7 History
We cannot escape history.
—Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was losing his customary patience. The Army of the Potomac had quickly advanced toward the Rappahannock but now seemed stalled. “I do not clearly see the prospect of any more rapid movements,” the president complained, perhaps worrying that Burnside had turned out no better than McClellan. Not realizing how the pontoons had delayed the enterprise, Lincoln requested an immediate parley with Burnside.1 On the evening of November 26 the two met aboard the steamer Baltimore in Aquia Creek and spent the next morning discussing campaign plans. Burnside reported that most of Lee’s army was “at and near” Fredericksburg but still proposed crossing the Rappahannock and attacking the Rebels. Because such an operation would be admittedly risky, Lincoln suggested gathering 25,000 men south of the Rappahannock at Port Royal and an additional force on the north bank of the Pamunkey River. The main army could then cross the Rappahannock while the two smaller forces prevented Lee from retreating into the Richmond defenses. Both Halleck and Burnside objected that this would take too much time, and so the idea was dropped. The country could wait until Burnside was ready, Lincoln supposedly said, and Halleck would not force the general into a battle prematurely. Yet there is little question Burnside felt political pressure to launch an attack. Perhaps his sense of inadequacy or fear of never measuring up to McClellan along with his frustration over the pontoons now made him suddenly cautious.2
Lincoln had attempted to keep this meeting secret, but on November 28 the New York Times reported the trip to Aquia Creek and two days later revealed that the president had conferred with Burnside. Shortly after his return to Washington, Lincoln appeared depressed. Talking with some women visitors, he sadly conceded, “I have no word of encouragement to give.”3
The army’s mood was decidedly mixed. Lingering rumors that McClellan would assume command of an army operating south of the James River and complaints about “trickster politicians” could still be heard in the camps. “McClellan is removed because he failed to move where Halleck desires,” Michigan private Edward Taylor opined. “And have we the assurance that Burnside will be supported by the Administration and that his appointment is not a cover to something further?” This “temporary appointment” would likely pave the way for the ascension of a radical such as John C. Frémont. “I have no faith now,” Taylor concluded glumly.4
Although some soldiers feared that the administration expected too much from Burnside, many still expressed faith in their new commander. In striking contrast to McClellan, the general’s informality and lack of pretense continued to win friends. Expecting a forward movement soon, a veteran of the general’s faithful Ninth Corps affectionately praised “Old Burny” for “managing things right.”5
Soldiers’ expectations ran the gamut, and the range of opinion suggested both continued frustration and apprehension. Hearing that Burnside was conferring with Lincoln, a New Yorker simply wanted matters settled before the weather got worse. Others were already feeling the effects of the late season. “The day is cold and raw, and I have the blues,” an Ohio colonel confessed. “I almost wish I had resigned. Surely, I have no relish for this winter campaign.”6 Delays were inevitable in military life, as veterans well knew. Even talk of winter quarters or a thirty-day armistice almost seemed more depressing. “I am sick of the war and so is the entire army,” groused a Massachusetts private.7
Sheer uncertainty buffeted emotions. “We are liable at any moment to be called upon either to advance or skedaddle,” a Rhode Islander advised his sister. “We have been here a week now looking at the rebles like two bulldogs neither one daring to bark.” That some men described the roads as dry and fit for campaigning while others did little but complain about mud suggests wide variations in mood and morale. A great battle seemed likely to begin any day—but then again maybe not.8
On the other side of the river Confederate confidence soared as the last brigades from Jackson’s corps arrived. Soldiers exulted over press reports of political pressure on Burnside.9 Official Richmond remained convinced that the Army of Northern Virginia could easily defend the capital. Lee had foiled the Yankees thus far, and should he soundly whip them again, the always sanguine Richmond Daily Enquirer predicted, the Army of Northern Virginia might even capture Washington. An armistice and early peace would quickly follow.10
In the meantime Lee’s soldiers were throwing up a few earthworks and preparing artillery positions in the hills surrounding Fredericksburg. Though much of the work took place at night, the Federals could see the results each morning. A “warm reception”—in the soldiers’ euphemistic language—would obviously await any bluecoats crossing the river.11
Republican editors back home paid little heed to such obstacles, and their coverage of the army’s advance remained upbeat if not wildly optimistic. A large map labeled “Burnside before Fredericksburg” appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune. One small-town Pennsylvania newspaper even offered the ominously familiar headline “On to Richmond.” Harper’s Weekly, however, sounded a cautious note: “If we do not take Richmond before Christmas, the Army of the Potomac will lose more men from disease in their winter-quarters than have perished in the bloodiest battle of the war.”12 Should Burnside fail to achieve a complete victory, he appeared fated for disaster.
