23 Freedom

The cause of Freedom is the cause of God!
—William Lisle Bowles

January 1, 1863, New Year’s Day: a traditional occasion for letting off steam and taking stock. A Georgia regiment celebrated their individual and collective liberty by drinking rum and racing horses, two activities long associated with freedom-loving American males.¹ As with Christmas, of course, a boisterous celebration at New Year’s might temporarily relieve melancholy, but soldiers and civilians alike still had to live with painful memories of the recent past.

Even optimistic Confederates recalled 1862 as a year of sadness and sorrow. Memories of former comrades lying in shallow graves on some soon-to-be-forgotten field cast a long shadow over efforts to foresee a brighter future. We “tax our ingenuity to devise means of killing each other,” marveled an Alabama lieutenant. Fire-eater Edmund Ruffin worried that the Yankees had gained significant ground and could still muster superior numbers in any engagement. A nurse in Chattanooga, turning to an Old Testament image, wailed that “in every state of our beloved land there has been a temple erected to the insatiate Moloch.”²

Yet the day’s bright sunshine chased away dark thoughts. In brief remarks at Raleigh, North Carolina, Jefferson Davis declared, “The New Year comes in auspiciously for us. It finds us victorious at every point.” The recent triumph of southern arms against overwhelming numbers portended well for the future and fanned hopes for peace. Even though the Yankees had driven her family from their home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, young Sarah Morgan rejoiced that “every hour brings us nearer our freedom.”³

Sarah Morgan’s words were an odd choice for a Confederate, many northerners would have thought, because January 1 would likely bring the final Emancipation Proclamation. To a Pennsylvania sergeant, however, it was just another cold day spent on picket duty. Under such conditions some soldiers simply longed to eat halfway palatable food. “I set with my ars flat on the ground and thought of the past,” Pvt. Philip Piper of the 110th Pennsylvania wrote to a cousin, but he was mostly thinking about his stomach, since his great wish for the New Year was to gorge on sausages and buckwheat cakes at home.⁴

Getting drunk might relieve the tedium, and whiskey had been associated with republican liberty at least since the American Revolution. In some officers’ quarters, especially those of that old Democratic wheelhorse Dan Sickles, whiskey and champagne flowed freely, the latter hardly the drink of robust democracy. Liquor remained a disturbing symbol of male freedom. Drunken revelry not only set a poor tone for camp life but also stirred resentment among enlisted men, who generally endured a bone-dry holiday and disapproving officers. A New Jersey chaplain proudly reported sobriety in his regiment, where men for the first time in some years began the new year with “clear heads and furless tongues.”⁵ Perhaps the unaccustomed mental acuity prompted some serious meditation.

What had all the months of fighting accomplished? For Union soldiers staggered by the Fredericksburg slaughter, talk about needless sacrifices persisted. A Minnesotan’s thoughts were typical: “The South is gaining & the North losing confidence in its cause.” The previous spring the army had been within sight of Richmond’s church spires, but now it languished more than sixty miles away. “We have traversed a country, leaving desolation & graves to mark our track, but we have gained absolutely nothing!” a provost guard lamented. Such sentiments resonated among northern Democrats who readily blamed an abolitionist clique in Washington for all military setbacks.⁶ Nor was the connection between demoralization and partisanship coincidental. The new year would bring not only more fighting but also new arguments over liberty.

The American Civil War was a fight over freedom. But differing ideas—all advanced with determined vigor—about what freedom meant raised hard and troubling questions. Did freedom embrace all people, including those of African descent now owned by others as chattel slaves? Did freedom, North or South, include the privilege to attack government policies and encourage draft resistance? Did freedom encompass the right to break up the American union or permit mobilizing enough power to preserve it? Who was truly fighting for freedom, Yankees or Rebels? Did internal dissent in both sections help preserve or threaten freedom?

