Rise to Greatness (48 page)

This confession was out of character, and Lincoln worried that some might think it “strange that he had in this way submitted the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind.” Strange or not, though, Lincoln said that he was now completely convinced that “God had decided this question in favor of the slaves.” And because of his vow and God’s answer, Welles wrote later, Lincoln “was satisfied it was right, was confirmed and strengthened in his action.… His mind was fixed, his decision made.”

He was not, therefore, interested in hearing his colleagues’ thoughts “about the main matter.” He knew their views already. What he wanted to do was read what he had written and hear their suggestions for improvements. Before he did, however, he wished to make “one other observation.” “I know very well,” he said, “that many might … do better than I can.” He acknowledged that his popular support was weakened, but added that “all things considered, [no] other person has more.” He had sought this office, and though he could not have imagined what the job would require, only he could execute its duties. As Chase remembered it, Lincoln then said: “I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility.”

With that, he launched into his reading. This revised version of the Emancipation Proclamation was similar to the one the cabinet had heard in July, but Lincoln was no longer leaning on Congress or the Confiscation Act. The proclamation was entirely a statement of military policy, an exercise of his constitutional power to take all actions necessary to put down an insurrection. Further, the order’s key phrase had been moved closer to the beginning: in the proclamation’s third paragraph, Lincoln decreed that on January 1, 1863, all slaves held in territory under rebellion “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Ominously for Southerners who lived in fear of a slave uprising, he declared that the government, including the army and navy, would “do no act or acts” to interfere with “any efforts [the slaves] may make for their actual freedom.” No one representing the Federal government could return any former slave to bondage in Rebel territory, nor would generals be allowed to ask whether the slave owners were loyalists. Any loyal slaveholders who hoped to avoid emancipation must persuade their neighbors to return to the Union by New Year’s Day. As in the previous version of the proclamation, Lincoln’s order would not apply to loyal territory.

When the president finished reading, all eyes turned to the secretary of state. “The general question having been decided, nothing can be said further about that,” Seward began. He then offered a proposal that may have been surprising, given that he was often accused of being a principal impediment to emancipation. Lincoln had written that the government would “recognize” the freedom of the former slaves; wouldn’t it be better, Seward asked, to say, “recognize
and maintain”
? This brief addition, which the president approved, packed a wallop, for it committed the United States not just to proclaim freedom, but to enforce it. Welles was impressed. Having suspected Seward of opposing an emancipation decree, he now saw that “in the final discussion he has … cordially supported the measure.”

Chase spoke next and gave his own approval, though he couldn’t resist pointing out that he would have done a few things differently. Welles also endorsed the decree, although he had no illusions that it would lead to a quick victory. “The subject has, from its magnitude and its consequences, oppressed me,” Welles confessed later, for he was sure that it would guarantee a long, terrible conflict, a war of subjugation to destroy a way of life and an economic system. Though “desirable,” Welles concluded, Lincoln’s proclamation was “an arbitrary and despotic measure in the cause of freedom.”

When no one offered criticism of the measure, Lincoln handed the paper to Seward with instructions to publish it the next day. Montgomery Blair now spoke up. He began by asking permission to publish his own written statement against the proclamation, which he had given to Lincoln “some days since.” It wasn’t that he opposed freedom for slaves, Blair said; on the contrary, he had always been in favor of abolition. Instead, he was terribly concerned about the impact this proclamation would have in the border states and in the army. “The results,” he predicted, “would be to carry over [the loyal slave states]
en masse
to the Secessionists.” At the same time, he added, the executive order would hand the Democrats “a club … to beat the Administration.”

Lincoln was quiet. This wasn’t the right moment to reveal just how sharply he felt those same worries. “When I issued that proclamation, I was in great doubt about it myself,” he later admitted. “I did not think that the people had been quite educated up to it, and I feared its effects on the Border States. Yet I think it was right. I knew it would help our cause in Europe.” In any event, the time for second-guessing was past. Lincoln’s capacity for thinking and rethinking was great—but not endless. Determined to go forward, he left Blair’s fears hanging there in the room.

*   *   *

Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was published on September 23 to an immediate storm of protest and praise. Charles Sumner spoke for many abolitionists when he declared that “the skies are brighter and the air is purer, now that slavery has been handed over to judgment.” Frederick Douglass was less enthusiastic, remarking that the dry document contained not “one word of regret and shame that this accursed system had remained for long the disgrace and scandal of the Republic.” Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was awed: “It will stand as the great act of the age.”

Many felt otherwise. In Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, the
Macomb Eagle
snorted: “Hoop de-dooden-do! The niggers are free!” Critics of the proclamation attacked it from every direction: The decree was hollow. It was tyrannous. It would unleash a storm of murder and rape across the South. It would flood the North with inferior black refugees. Lincoln did not put much stock in the angry newspaper editorials. When Hay raised the subject after the first round had been published, Lincoln simply replied that he “knew more about it than they did.”

Among other things, he knew he was in for a rough ride. “At last we have got our harpoon fairly into the monster,” he told a visitor, “but now we must look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail, he will yet send us into eternity.” A parade of Washingtonians, celebrating the proclamation with a marching band, paused outside the White House on the day after the decree was released. When they called for a speech, Lincoln said a few words and then apologized for his brevity: “In my position, I am environed with difficulties.” Four days later, replying to Hamlin’s note of congratulations, he elaborated. “The stocks have declined, and troops have come forward more slowly than ever. This, looked soberly in the face, is not very satisfactory.”

