Abe Grows Part II
Lincoln Giving his Second Inaugural Address
Abe Grows
A Two Part Essay on Lincoln and Race
By Jeff Schneider
Part II: Lincoln and Race 1861-1865
This article is a continuation of Abe Grows Part I: Lincoln and Race 1847-1860
See Part I elsewhere on this Substack site.
After the seven states of the southern tier seceded, Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. In his First Inaugural he addressed the people in those states as "fellow" countrymen, saying "that in your hands" was "the momentous issue of Civil War." He explained that the Union would not begin a war against the seceded states. Additionally, they could not legally secede since "even if the Constitution is a contract," it must be abrogated by all parties to be legally broken. Unlike a divorcing husband and wife, we "could not separate" because we were held to together by land, rivers, and trails. Then in a sudden burst of eloquence, the new President said that the "mystic chords of memory would once again swell the chorus of Union," referring both to the heart strings and the music that "would touch the better angels of our nature."
Instead of waiting, as he said in his Second Inaugural, the southerners sent "agents" to Washington DC seeking to "destroy (the union) without war.... Both parties deprecated war," instead they fought bitterly and unrelentingly. For many years it had been thought that there were 622,000 who died in the Civil War -- more than in all other American wars combined. But the latest studies offer a major correction. Now scholars estimate that the number is 650,000 to 850,000 (1) This essay, as in Part I, contains a short lesson. It compares Lincoln’s Reply to Greeley to the Emancipation Proclamation.
ONE
Let us remind ourselves of Lincoln's relation to anti-slavery, equality before the law and equality between the races in its broadest sense. In his lively speech on November 7, 1860, analyzing the results of the Presidential election the great abolitionist, Wendell Philips, listed the traits he saw in Lincoln in regard to race and politics. Phillips explained that "(a)n old Greek declared: Equality before the law... distinguished freedom from barbarism. Mark it and let us question Mr. Lincoln about it:" (2)
This invented dialogue is certainly parallel to the statement by Lincoln from 1857 in Part I: "In some respects she is certainly not my equal, but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking the leave of anyone else she is my equal and the equal of all others." Similarly, Phillips recalled that Lincoln believed that a negro "may walk where he wishes, eat what he earns, read what he can and associate with any other who is exactly the same shade of black he is. That is all he can grant." These statements show that Lincoln did believe in equality before the law, as we saw in the Free Soil discussion. However, Phillips believed in the power of the West to encourage equality and says that just as they say you can hear the "corn grow" in the moonlight on the prairie, so you can almost watch William Seward "grow" toward Garrison. The presidential campaign of 1860 had educated the public and now the "Republicans have undertaken a problem that drives them toward our position [abolition]." The next year, in July 1861, Phillips praised the contraband at Fort Monroe and credited pressure from the runaways as a major factor in forcing Lincoln to call for abolition. "Lincoln will do his constitutional duty" and defend the freedom of the contrabands, Phillips continued, proclaiming that Blacks "never shall fear a master" as long as 20 millions still live and breathe in the North. (3) We will now watch Abe grow as the circumstances, his honesty and his willingness to go to the "last ditch" in the war, force him onward to emancipation, and find a new confidence in feeling expressed in two of the greatest works of American literature.
