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Authors: Wilbert L. Jenkins

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LINCOLN AND BLACK FREEDOM

Even though Lincoln repeated that the Civil War was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery, from the beginning of the war there was speculation about whether or when the slaves would be emancipated. Lincoln had believed in the gradual emancipation of slaves, but he held a mixed record on the issue of black freedom when he assumed the presidency. According to the legend of “Lincoln the Emancipator,” one day at a slave auction in New Orleans in 1830, he made an eternal vow against slavery. Witnessing the sale of a beautiful mulatto girl, he was sickened by the manner in which she was handled and inspected by prospective buyers. As he walked away, Lincoln was alleged to have remarked, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard.”
15
Since the story was told by a man who did not accompany Lincoln on either of the two trips he made to New Orleans, it cannot stand up.
16
Furthermore, although Lincoln intended to use his 1860 autobiography for campaign purposes and could not reveal any abolitionist convictions, he made no mention of slaves or the slave trade in it. He did, however, speak of a previous trip to New Orleans and recalled an incident in which he and one of his companions “were attacked by seven Negroes with intent to kill and rob them”; “hurt some in the melee,” they “succeeded in driving the Negroes from the boat.”
17

Lincoln was also alleged to have become incensed over seeing some slaves in shackles on the Ohio riverboat while a young man in his twenties. But, years later in a letter to Mary Speed dated September 27, 1841, he philosophically described the scene on board as exemplifying “the effect of condition upon human happiness.”
18
Apparently, it did not bother Lincoln that one dozen slaves were shackled together like animals, separated from their families, and sold off to a place where slavery was regarded as being the harshest. Nevertheless, in his opinion, “they were the most cheerful and apparently happy creatures.” Thus, he concluded that God “renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best to be nothing better than tolerable.”
19
Moreover, as late as 1847, he accepted a slaveholder as a law client and argued against one of the man's slave's claim to freedom. Lincoln lost the case.
20

As a young congressman, Lincoln introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but he seemed to take a yes-and-no attitude toward the institution. His bill was carefully worded so as not to offend slaveholders. Furthermore, it called, not for the immediate emancipation of slaves, but for gradual emancipation and monetary compensation to the owners. This bill could go into effect if a majority of whites in the District voted for it in a referendum.
21
Consequently, Lincoln placed himself in a no-lose situation since whites in the District would have the final say in the matter. If they approved it, his star might rise; and even if they did not, he would not be damaged politically. During the 1850s it should be borne in mind that Lincoln consistently opposed the spread of slavery into the territories, but he never advocated its termination in the Southern states.
22

As noted earlier, Lincoln's position as president on the issue of emancipation remained consistent. As Union troops penetrated deep into Southern territory, the Confederacy began to employ slaves in their war effort. Contrabands, as they were called, were making such a substantial contribution that it became necessary for Union officials to devise strategies to counter it. Liberal Republicans threw their weight behind the first Confiscation Act, which was designed to deal with the problem of contrabands. The bill eventually garnered unanimous Republican support and Congress passed it on August 6, 1861, and sent it to Lincoln for his signature. The most controversial provision was one that authorized the seizure of Rebel slaves actively employed in the Confederate war effort. Not surprisingly, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and other Border state Democrats were livid. They argued that the provision was nothing less than a general emancipation act. In addition, Midwest Democrats were even more aggressive with their criticism, arguing that the bill would bring several million “wooly headed, thick-lipped” Southern Negroes into the North and “Africanize” the region.