The Army of the Potomac’s apparent halt along the Rappahannock, however, failed to dampen popular enthusiasm for this latest offensive. “The Confederate chiefs are obviously bewildered,” a Connecticut editor wrote hopefully. By the end of November, news of the pontoon problems appeared in the press, and for the time being Quartermaster Gen. Montgomery Meigs became the favorite whipping boy.13 Republicans tried to quell their own impatience and defended Burnside by claiming that once the campaign succeeded, no one would remember these momentary delays. Yet as one radical editor warned, destroying Rebel armies—not merely capturing Rebel cities—remained the key to victory.14 For civilians and soldiers alike, the demands for what a Massachusetts recruit termed “no more dilly-dallying with rebels” could not be ignored. Democrats sounded their own discordant notes, charging that Burnside operated under direct orders from Chase, Stanton, and Halleck. A New York editor even discerned a return to the poky McClellan strategy.15
With the army apparently stalled, some correspondents remained in Washington and missed reporting the campaign when the War Department stopped issuing passes for civilians, but reporters already at Burnside’s headquarters sent dispatches describing the Confederates’ defensive preparations. Exactly what Rebel forces had already arrived remained unclear. As usual Jackson’s exact location was of prime interest, and the Confederate positions appeared impressive. Taking Fredericksburg would be “the most stupendous undertaking which has been presented to any military commander during the war,” a New York Times reporter warned. Even among Republicans, doubts multiplied. Newspaper dispatches lost their breathless quality, and editorial comments carried an edge of despondency.16
Under pressure to advance but in danger of being mauled, Burnside appeared to have no good options. The tardy pontoons had thwarted his original plans, but even his friends were becoming nervous and impatient. Caught in the political and military crossfire, he might have to consider a different strategy.
* * *
On Thanksgiving Day Burnside returned from the meeting with Lincoln for a pleasant reunion with his wife. Yet for other soldiers, the holiday seemed much like any other day in camp.17 There was guard duty, picket patrol, and brigade inspections—the usual routine. Officers might cancel drill, but aside from some extra mail and packages, there was not much to celebrate. On such a “cheerless day,” a Maine corporal recalled, only the pranksters managed to escape the gloom and loneliness.18
In many camps, of course, there were religious services and other ceremonies. For New Englanders especially, observing at least some Thanksgiving traditions became an obsession. Chaplains offered prayers for peace and brief sermons on the meaning of the holiday. A regimental band played patriotic airs. In some camps men fell into formation for a reading of their governor’s Thanksgiving proclamation. To cynical veterans such activities seemed poor substitutes for a regular Thanksgiving dinner.19
But this was the middle of the nineteenth century, and such affairs could not be complete without some speech-making. Officers waxed eloquent about the sacred Union cause or warned the men against various temptations. Chaplains urged the boys to stay sober and tried to focus their minds on gratitude and other elevated sentiments. Yet on this blustery day the men most appreciated any speaker who kept his remarks brief. Having listened to two sermons dealing with matters such as self-sacrifice, the nobility of military service, and the evils of swearing, a Massachusetts officer charitably decided that “both... preachers labored as hard to find cause for thankfulness” as the men did.20
Thanksgiving in Camp (Harper’s Weekly, November 29, 1862)
Gratitude did not come easily for soldiers with growling stomachs. That there was nothing to eat but hardtack and salt pork became a common Thanksgiving Day refrain in diaries and letters. Because supply problems still plagued the army, some regiments lacked even these staples and so “gave themselves unreservedly to the exhilarating and pleasant recreation of d—ing the quartermaster.” A few paragons tried to be thankful for army rations; others found humor in the situation. Officers in the 13th New York held a “special” dinner, with each man bringing hardtack prepared in a different way. A Massachusetts regiment offered a choice of entrées: “salt pork stuffed with hard crackers . . . or a slice of pork between two crackers.”21
Sarcasm assuaged hunger pangs only briefly. “Thanksgiving day—full of memories, but turkeyless to us,” a Rhode Islander remarked. A Maine recruit noted how men from his regiment had raided a butchering yard, where they scraped fat from entrails and even ate lungs. “While our friends at home suffer through roast turkey, mince pie, and plum pudding,” he wrote, “we cram ourselves on air pudding.” But in the end there was nothing amusing about a Thanksgiving Day spent in a dreary camp eating barely digestible food. “The boys were mighty blue,” a Massachusetts lieutenant confided to his sister. “I was homesick as a dog.”22