The ideal of freedom, so central to the American story, inevitably engendered conflicting definitions and interpretations. State papers, political speeches, newspaper editorials, published sermons, soldiers’ letters, and informal conversations overflowed with talk of “freedom.” A staple of American thought and language, freedom was a concept at once commonplace, sacred, and contentious. The glosses on its meaning were myriad, contradictory, and incendiary. An admixture of morality and Christianity, not to mention Lincoln’s appeals to providence and his recognition of God’s often inscrutable ways, further complicated sorting out definitions and determining which one(s) would at last prevail.⁷ In addition, political power (and military might) remained central to the strident debate. As another costly year of war closed, shrill voices still stumped for particular notions of freedom to the exclusion of others. On New Year’s Day the focus would be on the future of black people, but emancipation remained a bitterly divisive issue.⁸

* * *

As 1862 came to an end, the nation turned again toward the haggard-looking man in the Executive Mansion for an infusion of moral purpose and strategic direction. The Fredericksburg disaster kindled speculation that the president might delay or withhold the final Emancipation Proclamation. A doubtful Harriet Beecher Stowe, for one, had written to Charles Sumner asking if Lincoln would “stand firm” and begging the senator to keep up the political pressure for emancipation. Many abolitionists depressed over battlefield news also worried about the war dragging on and the European powers intervening. Recent events had “raised the hopes of McClellan copperheads,” an irate Michigan citizen warned Senator Chandler. “For God’s sake don’t let the President go back on his proclamation.”⁹

The principle was clear. As Henry Ward Beecher pointed out in one of his stirring addresses, all men regardless of color were entitled to liberty under the law of God. Yet bold declarations could not ease worries about the president’s course. George Stephens, a black body servant and newspaper correspondent, wrote to the New York Anglo-African stressing the importance of issuing a final Emancipation Proclamation as promised. But Stephens had witnessed the carnage at Fredericksburg, and even though he emphatically believed that this defeat should not stay the president’s hand, he understood why Lincoln might have to withhold the proclamation in light of conservative resurgence in the free states. Unlike some radicals, he would not ignore political realities. As Chase pointedly advised veteran abolitionist Wendell Phillips, it would greatly help matters if the abolitionists would sustain antislavery men in Washington and in the cabinet.¹⁰

The Fredericksburg defeat actually elicited some passionate calls for emancipation, but these appeals had distinctly military overtones. Tending the wounded in a Washington hospital, Hannah Ropes emphatically favored “immediate, unreserved emancipation,” a policy obviously coupled with an aggressive war strategy. The opportune moment to destroy slavery had arrived, and the most ardent abolitionists shared Lincoln’s basic belief that right must eventually prevail.¹¹ Whether they yet agreed on the timing of emancipation remained to be seen. In a typically fiery speech in New York, Gerrit Smith declared that all attempts to conciliate Rebels and northern Democrats had failed. Despite Fredericksburg, the rebellion would collapse once the administration dismissed doughface generals and spurned any compromise on the slavery question. Perhaps the Lord had allowed Burnside’s defeat so the sin of slavery could be excised from the nation. Therefore “freedom” for the slaves became the key to victory. Such arguments combined moral fervor with pragmatic rationalization, because emancipation itself would bring several million slaves to the Union side and likely tip the balance in a war that might otherwise remain locked in bloody stalemate.¹²

Conservative Democrats, however, blamed the lack of military progress on Lincoln’s embrace of abolition. Editor James Gordon Bennett charged that antislavery fanatics virtually controlled the War Department and had even been directing Burnside’s moves. “Never did the very name of a radical so stink in the nostrils of the nation,” he fumed. “Unworthy of the name of Americans or of men, these bloodthirsty and ferocious abolitionists should be... expelled from all civilized communities in this world and assigned to the company of Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold in the next.”¹³ It would be easy to dismiss such words as gasconade; but Bennett tied abolition to battlefield losses, and for many disgruntled citizens the connection made sense.

Amidst rising criticism the president largely kept his own counsel. Not until December 29 did he read a draft of the final Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet. On December 31 Chase suggested changes. Lincoln made some modifications, but the final document remained very much his own. During the last week of 1862 the president appeared to have rebounded from both Fredericksburg and the cabinet crisis. Privately he made it clear that he would not retreat from emancipation, though some of his conservative friends still believed that the policy lacked popular support and could well prove ruinous. At one point Lincoln impatiently told a reluctant politician, “You must not expect me to give up the Government without playing my last card.”¹⁴

At 11:00 A.M. on January 1, 1863, the traditional New Year’s reception began at the Executive Mansion. The crush of visitors pushed forward to shake the president’s hand, but one reporter thought Lincoln looked preoccupied. Perhaps he was thinking about Fredericksburg or what to do about Burnside, whom he had met with earlier in the morning. During the reception Seward’s son Frederick carried the parchment copy of the Emancipation Proclamation upstairs. Spreading the document on the cabinet table, Lincoln inked the pen and then hesitated. “I never in my life felt more certain that I am doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he announced, perhaps to reassure both himself and others.¹⁵

