Most
members of the Republican Party believed
that the Constitution protected slavery
in the states. However, some Radical Republicans
such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles
Sumner, argued that after the outbreak of the American
Civil War the president had the power to abolish slavery
in the United States.
In May, 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler,
a strong opponent of slavery, was placed
in command of Fort Monroe in Virginia. Soon afterwards, runaway
slaves began to appear at the fort seeking protection. The slaveowners
demanded that the runaways should be returned. Butler refused, issuing
a statement that he considered the slaves to be "contraband of
war". Butler's action was welcomed by those involved in the struggle
against slavery and he immediately became a favourite with Radical
Republicans.
Abraham Lincoln believed that Butler's
action was unconstitutional. However, after a Cabinet meeting it was
decided not to reprimand Butler. Three months later, Major General
John C. Fremont, the commander of the
Union Army in St.
Louis proclaimed that all slaves owned by Confederates in Missouri
were free. This time Lincoln decided to ask Fremont to modify his
order and free only slaves owned by Missourians actively working for
the South.
When John C. Fremont refused to back
down he was sacked. Lincoln wrote to Fremont: "Can it be pretended
that it is any longer the government of the U.S. - any government
of Constitution and laws - wherein a General, or a President, may
make permanent rules of property by proclamation." Fremont was
replaced by the conservative General Henry
Halleck. He immediately issued an order forbidding runaway
slaves from seeking permission to be protected by the Union
Army.
Radical Republicans were furious with
Lincoln for sacking John C. Fremont.
The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, William
Fessenden, described Lincoln's actions as "a weak and unjustifiable
concession in the Union men of the border states. Whereas Charles
Sumner wrote to Lincoln complaining about his actions and remarked
how sad it was "to have the power of a god and not use it godlike".
The situation was repeated in May, 1862, when General David
Hunter began enlisting black soldiers in the occupied district
under his control. Soon afterwards Hunter issued a statement that
all slaves owned by Confederates in his area (Georgia, Florida and
South Carolina) were free. Lincoln was furious and despite the pleas
of Salmon Chase, the Secretary of the
Treasury, the instructed him to disband the 1st South Carolina (African
Descent) regiment and to retract his proclamation.
On 19th August, 1862, Horace Greeley
wrote an open letter to the Abraham Lincoln
in the New York Tribune
about forcing David Hunter to retract
his proclamation. Greeley criticized the president for failing to
make slavery the dominant issue of the
war and compromising moral principles for political motives. Lincoln
famously replied on 22nd August, "My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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."
Despite this public dispute with Horace Greeley,
Lincoln was already reconsidering his views on the power of the president
to abolish slavery. He wrote that the
events of the war had been "fundamental and astounding".
He admitted that these events had changed his mind on emancipation.
He was helped in this by William Whiting, a War Department solicitor,
who told him that in his opinion, the president's war powers gave
him the right to emancipate the slaves.
After consulting with his vice president, Hannibal
Hamlin, Lincoln wrote the first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation.
When Lincoln told his Cabinet of his plans to free the slaves in the
unconquered Confederacy, Montgomery Blair,
the Postmaster General led the attack on the idea. Blair argued that
if Lincoln went ahead with this it would result in the Republican
Party losing power. William Seward,
the Secretary of State, agreed with Lincoln's decision but advocated
that it should not be issued until the Union
Army had a major military victory.
On 17th September, 1862, George McClellan
defeated Robert E. Lee at Antietam.
It was the most costly day of the war with the Union
Army having 2,108 killed, 9,549 wounded and 753 missing. The Confederate
Army, who were now have serious difficulty replacing losses, had
2,700 killed, 9,024 wounded and 2,000 missing.
Although far from an overwhelming victory, on 22nd September, Lincoln
felt strong enough to issue his Emancipation Proclamation. The statement
said that all slaves would be declared free in those states still
in rebellion against the United States on 1st January, 1863. The measure
only applied to those states which, after that date, came under the
military control of the Union Army. It
did not apply to those slave states such as Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland,
Missouri and parts of Virginia and Louisiana, that were already occupied
by Northern troops.
Lincoln signed the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation on
the 1st January, 1863. There were two major chances to the document
published on the 22nd September. This included the omission of the
passage that the government would "do no act or acts to repress
such persons in any efforts that they may make for their actual freedom".
It was argued by conservatives in Lincoln's Cabinet that this passage
suggested that the government was willing to support slave rebellions
in the South.
The other change was that that under pressure from Radical
Republicans, Lincoln agreed to accept a clause accepting former
slaves in the Union Army. Over the next
two years six regiments of US Colored Cavalry, eleven regiments and
four companies of US Colored Heavy Artillery, ten batteries of the
US Colored Light Artillery, and 100 regiments and sixteen companies
of US Colored Infantry were raised during the war. By the end of the
conflict nearly 190,000 black soldiers
and sailors had served in the Union forces.
(1)
New York Evening Post, commenting
on Abraham Lincoln's decision to sack John
C. Fremont
(September, 1861)
He should not allow himself to be outstripped by his Cabinet, by Congress,
by the Major Generals, and by the people. He is the head of the nation,
to which it naturally looks for forward movements. But in his late
modification of Fremont's order, it almost appears as if he desired
to go backward.
(2) George
Julian, speech in the Senate on the American
Civil War (14th
January, 1862)
When
General Fremont proclaimed freedom to the slaves of rebels in Missouri,
it was greeted with almost universal joy throughout the free States.
