Lincoln and the Border States by William C. Harris

Author:William C. Harris [Harris, William C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Political Science, Political Process, Leadership, American Government, Executive Branch
ISBN: 9780700618040
Google: bo4jKQEACAAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2011-01-15T04:17:51+00:00

After Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, Maryland’s Union leaders, like those in Missouri, gradually and grudgingly began to consider a way to end slavery with the least possible disruption to the social and economic system and, perhaps more important, to their notions of race control and public support for the war. They also knew that Lincoln in nearby Washington had a keen interest in the state’s affairs. Although the proclamation did not apply to the border states, the president wanted Marylanders to adopt a plan of emancipation, preferably gradual emancipation, that would include federal compensation if Congress was willing. Many Maryland Unionists, like those in Missouri, recognized that the war was rapidly undermining slavery, with blacks fleeing to freedom in the District of Columbia, to army camps, and northward. It had become a constant battle for slaveholders to retrieve their slaves in the national capital, where their complaints had been increasingly ignored by an unsympathetic president and federal military officers.

By 1863 Governor Bradford, who had opposed the antislavery resolution at the Altoona governors’ conference in September 1862, saw the handwriting on the wall for the extinction of slavery. However, not until months after Lincoln had issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 did Bradford endorse state action to end the “peculiar institution.” Postmaster General Blair quietly recommended to friends in his home state that they should support a gradual plan of emancipation, along with the colonization of blacks. Henry Winter Davis, an enemy of the Blairs in Maryland politics, had emerged as the leader of a minority that demanded immediate emancipation. Davis, who would soon become a vitriolic spokesman for the radical Republicans in Congress, had become incensed by the president’s support for the Blairs. He also denounced Montgomery Blair’s colonization scheme as a delusion.37 At the same time, the proslavery faction of Unionists, soon a dwindling minority, had powerful spokesmen in lame-duck senator Anthony Kennedy and Representative John W. Crisfield, a large slaveholder and a talented states’ rights politician. After rejecting Lincoln’s compensation plan earlier and before they committed the state to emancipation, Maryland Unionists wanted assurances from Congress that the federal government would provide the funds to compensate loyal slaveholders for the loss of their chattels. They would soon be disappointed.

Delaware’s political leadership proved more hostile to the Emancipation Proclamation than neighboring Maryland Unionists. Proud of the fact that theirs was the first state to ratify the Constitution of 1787, as well as imbued with an inferiority complex because of the state’s increasing political insignificance, Delaware’s elite recoiled at any slight to their rights, including the right to own slaves. They had developed considerable political skill in defending their rights, and while maintaining allegiance to the Republic of the Founders, they perceived themselves as southerners, not northerners. Elected in the fall of 1862 on a platform opposing Lincoln’s policies, the new legislature in January denounced the president’s proclamation and his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus on September 24, 1862. The legislators

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