The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 2 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

Ten days later Mr. Lincoln annulled these orders absolutely by executive command, declaring that the question of the emancipation of slaves was one which he reserved to himself, and forbidding all generals in the field to deal with it in any way, direct or indirect.

Congress had legislated on the subject in a very cautious and hesitating fashion. In August, 1861, it had passed an act authorizing military commanders to seize and hold all negro slaves found actually employed in the military service of the Confederacy with the knowledge and consent of their owners. But the act stipulated that slaves so confiscated, should not be set free but should be held subject to the future disposal of the Federal courts.

The proceedings of military officers in the field with respect to this matter varied according to the views and temper of each. Mr. Lincoln's revocation of Fremont's orders led to that General's resignation. General Hunter's act in enlisting a regiment of fugitive slaves who had fled into his lines, gave great alarm in Congress and in the country, lest the war should be diverted from its Union-saving purpose and converted into a crusade for the forcible abolition of slavery, involving all the horrors of a servile insurrection on the part of slaves who, in many parts of the South, were scarcely better than half savages.

General Williams, commanding the Department of the Gulf, sought to solve the difficulty by the simple process of turning all fugitive slaves out of his camps, thus avoiding the necessity of deciding whether or not he would permit masters to come within his lines for the purpose of recapturing their slaves. Two colonels refused to obey this order, and were promptly removed from their commands in consequence.

Thus the "irrepressible conflict" of sentiment on the subject of property in slaves divided the Federal army and sorely vexed the country as it had done for nearly half a century before.

To Mr. Lincoln it brought perplexities of the gravest sort. It embarrassed him very greatly in his effort to hold the war steadily to the purpose he had marked out for it. It defeated all his hopes of persuading the South to believe that the Government was trying to save or restore the Union, and that the administration was sincere in its declaration of a fixed purpose not to interfere with the institution of slavery in states where it constitutionally existed or to impair in any way the autonomy of those states. Such pledges could make no appeal to the minds of Southern men in face of the actual interferences attempted, often successfully, by commanders in the field.

Worse still, this irreconcilable division of opinion and diversity of action, threatened to deprive the administration of that strong support at the North which Mr. Lincoln deemed necessary to a successful prosecution of the war. It threatened to alienate that great body of men at the North who were implacably opposed to abolitionism and who held firmly to the belief that the autonomy of the States was necessary to the maintenance of liberty, but who were ready enough to make sacrifice of blood and treasure in aid of a war waged solely for the preservation of the Union.

In this embarrassing situation Mr. Lincoln made a second attempt to cripple Southern resistance by securing emancipation by purchase in the border states, thus cutting off all hope on the part of the South that those states would ever secede, and at the same time in some degree satisfying the clamor of the abolitionists. He called the border-state Congressmen about him and earnestly, even passionately urged them to vote in Congress for an act pledging the Government to pay to every state that should decree emancipation the full value of all the slaves held in such state at the time the census of 1860 was taken. He especially besought these representatives of border slave states to persuade their constituents to a willing acceptance of these terms.

Nothing of any practical value came of this effort. It resulted only in stimulating on the part of the Abolitionists that aggressive insistence upon universal emancipation by military force which was so sorely embarrassing to the President.

It was soon afterwards (August 19, 1862), that Horace Greeley published his open letter entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" to which Mr. Lincoln replied, setting forth his policy and purpose, in words already quoted in this chapter: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. 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."