In the first part of the war, from April 14, 1861, up to the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, the Union was clearly losing. Lincoln later recalled "that at the end of July or early August we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations...that we had played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game!... [I] prepared the original draft of the proclamation and after much anxious thought called a cabinet meeting upon the subject." (4) The one idea he had not already considered was the suggestion of William Seward, Secretary of State. Seward "feared the effect of so important a step because of our repeated reverses." Instead, he thought the Union should wait for a major victory to issue the proclamation. That day did not come until the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day of the war, This plan was set in July, but the timing was preempted by Horace Greeley, Lincoln's old friend who published an open letter, "The Prayer of the Twenty Millions" in his New York Tribune. On July 19, 1862, he called on Lincoln to follow the wishes of the "loyal" citizens of the North" to enforce the Confiscation Laws freeing the enslaved. "[T]he triumph of the union is indispensible not only (to) the existence of our country, but to the well-being of mankind." Greeley continued. (5)
Enslaved people had been running away to forts and Army lines since May 26 1861, when a few slaves arrived at the Union's Fort Monroe in Virginia. Then "as if by a mysterious telegraph" the number ran up to 900 who had come to the "Freedom Fort" by July 1861. These acts of self-emancipation were what W.E.B. DuBois collectively called the General Strike in his classic, Black Reconstruction. (6) Runaways followed the Army in battle: In 1864 Sherman's famous march through Georgia had thousands of Contraband of War (freedmen) in its wake. Lincoln signed two Confiscation Acts passed by Congress, which were designed to take the illegal "property" of the Confederates (i.e. the enslaved) by accepting the runaways to do work behind the lines and in the forts. Lincoln signed the first after it was passed by Congress on August 6, 1861 and the second on July 7, 1862 which made the slaves of the Confederates, free. The general strike was one of the major factors in the Union victory because it energized the abolition cause, took the workers away from the rebels, forcing them to send white men back from the Army to tend to the plantations, and of course, freed the enslaved by the thousands before the war became an abolition war on January 1, 1863. By the end of the war there were nearly 200,000 Blacks in the Union Army and Navy. Lincoln's Reply to Greeley (Reply) is available for your convenience in footnote (7). I taught this letter in combination with the Emancipation Proclamation (Proclamation). The juxtaposition is eye-opening. The Proclamation is also available for your convenience in footnote (8).
TWO
I handed out the two documents in class then gave the students about 10 minutes to read them. Before they started, I asked them for the dates on the documents. The Reply is August 22, 1862, which goes on their left on the blackboard. I explain that Horace Greeley wrote an open letter to Lincoln, as mentioned above, pleading with him to free all the enslaved Blacks right away. The Proclamation has two dates: First is September 22, 1862 (five days after the Battle of Antietam) and the second is January 1, 1863. I put that on the right and spaced them out so that September 22 was on the top of the board and January 1 was underneath in the middle. I divided the class in half and then I asked the students to figure out how the documents were meant to operate. This is not a group activity. (9) The students reading the Proclamation should read the first 6 paragraphs and then explain why the document contained a list of states and counties in parentheses.
On first reading, Lincoln's Reply is a surprise. The students immediately come up with the idea that Lincoln wanted most of all to "save the Union." It was his "paramount object." But there are three ways to save the Union: With slavery, without slavery or with some slavery and some freed Blacks. I write those three on the board. The students say that this is racist. Yes, it certainly seems to be. What exactly is Lincoln's attitude? Eventually we come to see that Lincoln did not seem to care about the fate of the slaves: All he wanted was to save the Union. Lincoln had denounced Stephen Douglas in the Cooper Union Speech for holding the "don't care" position. It was how Lincoln characterized the popular sovereignty position: the position without a position on slavery for the territories in the West. It could go either way: regardless of right or wrong. It was a favorite of his critics who say that Lincoln was a racist. It is a body blow to those who think that Lincoln opposed slavery all his life. But then there is the statement at the end of the letter: He had a "personal wish that every man everywhere could be free." He characterized his position with the three possibilities as his "official duty." When I ask about his personal wish, the students say that it is of no consequence because his conception of his paramount duty was the key.
Now we are ready for the Proclamation. The students have to determine how to understand the dates. What is the difference between September 22 and the January 1. The September date is when the document was issued and the January 1 date is when it went into effect. How do you understand the operation of the Proclamation I ask. The students usually say that the slaves will be free after January 1, 1863. It is a military order, which he can issue as commander in chief. In the "time of rebellion against the government of the United States..." Then I ask does anyone have a different interpretation? Eventually someone goes back to the second paragaph which states On January 1 "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people thereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thencefoward and forever free." ( This is the September 22 version which is now in the past. That is the reason for the future tense.) So who will be freed after January 1? The slaves in the states or parts of states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863. The list of states and counties in the parentheses are exempted from the freeing of the enslaved living in those areas. All other states and counties Texas, Georgia and so on were still in rebellion at the time the Proclamation went into effect therefore their slaves "are and henceforward shall be free" from the first of January 1863. (This is the January 1 part, of the document, which at the time of writing is in the present.) How do you understand that, I ask. There are two aspects to this. The slaves in states or parts of states not in rebellion will not be freed. The slaves in the states that were in rebellion will be freed as the Union conquers those areas. Is there something else to say about all this? If the students cannot get further, then I ask why are there two dates for the Proclamation? Why did Lincoln wait 3 months between the issuing the Proclamation and putting it into effect. The students conclude that the states in rebellion could give up and if they did they could keep their slaves, but the war might be over sooner.
