Lincoln's Constitutional Dilemma: Emancipation and Black Suffrage

Abraham Lincoln has gotten bad press on the topics of emancipation and civil rights for blacks. Much revered as the 'Great Emancipator' in the earlier part of this century, Lincoln in the post-World War II era became the 'Reluctant Emancipator,' Among historians, it became fashionable in the 1950s and 1960s to dissociate Lincoln from his Radical Republican colleagues because of his seeming reluctance to interfere with slavery. According to these critics, the president took his time abolishing slavery; he appeared to like the idea of black suffrage even less.

Describing Lincoln's moves to destroy the peculiar institution, one historian has characterized them as 'tortoise-like.' Another has declared: 'If General McClellan had 'the slows' when it came to advancing against the Confederate army, [Lincoln] had the same affliction when it came to attacking slavery.' Even in the most recently published text in United States history, a work entitled A People and A Nation, the authors stress Lincoln's deliberate caution in repudiating slavery; Lincoln, they argue, 'would not let his personal feelings determine his political acts.' Fredrick Douglass, renowned black spokesman for equal rights, apparently concurred. In Douglass's estimation Lincoln was 'preeminently the white man's president.'1Historians have used Lincoln's own words to prove their assertion. They note, for example, his comment to a Cincinnati audience in 1859: 'I now assure you, that I neither ... had, nor have, nor ever had, any purpose in any way of interfering with the institution....' or they quote from Lincoln's statement to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune: 'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.'2 And they emphasize the pressure upon Lincoln to move toward emancipation: international considerations and almost daily visits from Radical Republicans or humanitarian groups demanding abolition.3 Thus by innuendo if not by direct statement, the Emancipation Proclamation was neither a humanitarian act nor a reflection of Lincoln's ideals.

Lincoln's detractors suggest other motives. At best the proclamation was an astute measure designed to keep Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy; less charitably, Lincoln's signature may have represented a mere concession to Radicals and other reformers lobbying tirelessly about the president.This is a compromising picture of Lincoln the president, showing him sharply changed from Lincoln the aspiring politician of the 1850s. 'I confess myself,' he said in 1858, 'as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil ... and look hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.'4 The view that Lincoln was reluctant on slavery implies a complete change of attitude once he took the presidential oath. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Even as late as 1864 his ethical views were unqualified. 'I am naturally anti-slavery,' he wrote. 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.'5Inferring from Lincoln's words in the 1860s a reluctance toward abolition, historians have largely misjudged his position. At heart, Lincoln doubted any constitutional basis for emancipating the nation's slaves; he was not sure that federal authorities had such a mandate.

Beyond that, Lincoln had always to measure his words. As president, he was in fact responsible to the diversity of public opinion on abolition, and he had, as a political reality, to please all factions whatever his personal view. Were he to speak forth in too liberal a tone, he might well alienate those Americans supporting the war but opposed to abolition; anything too conservative, in turn, could produce criticism from the Radicals.

Taken together, the president's words and efforts leave no reasonable doubt. Lincoln was committed to a free society and amenable to some limited form of black suffrage. And he moved with more conviction and even haste than he has been given credit for doing.In the first year of the war, Lincoln feared chiefly that any move toward abolition might cause the border slave states, especially Missouri and Kentucky, to secede.

In Missouri, Confederate and Union forces were battling for control in 1861; Kentucky had declared its neutrality, and Lincoln dared take no overt action lest the state be driven into the Confederacy. His judicious care in handling these states brought him into open conflict with General John C. Frémont in Missouri.

Specifically, he countermanded Frémont's 1861 proclamation freeing the slaves of disloyal Missourians — a move some historians say is indicative of Lincoln's reluctance.6 But the president had news, in fact, from western volunteers. They would stop fighting, they said, if Frmont's proclamation were not annulled. Coupled with an awareness that the pro-Union Kentucky legislature was demanding his intercession, the president hesitated no longer and rescinded the order.

As Lincoln said: 'I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone we could not hold Missouri; nor, as I think Maryland.'7 Quite apart from these considerations, and even before the border states were firmly in Union hands, Lincoln was at work on the slavery issue. As early as 1861 he was formulating plans for emancipation, while doubts about the loyalty of Missouri and Kentucky lingered into early 1862.

Only in that year did the battles of Pea Ridge and Mill Springs finally guarantee these states for the Union.8A more important restraint on Lincoln was his conviction that the United States Constitution prohibited the federal government from abolishing slavery in states where it existed. Lincoln's high regard for the Constitution cannot be disputed. As early as 1837 he told a Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois: 'We must maintain a reverence for the Constitution and the laws.' Later in the same year he presented resolutions in the state legislature, declaring: 'Congress ... has no power under the Consititution to interfere with ... slavery in the different states.' He echoed the same belief in 1859: 'I believe we have not the power ... to interfere with ... slavery, or any other of the institutions of our sister states.' And he carried the theme further in his first inaugural: 'I have no purpose directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.

