Terrible Swift Sword (54 page)

It can easily be shown, in other words,
that it was
a
singularly weak document. And yet . . . there
was a war on, and thousands of men were dying for intangibles no more solid
than the look of
a
flag adrift in the wind or the ring of a
phrase; and between Canada and the Rio Grande there were more than three
million people who were slaves and knew freedom only by hearsay; and when the
President of the United States said with whatever qualifications that these people
should be then, thenceforward and forever free his words would have the echoing
reach of a great trumpet call in the night. Once said they could never be
recalled. They would go on and on—then, thenceforward and forever.

The cabinet was somewhat taken aback,
but it was receptive. Secretary Seward and Secretary Welles had had forewarning;
a little more than a week earlier they had ridden in a carriage with the
President on the way to funeral services for an infant child of Secretary
Stanton, and the President had told them he believed emancipation was "a
military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union."
He asked their opinion, and both men had said that they felt the same way but
that they would like to have time to think about it a little longer. Having thought,
they now voiced warm support. Montgomery Blair was somewhat dubious, fearing
the effect on the fall elections, on the money market and on morale
generally—the Blairs, after all, were border state men. Secretary Chase was
just a little nonplused. He had written a month earlier that when the armies
advanced "slavery met us at every turn, and always as a foe," and had
considered it obvious that either slavery or the Union must perish, but the
President's proposal made him uneasy. He would support it, but he was afraid
that it might lead to a slave insurrection, and thought it might be safer to
let army commanders in the field take the lead.

In the main, the cabinet gave the
President its backing. Secretary Seward did have a word of caution, however.
Issued now, he said, the proclamation would come on the heels of military
disaster and might sound like a despairing plea for the help of the slaves
rather than a bold assertion that the slaves would be freed: would it not be
better to wait for a victory so that the proclamation could rest on military
success? Mr. Lincoln saw the point at once and the proclamation went into a
pigeonhole, to stay there until somebody won a battle. Meanwhile, its existence
would remain a deep secret.
⁶

Among the millions who were not in on the
secret was the eminent editor of the New York
Tribune,
Horace Greeley. With all of his
eccentricities Mr. Greeley frequently spoke for the great body of Northern
sentiment which the President was determined to hold in line, and as the summer
waned Mr. Greeley felt it necessary to call the President to time. The August
20 issue of the
Tribune
contained
an open letter to Mr. Lincoln, headed "The Prayer of Twenty Million,"
which complained bitterly that the President was losing the war because he was
too soft in regard to slavery.

The President, said Mr. Greeley, was
"strangely and disastrously remiss" in failing to enforce the
emancipation provisions of the new confiscation act; he was unduly influenced
by "certain fossil politicians" from the border states; the Union
cause was suffering intensely from "mistaken deference to rebel
Slavery," and loyal Northerners unanimously felt that "all attempts
to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are
preposterous and futile." It was time for the President to free the
slaves, and Mr. Greeley wanted action now.
⁷

Mr. Lincoln was prompt to reply, and on
August 25 the
Tribune
printed
his letter to Mr. Greeley—a letter which was aimed not so much at the editor
himself as at the millions in the North who, in the end, would decide whether
there would be an unbroken Union and whether slavery could endure.

His policy, said Mr. Lincoln, was very
simple: he would save the Union—as quickly as possible and in a Constitutional
way. Next:

"If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same time
destroy
slavery, I do not agree with them. My
paramount object in this struggle
is
to
save the Union, and is
not
either
to save or to destroy slavery. 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. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do
because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear
because I do
not
believe
it would help to save the Union. I shall do
less
whenever I shall believe what I am doing
hurts the cause, and I shall do
more
whenever
I shall believe doing more will help the cause." In closing, he wrote that
this expressed his view of his official duty; as a person, he hoped as he had
always done that all men could be free.
⁸

One of the interesting things about this
letter is that it was written exactly one month after Mr. Lincoln told his
cabinet that he was going to proclaim freedom for the slaves: a fact of which
the editor was given no faintest hint. Mr. Lincoln told him that he would do
what the war made him do, but he did not tell him that he already knew what
this would be and that he already had made up his mind to do it. The Emancipation
Proclamation was not going to come out as a letter to the editor. It would come
out when some victory in the field could give it life . . . life for words and
an idea, bought by the deaths of many young men.

In these days when he
waited for victory the President seemed to keep probing for the ultimate
meaning of the thing which he was about to do. To change the Negro from a chattel
to a man would have unending consequences. What were they going to be? How
would the nation adjust to them? When a delegation of "Chicago Christians
of All Denominations" called to present a memorial favoring emancipation,
Mr. Lincoln responded with a brooding soliloquy. What practical effect would a
proclamation have? Would it help the Union cause more than it hurt it? Might it
not be well first to rally the people behind the idea that the constitutional
government itself was at stake? This was "a fundamental idea, going down
about as deep as anything." What about the slaves themselves?
"Suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to
throw themselves upon us,
what
should we do with them?"
⁸

That question haunted him, as it haunted
others. Was America ready for unlimited freedom? What
would
it do with the Negro? It had begun by making
a slave of him, and whenever he managed to stop being a slave and tried to make
his way as a free man in a free society it resented him, with the deep,
illogical resentment we reserve for those whom we have wronged. Suppose the
whole race suddenly came out of slavery: Was there a place for it in America?

