34.
James R. Gilmore,
Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War
(Boston, 1898), 232–47, 261–73.
35.
Chicago Tribune
, August 10, 1864; James M. McPherson,
Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
(New York, 2008), 238;
New York Times
, July 23, 1864; Horace Greeley to Lincoln, August 8 and 29, 1864; Greeley to John G. Nicolay, September 4, 1864, all in ALP.
36.
Long,
Jewel of Liberty
, 193; Charles D. Robinson to Lincoln, August 7, 1864, ALP.
37.
CW
, 7: 499–500.
38.
CW
, 7: 506–8.
39.
Philip S. Foner, ed.,
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
(5 vols.; New York, 1950–75), 3: 405–7, 422–24; Frederick Douglass,
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
(Hartford, 1882), 434–35; James Oakes,
The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics
(New York, 2007), 229–30.
40.
Thurlow Weed to William H. Seward, August 22, 1864; Henry J. Raymond to Lincoln, August 22, 1864, both in ALP; Henry J. Raymond to Simon Cameron, August 21, 1864, Simon Cameron Papers, LC.
41.
CW
, 7: 514.
42.
Harris,
Lincoln’s Last Months
, 15–16;
CW
, 7: 517–18; Michael Burlingame, ed.,
With Lincoln in the White House: Letters, Memoranda, and Other Writings of John G. Nicolay, 1860–1865
(Carbondale, Ill., 2000), 152–53; Glyndon G. Van Deusen,
William Henry Seward
(New York, 1967), 386–87.
43.
New York Times
, December 17, 1864;
CW
, 6: 410–11; 7: 51.
44.
Noah Brooks to John G. Nicolay, September 2, 1864, ALP; Joel H. Silbey,
A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1868
(New York, 1977), 119–67; Long,
Jewel of Liberty
, 276–83;
General McClellan’s Letter of Acceptance, Together with His West Point Oration
(New York, 1864), 1–2.
45.
Frank Freidel,
Francis Lieber: Nineteenth-Century Liberal
(Baton Rouge, 1947), 351; Solomon N. Pettis to Lincoln, September 4, 1864; Theodore Tilton to John G. Nicolay, September 6, 1864; Thurlow Weed to William H. Seward, September 10, 1864, all in ALP; William Cassidy to Samuel L. M. Barlow, September 5, 1864, Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, HL.
46.
CW
, 8: 18; Joseph Medill to Lincoln, February 17, 1864, ALP;
Springfield Weekly Republican
, October 1, 1864; Winfred A. Harbison, “Zachariah Chandler’s Part in the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, 22 (September 1935), 267–76; Long,
Jewel of Liberty
, 240–42.
47.
Irving Katz,
August Belmont: A Political Biography
(New York, 1968), 146; Miller,
President Lincoln
, 375; Long,
Jewel of Liberty
, 153–71; Vorenberg,
Final Freedom
, 160.
48.
Harper’s Weekly
, September 10, 1864; “The Next General Election,”
North American Review
, 99 (October 1864), 560–66; Peter Ufland, “The Politics of Race in the Midwest 1864–1890” (unpub. diss., University of Illinois, Chicago, 2006), 13–19;
Speeches of William D. Kelley
(Philadelphia, 1864), 28, 47–55; William Dusinberre,
Civil War Issues in Philadelphia, 1856–1865
(Philadelphia, 1865), 175; Foner,
Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
, 3: 406–7, 422–24.
49.
Benjamin Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro
(New York, 1962), 224–29;
Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men Held in the City of Syracuse, N. Y.
(Boston, 1864), 4–5, 44–52; Larry E. Nelson, “Black Leaders and the Presidential Election of 1864,”
Journal of Negro History
, 63 (January 1978), 42–54.
50.
CW
, 7: 505, 512, 528; 8: 83; “Abraham Lincoln,”
North American Review
, 100 (January 1865), 11.
51.