The popular instinct at once recognized it as a blow struck at the
heart of the rebellion. The order that rebels should be shot did not
carry with it half the significance of this proclamation of freedom
of their slaves. But the President at once modified it, so far as
its anti-slavery features went beyond the Confiscation Act. Their
slave property must be held as more sacred than any other property;
more sacred than their lives; more sacred even than the life of the
Republic. Could any policy be more utterly suicidal?
(3)
Salmon
P. Chase, letter to Abraham
Lincoln
about the actions of General
David Hunter
(16th May, 1862)
It
has been made as a military measure to meet a military exigency, and
should, in my judgment be suffered to stand upon the responsibility
of the Commanding General who made it. It will be cordially approved,
I am sure, by more than nine tenths of the people on whom you must
rely for support of your administration.
(4)
Abraham
Lincoln, letter
to Abraham
Lincoln
on General
David Hunter
(19th May, 1862)
No
commanding general shall do such a thing, upon my responsibility,
without consulting me.
(5)
Horace Greeley, letter to President Abraham
Lincoln (19th August, 1862)
I do not intrude to tell
you - for you must know already - that a great proportion of those
who triumphed in your election, and of all who desire the unqualified
suppression of the rebellion now desolating our country, are solely
disappointed and deeply pained by the policy you seem to be pursuing
with regard to the slaves of the Rebels.
We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge
of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating
provisions of the new Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed
to fight slavery with liberty. They prescribe that men loyal to the
Union, and willing to shed their blood in the behalf, shall no longer
be held, with the nation's consent, in bondage to persistent, malignant
traitors, who for twenty years have been plotting and for sixteen
months have been fighting to divide and destroy our country. Why these
traitors should be treated with tenderness by you, to the prejudice
of the dearest rights of loyal men, we cannot conceive.
Fremont's Proclamation and Hunter's Order favoring emancipation were
promptly annulled by you; while Halleck's Number Three, forbidding
fugitives from slavery to Rebels to come within his lines - an order
as unmilitary as inhuman, and which received the hearty approbation
of every traitor in America - with scores of like tendency, have never
provoked even your remonstrance.
(6)
President Abraham
Lincoln, letter to
Horace Greeley (22nd August, 1862)
If there be those who
would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy
slavery. I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle
is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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 do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would
also do that.
(7) Abraham
Lincoln, proclamation (22nd September, 1862)
That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves
within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof,
will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do
no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts
they may make for their actual freedom.
(8) In
his book, Life and Times,
Frederick Douglass described his reaction
to the Emancipation Proclamation.
The first of January,
1863, was a memorable day in the progress of American liberty and
civilization. It was the turning-point in the conflict between freedom
and slavery. A death blow was then given to the slaveholding rebellion.
Until then the federal arm had been more than tolerant to that relict
of barbarism. The secretary of war, William H. Seward, had given notice
to the world that, "however the war for the Union might terminate,
no change would be made in the relation of master and slave."
Upon this pro-slavery platform the war against the rebellion had been
waged during more than two
years. It had not been a war of conquest, but rather a war of conciliation.
McClellan, in command of the army, had been trying, apparently, to
put down the rebellion without hurting the rebels, certainly without
hurting slavery, and the government had seemed to coöperate with
him in both respects.
Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and the whole anti-slavery phalanx at the
North, had denounced this policy, and had besought Mr. Lincoln to
adopt an opposite one, but in vain. Generals, in the field, and councils
in the Cabinet, had persisted in advancing this policy through defeats
and disasters, even to the verge of ruin. We fought the rebellion,
but not its cause. And now, on this day of January 1st, 1863, the
formal and solemn announcement was made that thereafter the government
would be found on the side of emancipation. This proclamation changed
everything.
(9)
Annie
L. Burton,
Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days (1909)
One morning my master got the news that the Yankees had left Mobile
Bay and crossed the Confederate
lines, and that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed by President
Lincoln. Mistress suggested that the slaves should not be told of
their freedom; but master said he would tell them, because they would
soon find it out, even if he did not tell them. Mistress, however,
said she could keep my mother's three children, for my mother had
now been gone so long.
All
the slaves left the plantation upon the news of their freedom, except
those who were feeble or sickly. With the help of these, the crops
were gathered. My mistress and her daughters had to go to the kitchen
and to the washtub. My little half- brother, Henry, and myself had
to gather chips, and help all we could. My sister, Caroline, who was
twelve years old, could help in the kitchen.
(10)
Thomas
Johnson, Twenty-Eight Years a Slave (1909)
The Emancipation Proclamation sent forth from the pen of Abraham Lincoln,
who eventually fell a martyr for American freedom, was the sublimest
and most important State paper that had ever been sent out from the
Executive Mansion at Washington to the American people. This legislative
act elevated Lincoln above the high level of America's greatest statesman.
He was a man eminently fitted for the supreme position which he occupied.
He saw the peril of his country and knew that the important moment
had come. In taking the strong, wise step which he did, he saved the
country from ruin and disgrace, and, thank God, made over four million
hearts to rejoice.
(11)
Abraham Lincoln, letter
to James C. Conking, defending his decision to emancipate the slaves
being held in the Deep South (26th August, 1863)
I know, as fully as one can
know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies
in the field who have given us our most important successes believe
the emancipation policy and the use of the colored troops constitute
the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one
of these important successes could not have been achieved when it
was but for the aid of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding
these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is
called Abolitionism or with the Republican Party politics, but who
hold them purely as military opinions.
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