Lincoln In the Greely letter.....

[alexjack]

...........of August 22nd 1862, Lincoln said, " If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it." Was he saying that if the Confederate states had offered to lay down their arms and come back into the Union on condition that they kept their slaves, he would have agreed to that?

 

[AndyHall]

At that point in the war, he would have been forced to, regardless of his own personal views regarding slavery.

But of course, the slaveholding states would have been able to keep their chattel anyway if they had not seceded in 1860-61. So it's not really plausible that what they would have been able or willing to lay down their arms and come back into the Union in the summer of 1862.

ETA: Here's a cartoon from 1862 lampooning what it would take to get the South back into the Union. Jeff Davis (left), his coat pockets stuffed with pistols and with a whip tucked under his arm, chides Brother Jonathan, an early representation of the United States: "Well Jonathan, if you agree to bear all the expenses of the war, and on top of that let me impose on you the old burden of slavery, while I hold the chain and the whip, I'll put up my weapons for a while and we'll have the 'Union as it was' only a great deal more so." Library of Congress.

 

[alexjack]

So it's not really plausible that what they would have been able or willing to lay down their arms and come back into the Union in the summer of 1862.View attachment 157917

Thanks for your answer Andy. So did he say that only because he knew it could never happen?

 

[Carronade]

That is what he said, although we might consider whether a line in a letter to a newspaper publisher, even one as prominent as Greeley, constitutes a legal commitment.

I agree with Andy that it's unlikely, but let's consider: when they first seceded, many of the rebels questioned whether the federal government would even resist them, let alone be able to resist effectively. Most southerners took for granted that they would easily whip the Yankees if it did come to a confrontation. The men who fired on Fort Sumter certainly did not consider that they were bringing down on themselves the wrath of a powerful, determined nation.

A year later, it was evident that the Federals were willing and able to fight. The border states had been lost, followed by most of Tennessee, New Orleans, much of the Carolina coast, and substantial parts of Virginia itself. No significant territory once lost had been regained by the Confederacy. The blockade had cut off most of their overseas commerce. The southern economy was already suffering. Huge, bloody battles had been fought, greater than any in the nation's history heretofore. The Army of Northern Virginia was holding its own, but Confederate arms had little fortune anywhere else; one army had already surrendered, at Fort Donelson. They were in for a long, hard, bloody war which they couldn't be sure of winning. An alternative might start to look appealing.

 

[alexjack]

I wonder did the Confederate leadership know of the contents of that letter.

 

[Carronade]

I think the "some, all, or none" formula was a sincere expression of Lincoln's beliefs. Of course it was also preparing the ground for the Emancipation Proclamation, but that "some" was based on the idea that "none" had already been offered and rejected ("all", including the border states and territory under Union control, was not yet on the table).

It's often said a war once started is hard to stop, but in truth many wars have ended with a return to the status quo ante, or with one or both sides settling for considerably less than they had gone to war for. Indeed the status quo ante may constitute a victory for one side. Lincoln's original and primary goal was nothing more than preserving the Union as it had been when he was elected; if that was achieved, it could be considered to justify both the losses to date and the avoidance of further losses.

 

[Bruce Vail]

...........of August 22nd 1862, Lincoln said, " If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it." Was he saying that if the Confederate states had offered to lay down their arms and come back into the Union on condition that they kept their slaves, he would have agreed to that?

Yes, but that sentiment was moot by the time of the Greeley letter.

We know from Seward's diary (and other sources) that Lincoln had already decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation at the time that Lincoln wrote to Greeley. So he was playing word games with Greeley to help shore up Greeley's support.

And Lincoln was always a wily rhetorician. He writes "If I could save the union...," which rather pointedly avoids the question of the whether the US Congress or rest of the Republican Party would go along with a "peace at any price" proposal. Greeley was, of course, a committed abolitionist, so there was no question that he would ever support any peace initiative that left slavery completely untouched.

 

[Drew]

I wonder did the Confederate leadership know of the contents of that letter.

Of course they did. It was published in many a newspaper. Part of the point of the letter, IMO, was to assuage growing concern that the war was being fought over slavery and not preservation of Union. The former was not a popular cause in many quarters.

 

[alexjack]

Thanks to everyone for your replies, each one made me stop and think. Thanks also for the courtesy in no one making an issue of the fact that in the title I misspelled Greeley.

