128. Debate in the Cabinet (1862)

BY SECRETARY SALMON PORTLAND CHASE

Chase entered public life as an anti-slavery man, and remained consistently such throughout his career. As a member of Lincoln's cabinet, his sympathies were with the demands of the radicals for emancipation, and he was their spokesman within the president's council. His best claim to fame, however, lies in the constructive statesmanship shown in his financial measures, especially in his organization of the national banking system. This extract is from his diary. — For Chase, see Hart, Salmon Portland Chase; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 25.- Bibliography as in No. 124 above.

O

[September 22, 1862.] T department about nine. State De

partment messenger came with notice to heads of departments to meet at twelve. Received sundry callers. Went to the White House. All the members of the Cabinet were in attendance. There was some general talk, and the President mentioned that Artemus Ward had sent him his book. Proposed to read a chapter which he thought very funny. Read it, and seemed to enjoy it very much; the heads also (except Stanton). The chapter was "HighHanded Outrage at Utica."

The President then took a graver tone, and said: "Gentlemen, I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery, and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an order I had prepared upon the subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since then my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made a promise to myself and (hesitating a little) to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This I say without intending any thing but respect for any one of you. But I already know the

views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. If there is any thing in the expressions I use or in any minor matter which any one of you thinks had best be changed, I shall be glad to receive your suggestions. One other observation I will make. I know very well that many others might, in this matter as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe that I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take."

The President then proceeded to read his Emancipation Proclamation, making remarks on the several parts as he went on, and showing that he had fully considered the subject in all the lights under which it had been presented to him.

After he had closed, Governor Seward said: "The general question having been decided, nothing can be said further about that. Would it not, however, make the proclamation more clear and decided to leave out all reference to the act being sustained during the incumbency of the present President; and not merely say that the Government ' recognizes,' but that it will maintain the freedom it proclaims?"

I followed, saying: "What you have said, Mr. President, fully satisfies me that you have given to every proposition which has been made a kind and candid consideration. And you have now expressed the conclusion to which you have arrived clearly and distinctly. This it was your right, and, under your oath of office, your duty to do. The proclamation does not, indeed, mark out the course I would myself prefer; but I am ready to take it just as it is written and to stand by it with all my heart. I think, however, the suggestions of Governor Seward very judicious, and shall be glad to have them adopted."

The President then asked us severally our opinions as to the modifications proposed, saying that he did not care much about the phrases he had used. Every one favored the modification, and it was adopted. Governor Seward then proposed that in the passage relating to coloniza

tion some language should be introduced to show that the colonization proposed was to be only with the consent of the colonists, and the consent of the States in which the colonies might be attempted. This, too, was agreed to; and no other modification was proposed. Mr. Blair then said that the question having been decided, he would make no objection to issuing the proclamation; but he would ask to have his paper, presented some days since, against the policy, filed with the proclamation. The President consented to this readily. And then Mr. Blair went on to say that he was afraid of the influence of the proclamation on the border States and on the army, and stated, at some length, the grounds of his apprehensions. He disclaimed most expressly, however, all objections to emancipation per se, saying he had always been personally in favor of it-always ready for immediate emancipation in the midst of slave States, rather than submit to the perpetuation of the system.

J. W. Schuckers, Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1874), 453-455.

129. A Peace Democrat's View of Emancipation (1863)

BY REPRESENTATIVE CLEMENT LAIRD VALLANDIGHAM

Vallandigham was a representative from Ohio, and the most prominent and outspoken of the copperheads, or opponents of the war. The speech from which this extract is taken was delivered in the House of Representatives on January 14, 1863. In the succeeding spring Vallandigham attacked the administration so violently in his speeches in Ohio that he was arrested, tried, and convicted by court-martial, and was banished by Lincoln across the Confederate lines. But he found in the South little sympathy for his reunion ideas, and so made his way to Canada, whence he was suffered to return unmolested the following year.-Bibliography: Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 213, 214.