CW
, 8: 46, 100–101; Paludan,
Presidency
, 290; William E. Gienapp,
Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America
(New York, 2002), 174; Chandra Manning,
What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
(New York, 2007), 186; Allan Nevins and Milton H. Thomas, eds.,
The Diary of George Templeton Strong
(4 vols.; New York, 1952), 3: 511.
52.
Richard J. Oglesby to Lincoln, November 20, 1864, ALP;
CW
, 8: 149–52;
New Orleans Tribune
, December 21, 1864.
Two supposed instances of continued commitment by Lincoln to colonization date from after 1864. In January 1865, Lincoln dispatched General Daniel E. Sickles on a diplomatic mission to Colombia, where the colonization plans of 1862 had been focused. A Panama City newspaper reported that Sickles had been authorized to promise the government of Colombia one million dollars to allow the establishment of a colony of 30,000 emancipated slaves. Some biographers of Sickles accept the truth of this report, but neither Sickles’s instructions from Secretary of State Seward nor his own letters to Washington say anything about such a project, and Sickles explicitly contradicted the rumor, explaining to his hosts that the freedmen “were invaluable to us in a military as well as in an economical point of view.” The main purpose of his trip was to establish the right of transit across the Isthmus of Panama for American soldiers on their way to and from California.
Mercantile Chronicle
(Panama City), February 13, 1865; Sickles to Seward, January 26, February 23, and April 17, 1865, all in Dispatches from U. S. Ministers to Colombia, 1820–1906, vol. 20, RG 59, NA; Seward to Sickles, January 6 and March 18, 1865, both in Diplomatic Instructions of the Department of State 1801–1906, Special Missions: Instructions, vol. 2, RG 59, NA; Thomas Keneally,
American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles
(New York, 2003), 310–14; W. A. Swanberg,
Sickles the Incredible
(New York, 1956), 269–71.
Writing in the 1880s and 1890s, Benjamin Butler claimed that shortly before Lincoln’s death, Butler suggested sending demobilized black soldiers to the Isthmus of Panama to construct a canal and that Lincoln, hoping to revive the idea of colonization, promised to speak to Seward about the proposal. Most historians doubt the reliability of Butler’s recollection. In February 1865, Butler had explicitly repudiated the idea of colonization in a speech in Boston and a letter to Charles Sumner. Allen T. Rice, ed.,
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time
(New York, 1888), 150; Benjamin F. Butler,
Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin F. Butler: Butler’s Book
(Boston, 1892), 903–4;
New York Tribune
, February 6, 1865; Butler to Charles Sumner, February 5, 1865, Charles Sumner Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Mark E. Neely Jr., “Abraham Lincoln and Black Colonization: Benjamin Butler’s Spurious Testimony,”
CWH
, 25 (March 1979), 77–83; Philip W. Magness, “Benjamin Butler’s Colonization Testimony Reevaluated,”
JALA
, 29 (Winter 2008), 1–29.
53.
James Speed to Lincoln, December 22, 1861; Charles Sumner to Lincoln, October 12 and 24, 1864; Joseph Medill to Lincoln, November 19, 1864; William Stone to Lincoln, November 2, 1864; Norman B. Judd to Lincoln, December 28, 1864, all in ALP;
Baltimore American
in
Chicago Tribune
, December 25, 1864;
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, appendix, 83.
54.
Michael Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
(2 vols.; Baltimore, 2008), 2: 748–49; Michael S. Green,
Freedom, Union, and Power: Lincoln and His Party during the Civil War
(New York, 2004), 164–66; Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds.,
Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln
(Stanford, 1996), 383; Robert F. Horowitz,
The Great Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley
(New York, 1979), 103;
Chicago Tribune
, January 12, 1865.
55.
Vorenberg,
Final Freedom
, 176–87, 203; LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox,
Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, 1865–1866
(Glencoe, N.Y., 1963), 6–13; Montgomery Blair to Samuel L. M. Barlow, January 12, 1865, Samuel L. M. Barlow Papers, HL; David Lindsey,
“Sunset” Cox: Irrepressible Democrat
(Detroit, 1959), 93.
