The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Arnold)/Chapter XX

In the early part of this book we have seen that Lincoln in his younger days dreamed of being an emancipator. In what way this day dream or presentiment entered his mind, whether it was due to the prophecy of the Voudou on his visit to New Orleans, or whether it was one of those mysterious impressions which come from no one knows where, it is impossible to tell. A careful reading of his speeches and writings will indicate that in some way there had been impressed upon his mind a premonition that he was to be an agent in freeing the slaves.

So early as January, 1837, when he was a very obscure man, in his lecture to the young men's association at Springfield, on "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," he spoke of the glory and distinction to be gained by the "emancipation of slaves." "Many great and good men may be found," he said, "whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or presidential chair, but such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle." In the same year, as a member of the Illinois Legislature, he joined one other member (they being the only members who would sign it) in a protest against pro-slavery resolutions. A Kentuckian by birth, and representing a district very hostile to abolition, he introduced into Congress, in 1849, a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In June, 1858, he made the speech in which he said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." In that most thoughtful, sagacious, and philosophic address he anticipated Governor Seward's "irrepressible conflict" speech, which was delivered at Rochester, in New York, October 25th, 1858. In this June speech of the then little known philosophic statesman, he said: "Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new--North as well as South... To meet and overcome the power of the dynasty (slavery)... is what we have to do," and he concludes with these solemn words: "The result is not doubtful. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come." There are few if any words more expressive of the character of Lincoln than those with which he concluded his great speech at Cooper Institute: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end do our duty, as we understand it."

It was this faith, and the courage to do his duty as he understood it, that sustained and carried him through the darkest days of his administration. As to slavery, and his action in relation to it, he said in his letter to Hodges, of Kentucky, April 14, 1864:

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling... When, early in the war. General Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When still later, General Cameron, the Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not think it an indispensable necessity. When still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hands upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our white military force, no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite an hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have them without the measure...

"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."

The history of the emancipation proclamation has already been told. It had been issued by him with the sincere belief that it was "an act of justice warranted by the Constitution, and upon military necessity," and upon it he had invoked "the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." Congress had abolished slavery at the capital, prohibited it in the territories, and had declared all negro soldiers in the Union army, and their families, free; repealed the fugitive slave laws, and indeed all laws which recognized or sanctioned slavery, and it had approved the proclamation. The states not embraced in this proclamation had emancipated their slaves, so that slavery existed only within the rebel lines, and only on territory over which the rebels had military control. The abolition of slavery in the republic so far as it could be done by Congress and the Commander in Chief was an accomplished fact. It existed within the rebel lines alone, and there the slaves were held by force. Lincoln was by nature a conservative, and he had always wished to emancipate the negroes, but he desired to accomplish it by gradual and compensated emancipation. He wished the change to "come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything."

These efforts failed, and he was compelled to resort to the proclamation, under the laws of war. From the day of its issue, he labored by pen and voice, and personal and official influence, to make that proclamation effective. After all that had been done by Congress, by war, and by the Executive, one thing alone remained, to complete and make permanently effective these great anti-slavery measures. This was to introduce into the Constitution itself a provision to abolish slavery in the United States, and prohibit its existence in every part thereof forever. To accomplish this required the adoption, by a two-thirds vote of each House of Congress, of a joint resolution to be submitted to, and ratified by three-fourths of the states. To use the homely but expressive phrase of Mr. Lincoln, "this would finish the job," and to this he now devoted his constant efforts. "We cannot," says he, "escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves... The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."

In the midst of the war, we pause to give a history of this thirteenth, and far most important of all amendments to the Constitution. The debates thereon, in both branches of Congress, were the most important in American history. Indeed it would be difficult to find any others so important in the history of the world. They ran through two sessions of Congress, and in eloquence and ability equal the discussions of any deliberative assembly ever held. The speeches were fully reported, which was not the case in other great debates of earlier date. We are indebted to the imagination of Webster for the speeches in the Continental Congress on the Declaration of Independence. The greatest debate in the Senate, prior to this, was the memorable one between Webster and Hayne, and their associates, on nullification.

