Read Online Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen C. Guelzo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Allen C. Guelzo
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documents and disseminate insurrectionary sentiments among [the] hitherto contented servile population.” That was entirely aside from the possibility that Lincoln himself harbored hostile designs on the South. Georgia governor Joseph Brown prophesied, with remarkable foresight, that
if Mr. Lincoln places among us his Judges, District Attorneys, Marshals, Post Masters, Custom House officers, etc., etc., by the end of his administration, with the control of public patronage, he will have succeeded in dividing us to an extent that will destroy all our moral powers, and prepare us to tolerate the running of a Republican ticket, in most of the States of the South, in 1864. If this ticket only secured five or ten thousand votes in each of the Southern States, it would be as large as the abolition party was in the North a few years ago since. … This would soon give it control of our elections. We would then be powerless, and the abolitionists would press forward, with a steady step, to the accomplishment of their object. They would refuse to admit any other slave States to the Union. They would abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and at the Forts, Arsenals and Dock Yards, within the Southern States, which belong to the United States. They would then abolish the internal slave trade between the States, and prohibit a slave owner from carrying his slaves into Alabama or South Carolina, and there selling them. … Finally, when we were sufficiently humiliated, and sufficiently intheir power, they would abolish slavery in the States. It will not be many years before enough of free States may be formed out of the present territories of the United States, and admitted into the Union, to give them sufficient strength to change the Constitution, and remove all Constitutional barriers which now deny to Congress this power. 70
Lincoln, as the president-elect, tried to offer as much in the way of reassurance as he could to the South without violating his own principles or the platform of the Republican Party. Late in November Lincoln wrote that, as president, he would regard himself as bound to obey the Constitution and the laws, including the fugitive slave laws and the security of slavery in the slave states. “I have labored in, and for, the Republican organization with entire confidence that whenever it shall be in power, each and all of the States will be left in as complete control of their own affairs respectively… as they have ever been under any administration,” Lincoln wrote calmly from Springfield two weeks after the election. “I regard it as extremely fortunate for the peace of the whole country, that this point… is now to be brought to a practical test, and placed beyond the possibility of Doubt.” To his old Whig comrade in politics, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, Lincoln wrote on December 22 to reiterate that he had no intention of meddling with slavery in the States, where the Constitution gave him no authority to meddle with it. “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would,
directly
, or
indirectly
interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves?” Lincoln asked soothingly. “If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.” 71
This gave little quiet to Southern jitters because, as president, Lincoln had no authority to interfere with slavery anyway; slavery was a matter of state statutes and state enactments, and while the Constitution obliquely recognized slavery’s existence, it gave it no explicit guarantees, either. Lincoln was, in effect, promising not to do what he had no power to do anyway. At the same time, Lincoln made it plain that he would never countenance the extension of slavery into the territories. Territorial governments, which Lincoln insisted fell under the jurisdiction of Congress no matter what the dictum of Roger Taney, were hereby served
if Mr. Lincoln places among us his Judges, District Attorneys, Marshals, Post Masters, Custom House officers, etc., etc., by the end of his administration, with the control of public patronage, he will have succeeded in dividing us to an extent that will destroy all our moral powers, and prepare us to tolerate the running of a Republican ticket, in most of the States of the South, in 1864. If this ticket only secured five or ten thousand votes in each of the Southern States, it would be as large as the abolition party was in the North a few years ago since. … This would soon give it control of our elections. We would then be powerless, and the abolitionists would press forward, with a steady step, to the accomplishment of their object. They would refuse to admit any other slave States to the Union. They would abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and at the Forts, Arsenals and Dock Yards, within the Southern States, which belong to the United States. They would then abolish the internal slave trade between the States, and prohibit a slave owner from carrying his slaves into Alabama or South Carolina, and there selling them. … Finally, when we were sufficiently humiliated, and sufficiently intheir power, they would abolish slavery in the States. It will not be many years before enough of free States may be formed out of the present territories of the United States, and admitted into the Union, to give them sufficient strength to change the Constitution, and remove all Constitutional barriers which now deny to Congress this power. 70
Lincoln, as the president-elect, tried to offer as much in the way of reassurance as he could to the South without violating his own principles or the platform of the Republican Party. Late in November Lincoln wrote that, as president, he would regard himself as bound to obey the Constitution and the laws, including the fugitive slave laws and the security of slavery in the slave states. “I have labored in, and for, the Republican organization with entire confidence that whenever it shall be in power, each and all of the States will be left in as complete control of their own affairs respectively… as they have ever been under any administration,” Lincoln wrote calmly from Springfield two weeks after the election. “I regard it as extremely fortunate for the peace of the whole country, that this point… is now to be brought to a practical test, and placed beyond the possibility of Doubt.” To his old Whig comrade in politics, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, Lincoln wrote on December 22 to reiterate that he had no intention of meddling with slavery in the States, where the Constitution gave him no authority to meddle with it. “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would,
directly
, or
indirectly
interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves?” Lincoln asked soothingly. “If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.” 71
This gave little quiet to Southern jitters because, as president, Lincoln had no authority to interfere with slavery anyway; slavery was a matter of state statutes and state enactments, and while the Constitution obliquely recognized slavery’s existence, it gave it no explicit guarantees, either. Lincoln was, in effect, promising not to do what he had no power to do anyway. At the same time, Lincoln made it plain that he would never countenance the extension of slavery into the territories. Territorial governments, which Lincoln insisted fell under the jurisdiction of Congress no matter what the dictum of Roger Taney, were hereby served
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