Abraham Lincoln Read online

  It cannot be stressed enough that Lincoln, then deeply involved in matters of reconstruction, fully endorsed Sherman’s scorched-earth policy. If Sherman was “a total warrior,” so was his Commander-in-Chief. Putting aside his own aversion to bloodshed and violence, Lincoln ended up pounding all his southern foes into submission—civilians and soldiers alike. And he did so because that was the surest way he knew to shorten the conflict, end the killing, and salvage his American dream.

  6: TOWARD A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM

  When it came to reconstruction, the historical Lincoln was no saintly Father Abraham extending the conquered South a tender and forgiving hand. He was not locked in a feud with “vindictive radicals” like Sumner and Stevens, who wanted to carve Dixie up in an ecstasy of revenge. This is a potent myth, à la Carl Sandburg, which most Americans still regard as historically accurate. Yet it scarcely fits with the President who sanctioned total war against southern insurrectionaries. In fact, a body of modern scholarship has persuasively demonstrated that Lincoln became a pretty tough reconstructionist, too. Not only did the historical Lincoln side with Sumner and Stevens on most crucial reconstruction issues; by 1865 he was prepared to reform and reshape the South’s shattered society with the help of military force. Again, as in his harsh war measures, Lincoln’s evolving approach to reconstruction became inextricably linked to his vision of what this conflict was about: on the Union side, as he said, it was a struggle to preserve for all humanity a system of government whose mission was to elevate the conditions of all its people, to afford all equal privileges in the race of life.

  During the course of the war, Lincoln went through three phases in his efforts to reconstruct the rebel South, that is, to restore federal authority and establish loyal state regimes in captured Confederate territory. In phase one, which began with the start of the fighting, Lincoln relied on pro-Union elements within a state to create loyal governments. But, as he should have remembered from the Sumter crisis, Unionist sentiment was too weak for such a policy to work. So in the spring and summer of 1862, the President initiated a second phase of reconstruction and installed military governors in the occupied portions of Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas, instructing them to restore those states to their former places in the Union. As in his plan of voluntary, state-guided emancipation, which he was promoting at this time, Lincoln sought merely to advise his military governors and not interfere directly in their efforts to establish loyal state regimes. But even so, as one scholar has observed, Lincoln’s use of military governors was “a radical extension of federal authority into the internal affairs of the states”—and a harbinger of what was to come in the President’s evolving reconstruction policy.

  Phase two of that policy proved a failure, because the military governors floundered in their attempts to harmonize conflicting Unionist sentiment and woo back disaffected rebels. The lesson here became as clear to Lincoln as that about slavery: he had to reconstruct Dixie himself. The impetus, direction, and purpose of southern restoration had to come from above, from the chief executive. As he had assumed control of emancipation, so he must take direct charge of restoring conquered rebel states to their “proper practical relation with the Union.”

  In his Gettysburg Address of November, 1863, Lincoln signaled the nation that something new was afoot, that something more was needed to win this historic war between the forces of liberty and the forces of reaction in the world. With emancipation now under way in occupied areas of Dixie, with 100,000 former slaves now serving the Union war effort, and with a new plan of reconstruction taking shape in his mind, Lincoln stood on Cemetery Hill south of Gettysburg and called for a national rededication to the proposition that all men are created equal, a new resolve to fight for that proposition and salvage America’s experiment in popular government for all humankind. Let Union people of all colors and conditions come together in a new commitment to freedom and a new national crusade. Let them cease their petty quarrels, put aside their differences, and vow that “these honored dead” had not died in vain.

  Two and a half weeks later, in his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, Lincoln promulgated a new plan for constructing loyal, slaveless regimes in occupied Dixie, thus inaugurating phase three of his approach to that difficult problem. First, Lincoln made it clear that he intended to control the reorganization of civilian government in conquered Dixie, that he regarded this as chiefly an executive responsibility to be carried out by the army. In fact, Lincoln was adamant about the role of the army in the reconstruction process, contending that it was indispensable in safeguarding the freedom of the very slaves it liberated. It was also necessary in protecting the loyal southern minority—harried little bands of Unionist Whigs and antisecessionists on whom Lincoln’s entire efforts depended. In sum, Lincoln would employ the army to oversee the task of building free-state governments in the occupied South, designating generals there as the “masters” of reconstruction.

  Second, Lincoln offered a solution to one of the most perplexing difficulties of southern restoration: “how to keep the rebellious populations from overwhelming and outvoting the loyal minority,” as he put it, and returning the old southern ruling class to power. For now, the President’s solution was to guard the loyal minority with the army, offer an oath that separated “the opposing elements, so as to build from the sound,” and virtually outlaw the old and current leaders in rebel Dixie. To accomplish the latter, Lincoln refused to pardon the following classes, thus preventing them from voting or holding political office in the occupied South: all men who had held Confederate civilian and diplomatic posts, all who had served as rebel officers above the rank of colonel in the army and lieutenant in the navy, all who had resigned from the U.S. armed forces or left Congress or judicial positions to help the rebellion, and all who had treated Union soldiers other than as prisoners of war. Apart from these, he fully pardoned all other southerners who had engaged in rebellion so long as they took an oath of allegiance to the Union, swearing “henceforth” to support it. Lincoln considered this a fair and liberal test “which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness.” Once a number of people equal to ten percent of those who had voted in 1860 had taken the oath, these people could establish a loyal civilian government and elect U.S. representatives, and their state would be restored to the Union with full federal protection.