On the 14th of December, 1863, as soon as the Speaker had announced the standing committees of the House, he proceeded in regular order of business to call the states for resolutions. As Ohio, the first state organized under the great Ordinance of 1787, was called, one of her representatives, James M. Ashley, introduced a joint resolution, submitting to the states a proposition to amend the Constitution, by abolishing and prohibiting slavery. When Iowa was called, James M. Wilson, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, introduced a joint resolution providing for the submission to the states of an amendment to the Constitution for the same purpose. On the 11th of January, 1864, Senators Henderson, of Missouri, and Sumner, of Massachusetts, presented joint resolutions with the same object, and they were referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, of which Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, was chairman. Trumbull had been elected to the Senate in 1856, by the personal influence of Mr. Lincoln. He was a ready speaker, an able debater, and in the discussions in the Senate had been a worthy rival of his great associate, Douglas. He was probably, without exception, the best practical legislator in the Senate, and, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, did more than anyone else to frame the various acts of Congress which became laws during the war.

On the 10th of February, 1864, he reported from the Judiciary Committee a substitute for the resolutions which had been offered by Henderson and Sumner. Adopting the language of the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, he reported the proposed amendment in these words:

"Art. XIII, Sec. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

"Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

On the 28th of March the Senate proceeded to consider the question, and the debate was opened by Senator Trumbull. He sketched with great clearness and force the struggle between freedom and slavery during the last seventy years, and showed how slavery was at the bottom of all our difficulties. He said:

"'If these halls have resounded from our earliest recollections with the strifes and contests of sections, ending sometimes in blood, it was slavery which almost always occasioned them. No superficial observer even of our history, North or South, or of any party, can doubt that slavery lies at the bottom of our present troubles. Our fathers who made the Constitution regarded it as an evil, and looked forward to its early extinction. They felt the inconsistency of their position, while proclaiming the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and happiness, they denied liberty, happiness, and life itself to a whole race, except in subordination to them. It was impossible in the nature of things, that a government based on such antagonistic principles could permanently and peacefully endure, nor did its founders expect it would. They looked forward to the not distant nor, as they supposed, uncertain period, when slavery should be abolished, and the government become in fact what they made it in name, one securing the blessings of liberty to all. The history of the last seventy years has proved that the founders of the republic were mistaken in their expectations; and slavery, so far from gradually disappearing as they had anticipated, had so strengthened itself, that in 1860, its advocates demanded the control of the nation in its interests, failing in which, they attempted its overthrow. This attempt brought into hostile collision the slaveholding aristocracy, who made the right to live by the toil of others the chief article of their faith, and the free laboring masses of the North, who believed in the right of every man to eat the bread his own hands had earned.'"

He then reviewed the action of Congress and of the Executive on the subject of slavery during the war, and closed the review by showing that the only way of ridding the country forever of slavery so that it could never be resuscitated, either by state or congressional action, was by a Constitutional amendment, prohibiting it forever everywhere within the United States. His practical mind then discussed the probability of the adoption of the amendment, and on that point came to this conclusion:

"'I think, then, it is reasonable to suppose, that if this proposed amendment passes Congress, it will within a year receive the ratification of the requisite number of states to make it a part of the Constitution. That accomplished, and we are forever freed of this troublesome question. We accomplish then what the statesmen of this country have been struggling to accomplish for years. We take this question entirely away from the politics of the country.  We relieve Congress of sectional strife, and what is better than all, we restore to a whole race that freedom which is theirs by the gift of God, but which we for generations have wickedly denied them.'"

Trumbull was followed by Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, who said:

"Why is it, Mr. President, that this magnificent continental republic is now rent, torn, dissevered by civil war? Why is it that the land resounds with the measured tread of a million of armed men? Why is it that our bright waters are stained, and our green fields reddened with fraternal blood? Why is it that the young men of America, in the pride and bloom of early manhood, are summoned from homes, from the mothers who bore them, from the wives and sisters who love them, to the fields of bloody strife?...

"Sir, this gigantic crime against the peace, the unity, and the life of the nation, is to make eternal the hateful domination of man over the souls and bodies of his fellow men. These sacrifices of property, of health, and of life, these appalling sorrows and agonies now upon us, are all the merciless inflictions of slavery, in its gigantic effort to found its empire, and make its hateful power forever dominant in Christian America...

