Abraham Lincoln by James M. McPherson

Author:James M. McPherson [McPherson, James M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780199743896
Google: MJKLnJzXPj0C
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-12-12T21:27:07+00:00

Another matter bound up with Lincoln’s powers as commander in chief, but involving many other considerations as well, was slavery. Lincoln’s decision in 1862 to issue an emancipation proclamation freed himself as much as it freed the slaves—freed him from the agonizing contradiction between his antislavery convictions and his constitutional obligations. Lincoln had said many times that he considered slavery “a social, moral, and political wrong. . . . If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Yet, he added, “I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially on this judgment and feeling.”48 The Constitution he had sworn to preserve, protect, and defend sanctioned slavery in states that wanted it. Moreover, Lincoln conceived his primary duty to be the preservation of the Union. In 1861 he believed that preserving it meant maintaining the support of Democrats and border-state Unionists for the war effort. They would be alienated by any move toward emancipation. That is why he revoked General John C. Frémont’s military order freeing the slaves of Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. If he had let Fr?nt’s order stand, Lincoln explained to a critic, it would have driven Kentucky into the arms of the Confederacy. “To lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol.”49

For the next year Lincoln adhered publicly to this position despite growing pressure from his own party to move against slavery. To a powerful emancipation editorial by Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune, Lincoln replied on August 22, 1862, with a letter published in many newspapers: “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.” Lincoln concluded with an assertion that this was his “view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oftexpressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”50

When he wrote this letter, Lincoln had already drafted an emancipation proclamation but was awaiting a Union military victory to give it impetus and credibility. His letter to Greeley was designed to prepare the public, especially conservatives and those Kentuckians he had worried about the previous year, for the announcement by making it clear that freeing some of the slaves might be necessary to achieve his, and their, main goal of preserving the Union.

Earlier in 1862 Lincoln had tried to persuade border-state Unionists to accept an offer of federal compensation for voluntary emancipation in their states. They refused, while Union military fortunes took a turn for the worse in the summer of 1862.

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