  Third, all reconstructed regimes must accept and obey the emancipation proclamation and all congressional laws bearing on slavery. “To now abandon them would be not only to relinquish a lever of power,” Lincoln said, “but would also be a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.” Far from being a lenient plan as many have claimed, Lincoln’s Proclamation made emancipation the very basis of reconstruction, thus placing him again on the side of Sumner and the advanced and moderate members of his party (conservative Republicans and Democrats, recall, still wanted to restore the rebel South with slavery preserved). Moreover, the President indicated that he intended to control the affairs of emancipated blacks in conquered Dixie.

  As for the old southern ruling class, Lincoln agreed with Sumner that it should be eradicated, and the President’s emancipation and reconstruction policies were calculated to do just that. Emancipation, as we have seen, would obliterate the very institution on which the southern master class depended for its existence. And Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction excluded nearly all rebellious southern leaders from participating in his reconstructed governments. True, Lincoln said he might modify his classes of pardons if that seemed warranted, and he did let disqualified individuals apply to him for clemency. But in his Message to Congress in December, 1864, he warned that the time might come—probably would come—when “public duty” would force him to “close the door” on all pardons and adopt “more rigorous measures.” At all events, Lincoln had no intention of allowing prewar southern leaders—a class he had once castigated as slavedealers in politics—to regain
power in postwar Dixie.

  Apart from eliminating slavery and the southern ruling class, Lincoln made it plain that he would be flexible in reconstructing the rebel South, that the ten percent plan was only one formula and that he would gladly consider others. As he set about restoring Louisiana and Arkansas by the ten percent plan, he indicated that his approach as to the mode of reconstruction would be empirical: what plan he adopted for other conquered areas would depend on the circumstances and exigencies of each place and moment. The ten percent plan above all was a wartime measure, designed to weaken the Confederacy and to create loyal state governments in occupied areas brimming with hostile rebel sympathizers.

  In his reconstruction efforts, Lincoln sought Congress’s approval and cooperation, for he acknowledged that Capitol Hill had a powerful voice in the reconstruction process, since both houses would decide whether to accept representatives from the states he restored. He did clash with advanced Republicans like Sumner, Stevens, and Wade, who argued that reconstruction was a congressional and not a presidential responsibility. Sumner also opposed Lincoln’s military approach because he did not understand how the army could produce an American state. But, despite their differences, Lincoln and the advanced and moderate Republicans on Capitol Hill stood together on most crucial reconstruction issues. They agreed that the South must be remade. They meant to abolish slavery there forever, and they worked closely, as we have seen, in guiding the present Thirteenth Amendment through Congress. They were concerned about the welfare of the freedmen. And they intended for southern Unionists to rule in postwar Dixie. Above all, they wanted to prevent ex-Confederate leaders from taking over the postwar South and forming a coalition with northern Democrats that might imperil the gains of the war. Lincoln and his congressional associates often differed on how to implement their goals—nearly all congressional Republicans, for instance, demanded a tougher loyalty oath than that required by the President’s ten percent plan. And they disagreed, too, on the issue of Negro voting rights, as I shall discuss in a moment. But even so, the President and congressional Republicans retained a close and mutually respectful relationship, so much so that many contemporaries thought they would remain as united in working out reconstruction problems as they had in prosecuting the war.

  One more thing about Sumner and Lincoln. While the President had his differences with the high-minded Senator, he always felt closest to Sumner’s wing of the party. He remarked that men like the senator were the conscience of the party, and during the course of the war, as we have seen, Lincoln moved over to Sumner’s position on emancipation, Negro troops, and other harsh war measures. Moreover, the two men remained warm personal friends. Mary Lincoln recalled how the President welcomed Sumner’s visits and how they talked and laughed together “like two schoolboys.” While their disagreements over reconstruction were sometimes rancorous, Lincoln and Sumner knew they needed one another in the hard days ahead, and they maintained close personal and political ties.

  Inevitably bound up with any reconstruction program were pressing questions about the welfare of the freedmen. How were they to provide for themselves? Should they be given the right to vote, to run for political office? Lincoln’s solution to the first question was the refugee system, which the army was already setting up in occupied Dixie. Through that system, officers enlisted liberated slaves as soldiers, employed others as military laborers, and hired still others to work in agricultural pursuits under government supervision. For a time in 1863, Lincoln vacillated as to whether the freed people should work for wages by contract, or whether they should first labor for whites as temporary apprentices. On several occasions he said he had no objection if white authorities assumed control of former slaves “as a laboring, landless, and homeless class” and adopted some temporary arrangement by which the two races in Dixie “could gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new.” But when congressional Republicans steadfastly opposed any such arrangement, Lincoln dropped the apprenticeship idea and ordered those involved in the refugee system to employ contract labor for southern blacks, so that they could receive wages set by the government and become self-supporting. And he insisted that the government contracts be fair to them. Moreover, he happily approved when his ten percent government in Louisiana rejected apprenticeship and granted economic independence to Louisiana Negroes. In this respect, Lincoln doubtless expected Louisiana to serve as a model for other rehabilitated states.