 

[Republican Blues]

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.

Abraham Lincoln

This could explain alot of what Lincoln said to folks...

 

[AndyHall]

Thanks for your answer Andy. So did he say that only because he knew it could never happen?

No, I believe he was sincere -- he had a very clear vision about what he could and could not do as president, and saw restoration of the Union as his paramount objective. Here's the critical part of that letter, to see his context and intent (my emphasis):

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.​

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.​

If there was any unstated agenda there, it was that he was surely already turning over in his mind the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, that came about a month later. But Lincoln undoubtedly knew that, in writing to Greeley, this letter would very likely become public, and so it was an opportunity to lay out his position clearly, without tipping his intentions going forward.

 

[AndyHall]

I wonder did the Confederate leadership know of the contents of that letter.

It was published in the Alexandria Gazette on Saturday, August 23, and a bunch of other newspapers around the country over the next week, so I'm going to say Davis' government knew about it by Monday morning, if not sooner.

 

[alexjack]

Thank you Andy, I'm much obliged. One more question and then I'll not bother you further. Do you think the Emancipation Proclamation, issued at the time it was, was primarily more of 'saving the Union' than a definite intention to announce his determination to free the slaves?

 

[AndyHall]

Thank you Andy, I'm much obliged. One more question and then I'll not bother you further. Do you think the Emancipation Proclamation, issued at the time it was, was primarily more of 'saving the Union' than a definite intention to announce his determination to free the slaves?

For Lincoln personally, I believe it was a happy confluence of both his war aims (to defeat the rebellion) and his long-standing desire to end the practice of chattel bondage. He probably guessed, correctly, that once emancipation was made official policy of the U.S. war effort, there was no going back, no way to get that genie back in the proverbial bottle.

It also helped to slam the door on possible active intervention by the UK on the side of the Confederacy, since much of British foreign policy over the previous decades had been devoted to curtailing the international slave trade and dealing with emancipation in its own colonies in the Americas. It would have been exceedingly difficult for Palmerston's government formally to ally itself with the Confederacy in any case, but especially so after the EP.

Lincoln had been pushed by officers like Fremont in the West and Butler at Fortress Monroe recognize that slave labor was a key competent of the Confederate war effort, just as much as southern railroads and foundries and mills were. And since the Confederates themselves viewed enslaved persons as another form of property, that provided sufficient justification for taking formal and official action to remove those resources from the hands of rebellion. but Lincoln well knew that the EP was only as effective as the Union armies could retake ground in the rebellious states, and could only be enforced by Federal occupation.

Lincoln also understood that the EP was a wartime exigency that would almost certainly not stand legal scrutiny once the war was over, and the Confederate states (presumably) were returned to Union. That's why, at the end of the war, he pushed hard to pass the Thirteenth Amendment that settled the question fundamentally.

In many respects, I think we Americans hail the Emancipation Proclamation more than we should, because it was the Thirteenth Amendment that actually accomplished the deed.

 

[alexjack]

@AndyHall. Thank you.

 

[chucksr]

It was a purely political gambit to clarify the position of the Republican Party before an election. It was a "safe" statement since the war was never about slavery in those Confederate states but about the expansion of slavery into the territories and the eventual loss of future slave states in those territories and thus, the loss of pro-slavery political power.
Of course Lincoln could offer that "peace plan", knowing full well it would never satisfy South. It was the expansion of slavery that created the firestorm of war--if the peculiar institution could not be practiced in newly created states then the slaveholders knew that abolition by constitutional amendment was on the horizon.

 

[Bruce Vail]

It was a purely political gambit to clarify the position of the Republican Party before an election. It was a "safe" statement since the war was never about slavery in those Confederate states but about the expansion of slavery into the territories and the eventual loss of future slave states in those territories and thus, the loss of pro-slavery political power.
Of course Lincoln could offer that "peace plan", knowing full well it would never satisfy South. It was the expansion of slavery that created the firestorm of war--if the peculiar institution could not be practiced in newly created states then the slaveholders knew that abolition by constitutional amendment was on the horizon.

Yes, this is right. The letter should be seen as an effort by Lincoln to prepare the way politically for the Emancipation Proclamation. In August 1862 it was too late to restore the Union "as it was" and Lincoln was well aware of that. He wanted the letter circulated to reassure the public that his motives were pure, constitutionally speaking.