In the proclamation Lincoln appealed to both justice and military necessity. Despite the subdued, legalistic tone of the document, the revolutionary implications were striking. Not only did the proclamation declare that slaves in areas currently controlled by the Rebels “henceforward shall be free,” but it also asserted that black men could now fight for their freedom on land and sea.¹⁶

After months of desultory discussions about raising black regiments, Lincoln had now committed the government—at least on paper—to launching the experiment. Yet just as Fredericksburg cast a long shadow over the emancipation question, so, too, did the military stalemate hasten enrollment of Negro troops. After visiting hospitals near Falmouth with Clara Barton, Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts stood ready to “draft every last man who could carry a musket.” Given the heavy losses, increasing desertions, and continuous laments over all the white lives sacrificed in vain, necessity powerfully challenged prejudice.¹⁷

Lincoln had announced two key decisions (emancipation and black troops) in one document, and they hit the country like a thunderclap. On New Year’s Eve in several northern cities, interracial crowds had gathered in churches and public squares anticipating the glorious news. Larger groups assembled the next afternoon and evening awaiting final word. Lingering doubts still mingled with hopes, however. “Thus far the loyal north has trusted him [Lincoln], less for his ability than for his honesty,” Frederick Douglass had commented in an editorial composed in late December but not published until January. The president should not “trifle with the wounds of his bleeding country . . . while the cold earth around Fredericksburg is wet with the warm blood of our patriot soldiers—every one of whom was slain by the slaveholding rebels.” Should Lincoln delay, Douglass warned, he risked going down in history as an American Nero. On January 1 at a large meeting held at Tremont Temple in Boston, Douglass impatiently awaited news of the president’s decision. When a messenger arrived late in the evening to announce that Lincoln had signed the final Emancipation Proclamation, the crowd erupted in shouts of praise and hymns of rejoicing.¹⁸

Antislavery stalwarts still reluctant to praise Lincoln described the Emancipation Proclamation as the culmination of a divine plan. Turning the fight into a crusade for freedom would surely strengthen the North’s hand against the rebellion, the Chicago Tribune declared. The Emancipation Proclamation had saved a nation tottering on the brink of destruction, and Federal armies would now carry forward the great work of freeing the slaves and restoring the Union.¹⁹ Even having the Army of the Potomac stalled along the Rappahannock seemed a minor problem, because supporters of emancipation clearly believed that a righteous crusade against slavery guaranteed victory on the battlefield.

To critics of emancipation, however, the proclamation seemed nothing more than a worthless, paper decree, more an act of desperation than of statesmanship. Faltering Union armies could not whip the Rebels, much less destroy slavery. Democrats declared themselves to be the true defenders of liberty and berated Lincoln as a dangerous tyrant and bumbling war leader. Having successfully played on racial fears during the recent election campaign, they again raised the specter of bloody slave revolts, black voting, and social equality. Emancipation marked the latest ploy by a desperate administration and could only portend the final destruction of the Union.²⁰

Democratic opposition could be expected, but more worrisome to the administration was uncertain support on its own side. Lincoln had not been able to mollify conservative Republicans, and even some cabinet members harbored reservations. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles acknowledged the revolutionary nature of emancipation but predicted that “the immediate effect will not be all its friends anticipate or its opponents apprehend.” Privately Seward and his cronies were decidedly lukewarm. That bellwether of moderation the New York Times remained skeptical about how well former slaves could handle freedom and sounded downright equivocal on the question of black troops.²¹ Clearly some Republicans were hedging their bets, uncertain about the wisdom of emancipation, alarmed about Democratic calls for peace negotiations, worried over cries for McClellan’s return to command, and waiting to gauge the soldiers’ response.

A Connecticut artillerist who rejoiced that Lincoln had refused to back down on emancipation acknowledged that many of his comrades bitterly opposed the proclamation and that some Republicans had even switched parties. McClellan supporters of course railed against the president, but the initial outcry extended throughout the army. Turning the war into an antislavery crusade might only make the Rebels fight harder—a serious objection for soldiers who feared that the Confederates already enjoyed greater élan and higher morale. A divided North rent by party divisions and disaffection in the border states could hardly defeat a united South.²²

The proclamation also provoked more visceral responses. Men who had enlisted to save the Union deeply resented becoming a tool for radical plotters who would risk destroying the republic to advance their schemes. If people at home wanted to fight for black freedom, let them enlist. A New Jersey volunteer enjoyed watching the regiment’s only abolitionist trudge along with his knapsack.²³