NOW,

TOW, sir, on the 14th of April [1861], I believed that coercion lieved, what you all in your hearts believe to-day, that the South could never be conquered never. And not that only, but I was satisfied — and you of the abolition party have now proved it to the world — that the secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the States. In any event, I did not doubt that whatever might be the momentary impulses of those in power, and whatever pledges they might

make in the midst of the fury for the Constitution, the Union, and the flag, yet the natural and inexorable logic of revolutions would, sooner or later, drive them into that policy, and with it to its final but inevitable result, the change of our present democratical form of government into an imperial despotism. . . .

And now, sir, I recur to the state of the Union to-day. . .

Money and credit. . . you have had in prodigal profusion.... The fabled hosts of Xerxes have been outnumbered. And yet victory strangely follows the standards of the foe. From Great Bethel to Vicksburg, the battle has not been to the strong. . . . you have utterly, signally, disastrously I will not say ignominiously — failed to subdue ten millions of "rebels," whom you had taught the people of the North and West not only to hate but to despise. Rebels, did I say? Yes, your fathers were rebels, or your grandfathers. He who now before me on canvas looks down so sadly upon us, the false, degenerate, and imbecile guardians of the great Republic which he founded, was a rebel. And yet we, cradled ourselves in rebellion, and who have fostered and fraternized with every insurrection in the nineteenth century everywhere throughout the globe, would now, forsooth, make the word "rebel" a reproach. Rebels certainly they are; but all the persistent and stupendous efforts of the most gigantic warfare of modern times have, through your incompetency and folly, availed nothing to crush them out, cut off though they have been by your blockade from all the world, and dependent only upon their own courage and resources. And yet they were to be utterly conquered and subdued in six weeks, or three months! Sir, my judgment was made up and expressed from the first. I learned it from Chatham : "My lords, you cannot conquer America." And you have not conquered the South. You never will. It is not in the nature of things possible; much less under your auspices. But money you have expended without limit, and blood poured out like water. Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchres, these are your trophies. In vain the people gave you treasure and the soldier yielded up his life. "Fight, tax, emancipate, let these," said the gentleman from Maine, (Mr. PIKE,) at the last session, "be the trinity of our salvation." Sir, they have become the trinity of your deep damnation. The war for the Union is, in your hands, a most bloody and costly failure. The President confessed it on the 22d of September, solemnly, officially, and under the broad seal of the United States. And he has now repeated the confession. The priests and rabbis of abolition taught him that God would not prosper such a cause. War for the

Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun, and with stronger battalions than before. With what success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg and Vicksburg answer.

...

And now, sir, I come to the great and controlling question within which the whole issue of union or disunion is bound up: is there" an irrepressible conflict" between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding States? . . . If so, then there is an end of all union and forever. You cannot abolish slavery by the sword; still less by proclamations, though the President were to "proclaim" every month. Of what possible avail was his proclamation of September? Did the South submit? Was she even alarmed? And yet he has now fulmined another "bull against the comet" - brutum fulmen — and, threatening servile insurrection with all its horrors, has yet coolly appealed to the judgment of mankind, and invoked the blessing of the God of peace and love! But declaring it a military necessity, an essential measure of war to subdue the rebels, yet, with admirable wisdom, he expressly exempts from its operation the only States and parts of States in the South where he has the military power to execute it.

Neither, sir, can you abolish slavery by argument. As well attempt to abolish marriage or the relation of paternity. The South is resolved to maintain it at every hazard and by every sacrifice; and if "this Union cannot endure part slave and part free," then it is already and finally dissolved. Talk not to me of "West Virginia." Tell me not of Missouri, trampled under the feet of your soldiers. As well talk to me of Ireland. Sir, the destiny of those States must abide the issue of the war. But Kentucky you may find tougher. And Maryland

"E'en in her ashes live their wonted fires."

Nor will Delaware be found wanting in the day of trial.

But I deny the doctrine. It is full of disunion and civil war. It is disunion itself. Whoever first taught it ought to be dealt with as not only hostile to the Union, but an enemy of the human race. Sir, the fundamental idea of the Constitution is the perfect and eternal compatibility of a union of States "part slave and part free;" else the Constitution never would have been framed, nor the Union founded; and seventy years of successful experiment have approved the wisdom of the plan. In my deliberate judgment, a confederacy made up of slaveholding and non-slaveholding States is, in the nature of things, the strongest of all popular governments. African slavery has been, and is, eminently con