Republicans countered with the argument that since confiscated slaves would be carefully controlled, Southern blacks were not going to flood into the free states. Moreover, they argued that owing to the fact that a war was going on, the government had every right to seize enemy property—including slave property—as legitimate contraband. Finally, Republicans maintained that since the bill affected only those slaves used for rebel war purposes, it was hardly a general emancipation bill, which eradicated slavery as a state institution. Instead, it was an entirely legal war measure designed to weaken Confederate military forces and help terminate the rebellion. Apparently, Lincoln was persuaded by the arguments of the Republicans, as he elected to sign the bill into law. The first Confiscation Act was, to a large extent, similar to General Benjamin Butler's contraband policy, which Lincoln had already upheld. Nevertheless, when racial antagonisms flared up in the wake of the act, Lincoln reiterated his position that emancipation was not a goal in the war.
23
Clearly, events beyond the president's control had moved him to sign the first Confiscation Act. He sincerely believed that it would help him accomplish his overall objective, the preservation of the Union.

Throughout 1861 in particular, Lincoln's chief concern was to maintain a united coalition of war Democrats and Border state Unionists as well as Republicans in support of the war effort. In order to accomplish this goal, Lincoln deemed it imperative to define the war as being solely for the Union and not a war against slavery. Defining the conflict as one to preserve the Union would unite his coalition, while describing it as a struggle against slavery would fragment it. Accordingly, on August 30, Lincoln rescinded General Frémont's emancipation edict in Missouri,
24
which placed the state under martial law and ordered that the slaves of rebels there be seized and “declared freemen.”
25
Lincoln could not allow the emancipation edict to stand because it would jeopardize his political and military efforts to prevent the Border states of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri from seceding. Moreover, efforts were also under way to garner the support of Unionists in western Virginia and eastern Tennessee.
26
Given the circumstances under which Lincoln operated early in the war, it is easy to understand his reluctance to support Frémont's edict. At the same time, however, his decision to rescind the order did not cause him great grief, as it was consistent with his principal war aim.

As the spring of 1862 emerged, Lincoln and the Republican Congress collaborated on ways to battle at the outer defenses of slavery. The president was sent a bill by Congress that forbade Union officers from returning fugitive slaves to the Confederacy. Lincoln signed it. While the bill represented on the surface a progressive attack against the institution of slavery, this was not entirely why Lincoln supported it. Uppermost in his mind was Confederate defeat, which would equal preservation of the Union. By denying the Confederates the return of fugitive slaves who in turn could be used in their war effort, Lincoln was striking a blow against the Confederacy's chances of survival. He also signed a bill, sent to him by Congress, that outlawed slavery in all federal territories. Thus, in one fell swoop Lincoln reversed the Dred Scott Decision and implemented the Republican goal of slave containment. Shortly thereafter, Washington would witness something scarcely dreamed of when the war began—black diplomats strolling about the streets of a slaveless capital city.
27

Nonetheless, Lincoln remained adamantly opposed to military emancipation in the rebel states. In fact, Lincoln's reaction to news that General David Hunter had issued on May 9, 1862, a military order that applied to slaves on Union-held islands off South Carolina, reminiscent of Frémont's emancipation edict in Missouri, underscores this point. Because slavery was inconsistent with a free country, Hunter declared, the slaves inside his lines were “free forever.”
28
When Lincoln found out about the order, he revoked it at once. Although he believed “that all men everywhere could be free,” he thought that only the president alone could decide when military emancipation was necessary to save the country.
29
In time, Lincoln would reach this conclusion, but events had not moved him to this point by the spring of 1862.

In the summer of 1862, Congress began to intensify its attacks against slavery and also increased its efforts to persuade a reluctant Lincoln to follow suit. Radical Republicans, led by men such as Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, wanted to punish rebels by confiscating their property, including their slaves. In an effort to accomplish this objective, the Republican-controlled Congress on July 17 passed the second Confiscation Act, which defined the rebels as traitors. Not surprisingly, Lincoln voiced concerns about many of its provisions. He was troubled the most by one that declared that after a period of sixty days, the slaves of rebels should be “forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.” The president simply did not believe that Congress had the right to free a slave within a state. Lincoln did not sign the bill until he had secured modifications of some of the more stringent provisions, and even then he took the unprecedented step of placing before Congress his statement of objections to the bill that he had just approved.
30
Why, specifically, did Lincoln feel the need to go to such an extraordinary length to sign into law the Second Confiscation Act? Was it because the act was truly a revolutionary measure?

