Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

When General McDowell was turned back from Fredericksburg to take part in the fruitless chase after Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, he was doing precisely what the President of the Confederate States would have ordered, had he been able to issue the orders of the President of the United States. McDowell saw the blunder, but his directions were peremptory and nothing was left but to obey. He telegraphed the Secretary of War, "The President's order is a crushing blow to us." Mr. Lincoln personally and immediately replied to General McDowell, "The change is as painful to me as it can possibly be to you or to any one." McDowell then ventured to argue the case with the President. He distinctly told Mr. Lincoln that he could effect nothing in trying to cut off Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. "I shall," he continued, "gain nothing for you there, and I shall lose much for you here. It is therefore not only on personal ground that I have a heavy heart in this matter, but I feel that it throws us all back, and from Richmond north we shall have all our large mass paralyzed, and shall have to repeat what we have just accomplished." Mr. Lincoln's order and the whole of this correspondence were by telegraph on the twenty- fourth day of May. Conclusive as the reasoning of General McDowell seems, it did not move Mr. Lincoln from his purpose; and the heavy re-enforcement which was then within three days of the point where it could most effectively aid McClellan, was diverted to a hopeless and useless pursuit. Had McDowell been allowed to proceed as he desired and as General McClellan confidently expected, he would have re-enforced the Army of the Potomac for an attack on Lee, while Stonewall Jackson's corps was in the Shenandoah Valley. By the unfortunate diversion ordered by Mr. Lincoln, precisely the reverse occurred. Stonewall Jackson's corps arrived before Richmond in season to aid in defeating McClellan, while McDowell with his splendid contingent was aimlessly loitering in a distant part of Virginia.

The President was led into this course by the urgent advice of the Secretary of War. When McClellan went to the field, Mr. Stanton undertook personally to perform the duties of General-in-Chief in Washington. This was evidently an egregious blunder. Neither by education, temper, temperament, nor by any other trait of his character, was Mr. Stanton fitted for this duty. He was very positively and in a high degree unfitted for it. With three Major- Generals—McDowell, Banks, and Frémont—exercising independent commands in the Potomac Valley, with their movements exerting a direct and important influence upon the fortunes of the main army under McClellan, there was especial need of a cool-headed, experienced, able general at the Capital. Had one of the three great soldiers who have been at the head of the army since the close of the war, then been in chief command at Washington, there is little hazard in saying that the brilliant and dashing tactics of Stonewall Jackson would not have been successful, and that if General McClellan had failed before Richmond, it would not have been for lack of timely and adequate re-enforcement.

Before these military disasters occurred, Congress had made progress in its legislation against the institution of Slavery. At the beginning of the war there had been an ill-defined policy, or rather an absence of all policy, in relation to the most important of pending questions. The winter preceding the outbreak of the rebellion had been so assiduously devoted by Congress to efforts of compromise and conciliation, that it was difficult to turn the public mind promptly to the other side, and to induce the people to accept the logical consequences of the war. There was no uniform policy among our generals. Each commander was treating the question very much according to his own personal predilection, and that was generally found to be in accordance with his previous political relations. The most conspicuous exception to this rule was General Benjamin F. Butler, who had been identified with the extreme pro- slavery wing of the Democratic party. He was in command in May, 1861, at Fortress Monroe, and he found that when fugitive slaves sought the protection of his camp they were pursued under flags of truce, and their return was requested as a right under the Constitution of the United States by men who were in arms against the Constitution. The anomaly of this situation was seen by General Butler, and he met it promptly by refusing to permit the slaves to be returned, declaring them to be contraband of war. As they were useful to the enemy in military operations, they were to be classed with arms and ammunition. This opinion was at first received joyously by the country, and the word "contraband" became the synonym of fugitive slave. But General Butler's judgment is justified by the rules of modern warfare, and its application solved a question of policy which otherwise might have been fraught with serious difficulty. In the presence of arms the Fugitive-slave Law became null and void, and the Dred Scott decision was trampled under the iron hoof of war.

SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN THE DISTRICT.

The first exercise of legislative power hostile to the institution of slavery, already detailed, was promptly followed by one still more decisive. Congress provided for the abolition of the institution in the District of Columbia. A bill for this purpose was introduced in the Senate on the 16th of December, 1861, and two months later Mr. Morrill of Maine, from the Committee on the District, reported it to the Senate with a favorable recommendation. Garrett Davis of Kentucky spoke in support of an amendment requiring the colonization, beyond the limits of the United States, of all persons who might be liberated by the Act. He was firmly persuaded that the liberation of slaves with their continued residence among the whites would result in a war of races. Mr. Hale of New Hampshire combated his opinion by arguments and facts drawn from the history of emancipation in Jamaica. Mr. Wilson of Massachusetts gave an interesting history of the circumstances which led to the selection of the site for the National Capital upon slave territory.

Mr. Sumner dealt with the subject at great length, enforcing his views by numerous authorities drawn from history, from the decisions of courts, and from the opinions of publicists and statesmen of modern times. The opponents of the measure did not conceal their apprehension that the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia portended its overthrow in the States. Mr. Sumner and his associates hailed the movement as the inauguration of a policy destined to produce that result. "The future," said the Massachusetts senator, "cannot be doubtful. At the National Capital slavery will give way to freedom. But the good work will not stop here: it must proceed. What God and Nature decree, Rebellion cannot arrest." Mr. Sherman of Ohio maintained that it was not a measure for the preservation of the government, but a municipal regulation, and that the time had come when it was evidently wise to exercise the powers granted by the Constitution. Mr. Willey of Virginia deprecated the existence of slavery in the capital of the country, but he opposed the emancipation bill as the first of a series of measures that would end in the abolition of slavery in all the States by act of Congress. The bill passed the Senate the third day of April by a vote of 29 to 14.

When the measure reached the House and was read for information it was at once challenged by Mr. Vallandigham of Ohio; and upon the parliamentary question "Shall the bill be rejected?" the yeas were 45 and the nays were 93. The debate which immediately followed was in good temper, with a notable absence of the exasperation which it was feared the subject would call forth. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky stated the objections of the minority, and especially of the Border slave States, fairly and temperately. The time seemed to him unpropitious inasmuch as the moving cause of the secession of the States was the apprehension on their part that Congress was likely to take measures for the abolition of slavery. The passage of the bill necessarily rendered futile every attempt at reconciliation. Secondly, there was an implied agreement with Virginia and Maryland at the time of the cession of the District that "the system of slavery shall not be disturbed." And finally, the bill, although it provided for compensation to lawful owners, was in effect a measure of confiscation. It passed the House by a vote of 92 to 38. The President accompanied his approval with a special message in which, while not doubting the constitutionality of the measure, he intimated that there were "matters within and about the Act which might have taken a course or shape more satisfactory to his judgment." He especially commended the provision made for compensation to the owners of slaves, and referred with satisfaction to the appropriation made to aid any colored person of the District who might desire to emigrate "to Liberia, Hayti, or any country beyond the limits of the United States which the President may determine." The sum of one hundred thousand dollars was appropriated for this purpose by the Act—one hundred dollars being allowed to each emigrant. The experiment came to nothing. The colored persons who had resided in the United States as slaves were obviously desirous of trying their fortunes as freemen among the people whom they knew, and in the homes to which they were attached.

THE PRESIDENT'S CONSERVATIVE COURSE.

Mr. Lincoln had always been a firm believer in the scheme of African colonization; and in his message of December, 1861, he recommended a provision for colonizing the slaves set free by the influence of war. From the slave States which had remained loyal to the Union he was willing to accept slaves in lieu of the direct tax, according to some mode of valuation that might be agreed upon, and he was anxious that adequate provision should be made for their settlement in some place or places with a climate congenial to them. But the experiment with the manumitted negroes of the District, which was made in compliance with this recommendation of the President and in deference to his personal wishes, frequently and earnestly expressed, demonstrated the impracticability of the plan. Colonization could be effected only by the forcible removal of the colored people, and this would have been a more cruel violation of their natural rights than a continuance of the slavery in which they were born. If free choice between the two conditions had been offered, nine-tenths, perhaps even a larger proportion of the slaves, would have preferred to remain in their old homes. In an economic point of view the scheme was indefensible. We were at the time the only country with undeveloped agricultural resources in warm latitudes, that was not engaged in seeking labor from all quarters of the world. The Colonization scheme deliberately proposed to strip the United States of patient, faithful laborers, acclimated to the cotton and sugar fields of the South, and capable of adding great wealth to the nation. Colonization would deprive us of this much needed labor, would entail vast expense in the deportation of the negroes, and would devolve upon this country, by a moral responsibility which it could not avoid, the protection and maintenance of the feeble government which would be planted on the shores of Africa. The Liberian experiment, honorable as it was to the colored race, and successful as it had proved in establishing civilization in Africa, had not attained such material prosperity as would justify the United States in the removal of millions of its population to a remote country where there was no demand for labor.

Mr. Lincoln's course on the Slavery question at that period of his Administration was steadily and studiously conservative. He had checked the Secretary of War (Mr. Cameron) in the issuing of an anti-slavery order which was considered premature and unwise; he had countermanded and annulled the proclamations of General Hunter and General Frémont declaring the slaves to be free within the districts of their respective commands. He now recommended a measure in the line of his conservative policy, to which he attached great weight, and from which he anticipated important consequences. On the 6th of March, 1862, the President sent a message to Congress recommending the adoption of a joint resolution declaring that "the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to each State pecuniary aid to be used in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." Mr. Lincoln believed that if the leaders of the existing Rebellion could conquer their independence, the Border slave States would necessarily join them from sympathy with their institutions. By the initiation of emancipation all possible desire or tendency in that direction would be removed, and thus a severe blow be given to the Rebellion. He believed in compensation to the slave-holder, and expressed his opinion that "gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all." He asked Congress to consider "how very soon the current expenses of the war would purchase at a fair valuation all the slaves in any named State."