Even soldiers who denied that the army was demoralized cursed emancipation and the government. One phrase (in several variations) resounded: “The men will not fight for niggers.” Young volunteers had been deceived by “brokers and officeholders” into believing they were “fighting for the Union,” a Rhode Island private raged, when “it is a bull nigger they are fighting for.” Conservative editors quoted soldiers who swore they would never risk their lives to free slaves. “‘It’s nothing but an abolition war, and I wish I was out of it,’” one Wisconsin soldier correspondent groused. “You can hear it everywhere, let those deny it who may. It is the truth, and why hide the truth. That is the sentiment, go where you will.”²⁴

Such fulminations, however, hardly plumbed the depth of racism in the ranks. “If I had my way about things I would shoot every niggar I come across,” a private in the 14th Indiana frothed. With freed blacks heading north, he warned his sister, there would be an “awful bad smell amonxt you.” A common complaint among soldiers—that blacks received preferential treatment from the government—carried its own irony because by this time using escaped slaves as officers’ servants had already shown Federals to be less than ardent friends of freedom. Some regiments became notorious for their casual cruelty toward the fugitives. A Massachusetts volunteer spoke for many of his comrades: “We all hate the sight of a nigger worse than a snake.”²⁵

But even racism bore various shadings. A Pennsylvania captain expressed moral indifference to the slavery question: “I care not if the Niggers eat the Whites or Whites kill the Niggers.” Others who at least recognized the evils of slavery clung to the shibboleth of colonization.²⁶ Indeed, racial attitudes like much else in Civil War America remained in flux, so fiercely expressed sentiments did not necessarily betoken attitudes carved in stone. Entrenched racial prejudice among the troops was often impervious to argument, but not to the course of the war itself. Military developments and to some degree the performance of black troops would vindicate the wisdom of emancipation and change white soldiers’ attitudes as well.

For the present, however, opponents of the proclamation chafed at charges of disloyalty. “They [abolitionists] tell us because we are not willing to see the negro in our ranks... that we lack patriotism!” a Michigan private complained. McClellan supporters especially noted how they had bravely fought for the Union. From their perspective, Lincoln’s emancipation policy had only further demoralized an already badly shaken army. Reports that the soldiers were ready to throw down their arms intensified in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation. Such sentiments would soon wane, but in January 1863 the slavery question became one more source of division among already disheartened soldiers.²⁷

Yet there was also quiet support for emancipation in the army. A Maine officer even suggested that any soldiers who cursed an abolition war ought to be sent south. Like the opponents of emancipation, its defenders offered a variety of arguments. For some men the simple immorality of slavery settled the question. To others a war against slavery became the key to military victory. “I would burn and destroy every city in the South, and emancipate every slave, if by doing so our cherished institutions could be preserved and handed to future generations,” declared one Hoosier. A fair number of men remained ambivalent, hardly knowing what to expect from the emancipation policy.²⁸

Confederates for the most part feigned indifference to Lincoln’s supposedly empty gesture. “It is difficult to decide,” the always acerbic Richmond Daily Examiner sniffed, “whether wickedness or folly predominate in this extraordinary document.” Lincoln’s refusal to free slaves in areas under Union military control revealed his craven hypocrisy. A paper decree would have no effect on the war, Confederate editors bravely maintained, and the general absence of comment among Lee’s men suggested they agreed. Although many Confederates may not have been so nonplussed as they tried to appear, confidence in southern arms made the change in enemy policy seem much less frightening. The Richmond Daily Dispatch drew a striking contrast between northern words and southern deeds: “The South has given its answer to Lincoln’s proclamation of emancipation at Fredericksburg and Murfreesboro.”²⁹

* * *

Discussions of the impact of emancipation on the nation’s future did not take place in a political vacuum and were shaped by assessments of the military situation and renewed talk of a negotiated peace. All sorts of rumors alarmed already nervous Republicans. A frightened Ohioan advised Chase that Democrats planned to hold a national convention, depose Lincoln, and lead the northwestern states into a coalition with the Rebels. After Fredericksburg, predictions of an armistice or worse suddenly seemed believable. According to Sumner many senators had grown despondent, and Lincoln himself greatly feared “fire in the rear” from the northern Democracy. Not expecting a great battlefield victory any time soon, Republicans remained wary and downcast.³⁰

