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.”
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 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.”
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 institutions 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.”
Frances profoundly disagreed with this balancing equation, asserting there could be no “truly republican” institutions with slavery intact—“they are incompatible.” Sometime during that long, anxious summer, she recorded her exhortations in a note to her husband. “Whatever may be the principles in the determination of the President in this matter,” she wrote, “you owe it to yourself & your children & your country & to God to make your record clear.” If the president refused to act on slavery, “it would be far better for you to resign your place tomorrow than by continuing there seem to give countenance to a great moral evil.”
Frances had no intimation that Lincoln’s views on the relationship between emancipation and republican institutions had already evolved beyond those of her husband. For despite the continued criticism of his inaction on slavery, Lincoln kept his proclamation concealed until victory could offer the propitious moment. Everything depended on the success of his army.
CHAPTER 18
“MY WORD IS OUT”
LINCOLN PINNED HIS HOPES for the victory that would allow him to issue his Emancipation Proclamation on the newly assembled Army of Virginia, headed by General John Pope. In the Western theater, Pope had demonstrated the aggression McClellan lacked. Early August 1862, Halleck ordered McClellan to withdraw his entire army by steamship from Harrison’s Landing to Aquia Creek and Alexandria, thus ending the Peninsula Campaign. Once there, McClellan was to rendezvous with Pope, who would be pushing south from Manassas toward Richmond along the interior route Lincoln had initially favored. Joined together, the two armies would substantially outnumber General Lee’s forces.
But McClellan stalled, fearing that Pope would be placed in charge of the merged army. He argued ferociously against the move, warning Halleck it would “prove disastrous in the extreme.” His only hope, he confided to his wife, was that he might “induce the enemy to attack” before he reached Washington and was relieved of his command. After delaying for ten days with strategic protests and claims of insufficient transports, he grudgingly began his withdrawal on August 14, not reaching Aquia Creek until August 24.
Realizing that he would be overpowered by the combined armies, General Lee moved north from Richmond to engage Pope before McClellan reached him. By August 18, the Confederate forces, under Generals Stonewall Jackson and James Longstreet, had come within striking distance of Pope. Only the Rappahannock River, midway between Washington and Richmond, separated the two forces. From the security of the northern riverbank, Pope waited in vain for McClellan’s troops to reinforce what everyone hoped would be a major offensive.
Lee capitalized brilliantly on McClellan’s delay. Leaving Longstreet’s forces in front of Pope, he sent Jackson behind Pope’s lines to capture the Union’s supply base at Manassas Junction and then assemble in the woods near the old Bull Run battlefield. In a state of confusion, Pope left the Rappahannock and headed north, where he would encounter the combined forces of Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson. “What is the stake?” Seward wrote Frances. “They say that it is nothing less than this capital; and, as many think, the cause also.” While soldiers on both sides waited for the fighting to begin, a comet appeared in the northern sky. Lincoln, so familiar with Shakespeare, doubtless recalled Calpurnia’s ominous warning to Caesar: “When beggars die there are no comets seen/The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
Although McClellan agreed to send two corps to Pope, he continued to delay, awaiting word on his own status as commander. If his troops were integrated into Pope’s army, he told his wife on August 24, he would “try for a leave of absence!” Everything would change, however, if “Pope is beaten, in which case they may want me to save Washn again.”
The Second Battle of Bull Run began in earnest on Friday, August 29. When the wind blew from the west, “the smell of the gunpowder was quite perceptible,” the Evening Star reported, and the “distant thunder” of cannonfire was plainly audible throughout Washington. Crowds gathered on street corners and huddled in the great hotels. In the absence of reliable information from the front, rumors flew. At one moment, newsboys announced that “Stonewall Jackson was captured with 16,000 of his men.” Minutes later, it was said that Jackson had crushed Pope and was heading north to capture Washington. Stories of victory and defeat for each side “alternated in about equal proportions.”
These were disquieting days for the president. The manager of the War Department telegraph office recalled that Lincoln spent long hours in the crowded second-floor suite awaiting bulletins from the front, “prepared to stay all night, if necessary.” He wired various generals, including McClellan, who had set up his headquarters at Alexandria, requesting news from Manassas. McClellan responded immediately, providing advice rather than information. The president now had only two options, McClellan counseled. Either he must “concentrate all our available forces to open communication with Pope,” or he should “leave Pope to get out of his scrape & at once use all our means to make the capital perfectly safe.”
On Saturday morning, John Hay met the president at the Soldiers’ Home and rode with him to the White House. During the ride,
Lincoln “was very outspoken in regard to McClellan’s present conduct,” saying that “it really seemed to him that McC wanted Pope defeated.” He was particularly incensed, Lincoln told Hay, by McClellan’s advice to “leave Pope to get out of his own scrape.”
Lincoln’s condemnation was mild, however, compared to the rage Stanton directed toward the general he now considered a traitor. McClellan’s delay in bringing his troops to Pope’s defense prompted the secretary of war to approach General Halleck for an official report. He asked Halleck to specify the exact date upon which McClellan had received orders to withdraw from the James, and to render an opinion as to whether the order was obeyed with a promptness commensurate with national safety. Halleck replied that the order given on August 3 “was not obeyed with the promptness I expected and the national safety, in my opinion, required.”
Armed with Halleck’s report, Stanton took Chase into his confidence. The two old friends decided that McClellan must be removed at once, and that they would have to force Lincoln’s hand. Agreeing that verbal arguments with Lincoln were “like throwing water on a duck’s back,” they decided that “a more decisive expression must be made and that in writing.” Stanton volunteered to draft a remonstrance against McClellan, to be signed, if possible, by a majority of the cabinet. They would present it to Lincoln with the inference that General McClellan’s continued command would lead to the resignation of some cabinet members, and even the dissolution of the administration. Meanwhile, Stanton and Chase journeyed to Bates’s F Street home, hoping to enlist his support. Finding that he was out, they left word for him to call on Chase the following morning.
When Bates stopped by the Treasury office early Saturday morning, Chase was delighted to learn that he was in full agreement regarding McClellan. “Never before was there such a grand army, composed of truly excellent materials, and yet,” Bates complained, “so poorly commanded.” To his mind, McClellan had “but one of the three Roman requisites for a general, he is young. I fear not brave, and surely not fortunate.” Moreover, Bates agreed with Chase and Stanton that “unless there be very soon a change for the better, we [the administration] must sink into contempt.” Certain now that Bates was a staunch ally in the cause of McClellan’s dismissal, Chase proceeded to the War Department, where Stanton had completed a first draft of the letter.