Many enlisted men tried to round up a respectable Thanksgiving meal, but their efforts usually fell far short. A few ginger cookies, shortcakes with molasses, or a small apple pie seemed like special treats.23 Soldiers often settled for a lot less: “rather ancient” chickens; “flat, sour, heavy biscuits,” two dozen for 50 cents in Falmouth; soup made from desiccated vegetables; a cow’s heart; and the “rarity” of boiled tripe. A tablecloth thrown over a makeshift table recaptured in some small way the atmosphere of Thanksgiving at home. Although a raw Michigan recruit considered his dinner of pork and beans the finest he had eaten in camp, “it was the first time in many years that I had been without a piece of turkey.” What rankled even more was to watch generals and other officers, as one Massachusetts volunteer put it, “faring like princes.” To see and worse yet smell the succulent geese, turkey, and other fixings while breaking your teeth on hard bread sent spirits drooping.24
Yet for some soldiers more than for many other Americans, the historical meaning of Thanksgiving also weighed on their minds. With a tinge of Calvinistic fatalism, these men appreciated the preservation of their own lives and the continued health of their families. “We are to day an unbroken Circle upon probationary ground,” a New Hampshire sergeant cautioned his wife.25 How easy to envision the family gathering around the table for the traditional holiday feast or attending a Thanksgiving church service. Whatever the tensions and problems his folks had faced, a soldier in camp remembered a room filled to overflowing with love and affection. The men regaled comrades with old stories, recalled holiday traditions, and described what they would be eating back home. A New York private jokingly commissioned an older brother to devour his share of the family dinner. The pleasant sketch appearing in some illustrated newspapers of an extended family crowded around a Thanksgiving table groaning with rich food contrasted starkly with the spartan realities of army life. Yet the troops also tried to imagine the war at an end, the family circle restored, and everyone grateful for the blessings of peace.26
On November 27, 1862, such blessings seemed far away. The desolation of the Virginia countryside was depressing enough, but so was the condition of many regiments. To “see the poor fellows around you dying, worn out by marches and disease” only added to the ennui. “I ought to be happy,” a New York lieutenant told a friend back home. “I use to be the gayest, happiest, jolliest dog of all.” Broken in health and spirits, he now felt “as unhappy and miserable” as anyone in the regiment. He could not help but think that the northern people had somehow wronged him, McClellan, and the entire army. But he vowed to stick it out and like many others discovered unexpected reservoirs of patriotism within himself.27
For the northern public this Thanksgiving became a great celebration of religious nationalism. “Christianity and civilization are engaged in deadly conflict with the paganism and barbarity of feudal ages,” declared one small-town editor. Others agreed that the fate of liberty hung in the balance. Yet the usual catchphrases could not conceal the disputed nature of these ideas. Republicans emphasized the wickedness of the rebellion and the need to end partisan strife, while Democrats prayed for what an Indianapolis editor termed the “complete restoration of constitutional liberty” and thanked the Almighty for the triumph of conservatism in the recent elections.28
The more general hope was that the war would serve some larger purpose by stimulating public virtue. As Governor Edwin Morgan of New York observed in his Thanksgiving proclamation, even war “does not shut out all sunshine from our homes.” People continued to work and love while the “storm without makes them gather closer together about the family hearth. With less of egotism and of worldly pride than before, chastened by adversity, they are happier than ever.” The war would weed out arrogance and luxury, but both the theology and the politics remained confused.29 After all, in the view of many orthodox Christians such a cataclysm had to originate in sin. Some clergy lamented the prevalence of individual vices such as swearing, Sabbath-breaking, and intemperance, while others railed against national iniquities such as moneygrubbing, political corruption, and especially slavery. Even conservatives came to believe that God would use the war to end human bondage. The people should rejoice on this Thanksgiving Day, Henry Ward Beecher declared, because the nation would soon be freed from this grievous offense.30
