Abraham Lincoln

by William Eleroy Curtis

He soon followed this up by proposing to Delaware a scheme for the purchase by the government of the seventeen hundred and ninety-eight slaves shown by the census of 1860 to be still held in that State, at the rate of four hundred dollars per capita. A majority of the Lower House of the Legislature of Delaware accepted the idea, but the Senate rejected it and the subject was dropped. But Lincoln did not allow the minds of his antislavery critics to rest. He kept them busy discussing new propositions, and on March 6, 1862, sent a special message to the two Houses of Congress recommending the gradual abolishment of slavery by furnishing to the several States from the public treasury sufficient funds "to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." By this proposition he avoided the objections to the general government interfering with the domestic affairs of the States, and left the people of each State to arrange for emancipation in their own way. "It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them," he said in his message, and again called attention to the probable effects of the war upon the slave situation. The representatives of the border States in Congress took no heed of the warning, but the Northern papers devoted a great deal of space to a discussion of the proposition, and Lincoln's purpose of giving them something to talk about was accomplished. The most serious objection was based upon the enormous expenses. As early as 1839 Henry Clay estimated the value of the slaves at one billion two hundred and fifty million dollars, and upon the same basis of calculation it must have exceeded two billion dollars in 1860; but Lincoln answered that one-half day's cost of the war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars a head, and that eighty-seven days' cost would pay for all the slaves in the border States.

He called together the Congressional delegates from the border States and made an earnest effort to convince them of the expediency of his plan. The House of Representatives adopted it by a two-thirds vote, although few of the members from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri voted with the affirmative. A month later the resolution was concurred in by the Senate, and what Thaddeus Stevens, the radical leader of the House, described as "the most diluted milk-and-water-gruel proposition ever given to the American people" became a law.

It is not necessary to say that the Legislatures of the border States never had an opportunity to take advantage of the proposition; history moved too fast for them. But Lincoln at once began a systematic campaign in Congress to secure legislation for the purchase of all the slaves belonging to loyal owners in the District of Columbia, and that became a law on April 16, 1862.

Public opinion was being rapidly educated; the Republican majority in Congress was pledged to the doctrine of emancipation; the slave-holders in the border States were being led gradually to realize the inevitable, and if they had been wise they would promptly have accepted the generosity of the President's proposition and thus have escaped the enormous pecuniary losses which they suffered by the Emancipation Proclamation a little later.

Before Congress adjourned, laws were passed which materially altered the situation. The army was prohibited from surrendering fugitive slaves; the confiscation act was greatly enlarged; all slaves actually employed in military service by the Confederacy were declared free; the President was authorized to enlist negro regiments for the war; the Missouri Compromise was restored; slavery was forbidden in all Territories of the United States; appropriations were made for carrying into effect the treaty with Great Britain to suppress the slave-trade; the independence and sovereignty of Hayti and Liberia, two black republics, were formally recognized, and two nations of negroes, with negro Presidents, negro officials, and negro ambassadors, were admitted on an equality into the sisterhood of civilized nations. Any one who would have predicted such legislation a year previous would have been considered insane, even six months previous it would have been declared impossible.

The next sensation was an emancipation proclamation issued by General David Hunter, who commanded the Department of the South, which declared free all persons held as slaves in the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Lincoln promptly vetoed Hunter's order and declared it unauthorized and void, saying that he reserved to himself, "as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free" when "it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government."

This announcement should have satisfied the North and have been a sufficient warning to the South, because as we read it now we can see Lincoln's purposes between the lines.

The President could not permit the Congressional delegations from the border States to return to their constituents without one more admonition and one more appeal to their patriotism and their sense of justice and wisdom. He called them to the White House and read to them a carefully prepared argument in support of his plan to sell their slaves to the government. Two-thirds of them united in an explanation of their reasons for rejecting the scheme on account of its impracticability, and the remainder promised to submit it to their constituents. The reception of this last appeal convinced Lincoln that he could do nothing by moral suasion, and he immediately determined to try the use of force.

"It has got to be," he told a friend afterwards. "We had played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game; and I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and, without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation."

On July 22, 1862, he read to his Cabinet the first draft of a proclamation, not for the purpose of asking their advice, he told them, but for their information. But every man was pledged to confidence, and the secret was so well kept that the public had no suspicion of his intention, and the radical newspapers and abolitionists continued to criticise and attack him in a most abusive manner. A committee of clergymen from Chicago came to Washington to urge him to issue an emancipation proclamation. He received them respectfully, but did not tell them that their wishes would have been anticipated but for the defeat of the Union army at the second battle of Bull Run. He made them an eloquent but evasive speech, and appealed to their good sense. "Now, gentlemen," he said, "if I cannot enforce the Constitution down South, how can I enforce a mere Presidential proclamation? 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."