Political Recollections / 1840 to 1872

by George Washington Julian

On the nineteenth of August Horace Greeley wrote his famous anti- slavery letter to the President, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions." It was one of the most powerful appeals ever made in behalf of justice and the rights of man. In his reply Mr. Lincoln said: "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 save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that." These words served as fresh fuel to the fires of popular discontent, and they were responded to by Mr. Greeley with admirable vigor and earnestness. The anti-slavery critics of the President insisted that in thus dealing with slavery as a matter of total indifference he likened himself to Douglas, who had declared that he didn't care whether slavery was voted up or voted down in the Territories. They argued that as slavery was the cause of the war and the obstacle to peace, it was the duty of the Government to lay hold of the conscience of the quarrel, and strike at slavery as the grand rebel. Not to do so, they contended, now that the opportunity was offered, was to make the contest a mere struggle for power, and thus to degrade it to the level of the wars of the Old World, which bring with them nothing for freedom or the race. They insisted that the failure of the Government to give freedom to our millions in bondage would be a crime only to be measured by that of putting them in chains if they were free. They reminded the President of his declaration that a house divided against itself can not stand, and that the Republic can not permanently exist half slave and half free; and they urged that this baptism of fire and blood would be impious if the cause which produced it should be spared to canker the heart of the nation anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds. A Union with slavery spared and reinstated would not be worth the cost of saving it. To argue that we were fighting for a political abstraction called the Union, and not for the destruction of slavery, was to affront common sense, since nothing but slavery had brought the Union into peril, and nothing could make sure the fruits of the war but the removal of its cause. It was to delude ourselves with mere phrases, and conduct the war on false pretenses. It was to rival the folly of the rebels, who always asservated that they were not fighting for slavery, but only for the right of local self government, when the whole world knew the contrary. These ideas, variously presented and illustrated, found manifold expression in innumerable Congressional speeches and in the newspapers of the Northern States, and a month later brought forth the President's proclamation of the twenty- second of September, giving the insurgents notice that on the first day of January following he would issue his proclamation of general emancipation, if they did not in the meantime lay down their arms. The course of events and the pressure of opinion were at last forcing him to see that the nation was wrestling with slavery in arms; that its destruction was not a debatable and distant alternative, but a pressing and absolute necessity; and that his Border State policy, through which he had so long tried to pet and please the power that held the nation by the throat, was a cruel and fatal mistake. This power, however, had so completely woven itself into the whole fabric of American society and institutions, and had so long fed upon the virtue of our public men, that the Administration was not yet prepared to divorce itself entirely from the madness that still enthralled the conservative element of the Republican party.

It was during this year that a formidable effort was made by the old Whig element in the Republican party to disband the organization and form a new one, called the "Union party." They were disposed to blame the Abolitionists for the halting march of events, and to run away from the real issues of the conflict. They were believers in the Border State policy, and favored the colonization of the negroes, while deprecating "radical and extreme measures." They forgot that the Republican principle was as true in the midst of war as in seasons of peace, and that instead of putting it in abeyance when the storm came, we should cling to it with redoubled energy and purpose. They forgot that the contest of 1860 was not only a struggle between slavery and freedom, but a struggle of life and death, inasmuch as the exclusion of slavery from all federal territory would not only put the nation's brand upon it in the States of the South, and condemn it as a public enemy, but virtually sentence it to death. They forgot that the charge of "abolitionism," which was incessantly hurled at the Republican party, was thus by no means wanting in essential truth, and that when the slaveholders were vanquished in the election of Mr. Lincoln, their appeal from the ballot to the bullet was the logical result of their insane devotion to slavery, and their conviction that nothing could save it but the dismemberment of the Republic. They forgot that the Rebellion was simply an advanced stage of slaveholding rapacity, and that instead of tempting us to cower before it and surrender our principles, it furnished an overwhelming argument for standing by them to the death. This movement was fruitful of great mischief throughout the loyal States, and on my return to Washington in the fall of this year I was glad to find this fact generally admitted, and my earnest opposition to it fully justified by the judgment of Republican members of Congress.

