Considering Lincoln—Liberator or Racist Part III

Personal tragedy and four years of the burdens of war visibly aged Abraham Lincoln as shown in his final portrait taken by Alexander Gardner day before his death.

Note—It has been since Tuesday that the last entry in this series appeared. Both personal scheduling problems and the complexity of the story has resulted in the delay.  But we finally take up the story Lincoln was elected President of the United States.  In this conclusion he faces his immediate crisis, and we examine how he used issues of race and slavery to advance he proclaimed war objective of preserving the Union and how his views evolved.

If Lincoln held any real hope that his pledges not to interfere with slavery in states where it was established, and his protestations of racial loyalty would mollify the South he was quickly disabused of the notion.  Before he took the oath of office the seven states had seceded and the Confederacy was formed on February 8, 1861 with seven states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.  They elected Jefferson Davis president and established a capitol at Mobile, Alabama.

The New York Times was one of the newspaper that mocked Lincoln for "sneaking" through Baltimore while changing trains to Washington when he was threatened by mobs and Alan Pinkerton suspected a assignation plot. He was variously described as disguising himself as a Scotsman or a woman.

After having to sneak through Baltimore to avoid secessionist mobs Lincoln still tried to extend gestures of peace to the South in his First Inaugural Address:

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so”… We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies ... The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

But it was futile.  Lincoln pledged to protect the Union.    War finally broke out when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumpter in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.  From the beginning Lincoln insisted that his only war aim was the preservation of the Union and tried to downplay the issue of slavery.  More states joined the rebellion—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.  Border states Kentucky and Missouri attempted to establish Confederate governments, but the states officially remained in the Union despite fighting.  Slave holding Delaware and Maryland were kept in the Union mainly by virtual occupation, although Maryland would go on to provide substantial numbers of troops to the North.  Unionist west counties seceded from the Old Dominion and were admitted to the Union as the new state of West Virginia.

Hopes for a quick war and “home by Christmas” were quickly dashed by a series of Confederate victories and Union disasters.  With the war dragging on members of his Cabinet especially Secretary of State William Seward and Radical Republicans in Congress began to press for direct action on slavery.  Lincoln wrote to Horace Greely:

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that… I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

By 1862 he would put that assertion to the test.  With the war dragging on and casualties mounting horrifically he began to view abolition of slavery in the rebellious states as both an attack on the economic foundation of Southern Society and a potential rallying cause for war weary Northerners.  Slaves near front lines were already abandoning their masters’ plantations and flocking to the protection of the Union Army.  Some commanders welcomed them, others declared them contraband of war—property—and put them to labor in construction and transportation gangs.  Lincoln surmised if word got out that they would be freed more slaves would do the same even away from the lines.  He also began to consider how Blacks could be armed and included in the Army. 

But to make a move, he felt he had to act after a hard to come by major victory in the field so as not to appear to be acting out of weakness.  The bloody Battle of Antietam, a narrow Union victory even though it failed to smash Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia finally gave him the opportunity he was looking for.  On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln called his Cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to go into effect on January 1, 1863.  The Proclamation only covered Southern states and area under “active rebellion.”  He took the interim to sell the country on his military authority as Commander in Chief to take the action and to consolidate support for it.  He also made a case that it gave rebellious states 100 days to end their rebellion and rejoin the Union to preserve their slaves.  Of course, he knew that note would.

Pro-administration cartoonist Thomas Nast illustrated the Emancipation Proclamation with scenes of jubilant slaves hearing the news.  It became fodder for the creation of the Great Emancipator image.

Thousands of Free Blacks and former slaves were then enlisted in the Army as units of the U.S. Colored Troops.  Many fought bravely and with distinction in actions like the doomed assault of Fort Donelson during the Siege of Charleston in 1863 and the Battle of the Crater in 1864.  He was outraged by the massacre of Black troops captured at Fort Pillow in Tennessee in 1864 by forces under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest who would go on to found the Ku Klux Klan after the war others provided garrison troops behind the lines protecting seized Confederate territory and freeing White regiments for the front lines.  Others were placed in labor battalions and often given dangerous assignments like handling ammunition and powder.  Collectively all were a critical addition to Union forces and earned grudging respect from many White troops.

The bloody massacre of Black troops trapped at Ft. Pillow in 1864 by Nathan Bedford Forrest shocked the President and increased his gratitude for the US Colored Troops sacrifices for the Union.

Lincoln’s views of Blacks were also evolving through personal contact with Frederick Douglass who visited the Executive Mansion at least twice and others lesser known individuals who made personal appeals to the President on behalf of loved ones.  In Douglass and other Black leaders, he found intellectual strength and ability that he had previously dismissed.  His human sympathy was aroused by the common Blacks he encountered. 

But perhaps he was most influenced far closer to home.  Mary, whose mental health was effected by the death of her son Willie and who was beset by critics for her extravagance, was also assumed by many to be a Confederate sympathizer and perhaps even a spy, especially after she brought her half-sister Emily Todd Helm to stay with her in December 1863, after the death of her husband, Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm was killed at the Battle of Chattanooga. Another half-sister, Martha Todd White, of Selma, Alabama, obtained a pass from Lincoln to come through the lines and was accused of smuggling contraband of war on her return trip.  But Mary, who frequently accompanied her husband on field inspections and hospital visits, became increasingly hostile to the Rebels.  She was extremely close to her live-in dressmaker and personal friend Elizabeth Keckly, the Black seamstress who previously had served the Jefferson Davis Family. Keckly had Mary’s ear about the injustices, sufferings, and ambitions of her people and spoke to the President as well.  Lincoln also developed friendships with the Mansion’s Black servants especially his personal valet, majordomo, and secret confidant William Slade.

Mary Lincoln's seamstress, friend and confidant Elizabeth Keckly influenced her and by extension her husband.

Mary also came under the personal sway of arch-abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.   Lincoln was often beset and frustrated by criticism for moving too slowly against slavery and attempted interference with his conduct of the war by the New Englander and by the Radical Republican block in the House led by Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Mary privately advanced their arguments to the President and in turn served as bridge to them, according to Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Most would modify their hostility to the President after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mary Lincoln opened discrete communications between the President and his vocal Radical Republican opponents like Senator Charles Sumner, seen above, and Congressman Thaddeas Stevens.

Lincoln racism reputation has also been tainted by the 1862 uprising of the Dakota in the ancestral Sioux heartland of Minnesota and Dakota Territory.  The uprising took settlers across Minnesota by surprise with dozens of farmsteads attacked, burned, and their residents killed.  Established towns like New Ulm were attacked and settlers fled in a panic toward the safety of St. Paul.  Most of the Minnesota Militia had been Federalized and Volunteer Regiments which had been raised took many fit and able military age men and were serving on the front lines.   The president considered the native uprising a stab in the back to the greater war effort and had to contemplate diverting forces to meet the threat.

His attitude was also shaped by his past as a militia volunteer during the Black Hawk War of 1836.  Although New Salem was safe and far south of the action in northwestern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and he never participated in any fighting during his two one-month enlistments he had seen refugees in Wisconsin and other signs of attacks on settlers.  He shared the common attitude that Native Americans should be expelled from areas of White settlement or where Whites wanted to settle.

Within a few weeks a hastily assembled rag-tag force of the few remaining trained Minnesota Militia, raw recruits, and a handful of Federal garrison troops and eventually members of the 3rd Minnesota Infantry Regiment from the front finally put down the uprising capturing many warriors and villages and sending other fleeing to the Dakota frontier and ultimately to Canada. 

The mass hanging of 38 chiefs and warriors after the 1862 Great Dakota Uprising in Minnesota was laid at Lincoln feet.

On September 27, 1862, Colonel Henry Hastings Sibley ordered the creation of a military commission to conduct trials of captured Dakota warriors.  It was highly irregular and conducted outside both civil and military courts.  The hasty trial was conducted amid highly inflamed public opinion by officers who had been engaged in the conflict.  The Commission announced that 303 prisoners were convicted of murder and rape and were sentenced to death.  Lincoln requested details of the cases and asked if any might be less culpable than others.  Amid both demands for revenge and some pleas for leniency the President commuted the death sentences of 264 prisoners, but he allowed the execution of 39 men. On December 23, suspended the execution of one of the condemned men after Sibley telegraphed that new information led him to doubt the prisoner’s guilt.  The number of condemned men was reduced to the final 38.

A mass hanging was held on December 26 at Mankato, Minnesota.  It was the largest one-day mass execution in American history. Congress abolished the eastern Dakota and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) reservations in Minnesota and declared their treaties null and void. In May 1863, the eastern Dakota and Ho-chunk imprisoned at Fort Snelling at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers were exiled from Minnesota.

Despite whatever mercy Lincoln showed in his commutations, Native Americans still hold him responsible for the execution atrocity and the cultural devastation of the Dakota and Ho-Chunk including the exile of many non-combatants, opponents of the uprising, and even allies who had provided intelligence cooperation to the troops.

Still, for Lincoln the uprising and its aftermath were a blip compared to the much greater struggle to which he again rapidly turned his full attention.

As the war drew to a close, Lincolns professed attitudes about Blacks and their future evolved. 

No where was that more evident than in Lincoln’s drive to get the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery across the United States in loyal Border States as well as the secessionist Confederacy.   Backed by Radical Republicans it had passed the Senate where no rebellious states were represented but narrowly was defeated in the House by Border State Representatives and united Democratic opposition in early 1864.  Lincoln’s reelection victory in November after he had made abolition by Constitutional Amendment the center piece of his campaign along with Republican Congressional victories were characterized as popular mandates for final action.

It would still be an uphill battle and would require the votes of a handful of wavering Republicans, at least some Democrats, and a somewhat uneasy alliance with his former harsh critics among the Radical Republicans.  Lincoln determined that the best chance for passage would come during the lame duck session of Congress when the votes of some retiring or defeated incumbents who had nothing to lose might be swayed. 

Lincoln wrote to Congress in his December 6, 1864 State of the Union Address, “there is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the States for their action. And as it is to so go, at all events, may we not agree that the sooner the better?”

The passage of the 13th Amendment by the lame duck Congress in 1865 was charactarized as an early Valentine to the President.

He instructed Secretary of State William H. Seward, Representative John B. Alley, and others to procure votes by any means necessary, and they promised government posts and campaign contributions to outgoing Democrats willing to switch sides.  Seward had a large fund for direct bribes. Ashley, who reintroduced the measure into the House, also lobbied several Democrats to vote in favor of the measure.  Thaddeus Stevens later commented that ‘the greatest measure of the Nineteenth Century was passed by corruption aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”

On January 31, 1865, the House called another vote on the amendment, with neither side being certain of the outcome. With a total of 183 House members—one seat was vacant—122 needed to vote aye to secure passage. Eight Democrats abstained—many of them bribed to do so—reduced the number to 117. Every Republican (84), Independent Republican (2), and Unconditional Unionist (16) supported the measure, as well as fourteen Democrats, almost all of them lame ducks, and three Unionists. The amendment finally passed by a vote of 119 to 56, narrowly reaching the required two-thirds majority.[61] The House exploded into celebration, with some members openly weeping. Black onlookers, who had only been allowed to attend Congressional sessions since the previous year, cheered from the galleries.

It was an exhausting political master stroke by Lincoln as the war was driving to a close.  Ratification by the States moved with astounding speed.  By the end of February, 18 states had ratified the amendment. Among them were the ex-Confederate states of Virginia and Louisiana, where ratifications were submitted by Reconstruction governments.  On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State Seward certified that the 13th Amendment had become valid as a part of the Constitution.

By that time Lincoln was dead.

Lincoln accompanied by his son Tad entered the former Confederate Capital of Richmond to the cheers and adulation of freed slaves.

On April 4, 1865, two days after Confederate forces evacuated Richmond, Lincoln and his son Tad visited the still smoldering ruins of the South’s former Capital. As they stepped ashore, they were instantly recognized by the former slaves, who surrounded them weeping and cheering, declaring him a Liberator and a savior.  He was deeply moved.

With that fresh in his mind the President publicly foresaw for the first time a future in which some Black men could enjoy citizenship rights. In his last public speech on April 11, 1865, just two days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Lincoln saw an opportunity to present a case to the public.

Lincoln gave his last speech from a second floor window of the Executive Mansion to a crowd of wildly celebrating citizens on April 11.  John Wilkes Booth, pictured in a cape at left listened and vowed revenge on the President and the administration for considering granting limited voting rights to some Blacks.

As he described the work of 12,000 Louisianans loyal to the Union who had abolished slavery within the state, Lincoln, for the first time by any President, publicly stated that he favored giving at least some Black men, including the “very intelligent and...those who serve our cause as soldiers” the right to vote. His public endorsement of limited black suffrage prompted John Wilkes Booth, who stood watching from the crowd, to declare “that is the last speech he will ever make.” Three days later, on April 14, 1865, Booth shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, fatally wounding the 16th President of the United States.

Lincoln’s death left the scope and details of Reconstruction up in the air.  He had approved of General Ulysses S Grant’s lenient parole of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.  He foresaw a soft Reconstruction with former Confederates who swore loyalty to the Union quickly resorted to full citizenship rights and states quickly re-admitted—or recognized since in his view they never had the right to secede at all.  He doesn’t seem to have given much thought about how that would effect the newly freed slaves.  He still vaguely supported resettlement in Africa but had probably abandoned in real hope that could be accomplished.

Radical Republicans supported the use of occupying Federal troops to protect liberated slaves, their right to vote, and the governments they helped to form.  Lincoln would probably have pursued a much softer Reconstruction that would have allowed former Rebels more quickly over turn the gains of Freedmen.

Despite this the Radical Republicans who had once scorned him immediately raise the slain President to the status of a pure and holy martyr and used that to push for their sweeping Reconstruction reforms and military protection for freed slaves and Reconstruction governments against the resistance of President Andrew Johnson.  Although Johnson narrowly escaped their impeachment trial, the Radicals were able to extend Federal Protection for several years.

Assessing Lincoln’s whole legacy on race is still controversial.  Opinions range from the wholly condemantional to vestiges of the Great Emancipator image.

Black Harvard Historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. edited this important assessment Lincoln on Race & Slavery.

We will leave this examination with words by honored Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates:

Whereas abolition was a central aspect of Lincoln’s moral compass, racial equality was not …Lincoln despised slavery as an institution, an economic institution that discriminated against white men who couldn’t afford to own slaves and, thus, could not profit from the advantage in the marketplace that slaves provided. At the same time, however, he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people vis-à-vis white people, having fundamental doubts about their innate intelligence and their capacity to fight nobly with guns against white men in the initial years of the Civil War… [Lincoln] certainly embraced anti-black attitudes and phobias in his early years and throughout his debates with Douglas in the 1858 Senate race… By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was on an upward arc, perhaps heading toward becoming the man he has since been mythologized as being: the Great Emancipator, the man who freed — and loved — the slaves. But his journey was certainly not complete on the day that he died. Abraham Lincoln wrestled with race until the end.