"Sir, under the new Constitution, framed to secure the blessings of liberty, slavery strode into the chambers of legislation, the halls of justice, the mansion of the Executive, and with menaces in the one hand and bribes in the other, it awed the timid and seduced the weak. Marching on from conquest to conquest, crushing where it could not awe, seduce, or corrupt, slavery saw institutions of learning, benevolence, and religion, political organizations and public men, aye, and the people too, bend before it and acknowledge its iron rule. Seizing on the needed acquisitions of Louisiana and of Florida, to extend its boundaries, consolidate its power, and enlarge its sway, slavery crossed the Mississippi, and there established its barbarous dominion against the too feeble resistance of a not yet conquered people. Controlling absolutely the policy of the South, swaying the policy of the nation, impressing itself upon the legislation, the sentiments, and opinions of the North, slavery moved on to assured dominion. Under its aggressive advances, emancipation societies, organized by the men of the revolutionary era in the first bright ardor of secured liberty, one by one disappeared, presses and churches forgot to remember those in bonds as bound with them, and recreant sons disowned the sentiments, opinions, and principles of a glorious ancestry."

He then rapidly sketched the anti-slavery legislation of Congress and the action of the Executive, and thus alluded to the proclamation of emancipation:

"'The enforcement of this proclamation will give peace and order, freedom and unity, to a now distracted country; the failure to enforce it will bring with it discord and anarchy, a dissevered Union, and a broken nation... But, sir, the crowning act in this series of acts for the restriction and extinction of slavery in America, is this proposed amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the existence of slavery forevermore in the republic of the United States.'"

The amendment was vigorously opposed by the senators from Kentucky, by Saulsberry, of Delaware, and others.

On the 5th of April, a memorable speech in favor of the amendment was made by Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. He was a lawyer of great learning, had been Attorney General, was a contemporary of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, and an experienced statesman, and represented a state not included in the emancipation proclamation, but which was by its own action throwing off the burden of slavery. His speech attracted marked attention in the Senate and throughout the nation. He said, among other things:

"I concurred, and concur still, in the judgment of the great apostle of American liberty, the author of that declaration which is to live through all time as the Magna Charta of human rights, that in a contest between the slave to throw off his thralldom, and the master who holds him to it, the God of justice could take no part in favor of the latter...

"God and nature, judging by the history of the past, intend us to be one. Our unity is written in the mountains and rivers in which we all have an interest. The very difference of climate renders each important to the other, and alike important. That mighty horde, which from time to time have gone from the Atlantic imbued with the principles of human freedom which animated their fathers in running the perils of the mighty deep, and seeking liberty here, are now there, and, as they have said, they will continue to say until time shall be no more: 'We mean that the government in future shall be as in the past, an example of human freedom for the light and example of the world, and illustrating in the blessings and happiness it confers, the truth of the principles incorporated into the Declaration of Independence; that life and liberty are man's inalienable rights.'"

As to the power of the President to free the slaves, he said:

"'I believe that it is the rightful exercise of a belligerent power to emancipate the slaves of the enemy, if we can get possession of them, just as it is the rightful exercise of a belligerent right to take any other property belonging to the enemy, which may be taken under the civilized rules of modern warfare, or as it is a belligerent right to capture any other person of the enemy.'"

Charles Sumner closed the debate in the Senate, bringing to the discussion rich stores of historic illustration, and quoting largely from the poets, historians, and statesmen of the past against slavery. "The amendment," said he "will give completeness and permanence to emancipation, and bring the Constitution into harmony with the Declaration of Independence." He desired to change the phraseology of the amendment, so that, instead of using the language of the Ordinance of 1787, the resolution should declare the "equality of all persons before the law," and he referred to the constitutions of France as precedents. Senator Howard, of Michigan. said: "I prefer to dismiss all reference to French constitutions or French codes, and to go back to the good old Anglo-Saxon language employed by our fathers in the Ordinance of 1787--language well understood, and which has been adjudicated upon repeatedly, and, I may add, near and dear to the people of the Northwestern territory, from whose soil slavery was excluded."

Mr. Sumner withdrew the amendment he had proposed, and the resolution, on the 8th of April, 1864, passed the Senate, in the language in which it had been reported by Mr. Trumbull; ayes, thirty-eight; noes, six. Senators Hendricks, of Indiana, and McDougall, of California, were the only senators from the free states who voted against it.