Since the act provided that the slaves of rebels could be made free if they came under the control of the army, one might conclude that this would mean emancipation for all the slaves whom victory by Union forces could guarantee. Therefore, whenever Union soldiers appeared, slaves could conceivably obtain their freedom. However, while the goal was revolutionary, the means to reach it were not. Indeed, actual freedom would be difficult to obtain because of the red tape involved. For example, freedom could only be acquired by appearing before a federal court on a case-by-case basis. There were estimated to be 350,000 slave owners in the South when the Second Confiscation Act became law. Thus, if their individual slaves were to seek freedom under this act, there would have to be one case for every owner. These cases would tie up the courts for several years and render them useless in terms of dealing with other legal matters. It is little wonder that Lincoln could say as late as September 13, 1862, “I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.”
31
Historian David H. Donald was correct when he wrote of the Second Confiscation Act, “it had little effect except as an expression of opinion.”
32

Nevertheless, one ought not completely to minimize the importance of the act. It did, in fact, represent another example of slavery being undercut by the force of military necessity. There was a provision in the bill that authorized the president to “receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing entrenchments or performing camp service, or for any other labor or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent persons of African descent.” The law even provided pay for that service. On the day that the measure passed, Lincoln informed Congress that he was ready to let military commanders “employ, as laborers, as many persons of African de[s]cent, as can be used to advantage.”
33
As had been the case earlier, he was still concerned about the political implications of military emancipation, but he had no major problem in endorsing the utilization of blacks as laborers to assist the Union war effort. Again, Lincoln's primary concern was the defeat of the Confederacy and the salvation of the Union. He realized that his actions would inevitably lead to the emancipation of slaves, and he had concluded at this time that emancipation was a military necessity. Thus, it is little wonder why Lincoln would sign the Militia Act into law on the same day that he signed the Second Confiscation Act.

The Militia Act empowered the president to call 300,000 nine-month militiamen, ages eighteen to forty-five, from the states, based on their population. Lincoln had the authority under the act to fill the necessary quota if the states did not supply the men. Although recruitment and surreptitous conscription were the main elements of this measure, it also expedited the evolution of black military service. Blacks could now be accepted as soldiers to fill the state quotas. Moreover, as a consequence of the Militia Act, Lincoln had the authority to emancipate any slaves who enlisted, along with their families, if their masters were rebels. Therefore, some blacks who fought in the armed forces were freed even before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.
34
By signing the bill, for the first time during the war, Lincoln had endorsed a limited form of military emancipation. In the coming days his support for military emancipation would steadily grow as it became tied to the preservation of the Union.

While Lincoln had reached the conclusion by the summer of 1862 that military emancipation was a necessary prerequisite for Union victory, throughout 1862 he continued to promote his colonization scheme that he had unveiled early in his presidency and that he hoped would lead to the peaceful, gradual liberation of blacks. Lincoln's plan for emancipation was twofold: compensation for the slaveholders and colonization for blacks, slave and free. First, he proposed a plan aimed at freeing slaves gradually, over a 30-year period, and compensating their masters out of the national treasury. In order for his proposal to be carried out, Lincoln had to solicit the cooperation of Congress and the particular states involved. He sent Congress a message in March 1862 urging gradual emancipation and proposing that the Federal government assist states initiating such a plan. Congress sided with the president, and on April 10 passed a joint supporting resolution, which specified that federal financial aid should be given to any state that adopted a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery. But spokesmen from the Border states on Capitol Hill responded negatively. They argued that the cost of the program would be $478 million and that their constituents would vote down the proposal even if this sum were appropriated beforehand. This response was a setback for Lincoln, who had hoped that an offer to compensate slaveholders might tip the balance in favor of his plan.
35

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