By the autumn of 1862,Lincoln had acquired the same political method that Seward had displayed in the spring of 1861.What a chasm separates the two Lincolns!The cautious,contradictory,almost timid statesman of the Sumter episode;the confident,unified,quietly masterful statesman of the Emancipation Proclamation.Now,in action,he was capable of staking his whole future on the soundness of his own thinking,on his own ability to forecast the inevitable.Without waiting for the results of the Proclamation to appear,but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists,he threw down the gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship.Two days after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator.He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus.The occasion was the effort of State governments to establish conscription of their militia.The Proclamation delivered any one impeding that attempt into the hands of the military authorities without trial.
Here was Lincoln's final answer to Stevens;here,his audacious challenge to the Jacobins.And now appeared the wisdom of his political strategy,holding back emancipation until Congress was out of the way.Had Congress been in session what a hubbub would have ensued!Chandler,Wade,Trumbull,Sumner,Stevens,all hurrying to join issue on the dictatorship;to get it before the country ahead of emancipation.Rather,one can not imagine Lincoln daring to play this second card,so soon after the first,except with abundant time for the two issues to disentangle themselves in the public mind ere Congress met.
And that was what happened.When the Houses met in December,the Jacobins found their position revolutionized.The men who,in July at the head of the Vindictive coalition,dominated Congress,were now a minority faction biting their nails at the President amid the ruins of their coalition.
There were three reasons for this collapse.First of all,the Abolitionists,for the moment,were a faction by themselves.
Six weeks had sufficed to intoxicate them with their opportunity.The significance of the Proclamation had had time to arise towering on their spiritual vision,one of the gates of the New Jerusalem.
Limited as it was in application who could doubt that,with one condition,it doomed slavery everywhere.The condition was a successful prosecution of the war,the restoration of the Union.Consequently,at that moment,nothing that made issue with the President,that threatened any limitation of his efficiency,had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support.
The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President's mood,a possible recantation on January first.In order to hold him to his word,they were ready to humor him as one might cajole,or try to cajole,a monster that one was afraid of.No time,this,to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues,or about questions of party leadership.Away with all your "gabble"about such small things!The Jacobins saw the moving hand--at least for this moment--in the crumbling wall of the palace of their delusion.
Many men who were not Abolitionists perceived,before Congress met,that Lincoln had made a great stroke internationally.The "Liberal party throughout the world"gave a cry of delight,and rose instantly to his support.John Bright declared that the Emancipation Proclamation "made it impossible for England to intervene for the South"and derided "the silly proposition of the French Emperor looking toward intervention."[1]Bright's closest friend in America was Sumner and Sumner was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.He understood the value of international sentiment,its working importance,as good provincials like Chandler did not.Furthermore,he was always an Abolitionist first and a Jacobin second--if at all.
From this time forward,the Jacobins were never able to count on him,not even when they rebuilt the Vindictive Coalition a year and a half later.In December,1862,how did they dare--true blue politicians that they were--how did they dare raise a constitutional issue involving the right of the President to capture,in the way he had,international security?
The crowning irony in the new situation of the Jacobins was the revelation that they had played unwittingly into the hands of the Democrats.Their short-sighted astuteness in tying up emancipation with the war powers was matched by an equal astuteness equally short-sighted.The organization of the Little Men,when it refused to endorse Lincoln's all-parties program,had found itself in the absurd position of a party without an issue.It contained,to be sure,a large proportion of the Northerners who were opposed to emancipation.But how could it make an issue upon emancipation,as long as the President,the object of its antagonism,also refused to support emancipation?The sole argument in the Cabinet against Lincoln's new policy was that it would give the Democrats an issue.Shrewd Montgomery Blair prophesied that on this issue they could carry the autumn elections for Congress.Lincoln had replied that he would take the risk.He presented them with the issue.They promptly accepted it But they did not stop there.They aimed to take over the whole of the position that had been vacated by the collapse of the Vindictive Coalition.By an adroit bit of political legerdemain they would steal their enemies'thunder,reunite the emancipation issue with the issue of the war powers,reverse the significance of the conjunction,and,armed with this double club,they would advance from a new and unexpected angle and win the leadership of the country by overthrowing the dictator.