Because their political opponents were raising anew the cry of “liberty,” leading Democrats, who considered themselves true defenders of white democracy against abolitionist fanaticism, equated freedom with both racial purity and civil liberties. Even after release of some government prisoners, Democrats kept pounding away at the War Department’s “arbitrary arrests.” Acrimonious debate in Congress erupted over both the fate of particular prisoners and the larger question of political freedom. Democrats excoriated the hypocrisy of a government obsessed with emancipating black men but seemingly indifferent to the fate of white men tossed into prison because of their political beliefs.³¹

Many of these partisans believed they had found a champion in Governor Horatio Seymour of New York. Shortly after his election, Seymour had consulted with McClellan, and while New York Democrats courted the general’s favor, the two men cautiously helped each other. In several respects Seymour, as befitting an old supporter of Stephen A. Douglas, remained a War Democrat, but he was increasingly wary of expanding federal power. He loyally supported troop enlistments, but on the civil liberties question he drew a principled political line. To leading conservatives in both parties Seymour had become a pivotal figure, apparently with an eye on the presidency. Editors eagerly anticipated his annual message to the legislature, and no less a wire-puller than Thurlow Weed sought to shape its contents.³²

On Wednesday, January 7, Seymour’s message dominated the political stage. More than two-thirds of the document addressed national affairs and struck a decided note of loyal opposition. Civil war was a reality, the troops deserved public support, and the Union remained indissoluble. Denying that the rebellion “can suspend a single right of the citizens,” Seymour nevertheless stopped short of explicitly endorsing peace negotiations with the Rebels. Denunciation of martial law and support for civil liberties won warm support from leading Democratic editors. The governor had emphasized both patriotism and freedom, twin themes that received especially friendly coverage in the Irish American press. True loyalty that safeguarded the republic’s traditions against dangerous abuses of power by the abolitionist-controlled Lincoln administration became a potent message for his party.³³

Though Seymour’s message was not especially memorable in content or language, its effectiveness could be measured by sharply worded Republican criticism. Greeley characterized the governor as a “demagogue” placed in office by “cowardice, drunkenness, and masked disloyalty.” Other editors blasted him as a “hypocrite,” his message “disgraceful,” and his purpose “factious.” Even the New York Times, at first mildly dismissive, intemperately attributed Seymour’s election to the disfranchisement of loyal soldiers in the field and the machinations of liquor dealers.³⁴ The Republicans’ harsh rhetoric betrayed their recognition of Seymour as a rising star and a serious threat to the administration.

A whiff of political danger in turn fed larger fears. Though reluctant to use the word “traitor,” Republicans worried about the growing power of so-called Peace Democrats, whom they suspected of unduly influencing Seymour. Even conservatives such as Gideon Welles railed against the governor’s “jesuitical insincerity,” his “unhallowed partisan and personal aspirations.” Longtime Democrat Maj. Gen. John Dix, who was commanding troops in New York City, warned that Seymour’s views might even spark serious resistance to the forthcoming draft. According to Frederick Douglass, northern traitors now threatened the republic far more than Rebels. Though obviously heartened by the Emancipation Proclamation, he worried that the Army of the Potomac might “never win a great battle” and that a “divided North” would be no match for a “united South.”³⁵ The aftershocks of Fredericksburg continued to shake northern confidence and weaken public will.

Republican alarms, however overwrought, reflected an apparent shift in the general mood, a defeatism that threatened to cross both party and ideological lines and perhaps force recognition of southern independence or at least a restoration of the Union based on humiliating concessions to the Rebels. Rumors of impending peace negotiations—made plausible by the appearance of quixotic and unauthorized “diplomats” in Richmond—revived talk of sectional compromise. Shortly before Fredericksburg, mercurial Horace Greeley had forecast a peace settlement within six months. After the battle he began corresponding with two leading Peace Democrats and in mid-January consulted with Henri Mercier, the French minister in Washington.³⁶ Spurred by newspaper editorials and public meetings, conservative Democrats trumpeted a potent message: if more fighting could not bring peace, a point that seemed obvious at the beginning of 1863, a convention of the states should negotiate an end to the war.³⁷

Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, the most prominent and outspoken of the Peace Democrats, bluntly termed the war a failure and shortly after Fredericksburg called for a cease-fire. Thwarted by a Republican House majority that tabled his motions, Vallandigham spoke for an hour without interruption on the afternoon of January 14, 1863. After denouncing abolition and the suspension of habeas corpus, he drove home his most telling argument. “You have not conquered the South,” he told his Republican colleagues. “You never will.” Lincoln had transformed a war for the Union into a war for abolition: “With what success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg . . . answer.” Federal troops should be withdrawn from the southern states and a peace established based on free trade and white supremacy.

