The Republican party had run on an anti-slavery platform, and many southerners felt that there was no longer a place for them in the Union. On December 20, , South Carolina seceded. The seceded states created the Confederate States of America and elected Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi Senator, as their provisional president.
In his inaugural address, delivered on March 4, , Lincoln proclaimed that it was his duty to maintain the Union. He also declared that he had no intention of ending slavery where it existed, or of repealing the Fugitive Slave Law -- a position that horrified African Americans and their white allies. Lincoln's statement, however, did not satisfy the Confederacy, and on April 12 they attacked Fort Sumter, a federal stronghold in Charleston, South Carolina. Federal troops returned the fire.
The Civil War had begun. Immediately following the attack, four more states -- Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee -- severed their ties with the Union.
To retain the loyalty of the remaining border states -- Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri -- President Lincoln insisted that the war was not about slavery or black rights; it was a war to preserve the Union. His words were not simply aimed at the loyal southern states, however -- most white northerners were not interested in fighting to free slaves or in giving rights to black people. For this reason, the government turned away African American voluteers who rushed to enlist.
Lincoln upheld the laws barring blacks from the army, proving to northern whites that their race privilege would not be threatened. There was an exception, however. African Americans had been working aboard naval vessels for years, and there was no reason that they should continue. Black sailors were therefore accepted into the U.
Navy from the beginning of the war. Still, many African Americans wanted to join the fighting and continued to put pressure on federal authorities. Even if Lincoln was not ready to admit it, blacks knew that this was a war against slavery. Some, however, rejected the idea of fighting to preserve a Union that had rejected them and which did not give them the rights of citizens. The federal government had a harder time deciding what to do about escaping slaves.
Because there was no consistent federal policy regarding fugitives, individual commanders made their own decisions. Some put them to work for the Union forces; others wanted to return them to their owners. Finally, on August 6, , fugitive slaves were declared to be "contraband of war" if their labor had been used to aid the Confederacy in any way.
And if found to be contraband, they were declared free. As the northern army pushed southward, thousands of fugitives fled across Union lines.
Neither the federal authorities nor the army were prepared for the flood of people, and many of the refugees suffered as a result. Though the government attempted to provide them with confiscated land, there was not enough to go around. Many fugitives were put into crowded camps, where starvation and disease led to a high death rate. Northern citizens, black and white alike, stepped in to fill the gap.
They organized relief societies and provided aid. They also organized schools to teach the freedmen, women, and children to read and write, thus giving an education to thousands of African Americans throughout the war. Though "contraband" slaves had been declared free, Lincoln continued to insist that this was a war to save the Union, not to free slaves. But by , Lincoln was considering emancipation as a necessary step toward winning the war.
The South was using enslaved people to aid the war effort. Black men and women were forced to build fortifications, work as blacksmiths, nurses, boatmen, and laundresses, and to work in factories, hospitals, and armories.
In the meantime, the North was refusing to accept the services of black volunteers and freed slaves, the very people who most wanted to defeat the slaveholders. In addition, several governments in Europe were considering recognizing the Confederacy and intervening against the Union. If Lincoln declared this a war to free the slaves, European public opinion would overwhelmingly back the North.
On July 22, , Lincoln showed a draft of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. Seven states had already announced their secession. After the fall of Fort Sumter on April 12, , the Civil War began, four more states seceded, and the Union army experienced repeated defeats. Lincoln continued to maintain that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed.
However, as a result of Union battlefield losses by July , the President had decided that emancipation was a military necessity. Lincoln knew that many thousands of enslaved people were ready to fight for the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it. Constitution to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, He stated the military necessity of his action.
He ordered slaves freed in areas that were in rebellion against the U. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was an essential first step by the U. Lincoln's detractors suggest other motives. At best the proclamation was an astute measure designed to keep Great Britain from recognizing the Confederacy; less charitably, Lincoln's signature may have represented a mere concession to Radicals and other reformers lobbying tirelessly about the president.
This is a compromising picture of Lincoln the president, showing him sharply changed from Lincoln the aspiring politician of the s. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even as late as his ethical views were unqualified. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. Inferring from Lincoln's words in the s a reluctance toward abolition, historians have largely misjudged his position.
At heart, Lincoln doubted any constitutional basis for emancipating the nation's slaves; he was not sure that federal authorities had such a mandate.
