The slavery question presented vexatious difficulties in conducting the war. Congress in August 1861 passed an act (approved August 6th) confiscating rights of slave-owners to slaves employed in hostile service against the Union. On the 30th of August General Fremont by military order declared martial law and confiscation against active enemies, with freedom to their slaves, in the State of Missouri. Believing that under existing conditions such a step was both detrimental in present policy and unauthorized in law, President Lincoln directed him (2nd September) to modify the order to make it conform to the Confiscation Act of Congress, and on the 11th of September annulled the parts of the order which conflicted with this act. Strong political factions were instantly formed for and against military emancipation, and the government was hotly beset by antagonistic counsel. The Unionists of the border slave states were greatly alarmed, but Lincoln by his moderate conservatism held them to the military support of the government.[5] Meanwhile he sagaciously prepared the way for the supreme act of statesmanship which the gathering national crisis already dimly foreshadowed. On the 6th of March 1862, he sent a special message to Congress recommending the passage of a resolution offering pecuniary aid from the general government to induce states to adopt gradual abolishment of slavery. Promptly passed by Congress, the resolution produced no immediate result except in its influence on public opinion. A practical step, however, soon followed. In April Congress passed and the president approved (6th April) an act emancipating the slaves in the District of Columbia, with compensation to owners—a measure which Lincoln had proposed when in Congress. Meanwhile slaves of loyal masters were constantly escaping to military camps. Some commanders excluded them altogether; others surrendered them on demand; while still others sheltered and protected them against their owners. Lincoln tolerated this latitude as falling properly within the military discretion pertaining to local army operations. A new case, however, soon demanded his official interference. On the 9th of May 1862 General David Hunter, commanding in the limited areas gained along the southern coast, issued a short order declaring his department under martial law, and adding—“Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States—Georgia, Florida and South Carolina—heretofore held as slaves are, therefore, declared for ever free.” As soon as this order, by the slow method of communication by sea, reached the newspapers, Lincoln (May 19) published a proclamation declaring it void; adding further, “Whether it be competent for me as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to declare the slaves of any state or states free, and whether at any time or in any case it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which under my responsibility I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies or camps.” But in the same proclamation Lincoln recalled to the public his own proposal and the assent of Congress to compensate states which would adopt voluntary and gradual abolishment. “To the people of these states now,” he added, “I must earnestly appeal. I do not argue. I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times.” Meanwhile the anti-slavery sentiment of the North constantly increased. Congress by express act (approved on the 19th of June) prohibited the existence of slavery in all territories outside of states. On July the 12th the president called the representatives of the border slave states to the executive mansion, and once more urged upon them his proposal of compensated emancipation. “If the war continues long,” he said, “as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion—by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.” Although Lincoln’s appeal brought the border states to no practical decision—the representatives of these states almost without exception opposed the plan—it served to prepare public opinion for his final act. During the month of July his own mind reached the virtual determination to give slavery its coup de grâce; on the 17th he approved a new Confiscation Act, much broader than that of the 6th of August 1861 (which freed only those slaves in military service against the Union) and giving to the president power to employ persons of African descent for the suppression of the rebellion; and on the 22nd he submitted to his cabinet the draft of an emancipation proclamation substantially as afterward issued. Serious military reverses constrained him for the present to withhold it, while on the other hand they served to increase the pressure upon him from anti-slavery men. Horace Greeley having addressed a public letter to him complaining of “the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of the rebels,” the president replied on the 22nd of August, saying, “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.” Thus still holding back violent reformers with one hand, and leading up halting conservatives with the other, he on the 13th of September replied among other things to an address from a delegation: “I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative like the pope’s bull against the comet.... I view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.... I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement.”
The year 1862 had opened with important Union victories. Admiral A. H. Foote captured Fort Henry on the 6th of February, and Gen. U. S. Grant captured Fort Donelson on the 16th of February, and won the battle of Shiloh on the 6th and 7th of April. Gen. A. E. Burnside took possession of Roanoke island on the North Carolina coast (7th February). The famous contest between the new ironclads “Monitor” and “Merrimac” (9th April), though indecisive, effectually stopped the career of the Confederate vessel, which was later destroyed by the Confederates themselves. (See [Hampton Roads].) Farragut, with a wooden fleet, ran past the twin forts St Philip and Jackson, compelled the surrender of New Orleans (26th April), and gained control of the lower Mississippi. The succeeding three months brought disaster and discouragement to the Union army. M’Clellan’s campaign against Richmond was made abortive by his timorous generalship, and compelled the withdrawal of his army. Pope’s army, advancing against the same city by another line, was beaten back upon Washington in defeat. The tide of war, however, once more turned in the defeat of Lee’s invading army at South Mountain and Antietam in Maryland on the 14th and on the 16th and 17th of September, compelling him to retreat.