Families with loved ones in the army clung all that more fervently to holiday traditions. They attended church, gathered around the table, and munched on the usual apples, candy, and nuts after dinner; but how hard it was to enter the spirit of the occasion. Catherine Eaton told her husband how they had likely “thought of each other at the same moment many times” on Thanksgiving Day. Other women carried food to army hospitals or served meals to the poor in some of the nation’s worst neighborhoods. If people would contrast the prosperity of New York with the desolation of Virginia, a Dutch Reformed clergyman suggested, they would count their many blessings. This surely belabored the obvious and offered cold comfort to families who had lost loved ones, feared they soon would, or struggled along without a breadwinner. Two Philadelphia ministers feebly advised their parishioners to be thankful that things were no worse.31 Yet Thanksgiving had originated as a celebration of deliverance from hunger and despair, and many Americans must have wondered as the year 1862 neared its end when their deliverance from the horrors of civil war would come.
God sometimes seemed so far away. The war sorely tested civilians, but it threatened to consume the soldiers’ faith. Notably pious people were naturally much concerned about the state of religion throughout the country but especially worried about the army. Would the men hold fast to their spiritual moorings, or would camp life and battle destroy their moral character? The war slowed the onslaught of secular influences; soldiers and civilians increasingly relied on religious language to describe their daily struggles with separation, danger, and death. Clergy and laity alike invoked God’s power to restore order to increasingly chaotic lives.32
On a mid-November day two members of the 19th Indiana strolled through a pine grove and discussed the Lord’s tender mercies. Such simple piety that emphasized the essentials of faith suited many soldiers because the war raised some baffling theological questions. It must be part of God’s plan to be in this “miserable forsaken country,” a New York private concluded while standing picket along the Rappahannock. Men read the Bible and various religious tracts for guidance about their role in the country’s unfolding destiny. The sacred history, especially in the Old Testament, gave individual sacrifice not only a larger but also a transcendent meaning. But this relationship became easily muddled in the men’s minds. Despite all the carnage of the past year, a belief that the Lord protected individuals from harm persisted and made prayer even more essential. Yet the men prayed not only for their own safety but also for the spiritual welfare of their families and for the Almighty’s blessing on their commanders. That God answered such prayers remained a cornerstone of wartime faith.33
But in a righteous cause, where were the Christian soldiers? Sunday seemed like any other day in the army. For some men, simply to enjoy a quiet Sabbath at home became a humble but profound wish. The devout missed hearing church bells, dressing up for services, and even listening to exhortatory sermons. The trouble was that camp life hardly inspired spiritual discipline. “My experience goes to convince me that religion stands a poor show for increase in the Army,” a Maine private lamented.34
Because “man and beast” needed the “prescribed weekly rest,” Lincoln ordered that “Sunday labor in the Army and Navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.” His language suggests more practical than spiritual considerations, but the president duly acknowledged the “Divine will” and called for the “orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men.” Although some regiments began holding Sunday services, and the New York Times applauded the president’s effort to safeguard soldiers’ health and morals, chaplains noted that indifference to the Sabbath had already taken root and were doubtful about the Lord ever blessing an army that so often marched on Sunday.35
This is not to say that religious obligations were completely ignored. To the contrary, Sunday services took place despite the cold weather and over the sound of drums and axes echoing through the camps. And they were held regardless of rude interruptions. After rowdies disrupted a prayer meeting, a New Jersey chaplain had to chastise one overzealous worshiper for swearing and then thrashing the ringleader. Such an episode illustrates not only the anomalous status of religion in the army but also the difficulties of spiritual leadership. At first colonels selected regimental chaplains. Eventually Congress required that only ordained clergy be appointed but also cut their pay from $1,700 to $1,200 a year.36