  While there were many faults with Lincoln’s refugee system, it was based on sound Republican dogma: it kept southern blacks out of the North, and it secured them jobs as wage earners on captured farms and plantations. The system thus helped southern blacks to help themselves and prepared them for life in a free society in postwar Dixie.

  When it came to Negro suffrage, Lincoln displayed the same capacity for growth and change that had characterized his approach to emancipation. By 1864, with tens of thousands of black men fighting for the Union cause, Lincoln endorsed limited suffrage for Louisiana Negroes. He wrote Governor Michael Hahn that he wished “the very intelligent” blacks and especially those “who have fought gallantly in our ranks” could be enfranchised. Yet Lincoln would not force Negro suffrage on Louisiana—certainly not in a presidential election year—because he knew what a combustible issue it was in both the North and the South. What is more, he feared that mandatory Negro suffrage would alienate white Unionists in Louisiana and ruin all his reconstruction efforts there.

  Nevertheless, when the Louisiana constitutional convention refused to give black men the vote, Lincoln helped persuade the lawmakers to reconsider their decision and forge a compromise: while the Louisiana constitution did not enfranchise Negroes, it did empower the legislature to do so. At the same time, the constitution not only outlawed slavery (as Lincoln insisted it must), but opened the courts to all persons regardless of color and established free public education for both races. For his part, Lincoln accepted this as the best that could be done in the Louisiana of 1864 and 1865, and he commented—with a touch of irony—that Louisiana’s new constitution was “better for the poor black man than we have in Illinois.” Maybe Louisiana’s all-white government was imperfect, but Lincoln thought it better than no government at all. While he wished it had provided limited Negro suffrage, he believed this could be accomplished faster “by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them.” In sum, the Louisiana government was a foundation to build on for the future—for blacks as well as whites.

  Yet, characteristically, Lincoln left himself room to maneuver on the Louisiana question. He publicly asserted that he would not be bound by an outmoded policy: he had promised to support Hahn’s all-white government in occupied Louisiana, “but, as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest.”

  Contrary to what some have claimed, Lincoln’s interest in Negro suffrage was not confined to Louisiana, with its relatively well-educated and outspoken black community in New Orleans. Over the winter of 1864-65, in fact, Lincoln approved some form of Negro suffrage for other rebel states if Congress would accept his Louisiana regime. This was part of a compromise he made with Sumner and a few other advanced Republicans, who demanded universal male suffrage for southern blacks so that they could protect their liberty. But the compromise fell apart because most congressional Republicans opposed even limited Negro suffrage as too radical. In the matter of black political rights, Lincoln was ahead of most members of his party—and far ahead of the vast majority of northern whites at that time.

  So far, Lincoln had supported limited Negro suffrage only in his correspondence and private negotiations. But in his last speech, on April 11, 1865, the President addressed reconstruction in Louisiana and publicly endorsed enfranchising “the very intelligent” blacks there and “those who serve our cause as soldiers.” In
fact, he went further than that. In a telling line toward the end of his speech, Lincoln all but granted that the black man deserved the elective franchise. Though he was speaking in the context of Louisiana, he asserted that “what has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States.” Lincoln still did not make Negro suffrage mandatory, but he did not reject the idea either. As with other reconstruction issues, he left the matter open.

  It appears obvious in what direction Lincoln was evolving. And that was toward full political rights for the Negro, not away from them. Certainly Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Attorney General James Speed, and other champions of Negro suffrage thought the President now appreciated the need for southern blacks to vote and thus to protect themselves from their former masters. After Lincoln’s last Cabinet meeting, Attorney General Speed told Salmon Chase, also an advocate of Negro enfranchisement, that the President “never seemed so near our views.”

  By war’s end, Lincoln seemed on the verge of a new phase of reconstruction, a tougher phase that would call for some form of Negro suffrage, more stringent voting qualifications for ex-Confederates (as hinted at in his 1864 Message to Congress), and probably an army of occupation for the postwar South. At his last Cabinet meeting, Lincoln and his secretaries unanimously agreed that such an army might be necessary to prevent the rebellious southern majority from overwhelming the small Unionist minority in Dixie and maybe even re-enslaving the blacks. In other words, the President was already considering in April, 1865, what Congress would later adopt in the days of “Radical Reconstruction.” Perhaps a new and tougher program was what Lincoln had in mind in the closing line of his last speech: “It may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act, when satisfied that action will be proper.”