I believe I have no lawful right to do so....'9Despite his reservations, Lincoln did move forward on emancipation. Evidence indicates that he was beginning to devise emancipation schemes as early as November 1861 — a mere eight months after his inauguration. On November 18 he informed George Bancroft, the historian, of his interest in emancipation — a problem to be handled with 'all due caution, and with the best judgment I can bring it.' Two weeks later in his annual message to Congress, the president requested a congressional law to bestow freedom on slaves who were fleeing to Union lines — a request Congress granted three months after.10In ensuing weeks, Lincoln launched an effort to secure gradual, compensated emancipation in the border slave states.

This approach he believed most viable, as it solved his constitutional dilemma. There could be no question about the constitutional legitimacy of state action. If the individual states were empowered to legalize slavery, they might just as legally abolish it.

In Lincoln's own words, his gradual, compensated plan set 'up no claim of a right, by federal authority, to interfere with slavery.... It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with' the border slave states themselves.11Gradual emancipation was the focus of Lincoln's plan; Delaware was his first target. Delaware as a choice was no surprise: pro-Union sentiment was stronger there than in the other border states.

Slavery in the state was correspondingly weak: there were only 1,798 slaves in the entire state. At any rate, in December 1861 Lincoln worked out a legislative act with George P. Fisher, a Union-Republican representative from Delaware in Congress; it was Fisher who, according to plan, should get the bill introduced and passed by the state legislature.

Under its terms, Delaware would abolish slavery over a period of years; in return, the federal government would grant the state $719,200 as compensation to slaveholders. Unfortunately, the plan died there. Rumor of its inception invoked such strong opposition that its backers declined to bring it before Delaware's legislators at all.12Undaunted Lincoln continued his campaign for gradual, compensated emancipation.

First, in March 1862 — after he had been in office only one year — he asked for and secured from Congress a resolution favoring the idea. Next, he held conferences with representatives from the border slave states over a five month period — from March to July 1862 — and tried to persuade them to support his government-financed scheme: gradual emancipation over thirty years and federal compensation of $400 for each slave freed. Arguing that the Union could not be restored with slavery intact, Lincoln presented his plan as a means by which these states might abolish slavery at no cost to themselves.

In a variety of appeals Lincoln continued his efforts until late summer. But the scheme pleased very few. Citizens in the border states and northern conservatives alike denied Congress's power to appropriate federal funds for compensated emancipation; Radicals rejected the plan as 'the most diluted, milk-and-water-gruel proposition that was ever given to the American nation.'13 Still, Lincoln would not be dissuaded.

In his annual message of December 1862, he proposed a constitutional amendment authorizing Congress to compensate slaveowners in those states that passed legislation freeing their slaves.14Even as he crusaded for emancipation in the border states, Lincoln was finalizing plans for military emancipation in the Confederacy. Charles Sumner early took up the charge: ever since the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, he had been urging emancipation by military edict in the rebellious states. Lincoln at first seemed unimpressed by Sumner's argument.

Either that, or he was unwilling to undertake emancipation by military decree while working to secure abolition in the border states. Once it became apparent, however, that the border states would reject gradual emancipation, Lincoln moved with resolution on his military edict. On July 13, 1862, the day after his final meeting with border state representatives, the president broached military emancipation with Gideon Welles and William Seward, entrusted members of his cabinet.

Gaining a favorable response, Lincoln then presented the terms of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his entire cabinet on July 22 and indicated his eagerness to issue the document immediately. Only Seward's suggestion that he wait for a Union military victory caused Lincoln to hesitate, and reconsider the timing.15Between the cabinet meeting in July and the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, Lincoln sought to prepare the citizenry for its impact. Hence the letter to Horace Greeley on August 22, in which Lincoln offered ample justification of his views on slavery vis à vis the Union. 'My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 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 salvery 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 save the Union.'16 Cited by itself and without reference to Lincoln's July 22 Cabinet meeting, the passage indicates reluctance toward abolition on Lincoln's part. However, when the letter is given proper chronological context, showing that Lincoln had already formulated the Emancipation Proclamation and was merely awaiting the propitius moment for its announcement, the statement takes on a different tone.

It was Lincoln's own way of softening the blow of military emancipation for the conservative elements. In a sense, he was preparing the public for what he knew was to come. By stressing the Union as his primary concern, Lincoln hoped to make emancipation more palatable for those opposing it.

And, of course, the best way to reach as wide an audience as possible was through the New York Tribune, the largest newspaper in the nation. Even as he issued the final document to the nation in 1863, Lincoln continued to stress the theme of military necessity for emancipation.17Civil War contemporaries and historians alike have criticized the Emancipation Proclamation. It did not free any slaves on the day it was promulgated; slavery was left undisturbed in the border states and in those portions of the Confederacy in Union hands; only the slaves in areas of rebellion were declared to be free.

This semi-abolition approach stemmed not from Lincoln's reluctance to terminate slavery, as some historians imply, but rather from his own doubts about the federal government's lack of authority to touch slavery in the loyal areas. The Emancipation Proclamation itself he regarded as a legitimate weapon of war — an act of confiscation 'warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity,' and an act that could apply only to areas still engaging in insurrection.18Still other Lincoln detractors have criticized the proclamation as superfluous. Congress, after all, in July 1862 had passed the Second Confiscation Act, a bill permitting military commanders to free slaves in the Confederacy.

