Abraham Lincoln - Essay Example

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln is considered to be one of the greatest American presidents who expressed himself as not simply a forceful war while demonstrating the vast power inherent in the presidency, but as a dictator, albeit in many accounts a benevolent and constitutional dictator. Lincoln, it is said, took the law into his own hands in meeting the attack on Fort Sumter and subsequently in dealing with the problems of internal security, emancipation, and Reconstruction. The author of a well-known treatise on emergency government in the Western political tradition states that "it was in the person of Abraham Lincoln that the constitutional dictatorship was almost completely reposed. . . ."1 In the following paper I would like to discuss Abraham Lincolns policies during the civil war. The discussion will be structured in the way that will shape Presidents motives in actual conducting the war and mostly pointed into defining whether the reasons were to abolish slavery or receive economic benefit. Faced with heavy Union losses and the destructive nature of the war, Abraham Lincoln, an antislavery proponent, gradually adopted slave emancipation as the most prudent means of ending the conflict between North and South, bringing an end to the war, and thus paving the way to a reunited nation. Lincolns role in the destruction of the institution of slavery during the Civil War and afterward is widely accpeted to be the reason of Civil War as the institution of slavery, so instrumental in dividing the nation, provided Linocoln with an effective tool for ending the conflict. Slowly, at a pace too deliberate for most blacks and many Republicans, Linocoln gradually approached emancipation through the Confiscation Acts, compensation plans, and the Emancipation Proclamation (Abbott, 1968). None of these plans provided for immediate or full emancipation. Even the much-touted Emancipation Proclamation excluded slaves in all the border states and in Confederate areas controlled by the Union as of January 1, 1863, offering freedom only to those slaves living in Confederate strongholds--the very areas in which Linocoln could not enforce his proclamation. At best, the Emancipation Proclamation opened the door to freedom, but it left millions still enslaved. Even when war seemed inescapable, Lincoln remained the premier politician and chief adherent to the Constitution regarding the slavery issue; but observers thousands of miles away lacked his keen understanding of these domestic political and legal realities and began to ponder the wisdom of intervention. He feared that any further erosion of domestic support for the Union would assure a Confederate victory, but he also recognized the crucial importance of keeping England and France out of the war. His realistic approach to this problem resulted in a series of European misinterpretations of American events that threatened the Unions security by increasing the possibility of foreign interference. As a result of Lincolns policy, most of the British and French press changed from their initial antipathy toward the South because of slavery to become convinced that freedom was not the issue in the war. If the Republican party and the U.S. government could be believed, the London Times declared, their only goal was to keep the South in the Union. "Every politician throughout the states had over and over again declared that he has no wish to meddle with the peculiar institution of the South." The Confederacy, now said the Times, fought for "the sacred right of self government." The London Economist, Herald, Post, and nearly all major papers in England, along with Blackwoods Review and the Edinburgh Review, expressed similar views. In France the same conversion occurred. The semiofficial organs of Napoleon and the government, the Constitutionnel, Moniteur, and Patrie, all had earlier denounced secession and slavery. The Pays, also a spokesman of the regime, had asserted that the "abolition of slavery is a noble cause to defend and bring to a triumphant conclusion." French observers, however, soon became equally perplexed and angry because of Lincolns emphasis on the Union. Adams in London put his finger on the problem by noting that the British people "do not comprehend the connection which slavery has with [the war], because we do not at once preach emancipation. Hence they go to the other extreme and argue that it is not an element of the struggle." 2 For domestic reasons, the Lincoln administration emphasized to Europe that the American conflict that caused the Civil War did not stem from slavery. Sewards instructions to his newly appointed minister to London, Charles Francis Adams, focused on the sanctity of the Union while skirting any reference to slavery as a divisive point between North and South. President Lincoln, of course, was not an abolitionist though he found slavery repugnant and had been on public record since the 1850s as opposing its extension without wishing to disturb its present existence. Seward as well opposed slavery without supporting the immediate dictates of abolition. To him, as well as to Lincoln, morality was not the central concern. Seward feared that the sudden collapse of slavery could cause widespread social and economic upheaval in the South that, in turn, would disrupt the southern economy, endanger the entire republic, and have a negative effect on international stability. Only gradual emancipation could afford the South time to adjust to a free labor economy. The president also had to consider domestic political factors in regard to the slavery question. Even an emphasis on the more moderate stance of antislavery, Lincoln knew, would alienate large groups of Americans, both North and South. A substantial number of these same people fell into the antislavery camp, whose attitudes ranged from lukewarm to heated but nonetheless remained moderate in setting no timetable for success and condoning compensation to owners of emancipated slaves. The abolitionists, however, called slavery a sin, rejected compromise, and advocated equal rights for blacks. Only total and immediate emancipation without compensation was acceptable to them. Most northerners strongly opposed the abolitionists and staunchly rejected a war against slavery. Lincoln also believed that a move against slavery would push southern Unionists into the Confederate camp, undermining his slim hopes of their seizing control and negotiating an end to the conflict. Most important, he feared that antislavery as a wartime objective would drive the border slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware out of the Union. Already shaky in their Unionism, they might join the South and virtually assure its indepcndence. Having partly discussed Lincolns policies during the Civil War I can define that in his actions President was ruled with the aim to abolish slavery rather than to receive economic benefit for his country. Beginning with the proposition that before July 1862 blacks were legally excluded from the militia, the regular army, and the volunteers, Whitings opinion reviewed the provisions of the Confiscation Act and the Militia Act under which Negroes might be enrolled in the service. One or the other of these statutes must provide the basis for a uniform pay policy. The Confiscation Act, Whiting pointed out, authorized the organization and use of Negroes as laborers, but made no reference to pay. The Militia Act, in contrast, provided that blacks employed in military labor or service were to be paid $10 per month, of which $3 might be in clothing, and one ration per day. Whiting argued further that Congress had confirmed this policy in March 1863 by passing an act authorizing the enlistment of Negro cooks at the same $10-per-month pay. Under congressional statutes, he concluded, Negro soldiers were entitled to the pay and allowances specified in the Militia Act. Stanton accepted Whitings opinion, and on June 4, 1863, it became official War Department policy in the form of a general order to all commanders (Kenneth, 1956). Three basic positions as for Lincolns policies during the Civil War may be distinguished in the literature. The first, represented in the work of Dunning, adopted a critical if not openly hostile attitude toward the idea of presidential dictatorship. A second point of view, seen in the account of James Ford Rhodes, expressed critical approval of Lincolns purportedly dictatorial actions. A third position viewed Lincolns wartime dictatorship with unqualified approval, and was illustrated in the robust writing of John W. Burgess. Quoting at length from two of Lincolns keenest critics, former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis and conservative legalist Joel Parker, he expressed disapproval of the arbitrary arrests and interference with freedom of the press for which Lincoln was responsible. The respect for the Constitution commonly ascribed to Lincoln, Rhodes suggested, had prevented the post-Civil War generation from appreciating "the enormity of the acts done under his authority." The historian also faulted Lincolns defense of the governments policy in the famous Vallandigham affair as the argument of a clever attorney and politician, not that of a statesman. Nevertheless, Rhodes concluded on a favorable note, declaring that Lincoln was "no Caesar or Napoleon . . . sought no self-aggrandizement, . . . [and] had in his own loyal and unselfish nature a check to the excessive use of absolute power. . . ." (Kelly, 1956). Speaking of Lincolnc personal attitude toward the Civil War and slavery that all encompassed it, it is needed to say that the latter distressed him. He realized how wrong it was that slavery should exist at all in a self-proclaimed free and enlightened Republic. He who cherished the Declaration of Independence understood only too well how bondage mocked and contradicted that noble document. Too, he thought slavery a blight on the American experiment in popular government. It was, he believed, the one retrograde institution that robbed the Republic of its just example in the world, robbed the United States of the hope it should hold out to oppressed people everywhere. He opposed slavery, too, because he had witnessed some of its evils firsthand. In 1841, on a steamboat journey down the Ohio River, he saw a group of manacled slaves on their way to the cruel cotton plantations of the Deep South. Lincoln was appalled at the sight of those chained Negroes. To solve the ensuing problem of racial adjustment, Lincoln insisted that the federal government should colonize all blacks in Africa, an idea he got from his political idol, Whig national leader Henry Clay. Said Lincoln in 1852: if the Republic could remove the danger of slavery and restore a captive people to their long-lost father-land, and do both so gradually "that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, then it will indeed be a glorious consummation. At the outset of the war, Lincoln strove to be consistent with all that he and his party had said about slavery: his purpose in the struggle was strictly to save the Union; it was not to free the slaves. He would crush the rebellion with his armies and restore the national authority in the South with slavery intact. Then Lincoln and his party would resume and implement their policy of slave containment (Moreno, 1995). There were other reasons for Lincolns hands-off policy about slavery. Four slave states— Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained in the Union. Should he try to free the slaves, Lincoln feared it would send the crucial border spiraling into the Confederacy, something that would be catastrophic for the Union. A Confederate Maryland would create an impossible situation for Washington, D.C. And a Confederate Missouri and Kentucky would give the rebels potential bases from which to invade Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. So Lincoln rejected emancipation in part to appease the loyal border. In view of above discussion and careful consideration of numerous literature that broadly discusses the issue of Abraham Lincolns Presidency and his policies during the Civil War, I can conclude, that the reasons and motives for the war were exteremely of slavery abolishing motives. Subsequently, this motive greatly helped in getting economic benefit for the country in the future. Bibliography: 1. Abbott Richard H. "Massachusetts and the Recruitment of Southern Negroes, 1863-65."Civil War History, 14 ( September 1968). 2. Bernard Kenneth A. «Lincoln and Civil Liberties." Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, 6 ( September 1951), 374-99. 3. Cole A. C. «Lincokn and the American Tradition of Civil Liberty." Illinois State Historical Society Journal, 19 ( October 1926-January 1927), 102-14. 4. Kelly Alfred H. "The Fourteenth Amendment Reconsidered: The Segregation Decision." Michigan Law Review, 54 ( 1956), 1049-86. 5. Kinoy Arthur. "The Constitutional Right of Negro Freedom." Rutgers Law Review, 21 ( 1967), 387-441. 6. Moreno Paul. "Racial Classifications and Reconstruction Legislation." Journal of Southern History, 61 ( 1995), 271-304. Read More