Did Lincoln know what would happen? No. Did any of the states or parts of states come back into the Union? No. Was Lincoln sure the North would win? No. So he was giving the slaveholders a chance to stop the fighting and keep their slaves. There were people in the North who wanted only to stop the war, not to win. Lincoln was showing them that giving up would not end the war, that the South would fight on. Was Lincoln willing to accept southern states coming back into the Union. Yes. Why would he do that? To end the war as soon as possible. The killing was horrendous. Lincoln considered the war "the people's war" and it was the people who were suffering. (10)
This is an example of critical support, which is a tactic in which a political party offers support to a party or a group of people it disagrees with but says if your tactic does not work then you must do what I want. That is, giving your opponent enough rope to hang himself. (11) Lincoln was saying to the Northerners who wanted to stop the war under any circumstances: I will allow the South 100 days to come back, with their slaves, but after January 1, I will conquer them if they remain in rebellion and they will lose all rights to the West and the slaves they have now. So in the event, the war continued until the North conquered the South which lost all its slaves, except in the exempt areas eventually covered by the 13th Amendment. The gamble of the 100 days succeeded. January 1, 1863 was really the beginning of the end for slavery in the United States.
THREE
Now it is time to look back at the Reply. At this point I asked my students, Does anyone see a relationship between the Reply and the Emancipation? The response was usually a class room full of blank looks. How did the Reply work? Lincoln said he would save the Union with slavery, without slavery or with some slavery. How was the Proclamation supposed to work? The Union would free the slaves in all the areas still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863. That is, the North would conquer the areas fighting Union troops. What is the next question, I would ask. What would have happened if some of the states returned to the Union before January 1? They would have kept their slaves and been in the Union. So how does the Reply compare to the Proclamation?
They are the same, but with the course of the war tied to the Proclamation. The Reply is a blue-print for the Proclamation : The war could end with slavery, by the Union losing. With no slavery, if the Union won or some slavery, if some of the states returned before January 1. In the event the Union won. Now we have crossed a line for some people, because the Reply, a key element in the argument that Lincoln was a racist, has the same structure as the Proclamation, the basis to Lincoln's reputation as the Great Emancipator.
There is still one major point left out of our analysis. What about Lincoln's "personal wish that every man everywhere could be free?" What could we say about that? The students answer that he was able to combine it with his official duty, because the Union won the war. How would you take that further? Eventually the students explain that it was his personal wish that sustained or at least added to his willingness to destroy slavery. It is very unlikely that anyone who did not hate slavery would have prosecuted the war to the astounding end that Lincoln achieved. So in the end his abolitionism in practice was born out of the cold calculation and risk that slavery would remain. Lincoln, as he believed he had to, bet everything on the war as a purge for the physical and moral traumas of slavery.
In the early 2000s I was in the Reading Room of the 42nd Street Library in New York City doing research when I met Hans Trefousse, my former professor and chair of my orals committee. It was after I had discovered the the relationship between Lincoln's Reply and the Proclamation. When I told him that I realized they operated in the same way, he looked at me in shock. He was one of the leading scholars of the Civil War and Reconstruction and had deep respect for Lincoln as a moral and political model. "Where did you get that?," he asked. I said that he had suggested it to me by laying out the dates of the documents and saying that "when Lincoln wrote the Reply, he had the Proclamation in his back pocket." That triggered my insight: It came to me at 5:30 AM when I was trying to figure out how to teach both documents at once, as a time-saver for class. It was an surprising insight though quite transgressive, especially for Professor Trefousse: he had trouble going there. As you see by now it is a very dramatic lesson when you compare the two short documents. It provokes thought and astonishment both for the teacher and the students. It was exciting for the students to see the intimate connection between morality and necessity. It is the true stuff of history.
FOUR
Now it is time to watch Lincoln become more and more comfortable with the equality of Blacks and whites. It is the feeling that changes and that perhaps as a result produced two of the most eloquent pieces of American literature: the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. I usually pointed to these steps in his political and moral arc as we covered these documents in the course of the narrative of the Civil War. However here, foregoing the narrative, I will just discuss his evolution using them along with other actions that he took regarding race.