56.
Vorenberg,
Final Freedom
, 206;
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 122, 236, 258–60, 531; Cox and Cox,
Politics
, 25.
57.
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 531; Eric Foner,
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877
(New York, 1988), 66;
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle
, February 1, 1865; George S. Merriam,
The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles
(2 vols.; New York, 1885), 1: 415–16;
CW
, 8: 254.
58.
CW
, 8: 151–52, 220; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, “Blair’s Mexican Project and the Hampton Roads Conference, the Thirteenth Amendment,”
Century Magazine
, 16 (October 1889), 839–44.
59.
Wilson and Davis,
Herndon’s Informants
, 413–14;
CW
, 8: 248; E. W. Clarke to Henry Wilson, January 31, 1865, Henry Wilson Papers, LC.
60.
CW
, 8: 284–87; John A. Campbell,
Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War during the Year 1865
(Baltimore, 1887), 5–17; Alexander H. Stephens,
A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States
(2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1868–70), 2: 599–619; R. M. T. Hunter, “The Peace Commission of 1865,”
Southern Historical Society Papers
, 3 (April 1877), 168–76.
61.
Stephens,
Constitutional View
, 2: 613–14;
CW
, 8: 260–61, 284–85; Burlingame,
Oral History
, 66;
WD
, 2: 237.
62.
Zachariah Chandler to Letitia Chandler, February 10, 1865, Zachariah Chandler Papers, LC; Harris,
Lincoln’s Last Months
, 122.
63.
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle
, February 4, 1865; Patience Essah,
A House Divided: Slavery and Emancipation in Delaware, 1638–1865
(Charlottesville, 1996), 2–6, 18; Robert J. Breckinridge to Lincoln, November 16, 1864; Edwin M. Stanton to Lincoln, March 3, 1865, both in ALP; Harold D. Tallant,
Evil Necessity: Slavery and Political Culture in Antebellum Kentucky
(Lexington, Ky., 2003), 18; William H. Williams,
Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639–1865
(Wilmington, 1996), 170;
Louisville Journal
in
Chicago Tribune
, November 24, 1864; Marion B. Lucas,
A History of Blacks in Kentucky
, vol. 1:
From Slavery to Segregation, 1760–1891
(Frankfort, 1992), 159–60.
64.
Cornelius Cole,
Memoirs of Cornelius Cole
(New York, 1908), 220;
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 138, 179, 199, 202, 236.
65.
Harper’s Weekly
, February 11 and 25, 1865;
A Memorial Discourse by Rev. Henry Highland Garnet Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives
(Philadelphia, 1865), 89;
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle
, March 1, 1865;
Christian Recorder
, February 25, 1865; Vorenberg,
Final Freedom
, 166.
66.
John Cochrane to Lincoln, January 28, 1865, ALP; Foner,
Reconstruction
, 62.
67.
Foner,
Reconstruction
, 62–65; Jean-Charles Houzeau,
My Passage at the New Orleans “Tribune”: A Memoir of the Civil War Era
, ed. David C. Rankin, trans. Gerard F. Denault (Baton Rouge, 1984), 2–5, 19–23;
New Orleans Tribune
, February 23, 1865.
68.
CW
, 8: 106–7, 148–49;
Washington Daily Morning Chronicle
, February 6, 1865.
69.
Palmer,
Selected Letters of Charles Sumner
, 2: 258; Donald,
Charles Sumner
, 196.
70.
Belz,
Reconstructing the Union
, 251–54; William C. Harris,
With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union
(Lexington, Ky., 1997), 235; Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life
, 2: 777;
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 967–68, 1002.
71.
Harris,
With Charity for All
, 237–44;
CG
, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 582;
The Works of Charles Sumner
(15 vols.; Boston, 1870–83), 9: 322;
Springfield Weekly Republican
, April 8, 1865;
CW
, 8: 337.