Abraham Lincoln and slavery
[13] On September 22, 1862, having waited until the North won a significant victory in the battle at Antietam,[14] Lincoln used the power granted to the president under Article II, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
[21] Foner also writes, "For many white Americans, including Lincoln, colonization represented a middle ground between the radicalism of the abolitionists and the prospect of the United States existing permanently half-slave and half-free".
In March 1864, writing to the governor of Louisiana,[25][26] and in April 1865, in his last public speech, which led directly to his assassination, Lincoln supported voting rights in the United States for African Americans.
[32] Seven weeks earlier, a mob in Alton, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, had killed Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister and editor of a newspaper with strong anti-slavery views.
[46] Lincoln, in collaboration with abolitionist Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, wrote a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive slaves, and a popular vote on the matter.
In addition, Taney struck down the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ parallel, as a limitation on slave owners' property rights that exceeded the U.S. Congress's powers under the Constitution.
But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible.According to historian Paul Escott, Lincoln favored a system of gradual emancipation that would allow for controlled management of free Negroes.
[85][86] Most significantly, the Corwin amendment would not have interfered with Lincoln's plan to ban the expansion of slavery into the federal territories, which was one of the main points of contention between pro- and anti-slavery factions.
[87] The American Civil War began in April 1861, and by the end of May the Lincoln administration approved a policy of not returning fugitive slaves who came within Union lines from disloyal states.
On August 6, 1861, Congress declared the forfeiture of contrabands to be permanent by passing the first of the Confiscation Acts, and two days later Lincoln's War Department issued instructions emancipating all the slaves who came within Union lines from disloyal states or owners.
[91] By the end of 1861 tens of thousands of slaves were emancipated as they crossed into Union lines at Fort Monroe, Virginia, the Sea Islands off South Carolina, and in western Missouri.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.At the time that Lincoln published this letter, he seemingly had already chosen the third of the three options he named: He was waiting for a Union victory to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which would announce that he would free some but not all the slaves on January 1, 1863.
On September 22, 1862, exactly one month after writing this letter, Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which announced that, on January 1, 1863, he would, under his war powers, free all slaves in states still in rebellion.
And the promise being made, must be kept.... [When peace comes] then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they strove to hinder it.The Conkling letter was dated August 26, 1863, the month after two great Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, but also at a time when Americans were reading the first reports of black troops fighting courageously in battles at Milliken's Bend and Battery Wagner.
Having won re-election to the presidency in November 1864 on a platform of abolishing slavery, Lincoln and several members of his cabinet embarked on a sustained lobbying effort to get the abolition amendment through the House of Representatives.
On December 8, 1863, Lincoln used his war powers to issue a "Proclamation for Amnesty and Reconstruction", which offered Southern states a chance to peacefully rejoin the Union if they abolished slavery and collected loyalty oaths from 10 percent of their voting population.
[121] When Lincoln accepted the nomination for the Union party for president in June 1864, he called for the first time for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to immediately abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.
Historians have disputed his motivation, with scholars such as James McPherson, David Reynolds, and Allen Guelzo arguing that Lincoln advocated colonization of the freedpeople in order to assuage racist concerns about the Emancipation Proclamation.
[144] Probably present at the 1845 founding of a short-lived Illinois auxiliary to the American Colonization Society (ACS), Lincoln had helped transfer a donation to the latter during his residency in Washington, D.C., as a member of the Thirtieth Congress.
[145] In 1854, in his Peoria speech, Lincoln articulated two motifs of his support for colonization: first, the unwillingness of "the great mass of white people" to accept black equality, and second, on a note of qualification, Liberia's liability to be overwhelmed by any sizable influx of immigrants.
[146][147] Accordingly, he supported the colonization program of Francis Preston Blair and his sons Frank and Montgomery (until 1860, better-known Republicans than Lincoln), who rejected Liberia in favor of closer destinations in the American tropics.
"[151] During a series of three cabinet meetings of late September 1862, Lincoln rebuffed Attorney General Edward Bates's suggestion of compulsory colonization, but decided to ask Congress, in his second annual message of December 1, 1862, to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to promote black resettlement by treaty with putative host states.
[154] Lincoln suspended the project in early October 1862, before a single ship had sailed, ostensibly because of diplomatic protests by the governments of Central America, but really because of the uncertainty caused by the Colombian Civil War.
The president hoped to overcome these complications by having Congress provide for a treaty with Colombia for African American emigration, much as he outlined in his second annual message, but he shelved the Chiriquí project over the New Year of 1863 when he learned that its stakeholders included not only a personal friend, Richard W. Thompson, but also the new secretary of the interior, John P.
[160][161] Lincoln signed an agreement on June 13, 1863, with John Hodge of British Honduras, which authorized colonial agents to recruit ex-slaves and transport them to Belize from the approved ports of Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.
The scheme petered out when John Usher refused to release funds to the would-be pioneers of Henry Highland Garnet's African Civilization Society and when the British Colonial Office banned the recruitment of "contraband" freedpeople for fear that the Confederacy would deem this a hostile act.
An entry in the diary of presidential secretary John Hay, dated July 1, 1864, claims that Lincoln had "sloughed off" colonization, though attributes that change to the president's frustration with corrupt contractors rather than to any philosophical departure.
[167] In the fall of 1864, Lincoln wrote Attorney General Edward Bates to inquire whether the legislation of 1862 allowed him to continue pursuing colonization and to retain Mitchell's services irrespective of the loss of funding.
[181]While president, as the Civil War progressed, Lincoln advocated or implemented anti-slavery policies, including the Emancipation Proclamation and limited suffrage for African Americans, which he had earlier opposed.
'"[190] White House usher William Slade, who became an "intimate friend," was often the first person Lincoln asked to review parts of his writings and speeches, likely including drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation.