Immediately after the battle of Fredericksburg, on the 13th of December, the Committee on the Conduct of the War visited that place for the purpose of inquiring into the facts respecting that fearful disaster. The country was greatly shocked and excited, and eager to know who was to blame. We examined Burnside, Hooker, Sumner, and Woodbury; but prior to this, in a personal interview with General Burnside, he frankly told me that he was responsible for the attack. He seemed to be loaded down with a mountain of trouble and anxiety, and I could see that he felt just as a patriotic man naturally would, after sacrificing thousands of men by a mistaken movement. He said he had no military ambition, and frankly confessed his incapacity to command a large army, as he had done to the President and Secretary of War, when they urged him to assume this great responsibility; and that he was very sorry he had ever consented to accept it. His conversation disarmed all criticism, while his evident honesty decidedly pleased me. It was a sad thought, while standing on the banks of the Rappahannock, that here were more than a hundred thousand men on either side of a narrow river, brethren and kindred, and naturally owing each other nothing but good will, who were driven by negro slavery into the wholesale slaughter of each other. But General Burnside told me our men did not feel toward the rebels as they felt toward us, and he assured me that this was the grand obstacle to our success. Our soldiers, he said, were not sufficiently fired by resentment, and he exhorted me, if I could, to breathe into our people at home the same spirit toward our enemies which inspired them toward us. As I approached one of the principal hospitals here, I was startled by a pile of arms and legs of wounded soldiers, and on entering the building I found scores of men in the last stages of life, stretched on the floor with nothing under them but a thin covering of hay, and nothing over them but a coarse blanket or quilt, and without a spark of fire to warm them, though the weather was extremely cold and they were literally freezing to death. Some of them were too far gone to speak, and looked at me so pleadingly that I can never forget the impression it made. Arrangements were made for their comfort as soon as it was possible.

On New Year's day I joined the immense throng of callers at the White House, but did not enjoy the delay of the President in issuing his Proclamation of Emancipation. It came late in the day, and brought relief to multitudes of anxious people. Perhaps no subject has ever been more widely misunderstood than the legal effect of this famous document, and the circumstances under which it was issued. Mr. Lincoln was himself opposed to the measure, and when he very reluctantly issued his preliminary proclamation in September, he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his mind, inseparably connected with the policy. Like Mr. Clay and other prominent leaders of the old Whig party, he believed in colonization, and that the separation of the two races was necessary to the welfare of both. He was at that time pressing upon the attention of Congress a scheme of colonization in Chiriqui in Central America, which Senator Pomeroy espoused with great zeal, and in which he had the favor of a majority of the Cabinet, including Secretary Smith, who warmly endorsed the project. Subsequent development, however, proved that it was simply an organization for land-stealing and plunder, and it was abandoned; but it is by no means certain that if the President had foreseen this fact, his preliminary notice to the rebels would have been given. There are strong reasons for saying that he doubted his right to emancipate under the war power, and that he meant what he said when he compared an executive order to that effect to the "Pope's Bull against the Comet."

But he saw no way of escape. The demand for such an edict was wide- spread and rapidly extending in the Republican party. The power to issue it was taken for granted. All doubts on the subject were consumed in the burning desire of the people, or forgotten in the travail of war. The anti-slavery element was becoming more and more impatient and impetuous. Opposition to that element now involved more serious consequences than offending the Border States. Mr. Lincoln feared that enlistments would cease, and that Congress would even refuse the necessary supplies to carry on the war, if he declined any longer to place it on a clearly defined anti-slavery basis. It was in yielding to this pressure that he finally became the liberator of the slaves through the triumph of our arms which it ensured.

The authority to emancipate under the war power is well settled, but it could only be asserted over territory occupied by our armies. Each Commanding General, as fast as our flag advanced, could have offered freedom to the slaves, as could the President himself. This was the view of Secretary Chase. A paper proclamation of freedom, as to States in the power of the enemy, could have no more validity than a paper blockade of their coast. Mr. Lincoln's proclamation did not apply to the Border States, which were loyal, and in which slavery was of course untouched. It did not pretend to operate upon the slaves in other large districts, in which it would have been effective at once, but studiously excluded them, while it applied mainly to States and parts of States within the military occupation of the enemy, where it was necessarily void. But even if the proclamation could have given freedom to the slaves according to its scope, their permanent enfranchisement would not have been secured, because the status of slavery, as it existed under the local laws of the States prior to the war, would have remained after the re-establishment of peace. All emancipated slaves found in those States, or returning to them, would have been subject to slavery as before, for the simple reason that no military proclamation could operate to abolish their municipal laws. Nothing short of a Constitutional amendment could at once give freedom to our black millions and make their re-enslavement impossible; and "this," as Mr. Lincoln declared in earnestly urging its adoption, "is a king's cure for all evils. It winds the whole thing up." All this is now attested by high authorities on International and Constitutional law, and while it takes nothing from the honor so universally accorded to Mr. Lincoln as the great Emancipator, it shows how wisely he employed a grand popular delusion in the salvation of his country. His proclamation had no present legal effect within territory not under the control of our arms; but as an expression of the spirit of the people and the policy of the Administration, it had become both a moral and a military necessity.