Many soldiers enjoyed the Sunday services in part because the chaplains often preached from texts with direct military applications and labored to fortify their listeners for the trials of army life. As with the Confederates, the most respected Federal chaplains held prayer meetings, visited the hospitals, and shared in the common hardships.37 The press often portrayed chaplains as shiftless cowards who hid in their tents when it was cold—“religious shirks,” according to a Hoosier correspondent. Instead of admiration, chaplains faced ridicule and became the butt of practical jokes even from pious soldiers. According to one thoughtful Pennsylvania volunteer, these supposed men of God frequently abandoned their posts and seldom exhibited a character consistent with their “high calling.” But then the officers with their incessant profanity hardly set a good example, and this same Pennsylvanian could only bemoan the “low ebb to which religion and morality have descended in the army.”38
According to Pennsylvania chaplain Alexander M. Stewart, it was an “uphill business to accomplish anything for Jesus in the camp.” The seeming indifference of the men and their commanders was a constant trial. “What are the abominations of savages and heathens compared with the wickedness of our army?” Stewart asked, a question many of his colleagues would echo.39
Whether the benefits justified the costs of supporting chaplains was debatable, claimed one coolly practical staff officer, especially when the successes tended to be both small and short lived. Chaplain Andrew Jackson Hartsock of the 133rd Pennsylvania persuaded his men to burn two decks of cards but recognized that soldiers without much reading matter easily got bored, quickly tired of the same old conversations around the campfires, and gambled to “while the time away.” He formed the “Regimental Christian Union” by compiling a list of men who strove to live a purer life and “escape the wrath to come.”40 If organization were a key to military success, perhaps it could yield spiritual fruits as well.
* * *
Chaplain Hartsock and his colleagues usually focused on personal piety, and certainly Lincoln’s order had recognized the importance of Sabbath observance; but the president increasingly used religious language to address public questions, most notably slavery. Although the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had been couched in starkly military terms, Lincoln had earlier assured a group of visiting clergy, “Whatever shall appear to be God’s will, I will do.”41 Moral and pragmatic considerations could not be easily separated anyway, and the political calendar would force the president to confront the question again soon in his annual message to Congress. Given the delay in the Army of the Potomac’s advance on Richmond and the recent elections, the president himself needed consolation.
Not so the victorious Democrats, who now pressed the administration to withdraw the Emancipation Proclamation. The northern people were fighting for the Union, not for abolition, they argued, and Lincoln should heed the voters’ message. The Confederates seemed ready to negotiate if only the administration adopted a more reasonable stance on slavery. Of course when argument failed, there was always racial fear, and conservative editors continued to warn—in often lurid fashion—that the northern states would soon be inundated with former slaves.42
Republicans were vulnerable on this last point and beat a hasty retreat. Even as the Chicago Tribune ridiculed reports about an impending “nigger invasion” of the North, editor Joseph Medill maintained that the Emancipation Proclamation was primarily a means to suppress the rebellion and secure free institutions for white people. Defending Lincoln’s policy as a purely military measure defined the Republican mainstream. Both publicly and privately, bellwether moderate Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, made it clear that loyal people would support the destruction of slavery strictly on the grounds of necessity. In short, no one could say abolitionists controlled the Republican Party.43
Antislavery zealots feared losing ground after the elections and worried that Lincoln would disappoint them once again. In their view this hardly seemed the time for caution or retreat. Emancipation was what Confederates most feared, and the time was ripe to destroy the South’s landed aristocracy. Any further delay, Frederick Douglass warned, would only play into the hands of Jefferson Davis. But would the president have enough backbone to forge ahead?44
All sides tried to gauge the army’s reaction to this debate, but that was no easy task given the range of opinion. A minority of soldiers agreed with the abolitionists that emancipation would strike a deathblow against a rebellion concocted by wealthy slaveholders. Maj. Elijah Cavins of the 14th Indiana denied favoring social equality or intermarriage but considered slavery a “relic of barbarism” deeply offensive to God. He had come to believe that all people have the right to pursue happiness and that even the mostly kindly treated slaves “dream of liberty.”45
