarters of a century. Three and a half million blacks who had lived enslaved for generations were promised freedom. It was a daring move, Welles later said, "fraught with consequences, immediate and remote, such as human foresight could not penetrate."

The cabinet listened in silence. With the exception of Seward and Welles, to whom the president had intimated his intentions the previous week, the members were startled by the boldness of Lincoln's proclamation. Only Stanton and, surprisingly, Bates declared themselves in favor of "its immediate promulgation." Stanton instantly grasped the military value of the proclamation. Having spent more time than any of his colleagues contemplating the logistical problems facing the army, he understood the tremendous advantage to be gained if the ma.s.sive workforce of slaves could be transferred from the Confederacy to the Union. Equally important, he had developed a pa.s.sionate belief in the justice of emanc.i.p.ation.

Bates, as one of the more conservative members of the cabinet, surprised his colleagues with his enthusiastic approval of the proclamation. He had previously registered disapproval of the more limited emanc.i.p.ation measures attempted by the military and had expressed grave misgivings about the confiscation legislation. His sudden support of this far more radical step can be traced, in part, to the terrible division that slavery and the war had wrought upon his family.

In a scenario common to many border-state homes torn by divided loyalties, the Bates brothers had joined opposing sides in the war. Twenty-eight-year-old Fleming Bates had enlisted in the Confederate Army and was serving under Major General Sterling Price. Fleming faced the prospect of going into battle against any of four brothers. His older brother Julian, a surgeon, had been made a colonel in the Missouri militia. His younger brother Coalter was with the Army of the Potomac and would fight at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Another brother, Richard, was clerking for his father but would soon join the Union navy; while the family's youngest son, Charles Woodson, was a cadet at West Point. For Bates, who valued his family above all else, nothing could be more heartbreaking than the possibility of his sons facing one another on the battlefield. He had long favored gradual emanc.i.p.ation, but if the president's proclamation could bring the war to a speedier conclusion, he would give it his "very decided approval."

Bates based his approval, however, on the condition that the freed slaves would be deported to someplace in Central America or Africa. Unlike Lincoln, who insisted that any emigration must be voluntary, Bates believed it should be mandatory. Bates "was fully convinced," Welles later recalled, "that the two races could not live and thrive in social proximity." He believed that a.s.similation was impossible without amalgamation, and that amalgamation would inevitably bring "degradation and demoralization to the white race." Although he conceded that "among our colored people who have been long free, there are many who are intelligent and well advanced in arts and knowledge," he could not imagine former slaves, "fresh from the plantations of the South, where they have been long degraded by the total abolition of the family relation, shrouded in artificial darkness, and studiously kept in ignorance," living on an equal footing with whites. Far better for everyone, he argued, if the government established treaties granting aid to foreign governments willing to accept and settle freed slaves. He was hopeful that such treaties would "provide for the just and humane treatment of the emigrants-e.g. ensuring an honest livelihood by their own industry...and guaranteeing to them 'their liberty, property and the religion which they profess.'"

Gideon Welles remained silent after Lincoln presented his proclamation. He later admitted that the prospect of emanc.i.p.ation involved such unpredictable results, "carrying with it a revolution of the social, civil, and industrial habits and condition of society in all the slave States," that he was oppressed by the "solemnity and weight" of the decision. He feared that, far from shortening the war, emanc.i.p.ation would generate an "energy of desperation on the part of the slave-owners" and "intensify the struggle." Yet, while he privately questioned the "extreme exercise of war powers" involved, Welles held his tongue and later loyally supported Lincoln.

Caleb Smith kept silent as well, though he, too, had serious reservations. John Usher, the a.s.sistant 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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 emanc.i.p.ation." He feared that widespread disorder would engulf the South, leading to "depredation and ma.s.sacre 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.s, 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 antic.i.p.ated and settled in [his] own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke."

William Henry Seward's mode of intricate a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.ses 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 emanc.i.p.ation, the ma.s.ses 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 a.s.sure 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."

AS JULY GAVE WAY TO AUGUST, 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 princ.i.p.al stumbling blocks in the way of emanc.i.p.ation 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 ent.i.tled 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 sh.o.r.e."

Reports of Lincoln's dialogue with the black delegation provoked Frederick Dougla.s.s to his most caustic a.s.sault 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," Dougla.s.s 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 emanc.i.p.ation. 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 Dougla.s.s 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 ent.i.tled "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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 emanc.i.p.ation, 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."

Seward had argued this very issue with his zealous wife for many months. At home in June, he had apparently suggested that the preservation of republican inst.i.tutions must supersede the immediate abolition of slavery. Though he had fought slavery all his life, Seward hesitated when faced with the possibility that moving too precipitously toward abolition might destroy the republic itself and all that it stood for on the stage of world history. He had no doubt that slavery would eventually be brought to an end. Indeed, he believed the future of slavery had been "killed years ago" by the progress of civilization. "But suppose, for one moment," he later explained, "the Republic destroyed. With it is bound up not alone the destiny of a race, but the best hopes of all mankind. With its overthrow the sun of liberty, like the Hebrew dial, would be set back indefinitely. The magnitude of such a calamity is beyond our calculation. The salvation of the nation is, then, of vastly more consequence than the destruction of slavery."