Beyond that, Lincoln had always to measure his words. As president, he was in fact responsible to the diversity of public opinion on abolition, and he had, as a political reality, to please all factions whatever his personal view. Were he to speak forth in too liberal a tone, he might well alienate those Americans supporting the war but opposed to abolition; anything too conservative, in turn, could produce criticism from the Radicals. Taken together, the president's words and efforts leave no reasonable doubt.
Lincoln was committed to a free society and amenable to some limited form of black suffrage. And he moved with more conviction and even haste than he has been given credit for doing. Page [End Page 27]. In the first year of the war, Lincoln feared chiefly that any move toward abolition might cause the border slave states, especially Missouri and Kentucky, to secede.
In Missouri, Confederate and Union forces were battling for control in ; Kentucky had declared its neutrality, and Lincoln dared take no overt action lest the state be driven into the Confederacy. His judicious care in handling these states brought him into open conflict with General John C. They would stop fighting, they said, if Frmont's proclamation were not annulled. Coupled with an awareness that the pro-Union Kentucky legislature was demanding his intercession, the president hesitated no longer and rescinded the order.
As Lincoln said: "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone we could not hold Missouri; nor, as I think Maryland. As early as he was formulating plans for emancipation, while doubts about the loyalty of Missouri and Kentucky lingered into early Only in that year did the battles of Pea Ridge and Mill Springs finally guarantee these states for the Union.
A more important restraint on Lincoln was his conviction that the United States Constitution prohibited the federal government from abolishing slavery in states where it existed. Lincoln's high regard for the Constitution cannot be disputed.
As early as he told a Young Men's Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois: "We must maintain a reverence for the Constitution and the laws. I believe I have no lawful right to do so Lincoln's search for a solution to his constitutional dilemma. Despite his reservations, Lincoln did move forward on emancipation. Evidence indicates that he was beginning to devise emancipation schemes as early as November — a mere eight months after his inauguration.
On November 18 he informed George Bancroft, the historian, of his interest in emancipation — a problem to be handled with "all due caution, and with the best judgment I can bring it.
In ensuing weeks, Lincoln launched an effort to secure gradual, compensated emancipation in the border slave states. This approach he believed most viable, as it solved his constitutional dilemma. There could be no question about the constitutional legitimacy of state action.
If the individual states were empowered to legalize slavery, they might just as legally abolish it. In Lincoln's own words, his gradual, compensated plan set "up no claim of a right, by federal authority, to interfere with slavery It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with" the border slave states themselves. Gradual emancipation was the focus of Lincoln's plan; Delaware was his first target. Delaware as a choice was no surprise: pro-Union sentiment was stronger there than in the other border states.
Slavery in the state was correspondingly weak: there were only 1, slaves in the entire state. At any rate, in December Lincoln worked out a legislative act with George P. Fisher, a Union-Republican representative from Delaware in Congress; it was Fisher who, according to plan, should get the bill introduced and passed by the state legislature. Unfortunately, the plan died there. Rumor of its inception invoked such strong opposition that its backers declined to bring it before Delaware's legislators at all.
Undaunted Lincoln continued his campaign for gradual, compensated emancipation. First, in March — after he had been in office only one year — he asked for and secured from Congress a resolution favoring the idea. Arguing that the Union could not be restored with slavery intact, Lincoln presented his plan as a means by which these states might abolish slavery at no cost to themselves.
In a variety of appeals Lincoln continued his efforts until late summer. But the scheme pleased very few. Citizens in the border states and northern conservatives alike denied Congress's power to appropriate federal funds for compensated emancipation; Radicals rejected the plan as "the most diluted, milk-and-water-gruel pro- Page [End Page 30] position that was ever given to the American nation. In his annual message of December , he proposed a constitutional amendment authorizing Congress to compensate slaveowners in those states that passed legislation freeing their slaves.
Even as he crusaded for emancipation in the border states, Lincoln was finalizing plans for military emancipation in the Confederacy. Charles Sumner early took up the charge: ever since the firing on Fort Sumter in April , he had been urging emancipation by military edict in the rebellious states. Lincoln at first seemed unimpressed by Sumner's argument. Either that, or he was unwilling to undertake emancipation by military decree while working to secure abolition in the border states.
Once it became apparent, however, that the border states would reject gradual emancipation, Lincoln moved with resolution on his military edict. On July 13, , the day after his final meeting with border state representatives, the president broached military emancipation with Gideon Welles and William Seward, entrusted members of his cabinet.
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