Volume Iv Part 14 (1/2)

There were about 3,000 slaves in the District. Upon the day of their emanc.i.p.ation they a.s.sembled in churches and gave thanks to G.o.d. In June slavery in the Territories--that bone of contention through so many years--was forever prohibited. In July an act was pa.s.sed freeing rebels'

slaves coming under the Government's protection, and authorizing the use of negro soldiers.

[1863]

Already President Lincoln was meditating universal emanc.i.p.ation.

September 22d the friends of liberty were made glad by a preliminary proclamation, announcing the President's intention to free the slaves on January 1, 1863, should rebellion then continue to exist. It is said that Mr. Lincoln would have given this notice earlier but for the gloomy state of military affairs. The day comes. The proclamation goes forth that all persons held as slaves in the rebellious sections ”are and henceforth shall be free.” The blot which had so long stained our national banner was wiped away. The Const.i.tution of course does not expressly authorize such an act by the President, but Mr. Lincoln defended it as a ”necessary war measure,” ”warranted by the Const.i.tution upon military necessity.”

This bold, epoch-making deed, the death-warrant of slavery here and throughout the world, evoked serious hostility even at the North. The elections in the fall of 1862 and the spring of 1863 showed serious losses for the administration party. Emanc.i.p.ation, too, doubtless added rancor and verve for a time to southern belligerency. But the fresh union, spirit, and strength it soon brought to the northern cause were tenfold compensation. Besides, it vastly exalted our struggle in the moral estimate of Christendom, and lessened danger of foreign intervention.

The War President trod at no time a path of flowers. Strong and general as was Union sentiment at the North, extremely diverse feelings and views prevailed touching the methods and spirit which should govern the conduct of the war. Certain timid, discouraged, or disappointed Republicans, seeing the appalling loss of blood and treasure as the war went on, and the Confederacy's unexpected tenacity of life, demanded peace on the easiest terms inclusive of intact Union. Secretaries Seward and Chase were for a time in this temper. The doctrinaire abolitionists bitterly a.s.sailed President and Congress for not making, from the outset, the extirpation of slavery the main aim of hostilities. Even the great emanc.i.p.ation pacified them but little.

The Democrats proper entered a far more sensible, in fact a not wholly groundless, complaint exactly the contrary. They charged that the Administration, in hopes to exhibit the Democracy as a peace party (which from 1862 it more and more became), was making the overthrow of slavery its main aim, waging war for the negro instead of for the Union.

They complained also that not only in anti-slavery measures but in other things as well, notably in suspending habeas corpus, the Administration was grievously infringing the Const.i.tution.

Yet a fourth cla.s.s, a democratic rump of southern sympathizers, popularly called ”copperheads,” wis.h.i.+ng peace at any price, did their best to encourage the Rebellion .. They denounced the war as cruel, needless, and a failure. They opposed the draft for troops, and were partly responsible for the draft riots in 1863. Many of them were in league with southern leaders, and held members.h.i.+p in treasonable a.s.sociations. Some were privy to, if not partic.i.p.ants in, devilish plots to spread fire and pestilence in northern camps and cities, Partly through influence of the more moderate, several efforts to negotiate peace were made, fortunately every one in vain.

[1864]

But despite the attacks of enemies and the importunities of weak or short-sighted friends, President Lincoln steadily held on his course.

The ma.s.ses of the people rallied to his support, and in the presidential election of 1864 he was re-elected by an overwhelming majority, receiving 212 electoral votes against 21 for General McClellan, the democratic candidate.

CHAPTER XI.

RECONSTRUCTION

Though arms were grounded, there remained the new task, longer and more perplexing, if not more difficult, than the first, of restoring the South to its normal position in the Union. It was, from the nature of the case, a delicate one. The proud and sensitive South smarted under defeat and was not yet cured of the illusions which had led her to secede. Salve and not salt needed to be rubbed in to her wounds. The North stood ready to forgive the past, but insisted, in the name of its desolate homes and slaughtered President, that the South must be restored on such conditions that the past could never be repeated. The difficulty was heightened by the lack of either const.i.tutional provision or historical precedent. Not strange, therefore, that the actors in this new drama of reconstruction played their parts awkwardly and with many mistakes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Handwriting.]

Facsimile of a portion of President Lincoln's draft of the Preliminary Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation, September. 1862 From the original in the Library of the State of New York, Albany.

[1865]

A most interesting const.i.tutional problem had to be faced at the outset: What effect had secession had upon the States guilty of it; was it or was it not an act of state suicide? This question was warmly debated in Congress and out. Although ridiculed in some quarters as a mere metaphysical quibble, it lay at the bottom of men's political thinking on reconstruction, and their views of the proper answer to it powerfully influenced their action.

All loyal Democrats and most Republicans answered it in the negative.

Secession, they said, being an invalid act, had no effect whatever; the rebellious tracts were still States of the Union in spite of themselves.

But the two parties reasoned their way to this conclusion by different roads. The Democrats deduced the view from the State's intrinsic sovereignty, the Republicans from the national Const.i.tution as ordaining ”an indestructible Union of indestructible States.” This cla.s.s of thinkers, in whichever party they were found, naturally preferred the term ”restoration” to ”reconstruction.”

The theory of state suicide was held by many, but with a difference.

Sumner and a few others deemed that secession had destroyed statehood alone; that over individuals the Const.i.tution still extended its authority and its protection, as in Territories. Thaddeus Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the State not only defunct but a washed slate governmentally, like soil won by conquest. Both these parties conceived the work before Congress to be out-and-out ”reconstruction,” involving the right to change old state lines and inst.i.tutions at will. Not even this position was more ultra than the course which reconstruction actually took.

Closely related to this main problem were several other questions nearly or quite as vexing. Were any conditions to be imposed upon the peoples seeking re-admission to the Union as States? If so, what, aside from the loyalty of voters and officeholders, were these conditions? Was the President to initiate and oversee the process of redintegration, prescribing the conditions of re-admission, and determining when they were fulfilled, or was all this the business of Congress? And, lastly, did the right thus to oversee and impose conditions depend upon a certain war power of Congress or of President, or upon the clause of the Const.i.tution which guarantees to every State a republican form of government? Nearly the same question as this, in another form, would be, Was this right explicitly const.i.tutional or only impliedly so?

The answer practically returned to these difficult inquiries was that Congress, as a quasi war right, must exact of the States lately in secession all the conditions necessary, in its view, to their permanent loyalty and the peace of the Union.