First we must acknowledge the effect of Lincoln's putting the Proclamation into effect. The night of January 1-2 was a high point in the life of Frederick Douglass, along with all the Blacks, the white abolitionists and people of good will the world over. In his Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876) he described his deep respect for Lincoln in a brutally honest description of the development we have been describing. The occasion was the unveiling of the first statue of President Abraham Lincoln in Washington DC which was funded by the Black community of the District by putting together what little they had to erect a monument to the man and his great acts of emancipation and victory in the war against slavery. First, Douglass recalled that January night:
Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom
of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January, 1863,
when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?
I shall never forget that memorable night, when ... I waited and watched
at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious
than myself, for the word of deliverance...(all of a sudden there was an) ...
outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the
lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation.
In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness….
Frederick Douglass is easy to quote, but hard to edit. But then he told other truths that fill out the story we have been relating:
Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word,
either our man or our model. In his interests,in his associations,
in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices,
he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President,
entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.
He said: "You [whites] are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity."
But finally on this topic:
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln
seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by
the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as
a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous,radical, and determined.
Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow countrymen
against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart
of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. (12)
Great men can tell the truth in ways that astound us of more common ability. When I taught this speech in high school, my students were deeply impressed. In classes about race as you have seen in the first part of this essay, in the article, "On Teaching African Slavery in America," and On Teaching All Men are Created Equal" we discussed race quite frankly. My students were used to talking about color and and racism, but coming from Frederick Douglass, the tenor of our discussions was confirmed by an authority second to none. It is these kinds of discussions that supposed experts on race like Robin DiAngelo are so defensive about having. As if these "experts" had ordered it, the Trump followers in the legislatures of 36 states in our country have banned discusssions like these. They conflate Critical Race Theory with classroom discussion of race and racism. I had those discussions every year in my classes from the middle 80s to 2017, both in high school and college. It is the history and the documents that give us the permission to speak freely.
FIVE
In the course of the war Lincoln called for Blacks who were both free and formerly enslaved to do work behind the lines and then enter the Army and Navy. The pay was not equal to the white soldiers' and did not come immediately. It took until May 29,1863 for Blacks soldiers to fight in battle. The men in the Black regiments refused to accept the pay until the discrimination was rectified. By 1864 Black"s pay was equalized, including back pay, but the equipment and the uniforms were not equal to those of the white's. The top officers for the Black troops were white. Lincoln wrote in 1864 that the Blacks who were "very intelligent" or had served in Army could vote as a right during the reconstruction (his term) of the Union.(13) Lincoln opposed confiscating the land of the slaveholders, as Thaddeus Stevens came to advocate, and he rescinded the order of General Fremont to free the slaves in Missouri early in the war. However, he did favor the 13th Amendment, which had been advocated by abolitionists many months before it was passed by Congress. It is clear that Lincoln did not come to these more advanced positions on his own. He was pushed by circumstances, and Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, among others. However the insight of Frederick Douglass is the key. Lincoln grew in feeling. There is no telling what he would have done, if he had lived. I do not agree with those who claim to know what actions a dead man would have taken had he lived, but the feeling changed: Douglass declared,"The image of the man went out with his words and those who read him knew him."(14)
In the 1850s he expressed a bare bones support of the right to equality before the law and a deep hatred of slavery But what equality meant to him was obscure. The soaring rhetoric of his last two and most famous speeches were driven by a change of heart that is evident to all. We are done "tarrying" with Lincoln "on the mountain," as Douglass said of him in his Oration on the Memory of Abraham Lincoln.
Now it is time to take up the Gettysburg Address (1863) in which Lincoln quotes the Declaration of Independence from "Four score and seven years ago," using the phrase, as President, that up to then only Garrison and Douglass would say out loud: "All men are created equal." "Testing whether that nation" conceived in liberty and dedicated to the natural right of equality "can long endure."
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
that the government of the people, by the people,
for the people shall not perish from the earth.
This new birth of freedom is an astounding expansion of democracy that was rejected in 1776: the equality of the Black people of the United States. It is a test whether the nation based on equality and liberty can defeat the white supremacist Confederacy. As President, Lincoln had initiated a re-founding of the country based on the expansion of the people to include the freed peoples whose numbers were increasing every day in the General Strike. This is not the same feeling as "with slavery, without slavery or some slavery and some free Blacks. It is plain as day. The rhetoric soars: Lincoln had embraced many of the ideals of the abolitionists.