More typically, however, soldiers appeared largely indifferent to the moral dimensions of the issue and described themselves as single-minded patriots fighting to preserve the Union. Perhaps concerned about the effect of slavery on white labor, they cared little about the condition of the slaves. A fair number of men expressed a vitriolic hostility to both emancipation and black people, blaming abolitionist agitation for prolonging the war. Let those who “howler about the evils of slavery or the injustices of the slave holder, come and serve as a private soldier for one month and I will bet One thousand dollars they will be as willing to settle this war as they are to abuse the Army for not making forward movements,” a Pennsylvania private informed a judge back home. Accusing Greeley, Sumner, and other radicals of manufacturing “political capital,” a disgusted Massachusetts recruit claimed that not one in fifty of his comrades would reenlist after seeing so many lives needlessly sacrificed. The war, he insisted, would likely create a new political party hostile to wire-pullers, speculators, and abolitionists—a party that would receive overwhelming support from men in uniform.46
Most soldiers, however, were neither ardent abolitionists nor diehard reactionaries. They clearly were not fighting for black equality or primarily to rid the country of slavery, though many eventually came to accept Lincoln’s pragmatic arguments for emancipation. Direct exposure to slavery in Virginia sometimes had a profound effect on political attitudes.47 Slavery had obviously blighted the state. The run-down farms and sallow-faced children all bespoke a society dominated by haughty aristocrats who degraded white labor. The mental and moral inferiority of southerners, an article of faith for many Yankees, was there for all to see. If nothing else the war should humble what a Pennsylvania chaplain called the “towering pride of old Virginia.” Idle planters and their pampered children would soon learn to live and work in a society freed from the incubus of slavery.48
As for the slaves, many soldiers hardly knew what to make of these strange people. Pity, condescension, bewilderment, and a certain fascination shaped their reactions. The Federals either emphasized appalling conditions in the slave quarters or claimed that physical mistreatment had been greatly exaggerated. Evidence of racial mixing struck soldiers as both exotic and frightening. Slaves, they discovered, were a varied lot. Many seemed appallingly ignorant; some appeared deathly afraid of the Federals; others expressed strong religious convictions and showed remarkable knowledge about the war.49
Refugee slaves often worked in the Federal camps. “I have got me a little nig & am going to try and civilize him,” Burnside’s aide Daniel Reed Larned bragged to his sister. Other officers considered blacks improvident and comical but nevertheless welcomed their labor. Rather like the slaveholders, they did not see black people as fully human and sometimes used them for sadistic amusement. The most popular prank involved grabbing slaves of various ages, throwing them onto a blanket, and having a dozen or more strong men toss them as high as twenty feet in the air. “It was confoundedly mean,” a New York private admitted, “but I laughed myself double at it.” In the 35th Massachusetts a captain made a man named Adam stand on his head. The captain then whacked him with a sword to bring him “back upon his feet again in double quick time.” Such antics, one lieutenant casually recorded in his diary, made the men “nearly split our sides with laughter.”50 Yankees sometimes proved to be cruel emancipators, and former bondsmen must have found “freedom” to be a mixed blessing.
The Army of Northern Virginia also had “servants,” but there was nothing ambivalent about their status. Human bondage was a given, a part of daily life, and remained what Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens had called it more than a year earlier: the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy. In a letter to his father a North Carolina captain added a request for a slave to a list that included towels and handkerchiefs. In late November the Engineer Bureau asked for approximately 4,500 slaves from fourteen counties to build more fortifications around Richmond. At the same time the Tredegar Iron Works advertised for 500 black men to work in coal mines and at the furnaces. Notices of runaway slaves and black crime, including a counterfeiting ring involving one of the president’s house servants, filled the newspapers.51 Thus slaves remained an indispensable, omnipresent, and troublesome property.