The honor of having been the author of the Ordinance of 1787, has been claimed by Virginia, for Jefferson, and by Massachusetts, through Daniel Webster, for "one Nathan Dane," but it has been settled by a very accurate historical student that its real author was Dr. Cutler.

No one will ever dispute that Senator Trumbull is entitled to the honor of framing, reporting, and carrying through the Senate, the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, a measure as much more important when compared with the Ordinance, as the whole country is more important than the Northwest territory. The honor of this great service would, in most countries of the world, have been rewarded with a title of high nobility, and pecuniary independence. This republic will not be so ungrateful as to forget to whom this great honor is due.

The resolution having passed the Senate, the main difficulty was to come in the House of Representatives. There, it was well known, the vote would be close, and the result uncertain.

On the 1st of January, 1864, while the resolution was pending in both houses of Congress, a friend of the President called at the White House to pay his respects and the compliments of the season. After congratulating the President on the great victories which had been achieved in the East and in the West, and the brightening prospects of peace, the visitor said:

"I hope, Mr. President, that on next New Year's day I may have the pleasure of congratulating you on three events which now seem very probable."

"What are they?" said he.

"First, That the war may be ended by the complete triumph of the Union forces.

"Second, That slavery may be abolished and prohibited throughout the Union by an amendment of the Constitution.

"Third, That Abraham Lincoln may have been re-elected President."

"I think," replied he, with a smile, "I think, my friend, I would be willing to accept the first two by way of compromise."

It has already been stated that propositions for the amendment had been offered in the House by Ashley, of Ohio, and Wilson, of Iowa. The President was extremely anxious about the vote in the House, and very often, with the friends of the measure, canvassed the House to see if the requisite number could be obtained, but we could never count a two-thirds vote. One day, after we had been speculating on the probabilities of the passage of the resolution, the author said: "I will test our strength. I will introduce a resolution as a feeler. I will make it just as simple as I can, and we will have a test vote;" and so, on the 15th of February, 1864, the author had the honor to introduce into the House the following:

"Resolved, That the Constitution should be so amended as to abolish slavery in the United States wherever it now exists, and to prohibit its existence in every part thereof forever." This resolution was adopted by a decided majority, but not by a majority of two-thirds, and it is believed that it was the first resolution ever adopted for the entire abolition of slavery. But, although it did not pass by two-thirds, yet it enabled us to know our strength, and just how many votes were needed to carry us through.

The discussion in the House began on the 19th of March, and a vote was not reached until the 15th of June. Mr. Wilson, of Iowa, who on the first day of the session had given notice of his Constitutional amendment, and who had introduced a joint resolution for that purpose, made a very able and logical argument in favor of its adoption. His proposition was that "slavery is incompatible with a free government," and he demonstrated that proposition. He said: "What are the thunders of this war but the voice of God calling upon the nation to return from the evil paths, made rough by errors and misfortunes, blunders and crimes, made slippery by the warm, smoking blood of our brothers and friends, to the grand highway of prosperity, happiness, glory, and peace in which He planted the feet of the fathers. Can we not hear amid the awful rushing roar of this warstorm the voice of Him who rides upon the whirlwind, and rules the tempest, saying: 'You cannot have peace until you secure liberty to all who are subject to your laws.'"

On the same day, Mr. Arnold, of Illinois, spoke in favor of the resolution. Among other things he said:

"Our aim is national unity without slavery. Not 'the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is,' but a nation without slavery, the Constitution the Magna Charta which shall secure liberty to all... The wandering stars must be brought back with their lustre brightened by the ordeal through which they have passed... We can have no national harmony and union without freedom. The fearful error of uniting free and slave states, we shall never repeat. But if the grand idea can be realized of a free, homogeneous people, united in a great continental republic based on liberty for all, and retaining the great principles of Magna Charta, we shall see realized the noblest structure of government and national polity ever organized on earth... It is the duty of the Executive, by the sword, and by war, to destroy all armed opposition. Everything necessary to accomplish this, consistent with the rules of war as recognized by civilized nations, he may rightfully do. He may emancipate and arm slaves, arrest and confine dangerous enemies, and thus prevent the execution of treasonable designs, and suppress, for the time, treasonable publications. All this may be done under the rules of war, and in the exercise of the powers vested in the Executive of carrying the war against public enemies and traitors... Slavery is the soul, body, and spirit of the rebellion. It is slavery which marshals yonder rebel hosts which confront the armies of Grant and Sherman...