During this month I called with the Indiana delegation to see the President respecting the appointment of Judge Otto, of Indiana, as Assistant Secretary of the Interior. He was afterward appointed, but Mr. Lincoln then only responded to our application by treating us to four anecdotes. Senator Lane told me that when the President heard a story that pleased him he took a memorandum of it and filed it away among his papers. This was probably true. At any rate, by some method or other, his supply seemed inexhaustible, and always aptly available. Early in February General Burnside came before the War Committee, and gave the most startling testimony as to the demoralization of the Army of the Potomac, the bickerings and jealousies of the commanding generals, and the vexations of the President in dealing with the situation. On the 18th of March I called on Mr. Lincoln respecting the appointments I had recommended under the conscription law, and took occasion to refer to the failure of General Fremont to obtain a command. He said he did not know where to place him, and that it reminded him of the old man who advised his son to take a wife, to which the young man responded, "Whose wife should I take?" The President proceeded to point out the practical difficulties in the way by referring to a number of important commands which might suit Fremont, but which could only be reached by removals he did not wish to make. I remarked that I was very sorry if this was true, and that it was unfortunate for our cause, as I believed his restoration to duty would stir the country as no other appointment could. He said, "it would stir the country on one side, and stir it the other way on the other. It would please Fremont's friends, and displease the conservatives; and that is all I can see in the stirring argument." "My proclamation," he added, "was to stir the country; but it has done about as much harm as good." These observations were characteristic, and showed how reluctant he was to turn away from the conservative counsels he had so long heeded.

On the 3d day of April the final report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War was completed, and the portion of it relating to the Army of the Potomac was in the hands of the Associated Press, and awaited by the public with a curiosity which it is not easy now to realize. The formation of the committee, as already stated, grew out of the popular demand for a more vigorous war policy, and its action was thus exposed to the danger of hasty conclusions; but the press and public opinion of the loyal States, with remarkable unanimity, credited it with great usefulness to the country, through its labors to rescue the control of the war from incompetent and unworthy hands.

I returned home by way of Philadelphia and New York, and had a delightful visit in the former place with James and Lucretia Mott, whom I had not seen since 1850. In New York I attended the great "Sumter meeting" of the 13th, and spoke at one of the stands with General Fremont and Roscoe Conkling. While in the city I met Mr. Bryant, Phebe Carey, Mr. Beecher and other notables, and on my way home tarried two days with Gerrit Smith, at his hospitable home in Peterboro. According to his custom he invited a number of his neighbors and friends to breakfast, and by special invitation I addressed the people in the evening, at the "free church" of the town, on topics connected with the war. I could see that Mr. Smith did not approve the severity of my language, and that this was a source of amusement to some of his neighbors, but the course of events afterward radically changed his views, and he admitted that in his public addresses he was greatly aided by the imprecatory psalms. I had several delightful rambles with him, our conversation turning chiefly upon reformatory and theological topics, and I found myself more than ever in love with this venerable philanthropist whom I had only met once before, on his visit to Washington the previous year.

On the night of the 8th of July the fire-bells of the town of Centreville, in which I resided, roused the people, who rushed into the streets to learn that General John Morgan, with six thousand cavalry and four pieces of artillery, had crossed the Ohio, and was moving upon the town of Corydon. The Governor had issued a call for minute men for the defense of the State, and within forty- eight hours sixty five thousand men tendered their services. Messengers were at once dispatched to all parts of Wayne County conveying the news of the invasion, and the next morning the people came pouring in from all directions, while the greatest excitement prevailed. The town had eighty muskets, belonging to its Home Guard, and I took one of them, which I afterward exchanged for a good French rifle; and having put on the military equipments, and supplied myself with a blanket and canteen, I was ready for marching orders. The volunteers who rallied at Centreville were shipped to Indianapolis, and were about seven hours on the way. I was a member of Company C, and the regiment to which I belonged was the One Hundred and Sixth, and was commanded by Colonel Isaac P. Gray. Of the force which responded to the call of the Governor, thirteen regiments and one battalion were organized specially for the emergency, and sent into the field in different directions, except the One Hundred and Tenth and the One Hundred and Eleventh, which remained at Indianapolis. The One Hundred and Sixth was shipped by rail to Cincinnati, and but for a detention of several hours at Indianapolis, caused by the drunkenness of an officer high in command, it might possibly have encountered Morgan near Hamilton, the next morning, on the way South. Our reception in Cincinnati was not very flattering. The people there seemed to feel that Ohio was able to take care of herself; and, in fact, nothing could have been more unreasonable than sending a body of infantry one hundred miles in pursuit of a cavalry force in that vicinity, where an ample body of cavalry was in readiness, and the river well guarded by gun-boats.