Classical defenses of slavery continued to appear during the war and remained at the heart of Confederate intellectual life. According to the Charleston Mercury slavery had produced the highly developed sense of honor that defined the southern character, a habit of command that brought success in politics and, more importantly, victory on the battlefield. Tales of faithful slaves protecting their masters and mistresses from Yankee marauders became staples of wartime propaganda. Even those bold souls who called for reform—such as a convention of Episcopal bishops who urged slaveholders to encourage marriage, to avoid breaking up families, and to offer religious instruction—were buttressing rather than subverting the institution. Some Confederate soldiers, without exploring the paradox, claimed to be fighting for both liberty and slavery.52
Refusing to concede the moral high ground, slaveholders generally dismissed the Emancipation Proclamation as another example of cant and hypocrisy. Given the treatment of free blacks in the North, who could believe that the money-grubbing Yankees cared a whit about the poor slaves? One Richmond newspaper derisively reported, “A negro proposes that President Davis should retaliate upon Lincoln’s proclamation by declaring all the Northern negroes slaves after the first of January next.”53 Yet beneath such swagger fear had always lurked. Attempts to ridicule the Emancipation Proclamation clashed with the commonly held view that the Federals were really attempting to incite slave insurrections. No less an authority than President Davis himself raised the alarm about the “horrors of a servile war”; state legislatures moved to strengthen internal security. A frightened Virginia woman worried that white people might soon be massacred, but her husband, an artillery sergeant in Lee’s army, tried to reassure her that the slaves would not dare strike in the middle of a war.54 Whether this tortured logic relieved her mind is doubtful. Nevertheless the threat of emancipation inspired Confederates to fight all that much harder for southern independence.
For Yankee and Rebel alike, however, talk about the future of slavery was little more than poorly informed speculation. Much still depended on Lincoln’s course. Even the president’s critics gave him credit for honesty and purity of heart, but by the fall of 1862 many people were questioning his steadiness of purpose. After long refusing to move against slavery, Lincoln had suddenly issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Yet now, given the more conservative political climate, would he revert to a more cautious policy? Lincoln appeared more depressed than ever. Even his customary humor carried with it an air of ineffable sadness. “His hair is grizzled, his gait more stooping, his countenance sallow, and there is a sunken deathly look about the large cavernous eyes,” a frequent visitor to the White House noted.55 Despite unsolicited advice from many quarters, Lincoln kept his own council.
On December 1, the opening day of the third session of the 37th Congress, the Reverend Byron Sunderland, chaplain of the Senate, prayed that the Emancipation Proclamation would “inspire some salutary fear in the rebels of the South [and in] . . . the false and lying prophets of the North.” Both houses then awaited the reading of the president’s annual message. Lincoln began with the fatalistic observation that the “Almighty” had not yet chosen to “bless us with a return of peace” and would do so “in His own good time,” then followed with brief comments on the war, the usual summary of foreign relations, and synopses of department reports.56
The most significant section of his address dealt with the future of slavery. Lincoln still favored compensated emancipation and had not abandoned the chimerical notion of colonizing former slaves in Latin America. He proposed a constitutional amendment to put slavery on the road to extinction by the end of the century. These measures, he argued, would prove much less costly in lives and treasure than continuing a bloody civil war. Lincoln did not believe that free blacks should be forced to leave the country and, seeking to assuage northern racial fears, argued that most would remain in the southern states. Yet he did not present the various proposals as a substitute for the Emancipation Proclamation, and that became a source of confusion. He closed this cautious state paper, which seemed to take several different tacks, with a rhetorical flourish: “Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial, through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.... In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.”57 As if replying to Confederate propagandists, the president linked national honor to emancipation. But how to square gradual and compensated emancipation (essentially a peacetime proposal) with the Emancipation Proclamation (a measure born of military necessity) was by no means clear. Often quoted in the future, the message as a whole struck some discordant notes for the present.