"In view of all the long catalogue of wrongs which slavery has inflicted upon the country, I demand to-day of the Congress of the United States, the death of African slavery. We can have no permanent peace while slavery lives. It now reels and staggers towards its last death struggle. Let us strike the monster this last decisive blow.

"The Thirty-seventh Congress will live in history as the Congress which prohibited slavery in all the territories of the Union, and abolished it at the national capital. The President of the United States will be remembered as the author of the proclamation of emancipation, as the liberator of a race, the apostle of freedom, the great emancipator of his country. The Thirty-eighth Congress, if we pass this joint resolution, will live in history as that which consummated the great work of freeing a continent from the curse of human bondage. Never, since the day when John Adams plead for the Declaration of Independence, has so important a question been submitted to an American Congress, as that upon which you are now about to vote. The signing of the immortal Declaration is a familiar picture in every log cabin and home all over the land. Pass this resolution, and the vote which knocks off the fetters of a whole race, will make this scene immortal. Live a century, nay a thousand years, and no such opportunity to do a great deed for humanity, for liberty, for peace and for your country, will ever again present itself. Pass this joint resolution, and you will win a victory over wrong and injustice, lasting as eternity. The whole world will rise up to do you honor. Every lover of liberty in Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, the world, will rise up and call you blessed. The gallant soldiers in the field who are giving their lives for liberty and union, will call down upon you the blessings of heaven. Let the lightnings of God (fit instruments for the glorious message) transmit to the toiling and struggling soldiers of Sherman, and Hunter, and Grant, the thrilling words, 'slavery abolished forever,' and their joyous shouts will echo over the land and strike terror into the ranks of the rebels and traitors fighting for tyranny and bondage. The thousands of wounded in the hospitals around this capital, would hail the intelligence as a battle fought, and a great victory won... The people and the states are eager and impatient to ratify it. Will those who claim to represent the ancient democracy refuse to give the people an opportunity to vote upon it? Is this your confidence in the loyal masses? The passage of this resolution will strike the rebellion at the heart. I appeal to border state men, and democrats of the free states; look over your country; see the bloody footsteps of slavery. See the ruin and desolation which it has brought upon our once happy land; and I ask, why stay the hand now ready to strike down to death the cause of all these evils? Why seek to prolong the life, to restore to vigor, the institution of slavery, now needing but this last act to doom it to everlasting death and damnation? Gentlemen may flatter themselves with the hope of a restoration of the slave power in this country. 'The Union as it was!' It is a dream never again to be realized. The America of the past is gone forever! A new nation is to be born from the agony through which the people are now passing. This new nation is to be wholly free. Liberty, equality before the law, is to be the great corner stone. Much yet remains to be done to secure this. Many a battle on the field has yet to be fought and won against the mighty power which fights for slavery, the barbarous system of the past. Many a battle has yet to be won in the higher sphere of moral conflict. While our gallant soldiers are subduing the rebels in the field, let us second their efforts by sweeping from the statute book every stay, and prop, and shield, of human slavery--the scourge of our country--and let us crown all by incorporating into our organic law, the law of universal liberty."

Randall, of Pennsylvania, a leading democrat from that state, opposed the resolution. He said: "Let the Constitution alone. It is good enough. Let the old Constitutional tree stand in all its fulness and beauty, and not a bough lopped off, and under its green branches there will yet repose a united, a happy, and a prosperous people...

"Woodman, spare that tree! Touch not a single bough. In youth it sheltered me, And I'll protect it now.'"

Pendleton, of Ohio, closed the debate with an able speech in opposition to the resolution. On the 15th of June, 1864, the vote was taken, amidst the most intense solicitude as to the result. The vote was: ayes, ninety-three, noes, sixty-five--not a majority of two-thirds. Thereupon Ashley, of Ohio, changed his vote from aye to no, to enable him to move a reconsideration, which he did, and pending this the resolution went over to the next session. Lincoln was chagrined and disappointed, but not discouraged by the vote; as Henry Clay once said to his friends, the pioneer hunters of Kentucky, "We must pick our flints and try again."