Firmness.in.the.Right
BURLINGAME, MICHAEL
Firmness in the Right How, and why, Lincoln ended slavery BY MICHAEL BURLINGAME In this estimable volume, Richard Striner effectively demolishes the fashionable myths of Lincoln the Reluctant...
...I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel...
...I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils...
...But Lincoln also revered the ConMichael Burlingame is the author, most recently, of The Inner World ofAbraham Lincoln...
...Lincoln argued that the question of black citizenship was a red herring, that the real issue before the public was slavery...
...stitution and felt bound to abide by it, even the odious fugitive slave clause...
...What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union...
...Memorably, Lincoln declared in the final debate: That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent...
...But he does quote Frederick Douglass's too-little-known 1865 speech in which the black orator called Lincoln "emphatically the black man's president, the first to show any respect for their rights as men...
...Only when those states were securely cemented to the Union did he announce the emancipation policy...
...It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle...
...Firmness in the Right How, and why, Lincoln ended slavery BY MICHAEL BURLINGAME In this estimable volume, Richard Striner effectively demolishes the fashionable myths of Lincoln the Reluctant Emancipator and Lincoln the White Supremacist...
...Lincoln loathed and despised slavery early on...
...But he correctly points out that Lincoln's statements that grate most harshly on modern ears (opposing black citizenship rights) were "a defense against the crude demagoguery of Douglas...
...Moreover, he knew that white backlash would be diminished if emancipation were decreed by their own state governments rather than by the federal government...
...Using his powers of persuasion, he cajoled Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which finally did abolish slavery throughout the nation...
...But as he cogently explained, the only constitutional ground for ordering emancipation was his authority under the war power...
...He could have strengthened his argument by citing defenses of Lincoln by thoroughgoing abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Owen Lovejoy...
...Thus, Lincoln was a martyr to black civil rights as much as Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers...
...It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable...
...I have always hated slavery I think as much as any abolitionist," he declared during his unsuccessful quest for a Senate seat in 1858...
...They were willing to fight to preserve the Union but not to free the slaves...
...and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free...
...That speech cost Lincoln his life, for John Wilkes Booth was in the audience and declared to companions who would help him assassinate the president three days later, "That means nigger citizenship...
...You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the constitution and the Union...
...Now, by God, I'll put him through...
...Striner's treatment of Lincoln's pre-presidential years focuses on the period 1854-61...
...But he felt bound by his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, which meant preserving the Union...
...Striner shows that the president worked assiduously behind the scenes to reconstruct Confederate states during the war as Union forces penetrated ever deeper southward...
...Exempt were the Border States and parts of the Confederacy occupied by Union forces...
...The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the 'divine right of kings.' It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself...
...If he moved prematurely, he rightly feared driving some or all of the loyal slave states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware) into the arms of the Confederacy, and thus losing the war...
...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...
...Striner's readable account is not aimed at specialists, who will discover little new in it, but at the general reader, who will be impressed by the relentless way the author shows how relentless was Lincoln's struggle to end slavery...
...He knew full well that millions of northerners and border state residents would object to transforming the war into an abolitionist crusade...
...and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union...
...And so it was...
...Because emancipation was legitimate as a measure for undermining the Confederacy, he restricted the scope of the proclamation to those areas still in rebellion...
...Striner makes his case well, skillfully utilizing the work of such fine historians as James M. McPherson, LaWan-da Cox, Harry V Jaffa, and William Lee Miller...
...Deeply committed to the antislavery cause, the sixteenth president was, as Striner persuasively argues, "a fervent idealist" and "an artist in the Machiavellian uses of power...
...Greasing the skids for the proclamation, Lincoln wrote a public letter a month before its issuance that, as Striner emphasizes, has been widely misunderstood: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery...
...Once slavery was abolished, Lincoln wanted the liberated blacks to enjoy real freedom...
...and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border...
...Six years later, as he prepared his bid for a second term in the White House, he wrote a public letter avowing "I am naturally anti-slavery...
...By assuring conservatives that emancipation was simply a means to preserve the Union, Lincoln hoped to minimize the white backlash that he knew would come...
...Lincoln feared that his proclamation might not stand up in court...
...but I bite my lip and keep quiet...
...As president, Lincoln would have issued the Emancipation Proclamation much earlier than he did if he had acted on his own wishes...
...When that strategy fizzled, Lincoln vigorously supported a measure guaranteeing freedom to all slaves that no court could undo: a constitutional amendment...
...His recommendation applied to tens of thousands of black veterans of the Union army as well as "very intelligent" black men...
...Democrats did not believe slavery was wrong and would allow it to expand...
...Critics who accuse Lincoln of being soft on slavery denounce the pragmatic justification of military necessity he gave for taking that step...
...Republicans believed slavery was wrong and should not be allowed to expand...
...This letter was not a definitive statement of Lincoln's innermost feelings about the aims of the war but, rather, a political utterance designed to smooth the way for the proclamation, which he had already written and intended to promulgate as soon as the Union army won a major victory...
...If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong...
...To that end he signed legislation establishing a Freedmen's Bureau, which Striner rightly characterizes as "an unprecedented social welfare agency...
...It is the eternal struggle between these two principles— right and wrong—throughout the world...
...In dealing with the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Striner notes that it "is easy enough to view Lincoln in a very bad light by our contemporary standards...
...Lincoln wanted white southerners in the reconstructed states to abolish slavery through their legislatures, which the Constitution did not forbid...
...In addition, the president publicly endorsed limited black suffrage in an important speech two days after Robert E. Lee surrendered...
...That is the last speech he will ever make...
...That sight was "a continual torment to me...
...I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty...
...As president, Lincoln had to make the mighty act of emancipation palatable to them...
...They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle...
...Douglas, like many of his Democratic colleagues, engaged in shameless race-baiting, compared with which Lincoln's reservations about black equality seem mild...
...and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that...
...His Ten Percent plan, which enabled a state to resume good standing in the Union if one-tenth of its eligible electorate took a loyalty oath, represented no abandonment of blacks, as critics charged...
...To his best friend, Kentucky slaveholder Joshua Speed, he confided in 1855: "I . . . acknowledge your rights and my obligations, under the constitution, in regard to your slaves...
Vol. 11 • April 2006 • No. 27