In 1864 Lincoln was re-elected in the midst of the Civil War. One margin of his victory was achieved by the former soldiers of the Democrat, General McClellan, whom he fired in November after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and against whom he had run in the election. Those soldiers voted by mail to elect Lincoln. Now we come to the great Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865 only a little over a month before the end of the war and Lincoln's assassination. The Second Inaugural has been quoted more often in the last few years since the increased and widespread emphasis on slavery and the Civil War among historians. It is notwithstanding quite famous, but not for its most emotionally packed sentences. Unless you have read the whole address for yourself you know only the most famous lines:
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather then
let the nation survive and the other would make war rather than let it perish,
and the war came....Fondly do we hope and fervently do we pray that this
mighty scourge of war may pass away....With malice toward none and charity for all with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace with ourselves and with all nations.
These lines sound "fitting and proper" for a speech describing the end of the tumultuous war which only had about a month to go until peace. It is generous and consoling. However the harrowing nature of the war with 850,000 American dead on both sides in a population of only 31.5 million that is not contained in those words. When we add the following to the above selection we see the war in all it's horrific detail. Both the Union and the rebels
read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes
His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing
their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not,
that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered.
That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
"Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be
that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh."
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses
which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having
continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both
North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those
divine attributes which the believers in a living God
always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray,
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it
must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
No other president, before or since has spoken with such conviction that he does not know the will of God except to say that the Civil War itself is the punishment for slavery and that both sides have suffered beyond comprehension. It is an Old Testament purge. "The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
The newly found feeling is evident. The depth is unmistakable. And now the final paragraph has a new meaning, for it is not unconditional forgiveness Lincoln has called for.
With malice toward none and charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in....
Lincoln has reached for firmness in the right. All is not forgiven. These, no matter how vague, are not the words of Andrew Johnson. In one of his last statements recounted in Black Reconstruction in speaking to the Blacks of Richmond after the rebels had fled the still burning city; He signals a new militancy for equal rights. He spoke from the steps of Jefferson Davis's mansion:
In reference to you colored people, let me say that God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights, by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and the bayonet and teach them that you are -- for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.(15)
I rest my case.
Lincoln Giving his Second Inaugural Address
1. See the article updated by Jennie Cohen at
https://www.history.com/news/civil-war-deadlier-than-previously-thought
The range of the dead in the Civil War is now less than the number of Americans dead from the coronavirus pandemic. As of February 2022 it has reached more than 900,000. If that number of living Americans were spaced out evenly across the country they could be only 17.6 feet apart to go the 3,000 miles from coast to coast. A tragedy too big to ignore, one would think.
2. https://www.nytimes.com/1860/11/09/archives/wendell-phillips-on-the-election-a-general-onslaught-upon-lincoln.html
3. Speech of Wendell Phillips At the Anti-Slavery Celebration at Framingham, July 4, 1861.
https://www.nytimes.com/1861/07/13/archives/speech-of-wendell-phillips-at-the-antislavery-celebration-at.html
4. Lincoln and Greeley, by Harlan Hoyt Horner, (1953) p. 271
5. Lincoln and Greeley, by Harlan Hoyt Horner, (1953) p. 267.
6. Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. DuBois, p. 63.
7. Reply to Greeley, by Abraham Lincoln http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm
8. Emancipation Proclamation, by Abraham Lincoln
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
9. I have found that group work is not often a good option. When the document is really challenging like the Virginia Resolves it is worth doing. Both because it is near the beginning of the year and students are not used to thinking carefully about a document and because when you announce that the class is going to do group work the smartest kids roll their eyes: They end up doing all the work. Group work often takes too much time.
10. This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust, p. 137
11. Cf In relation to the British Labor Party Lenin commented: "I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man—that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will hasten the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany. " Left Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder by V. I Lenin (1920).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch09.htm
12. Oration on the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, by Frederick Douglass.
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/
13. The Fiery Trial, by Eric Foner, p. 331.
14. Oration on the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, by Frederick Douglass.
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/
15. Quoted in Black Reconstruction, W.E.B. DuBois, p. 112.