There
were discouraging signs. Wholly typical was a newspaper item which was printed
within a fortnight of Mr. Lincoln's talk with the cabinet about emancipation.
Irish dock workers in Cincinnati had rioted all along the waterfront, stoning
and beating free Negroes who had been hired (at wages much lower than the wages
the Irish had been getting) to unload steamboats, driving them through the
city, clearing the wharves of them; it was done in broad daylight, and the
police stood by and offered no interference.
¹⁰
The free Negro would
come in on the very lowest level of the economic pyramid, and the people who
occupied that level were uncomfortable enough already and did not want to be
crowded; nor were the people on higher levels willing to concern themselves
much with the implications of the turmoil beneath them. The majority in the
North might dislike slavery, but it was by no means prepared for the seismic
shock that would run through all society when millions of slaves tried to lay
their hands on the benefits of freedom.

Perhaps there was a way out. If the
freed slaves could be taken entirely out of the country and transplanted in
some faraway land, America might avoid the distressing problems raised by
universal freedom. The idea of colonization had been in Mr. Lincoln's mind for
a long time, and in the middle of August he discussed it frankly with a
committee of free Negroes at the White House. The discussion was moody,
clouded, unhappy. The Negro race, said the President, suffered under the
greatest wrong ever inflicted on any people, yet nowhere in America could
Negroes hope for the equality which free men normally want; "go where you
are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you." As President he
could not alter this; he could only reflect that "there is an unwillingness
on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to
remain with us." Without slavery and the colored race America would not be
fighting this war, and "it is better for us both, therefore, to be
separated."

So he urged the Negroes to embrace
colonization. He was thinking about Central America. There was a country there
(he did not name it) which ran from Atlantic to Pacific, with good harbors on
both coasts, a fertile land endowed with deposits of coal, a place where
political conditions were indeed rather unstable but a land without prejudice,
eager for colonists—"to your colored race they have no objections."
If a fair handful of free Negroes would make a start there, with their
families, the United States government would give its support and protection:
"If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with a mixture of women and
children, good things in the family relation, I think I could make a successful
commencement." Would these free Negroes put their minds on it for a while?
The Negroes gravely assured him that they would think about the matter and let
him know, and then they went away . . . and of course nothing at all ever came
of it.
¹¹

Nothing
could come of it. The freedom that was to be given, with such risks and at such
cost, was to be given in America, and its effects would have to be faced there
and not in some far-off colony. Also, a strange thing had taken place during
the years of slavery, which hardly anybody had thought about. The people who
were about to be freed were slaves and they were Negroes; but also, quite
unexpectedly, they had become Americans, and Americans they would always
be—then, thenceforward and forever. Having taken them, used them and shaped
them, the country could discharge its responsibility only by taking on a new
one of immeasurable dimensions. To define freedom anew for the Negro was to
redefine it for everybody, and the act which enlarged the horizon of those in
bondage must in the end push America's own horizon all the way out to infinity.

3.
A Long and Strong Flood

When President
Lincoln gave command of the nation's armies to General Halleck he supposed that
he was rewarding diligence and promoting a soldier who had the secret of
victory. It was quite a while before he realized that Halleck, although
diligent, shared with General McClellan a singular genius for making war
in
low gear. Halleck
understood everything except the need to be in a hurry. He carried moderation
to excess, and he was aggressive only in theory. He could crowd a weaker
opponent into a corner, but instead of exterminating him there he would give him
a chance to get out; and
in
July of
1862, when he was called to Washington and placed in supreme command, he fully
shared with General McClellan responsibility for the fact that the war's tide
had turned and that the Confederacy's prospects were brighter than they had
been for many months.

It was not easy to see this, because
Halleck had been
in
command in the west
and in the west the Federals had been winning decisively. The trouble was that
what was won did not stay won. Victories were not spiked down and made permanent.
The beaten foe always got a chance to get up and renew the fight. Since the foe
had infinite determination, this chance was always accepted.

Federal
armies had occupied New Orleans and Memphis, driven the foe from Missouri and
western Tennessee, seized northern Alabama and Mississippi, occupied Cumberland
Gap, paralyzed the Confederacy's vital western railway network and (working
with the powerful Federal fleets) had opened all but a tiny fragment of the
great Mississippi waterway. By the middle of July they had thus gained an
advantage that the Confederacy could not possibly overcome without plenty of
time to repair damages, harness unused resources and fight according to its own
plan rather than to the plan of the invader. General Halleck let it have this
time, just as General McClellan had done. If the consequences were less
spectacular they were equally expensive.