In the first stage of Lincoln's thinking on this thorny subject,his chief anxiety was to avoid scaring off from the national cause those Southern Unionists who were not prepared to abandon slavery.This was the motive behind his prompt suppression of Fremont.It was this that inspired the Abolitionist sneer about his relative attitude toward God and Kentucky.As a compromise,to cut the ground from under the Vindictives,he had urged the loyal Slave States to endorse a program of compensated emancipation.But these States were as unable to see the handwriting on the wall as were the Little Men.In the same proclamation that overruled Hunter,while hinting at what the Administration might feel driven to do,Lincoln appealed again to the loyal Slave States to accept compensated emancipation."I do not argue,"said he,"Ibeseech you to make the argument for yourselves.You can not,if you would,be blind to the signs of the times....
This proposal makes common cause for a common object,casting no reproaches upon any.It acts not the Pharisee.The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven,not rending or wrecking anything."[7]
Though Lincoln,at this moment,was anxiously watching the movement in Congress to force his hand,he was not apparently cast down.He was emerging from his eclipse.June was approaching and with it the final dawn.Furthermore,when he issued this proclamation on May nineteenth,he had not lost faith in McClellan.He was still hoping for news of a crushing victory;of McClellan's triumphal entry into Richmond.The next two months embraced both those transformations which together revolutionized his position.He emerged from his last eclipse;and McClellan failed him.
When Lincoln returned to Washington after his two days at the front,he knew that the fortunes of his Administration were at a low ebb.Never had he been derided in Congress with more brazen injustice.The Committee,waiting only for McClellan's failure,would now unmask their guns-as Chandler did,seven days later.The line of Vindictive criticism could easily be foreshadowed:the government had failed;it was responsible for a colossal military catastrophe;but what could you expect of an Administration that would not strike its enemies through emancipation;what a shattering demonstration that the Executive was not a safe repository of the war powers.
Was there any way to forestall or disarm the Vindictives?His silence gives us no clue when or how the answer occurred to him--by separating the two issues;by carrying out the hint in the May proclamation;by yielding on emancipation while,in the very act,pushing the war powers of the President to their limit,declaring slaves free by an executive order.
The importance of preserving the war power of the President had become a fixed condition of Lincoln's thought.Already,he was looking forward not only to victory but to the great task that should come after victory.He was determined,if it were humanly possible,to keep that task in the hands of the President,and out of the hands of Congress.A first step had already been taken.In portions of occupied territory,military governors had been appointed.Simple as this seemed to the careless observer,it focussed the whole issue.The powerful,legal mind of Sumner at once perceived its significance.He denied in the Senate the right of the President to make such appointments;he besought the Senate to demand the cancellation of such appointment.He reasserted the absolute sovereignty of Congress.[8]It would be a far-reaching stroke if Lincoln,in any way,could extort from Congress acquiescence in his use of the war powers on a vast scale.
Freeing the slaves by executive order would be such a use.
Another train of thought also pointed to the same result.
Lincoln's desire to further the cause of "the Liberal party throughout the world,"that desire which dated back to his early life as a politician,had suffered a disappointment.
European Liberals,whose political vision was less analytical than his,had failed to understand his policy.The Confederate authorities had been quick to publish in Europe his official pronouncements that the war had been undertaken not to abolish slavery but to preserve the Union.As far back as September,1861,Carl Schurz wrote from Spain to Seward that the Liberals abroad were disappointed,that "the impression gained ground that the war as waged by the Federal government,far from being a war of principle,was merely a war of policy,"and "that from this point of view much might be said for the South."[9]In fact,these hasty Europeans had found a definite ground for complaining that the American war was a reactionary influence.
The concentration of American cruisers in the Southern blockade gave the African slave trade its last lease of life.With no American war-ship among the West Indies,the American flag became the safeguard of the slaver.Englishmen complained that "the swift ships crammed with their human cargoes"had only to "hoist the Stars and Stripes and pass under the bows of our cruisers."[10]Though Seward scored a point by his treaty giving British cruisers the right to search any ships carrying the American flag,the distrust of the foreign Liberals was not removed.They inclined to stand aside and to allow the commercial classes of France and England to dictate policy toward the United States.The blockade,by shutting off the European supply of raw cotton,on both sides the channel,was the cause of measureless unemployment,of intolerable misery.
