"We have a special Cabinet meeting. The subject was the Proclamation concerning emancipating slaves after a certain date in States that should then be in rebellion. For several weeks the subject has been suspended, but, the President says, never lost sight of. When the subject was submitted in August, and indeed in taking it up, the President stated that the matter was finally decided, but that he felt it to be due to us to make us acquainted with the fact and invite criticism of the Proclamation. There were some differences in the Cabinet, but he had formed his own conclusions, and made his own decisions. He had, he said, made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle (which had just been fought) he would consider it his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. We might think it strange, he said, but there were times when he felt uncertain how to act; that he had in this way submitted the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind what he should do. God had decided this question in favor of the slave. He was satisfied it was right—was confirmed and strengthened in his action by the vow and its results; his mind was fixed, his decision made; but he wished his paper announcing his course to be as correct in terms as it could be made without any attempt to change his determination. For that was fixed."—"The Diary of Gideon Welles," Atlantic Monthly, 1909, p. 369.
We have no present concern with the question whether Lincoln's method of determining the divine will was a reasonable method, or wholly consistent with some of his own questions and doubts; what concerns us is that the President invited no discussion of the Proclamation in its essential elements; any disposition which any of the members of the Cabinet might have felt to discuss the instrument itself or seek to dissuade the President from issuing it was stopped by his quiet and emphatic declaration that he had made a covenant with God, and must keep his vow; and that he was strengthened in his own conviction that the Proclamation was in accord with the will of God.
We must not pass lightly over the religious aspects of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had submitted his first draft of the Proclamation to the Cabinet on Tuesday, July 22, 1862, and it met with strong opposition. Only two members of the Cabinet favored it; Seward and Chase were strongly against it and the others thought it inopportune. With the memory of this opposition, which in July had practically voted the President down, Mr. Lincoln brought the matter again on September 22, not for discussion, for as he said he knew the view already of every member of the Cabinet, but he had promised God that he would do this thing. That very night Secretary Chase wrote in his diary an account of the meeting, which is condensed as follows:
"Monday, September 22, 1862.
"To Department about nine. State Department messenger came with notice to heads of Departments to meet at twelve. Received sundry callers. Went to White House. All the members of the Cabinet were in attendance. There was some general talk, and the President mentioned that Artemus Ward had sent him his book. Proposed to read a chapter which he thought very funny. Read it, and seemed to enjoy it very much.
"The President then took a graver tone, and said, 'Gentlemen: I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery; and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since then my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought, all along, that the time for acting on it might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the Rebels has not been quite what I should best like. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the Rebel Army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to anyone, but I made the promise to myself, and [hesitating a little] to my Maker. The Rebel Army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This, I say, without intending anything but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. If there is anything in the expressions I use, or in any minor matter, which any one of you thinks had best be changed I shall be glad to receive the suggestions. One other observation I will make. I know very well that many others might, in this matter as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe that I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here; I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.'"—Warden: Life of S. P. Chase, pp. 481-82, quoted in Nicolay and Hay, VI, 159-60.
In the diaries of Secretaries Welles and Chase we have incontrovertible testimony. The two records were made independently and on that very night, and were not published for years afterward. There was no possible collusion or reshaping of the testimony in the light of subsequent events, no time for imagination to play any part in enlarging upon the incident. The President recognized that the time was not wholly propitious, that a majority of the Cabinet probably would not be disposed to adopt his Proclamation if put to vote, that the people's support of the administration was wavering and unpredicable and none too certain to approve this measure. Under these conditions it is impossible to consider the Emancipation Proclamation solely from the standpoint either of political expediency or of military necessity. The fact which silenced all opposition in the Cabinet was the President's solemn statement that he had made a covenant with God, and that he must keep it.
There is a sense in which the solemnity is heightened by the grotesque incident of the chapter from Artemus Ward read at the beginning. There is an aspect in which the sublimity of that Cabinet meeting's ending is heightened by the ridiculousness of its beginning. In any event, it shows that the mind of Abraham Lincoln that morning was in what for him was a thoroughly healthy condition. However incongruous it might have been for another man to begin so solemn a meeting with a chapter from Artemus Ward, it was a mark of sanity, of thorough normal psychology, when done by Abraham Lincoln. It showed that the moral overstrain was finding its relief from excessive tension in what for Lincoln was an entirely normal way.
As before stated, these two contemporary accounts by Welles and Chase, though made at the time, were not published until years afterward; but there was another publication that was virtually contemporary. Frank B. Carpenter, the artist, began almost immediately his noted painting of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and in the course of his six months in the White House had long and repeated interviews with all members of the Cabinet, and talked with them about every incident connected with that event. He published his account in his book in 1866, while all the members of the Cabinet were living, and, so far as known, was never objected to or proposed to be modified by any member of the Cabinet. According to his statement, Lincoln told the Cabinet that he had promised God that he would do this, uttering the last part of this sentence in a low voice. Secretary Chase, who was sitting near the President, asked Mr. Lincoln if he had correctly understood him, and the President repeated what he had affirmed before, saying:
"I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom for the slaves."—Six Months in the White House, pp. 89, 90.
In this threefold attestation we have irrefutable testimony that the determining motive of President Lincoln in his issue of the Emancipation Proclamation was the keeping of his solemn covenant with God.
It is all but impossible to exaggerate the significance of this incident. The essential fact is as fully proved as human testimony can possibly prove a fact. When we remember the extreme reticence of Abraham Lincoln on all such matters, and the fact of which he must have been painfully conscious that his Cabinet was not very favorably disposed toward the thing that he proposed to do, his quiet, outspoken, and repeated declaration that he had promised this thing to God is sufficient in itself to settle forever the essentially religious character of Abraham Lincoln. If we had no other word from his lips touching on the subject of religion but this one, we should be assured of his unfaltering belief in God, in a profound sense of his own personal responsibility to God, in prayer, and a personal relation with God.