With public opinion thus ripened by alternate defeat and victory, President Lincoln, on the 22nd of September 1862, issued his preliminary proclamation of emancipation, giving notice that on the 1st of January 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and for ever free.” In his message to Congress on the 1st of December following, he again urged his plan of gradual, compensated emancipation (to be completed on the 1st of December 1900) “as a means, not in exclusion of, but additional to, all others for restoring and preserving the national authority throughout the Union.” On the 1st day of January 1863 the final proclamation of emancipation was duly issued, designating the States of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and certain portions of Louisiana and Virginia, as “this day in rebellion against the United States,” and proclaiming that, in virtue of his authority as commander-in-chief, and as a necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion, “I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free,” and pledging the executive and military power of the government to maintain such freedom. The legal validity of these proclamations was never pronounced upon by the national courts; but their decrees gradually enforced by the march of armies were soon recognized by public opinion to be practically irreversible.[6] Such dissatisfaction as they caused in the border slave states died out in the stress of war. The systematic enlistment of negroes and their incorporation into the army by regiments, hitherto only tried as exceptional experiments, were now pushed with vigour, and, being followed by several conspicuous instances of their gallantry on the battlefield, added another strong impulse to the sweeping change of popular sentiment. To put the finality of emancipation beyond all question, Lincoln in the winter session of 1863-1864 strongly supported a movement in Congress to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment, but the necessary two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives could not then be obtained. In his annual message of the 6th of December 1864, he urged the immediate passage of the measure. Congress now acted promptly: on the 31st of January 1865, that body by joint resolution proposed to the states the 13th amendment of the Federal Constitution, providing that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Before the end of that year twenty-seven out of the thirty-six states of the Union (being the required three-fourths) had ratified the amendment, and official proclamation made by President Johnson on the 18th of December 1865, declared it duly adopted.
The foreign policy of President Lincoln, while subordinate in importance to the great questions of the Civil War, nevertheless presented several difficult and critical problems for his decision. The arrest (8th of November 1861) by Captain Charles Wilkes of two Confederate envoys proceeding to Europe in the British steamer “Trent” seriously threatened peace with England. Public opinion in America almost unanimously sustained the act; but Lincoln, convinced that the rights of Great Britain as a neutral had been violated, promptly, upon the demand of England, ordered the liberation of the prisoners (26th of December). Later friendly relations between the United States and Great Britain, where, among the upper classes, there was a strong sentiment in favour of the Confederacy, were seriously threatened by the fitting out of Confederate privateers in British ports, and the Administration owed much to the skilful diplomacy of the American minister in London, Charles Francis Adams. A still broader foreign question grew out of Mexican affairs, when events culminating in the setting up of Maximilian of Austria as emperor under protection of French troops demanded the constant watchfulness of the United States. Lincoln’s course was one of prudent moderation. France voluntarily declared that she sought in Mexico only to satisfy injuries done her and not to overthrow or establish local government or to appropriate territory. The United States Government replied that, relying on these assurances, it would maintain strict non-intervention, at the same time openly avowing the general sympathy of its people with a Mexican republic, and that “their own safety and the cheerful destiny to which they aspire are intimately dependent on the continuance of free republican institutions throughout America.” In the early part of 1863 the French Government proposed a mediation between the North and the South. This offer President Lincoln (on the 6th of February) declined to consider, Seward replying for him that it would only be entering into diplomatic discussion with the rebels whether the authority of the government should be renounced, and the country delivered over to disunion and anarchy.
The Civil War gradually grew to dimensions beyond all expectation. By January 1863 the Union armies numbered near a million men, and were kept up to this strength till the end of the struggle. The Federal war debt eventually reached the sum of $2,700,000,000. The fortunes of battle were somewhat fluctuating during the first half of 1863, but the beginning of July brought the Union forces decisive victories. The reduction of Vicksburg (4th of July) and Port Hudson (9th of July), with other operations, restored complete control of the Mississippi, severing the Southern Confederacy. In the east Lee had the second time marched his army into Pennsylvania to suffer a disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July, though he was able to withdraw his shattered forces south of the Potomac. At the dedication of this battlefield as a soldiers’ cemetery in November, President Lincoln made the following oration, which has taken permanent place as a classic in American literature:—
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
In the unexpected prolongation of the war, volunteer enlistments became too slow to replenish the waste of armies, and in 1863 the government was forced to resort to a draft. The enforcement of the conscription created much opposition in various parts of the country, and led to a serious riot in the city of New York on the 13th-16th of July. President Lincoln executed the draft with all possible justice and forbearance, but refused every importunity to postpone it. It was made a special subject of criticism by the Democratic party of the North, which was now organizing itself on the basis of a discontinuance of the war, to endeavour to win the presidential election of the following year. Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, having made a violent public speech at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on the 1st of May against the war and military proceedings, was arrested on the 5th of May by General Burnside, tried by military commission, and sentenced on the 16th to imprisonment; a writ of habeas corpus had been refused, and the sentence was changed by the president to transportation beyond the military lines. By way of political defiance the Democrats of Ohio nominated Vallandigham for governor on the 11th of June. Prominent Democrats and a committee of the Convention having appealed for his release, Lincoln wrote two long letters in reply discussing the constitutional question, and declaring that in his judgment the president as commander-in-chief in time of rebellion or invasion holds the power and responsibility of suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, but offering to release Vallandigham if the committee would sign a declaration that rebellion exists, that an army and navy are constitutional means to suppress it, and that each of them would use his personal power and influence to prosecute the war. This liberal offer and their refusal to accept it counteracted all the political capital they hoped to make out of the case; and public opinion was still more powerfully influenced in behalf of the president’s action, by the pathos of the query which he propounded in one of his letters: “Must I shoot the simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?” When the election took place in Ohio, Vallandigham was defeated by a majority of more than a hundred thousand.
Many unfounded rumours of a willingness on the part of the Confederate States to make peace were circulated to weaken the Union war spirit. To all such suggestions, up to the time of issuing his emancipation proclamation, Lincoln announced his readiness to stop fighting and grant amnesty, whenever they would submit to and maintain the national authority under the Constitution of the United States. Certain agents in Canada having in 1864 intimated that they were empowered to treat for peace, Lincoln, through Greeley, tendered them safe conduct to Washington. They were by this forced to confess that they possessed no authority to negotiate. The president thereupon sent them, and made public, the following standing offer:—
“To whom it may concern:
“Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways.