Abraham Lincoln (23 page)

3: M
Y
D
ISSATISFIED
F
ELLOW
C
OUNTRYMEN

Lincoln on the stump derives from Lincoln,
CW
, 3:368-69, 375-76, 380, 387-88, 390-91. For Lincoln and the Republican vision of America, see ibid., 3:462-63, 477-81, and Lincoln,
Collected Works—Supplement, 1832-1865
(ed. Roy P. Basler, Westport, Conn., 1974), 43-45, hereafter
CWS
; the quotation “This is a world” from Lincoln's Cincinnati speech, the quotation “if constitutionally we elect,” and Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, all from Lincoln,
CW
, 3:376, 440-41, 453-56, 501-52, and 535-55.

For Lincoln and the 1860 nomination: the quotation “taste
is
in my mouth” from ibid., 4:45, also see 34, 36, 38, 43, 46, 47, and 3:375; how Lincoln got nominated from Lincoln,
CWS
, 54-55, Willard L. King,
Lincoln's Manager: David Davis
(Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 137 ff., Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness
, 155-59, from which I took the quotation “could not win,” and Stampp,
Imperiled Union
, 136-62; the quotations “class,” “caste,” and “despotism” from Lincoln,
CW
, 3:375.

My account of Lincoln, the South, and secession draws from Davis,
Image of Lincoln in the South
, 7-40; the quotation “the South, the loyal South” from the Atlanta
Southern Confederacy
as reprinted in the
New York Times
, Aug. 7, 1860; the quotation “the people of the South” from Lincoln,
CW
, 4:95; David M. Potter,
The Impending Crisis
, 1848-1861 (New York, 1976), 405-47, 485-513, and
Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis
(New Haven and London, 1942), 9-19, 139-42; Stampp,
Imperiled Union
, 163-88, 191-242; Steven A. Channing,
Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina
(New York, 1970), 17-57, 229 ff.; Allan Nevins,
The Emergence of Lincoln
(2 vols., New York, 1950), 2:287 ff.; the quotation “Slavery with us” from Channing,
Crisis of Fear
, 291; quotation “To remain in the Union” from Montgomery
Mail
as reprinted in the Nashville
Banner
, Nov. 11, 1860; the quotation “loud threats” from Thurlow Weed,
Autobiography
(Boston, 1883), 605-14; the quotations “Why all this excitement?” and “complaints?” and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address from Lincoln,
CW
, 4:215-16, 262-71. See also James G. Randall,
Lincoln the President: From Springfield to Bull Run
(paperback ed., New York, 1945), 178-206.

Lincoln and Fort Sumter: the quotation “all the troubles” from Orville H. Browning,
Diary
(ed. Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall, 2 vols., Springfield, Ill., 1927-33), 1:476; the quotations “no attachment to the Union” and “irrevocably gone” from Stephen A. Hurlbut to Lincoln, March 27, 1861, the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, Library of Congress, hereafter RTL; Lincoln,
CW
, 4:423-26; Richard N. Current,
Lincoln and the First Shot
(New York, 1963), 43 and passim.; Stampp,
Imperiled Union
, 177-88; Potter,
Lincoln and His Party
, 337-66; quotations “an ingenious sophism” and “With rebellion” from Lincoln,
CW
, 4:433-37; the quotation “
professed
Union men” and Lincoln's references to Lee, Johnston, Magruder, and southern insurrectionists from ibid., 4:427, 43 and 6:264, 265, 8:121; the quotation “all conquering
mind
” from ibid., 1:279.

Part Four: Warrior for the Dream

1: T
HE
C
ENTRAL
I
DEA

The quotation “You are nothing” is from A. G. Frick [?] to Lincoln, Feb. 14, 1861, Chicago Historical Society; the quotation “miserable traitorous head” from clipping in Edmund J. McGarn and William Fairchild to Lincoln, Apr. 20, 1861, RTL; the quotation “clear, flagrant, and gigantic case” from Lincoln,
CW
, 6:264; the quotation “not at all hopeful” from Orville Browning to Lincoln, Aug. 19, 1861, RTL, and Browning,
Diary
, 1:488-89; Lincoln's message to Congress and quotations “nothing in malice,” “I happen temporarily,” and “material growth” from Lincoln,
CW
, 4:426-39, 5:346, 7:512, 3:477-79, 5:52-53; Boritt,
Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream
, 195-231; the quotation “remorseless revolutionary struggle” from Lincoln,
CW
, 5:49.

There is a popular argument in the academies that Lincoln was a “Whig in the White House,” adhering to some theoretical Whig formula about a restricted presidency beyond what was necessary to save the Union. This argument rests on the assumption that Lincoln had left the Whigs reluctantly in 1856 and that ideologically he remained attached to the old party. This does not accord with the evidence. Lincoln was no reluctant Republican. By 1856, he had become convinced that old party labels—even his own Whig label—severely impeded the mobilization of anti-Nebraska forces and that a new free-soil party was imperative. The Republicans now loomed as the new major party of the future, and Lincoln readily enlisted in their antiextensionist cause. In fact, he gave the keynote address for the organization of the Republican party in Illinois. He never said, in a single surviving record, that he regretted the demise of the Whigs. Indeed, they had become obsolete in the battles over slavery that dominated the 1850s. In Republican ranks, Lincoln no longer had to consort with proslavery southerners, as he had with the Whigs. In Republican ranks, he belonged to a party that forthrightly denounced slavery as a moral wrong and that shared his views on the American experiment and the inalienable rights of man. In Republican ranks, Lincoln found an ideological home for all of his principles—political as well as economic. And no man, as I pointed out in the text, defended Republican dogma more eloquently and unswervingly than he. Thus, when he gained the presidency, Lincoln was a
Republican
in the White House, not a Whig. Among other things, it was not a Whig who employed all the pressures and prestige of the White House to get the present Thirteenth Amendment through a recalcitrant House of Representatives (as I describe in the text). Nor was it a Whig who raised Republican ideology to the lofty heights of the Gettysburg Address.

As for some Whig theory of the presidency, it is improbable that any such thing existed for a minority party which, in its twenty-four-or twenty-five-year history, managed to elect only two chief executives, both of them professional soldiers and political amateurs who died during their first year in office. The Vice-Presidents who replaced them—if anybody can remember their names—hardly left their marks on the job. The “Whig in the White House” argument appears in Donald,
Lincoln Reconsidered
, 187-208, and is carried to almost absurd lengths in Boritt's otherwise superior study,
Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream
.

2: D
EATH
W
ARRANT FOR
S
LAVERY

The quotation “Lincoln would like to have God” is from Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro
, 84. My discussion of the pressures on Lincoln to free the slaves is based on the following sources. The advanced Republicans: my own “The Slaves Freed,”
American Heritage
(Dec., 1980), 74-78; David Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man
(New York, 1970), 17 ff.; Hans L. Trefousse,
The Radical Republicans, Lincoln's Vanguard for Racial Justice
(New York, 1969), 171-73, 203-22; Franklin,
Emancipation Proclamation
, 1-28, 124; Detroit
Post and Tribune, Zachariah Chandler
(Detroit, 1880), 253; George Washington Julian,
Political Recollections, 1840-1872
(Chicago, 1880), 153, 165-66, 223; Edward Magdol,
Owen Lovejoy, Abolitionist in Congress
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1967), 299-302; the quotation “never allowed himself” from Noah Brooks,
Washington, D.C., in Lincoln's Time
(ed. Herbert Mitgang, Chicago, 1971), 33; quotations “perhaps the most energetic,” “queer, rough,” and “first blast” from Hans L. Trefousse,
Benjamin Franklin Wade, Radical Republican from Ohio
(New York, 1963), 180, 131, 181; the quotation “cooked by Niggers” from Trefousse,
Radical Republicans
, 31; the quotation “more advanced Republicans” from Detroit
Post and Tribune, Chandler
, 222.

Frederick Douglass: Douglass,
Life and Times
(reprint of revised 1892 ed., New York, 1962), 336; McPherson,
Negro's Civil War
, 38-40; also Philip S. Foner (ed.),
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
(4 vols., New York, 1975), 3: 13-21.

The need for slave soldiers: ibid.; the quotation “You need more men” from Donald,
Sumner
, 60; the quotation “Let the slaves” from Arna Bontemps,
Free at Last: The Life of Frederick Douglass
(New York, 1971), 224.

Lincoln's response to the pressures: the quotation “I think Sumner” from Fawn M. Brodie,
Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South
(paperback ed., New York, 1966), 155; the quotation “too big a lick” from Donald, Sumner, 60; Lincoln's gradual emancipation plan in
CW
, 5: 145-46, 317-19, and Charles M. Segal (ed.),
Conversations with Lincoln
(New York, 1961), 165-68; the quotations “milk-and-water gruel” and “I utterly spit at it” from Brodie,
Stevens
, 156.

My account of the congressional attack against slavery comes from the following: the Stevens profile from ibid., 68, 86-93, 193; the quotation “I trust I am not dreaming” from McPherson,
Negro's Civil War
, 44; the quotation “his pride of race” from Foner,
Life and Writings of Douglass
, 3: 24; the quotation “would never prosper” from Douglass,
Life and Times
, 336.

The quotation “strong hand on the colored element” is from Lincoln,
CW
, 7: 281-82. Gideon Welles, “History of Emancipation,”
Galaxy
(Dec., 1872), 842-43, and Welles,
Diary
(ed. John T. Morse, Jr., 3 vols., Boston, 1911), 1:70-71, describe the carriage ride in which Lincoln discussed emancipation. Lincoln's letter to Greeley is in
CW
, 5:388-89. For interpretations of the letter similar to my own, see Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro
, 128, and V. Jacque Voegeli,
Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro in the Civil War
(Chicago, 1967), 46.

Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is in
CW
, 5:433-36. The quotation “We shout for joy” is from Foner,
Life and Writings of Douglass
, 3:25; the quotation “Hurrah” from Trefousse,
Wade
, 187; the quotation “contained precisely” from Brodie,
Stevens
, 158; Sumner's remarks in his
Complete Works
, (20 vols., reprint of 1900 ed., New York, 1961), 9:199-200, 247. For a discussion of emancipation and Lincoln's message to Congress, Dec., 1862, see my own
With Malice Toward None
, 325-26, and Franklin,
Emancipation Proclamation
, 81. The Democratic response is in ibid., 81-82; the quotation “From the genuine abolition view” from Douglass,
Life and Times
, 541-42. The final proclamation is in Lincoln,
CW
, 6:28-30. The quotation “my name” is from Segal,
Conversations with Lincoln
, 234-35; the quotation “let us not cavil” from Franklin,
Emancipation Proclamation
, 113; the quotation “played his grand part” from Julian,
Political Recollections
, 226, also 250; the quotation “the sunlight” from the
Liberator
, Jan. 9, 1863; the quotation “The time has come” from McPherson,
Negro's Civil War
, 50.

3: T
HE
M
AN OF
O
UR
R
EDEMPTION

The quotation “of minor significance” is from Randall,
Mr. Lincoln
, 347. See my comments on the “insignificant” and “free-no-slaves” argument in
Our Fiery Trial
, 137-38. The quotation “events of the war” is from Sandburg,
Lincoln: The War Years
, 4:217; the quotation “the colored population” from Lincoln,
CW
, 6:149.

The best studies of Lincoln and black troops are Dudley T. Cornish,
The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865
(paperback ed., New York, 1966), and Quarles,
Lincoln and the Negro
, 153-83. The quotation “ALL SLAVES” is from ibid., 166; the quotation “with clenched teeth” from Lincoln,
CW
, 6:410; the Negro soldier and the “Sambo” image in John T. Hubbell, “Abraham Lincoln and the Recruitment of Black Soldiers,”
Papers of the Abraham Lincoln Association
, 2 (Springfield, 1980): 20-21.

For Lincoln and colonization, see the excellent summary in Neely,
Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia
, 63; the quotation “entirely a fantasy” from Neely, “Abraham Lincoln and Colonization: Benjamin Butler's Spurious Testimony,”
Civil War History
, 25 (March, 1979): 77-83. George M. Fredrickson, “A Man but Not a Brother: Abraham Lincoln and Racial Equality,”
Journal of Southern History
, 41(Feb., 1975), 39-58, is simply wrong in arguing that Lincoln continued “to his dying day to deny the possibility of racial harmony and equality in the United States and persisted in regarding colonization as the only real alternative to perpetual race conflict.” For Lincoln's desire to frighten rebel leaders out of the country, see Benjamin P. Thomas,
Abraham Lincoln
(New York, 1952), 517.