But the Confiscation Act was far more limiting than the Emancipation Proclamation. Loyal slaveholders were exempted from its provisions, and it did not set up legal procedures to be followed. As some constitutional historians have maintained, the act would have necessitated freeing slaves in case by case litigation in the federal courts.

Lincoln's proclamation, to the contrary, was a sweeping measure which freed all slaves in unconquered portions of the Confederacy — of loyalists and rebels alike.19Despite his defense of the proclamation as a military measure, Lincoln retained lingering doubt about its constitutionality. While he felt the courts would sustain it as a war measure, he questioned its force once peace were proclaimed. 'A question might be raised,' he conceded, 'whether the proclamation is legally valid. It might be urged that it only aided those that came into our lines, and that is was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up.' Moreover, the courts might decide that the terms of the proclamation did not extend to the children of slaves freed by it.

Whether in jest or in sheer resignation, Lincoln suggested that the government encourage as slaves as possible to to Union lines before the Lincoln must have over the at had been The border states had to gradual emancipation. Even the proclamation was its in the Lincoln feared that some might in after the He was for it was only that he support a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery the nation when such a measure was introduced in Congress late in the the president's the amendment to the in the of Lincoln now became more At his request Republicans a for an abolition amendment into their 1864 In his annual in the president Congress to the amendment once And this after its in Congress, he used the of his office to secure the conservative Republicans and opposition Lincoln the necessity for the to he passage seemed he so far as to from military rebels who were to members of Lincoln's caused one of the most Radicals in Congress, to measure in the was passed by aided and by the in the passed Congress by less than Lincoln felt no It abolition and there could be no question about its constitutionality. amendment is a for all It the whole he told an audience after its his Lincoln 'If the over the had I could not have what I in of black suffrage were even more he declared his opposition to equal suffrage in 1858, he became more to the idea the On the of his he rights for some blacks. The he took toward equal suffrage was to that which him to first of the he tried to action at the state that he to the in and in one public he indicated his to secure the by federal suffrage was not an in Lincoln's Proclamation of The was still to and the president doubted his authority to it because the states were responsible for their own But he was of equal suffrage as a issue.

P. of the to Lincoln's plan cabinet because it did not blacks. after Lincoln's scheme was in the of introduced his own for black suffrage in the states. But the bill was by the which like Lincoln's plan did not suffrage. Charles Sumner the issue more almost daily he appeared at the to the of equal suffrage. and came to that the only guarantee the of was to give slaves the who came before the president to the cause of black may have the on The was by and and New In their Lincoln stressing the of the federal government to suffrage on But the day he to of about to have a other the I suggest for some of the colored might not be let in — for the very and especially those who have in our As the border states had to Lincoln's suggestion of gradual emancipation, so now to his suggestion of limited suffrage. constitutional to any but the question to the state legislature, that suffrage would be granted in the of 1864 Lincoln the black suffrage issue to the He also indicated his to of a measure then in In a of the bill which he the this measure was more It Lincoln had opposed and to his government in the bill the to black and secured their right to in the the was to and they the suffrage to all black the measure to and the president's the early months of Lincoln's more liberal on was Even as he was the he was the that Congress could black suffrage. he would the Lincoln's less attitude did not recently in as of the that Lincoln might even a suffrage informed the Missouri legislature, then a bill to abolish slavery, that it might also some because such action by the of our nation William and P. — each in believed that Lincoln had come to black only was Lincoln black suffrage more but by April he was to make his cause or undertake the as he it. his efforts in to a at the Lincoln the to blacks. 'I would that were now on the very and those who our cause as he And this sentiment to other states as he his it might to make some to the of the that action be historians to these as an of change on Lincoln's they did The change had come If he had used his letter to Greeley to prepare conservatives for emancipation, he now seemed on the public for black suffrage.

But the always whatever plans Lincoln may have had were by the his Lincoln took a which the federal government destroy slavery and the cause of black suffrage. a who had denied years Lincoln's change in attitude was and He was and to the of his nation in a Once committed to a Lincoln moved toward it with As 'I think we have to for Abraham all his it must be that he has Lincoln told 'I think it cannot be that when I have once a I have ever from his moves Lincoln still criticism for his from Radical In their to slavery and secure civil for Radicals were to all and the feelings of the conservative opposed to emancipation and black suffrage. As a president to factions in and Lincoln had to move with It was he who had to persuade conservatives that was in the best interest of the and he who had to by legal means the constitutional that His was far the more and as a he appeared less on Lincoln this fact As he told Charles 'the only and on this is the of a month and weeks in the Lincoln did not into emancipation immediately. he took that slavery and the more when it the Lincoln black suffrage. But in supporting the of and those who had in the he was a in would make black suffrage less to most white Lincoln and the Radicals may have apart on the means of but in the their was the