Environed with difficulties, but no longer quite so alone. The millions pleased with Lincoln’s decision felt fresh admiration for their president and a new dedication to the Union cause. The governors of the loyal states had been planning a meeting to formulate a shared war policy that might stiffen Lincoln’s spine, but now he had shown an oaken backbone and they threw out their old agenda. Instead, gathering on September 23 and 24 at the big new hotel in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the governors almost unanimously endorsed Lincoln and his executive order, and then headed for Washington to tell him so in person.

Emancipation was now front and center as an election issue, so this sign of solidarity in the Union coalition was a comfort to the president. But with antiwar agitation on the rise in many Northern states, Lincoln followed his radical proclamation by issuing a second extraordinary and dangerous decree: he ordered the military to arrest any persons believed to be “discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels.” Furthermore, he invoked the power that Congress had granted him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the constitutional guarantee that protects Americans from unlawful imprisonment. (This was not the first time he had done so: he had issued an executive order suspending the writ at the beginning of the war, but it had been deemed unconstitutional by Chief Justice Taney, who ruled that only Congress could grant him that authority.) The message was clear: Lincoln would not fight the battle for public opinion with words alone.

Lincoln knew that the Emancipation Proclamation marked a critical moment in the nation’s history. By publishing it and announcing his intention to free all the Confederacy’s slaves at the start of the following year, the president placed a fateful wager on the willingness of the North to see a hard war through to total victory. He acknowledged what the Southern secessionists had affirmed when they broke from the Union: that slavery could no longer be negotiated or compromised away. Either slavery must go or the Union must go; they could not coexist. What was more, Lincoln’s bet must pay off twice—among the military and at the ballot box—or it would pay off not at all. With Antietam behind him and the elections looming, the next several months would tell whether his wager would succeed.

*   *   *

The military outcome of Lincoln’s gamble rested on the banks of the Potomac, where McClellan’s army licked its wounds within a few miles of Lee and his Rebels. In those quiet camps, McClellan brooded on his future under a president who had promulgated “such an accursed doctrine.” He doubted it was possible to “retain my commission & self respect at the same time.”

His mood dark, the general was cheered by a visit from a delegation of friendly New York Democrats—the same ones who had met with him on the peninsula during the slow days of July. Led by the antiwar former mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood, they had come to Sharpsburg to persuade McClellan to run for president in 1864. As one of McClellan’s associates later told Lincoln, the delegation proposed that the general run on a platform promising reconciliation between North and South. But if that platform was to be viable two years hence, the war had to slow down. Hostilities must be held in check, hard-war policies somehow softened. No peaceful settlement between the combatants could be possible where all common ground was laid waste. Two months earlier, McClellan had demurred, the general’s associate told Lincoln, but at Sharpsburg he finally accepted the proposal.

This meeting and its outcome may have been the root of a shocking report that ripped through Washington on September 24. An officer on McClellan’s staff, Major John Key, was quoted as telling the judge advocate, Levi Turner, that Lee’s army wasn’t “bagged” at Antietam because “That is not the game.” Key allegedly went on to say that “the game” called for McClellan’s army to “tire the rebels out, and ourselves.” Why? Because “that was the only way the Union could be preserved, we come together fraternally, and slavery be saved.”

Lincoln, disgusted by all the loose talk from McClellan’s people, determined that Key should be made an example. He summoned the young major and demanded to know whether the offending words had been spoken. Key tried to put a loyal face on his remarks, but the president was not appeased. “If there was a ‘game’ ever among Union men, to have our army not take advantage of the enemy when it could,” Lincoln said angrily, it was his object “to break up that game.” He cashiered Key.

That was all well and good and forceful, but when September ended and Key was gone, McClellan was still resting in the valley of the fresh graves. The enemy was nearby, but no one was making an effort to take advantage of his weakness. For all Lincoln knew, then, the game was still on. And if that was the case, he had no choice but to break it up at a higher level.

11

OCTOBER

In the midst of all his military and political troubles, Abraham Lincoln turned up in the most unexpected role of advertising pitchman. A podiatrist in Manhattan named Isachar Zacharie was papering the metropolis that autumn with testimonials boasting of the famous feet he had tended. Among the endorsements was one from Lincoln, who had placed his aching toes in Zacharie’s hands on the advice of Stanton, another satisfied patient. Delighted with the results, Lincoln took time to write a grateful affirmation: “Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort.” The note now featured in Zacharie’s advertising campaign.

Little that was embarrassing, scandalous, or sensational got past the
New York Herald,
so naturally this caught the paper’s attention. In its October 3 edition, the
Herald
asked archly whether it could be “that many of the haps and mishaps of the nation, during this war, may be traced to a matter no greater than the corns and bunions which have afflicted the feet of our leaders?” Perhaps the Emancipation Proclamation itself could be blamed on Lincoln’s tender extremities, for “how could the President put his foot down firmly” with the hectoring abolitionists “when he was troubled with corns?”

The
Herald
was the most widely read newspaper in America, and among its devoted subscribers was Lincoln himself. He might grumble that he had no time to attend to the mewling of the press, but the
Herald
was in a class apart, because of both its reach and its influence among Democratic Unionists. The loudest voice of the loyal opposition rang out from the
Herald
’s pages; it was the populist soul of a very prickly element of Lincoln’s fractious coalition. Not surprisingly, therefore, Lincoln’s relationship with the editor and publisher, James Gordon Bennett, was the embodiment of an ancient maxim: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.