The political reaction, even among those with strong opinions about slavery, was mixed and contradictory. A certain amount of abolitionist outrage was to be expected. William Lloyd Garrison excoriated Lincoln as a man “manifestly without moral vision” whose public papers “all bear the same marks of crudeness, incongruity, feebleness, and lack of method.” Henry Ward Beecher, the famed antislavery preacher, warned the administration to stand by the Emancipation Proclamation or be destroyed. Frederick Douglass and other black leaders deplored talk of colonization. Some abolitionists, however, muted their criticism and expressed their reservations about compensated emancipation in remarkably mild language. Lincoln would still do the right thing on January 1, 1863, they hoped.58
There were no essential contradictions between the message and the Emancipation Proclamation, staunch Republicans maintained. Horace Greeley dusted off that old bogey the “slave power,” an idea that had long papered over strategic and tactical differences within the Republican Party. Editors praised Lincoln generally without mentioning any particular parts of the message or lauded his honesty in contrast to the Democrats’ disloyalty.59
For sure, doubts about gradual and compensated emancipation—decried as a “weak and absurd scheme” by newly elected Ohio congressman James A. Garfield—could not be easily suppressed. Even if the Rebel leaders would accept this plan, Congress would never appropriate the necessary funds. The message might contradict the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, but few Republicans seemed ready to repudiate the president’s policies, however unclear or wavering they might appear.60
Some conservative newspapers applauded Lincoln’s renewed call for gradual and compensated emancipation. Several editors praised his “statesmanship,” duly noting the radical Republicans’ dismay. The president’s moderate proposals might win over disaffected voters and even become the basis for a negotiated peace.61 Perhaps fearing just such an eventuality and riding high from their recent victories, leading Democrats would have none of it. Blasting Lincoln’s obsession with “the inevitable nigger,” a Rochester, New York, editor deplored the administration’s indifference to the suffering of the soldiers and their families. Racial phobias continued to carry their political weight, especially in the cities and the rural Midwest.62
Confederates saw Lincoln’s message as a sign of Yankee desperation and welcomed divisions among their enemies. “He [Lincoln] is quaking in his knees, evidently, and peace must come soon,” an artillery sergeant confidently predicted. Many white southerners scoffed at compensated emancipation. “What do you say to selling our negro property to old Abe and quitting the war?” Brig. Gen. William Dorsey Pender lightheartedly asked his wife.63
Like many northerners, Confederates hardly knew what to make of Lincoln’s latest proposals. If some thought the president was moderating his course, others believed he remained committed to the Emancipation Proclamation. The message was “full of abolition,” a Richmond editor maintained; it “breathes the same heartless, cold-blooded, and murderous fanaticism” that had caused the war, a Georgia minister sadly noted. Lincoln remained what he always had been: an abolitionist at heart. Moreover, the message overflowed with lies and evasions. Between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the Richmond Daily Whig commented, one could see “the zenith and nadir of the glory of the Great Republic.”64 But no matter whether Rebels saw the Yankees as more desperate or merely fanatical, they remained united in the fervent conviction that they could win their independence.
Of course military events could easily make interpretations of Lincoln’s message irrelevant. As critics pointed out, the president had said little about the war, but soldiers in the Army of the Potomac read the message carefully. Lincoln’s seemingly temperate course had considerable appeal in the ranks, where partisan politics meant little. “It meets my views exactly,” a Pennsylvania private remarked. “It is broad and deep, but yet so simple a child can understand it.” Lincoln’s moderation on slavery drew more support than his lofty rhetoric. As a New Yorker who had objected to the Emancipation Proclamation declared, “I believe in getting rid of slavery at any cost, but think Father Abraham has proposed the wisest plan I have heard yet.”65 More conservative soldiers thought Lincoln had devoted entirely too much attention to slavery. A disgruntled New Yorker complained that white soldiers had to eat hard, moldy bread while fugitive slaves dined on soft bread. Given Lincoln’s apparent commitment to abolition, he seemed “bound to die with the [Republican] party,” a Third Corps volunteer told his parents.66 But it would be many of these same soldiers who would do the dying. And it would be the soldiers who would have the most to say about the immediate course of history, even more than the president.