This speech went too far even for many conservatives. Criticism of Vallandigham by Democrats in Ohio and elsewhere revealed deep divisions in the party between moderates such as Seymour and the peace faction. Yet in the aftermath of Fredericksburg the effects of war weariness, military blunders, and political disaffection made Republicans edgy. Pungent attacks on Vallandigham reflected frustration with a weakened and divided government that seemed to stumble from defeat to defeat.³⁸

The political costs of the military stalemate kept mounting. In Indiana, Governor Oliver P. Morton and his supporters warned that “Copperheads” might provoke violence or even attempt to detach the old Northwest from New England. Peace meetings and rumors of secret societies sparked hysterical talk of conspiracies. Democrats in the Indiana House of Representatives thanked Seymour for his stout defense of civil liberties, introduced peace resolutions, and roundly condemned the Emancipation Proclamation.³⁹ If liberty meant the right to indulge in partisan attacks, then liberty seemed in no danger. Disputes between Republican governors and Democratic legislators in both Indiana and Illinois led to the effective dissolution of the state legislatures. Cries against “tyranny” or “treason” drowned out reasoned debate and lent weight to the more extreme voices in each party.⁴⁰

The shock of Fredericksburg and disputes over emancipation sometimes pulled the Republicans in a more conservative direction, forcing several prominent radicals to fight for their political lives. Although Chase apparently toyed with the idea of seeking a senate seat from Ohio, recent Democratic gains led the Republican majority in the legislature to put aside factional bickering and reelect radical stalwart Benjamin F. Wade.⁴¹ Elsewhere divided Republicans battled a resurgent Democracy. In Michigan another ardent antislavery man, Zachariah Chandler, faced a challenge from a moderate Republican who attacked the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War for meddling in military affairs. Even though Chandler was easily reelected by the legislature, he still fumed over the political effects of recent military failures. If he were ever president, Chandler told his wife, he would stop the Rebel sympathizers in their tracks by clapping Seymour into prison—a statement that nicely summed up the sort of reaction the governor’s increasing prominence sparked among agitated Republicans. To bolster wavering Republicans, a radical New York editor suggested that the country badly needed more “earnest men” like Zach Chandler.⁴² Attempting a political comeback in Pennsylvania, former secretary of war and minister to Russia Simon Cameron apparently tried to buy a senate seat with both patronage and cash. But in a legislature where the parties were evenly balanced, he fell two votes short amidst charges of corruption and threats of violence.⁴³ The tense atmosphere in several states created a surreal political climate. Democrats routinely denounced would-be Republican tyrants, but their own irregular procedures and calls for negotiations with the Rebels tested the limits of wartime dissent.

The exercise of political freedom only heightened the sense of danger among all groups, whether bitter racists who opposed emancipation, moderates who worried that the army was falling apart, or radicals who detected treason in every partisan attack. A cacophony of warring tongues precluded consensus on defining or protecting freedom. The fissures in both the parties and the nation along with insistent calls for peace presented Republicans with their most serious challenge since the secession crisis.

Radical dissatisfaction with the cabinet and the president persisted. A gloomy Pittsburgh editor blamed the administration’s “irresolution and timidity” for strengthening the hands of northern traitors. Fainthearted Republicans feared being dragged down by military disasters.⁴⁴ Just as with the supposed demoralization in the Army of the Potomac, however, sound and fury did not bespeak genuine disaffection. Several Republican editors issued rousing calls for unity. Only if the party stood firm against the “Calhounites” of the South and their northern allies could political liberty and the heritage of the revolutionary fathers survive. Devotion to the Union cause and an energetic war policy could still bring victory; like the Israelites murmuring against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness—in the apt analogy offered by a Boston Unitarian minister—the northern people could still reject the counsels of despair and reach the political promised land.⁴⁵

Political loyalty in this hothouse atmosphere meant resisting the siren calls for a negotiated peace on both practical and philosophical grounds. Parleying with the Rebels would be far worse than continuing the war, and in any case Confederate leaders had arrogantly spurned even the cowardly initiatives of the Peace Democrats.⁴⁶ Who could trust the motives of men ready to truckle with traitors? Selfish businessmen and politicians whose patriotism seldom extended beyond profits or patronage would happily bargain with the Rebels. Democratic partisans downplayed every victory and magnified every defeat, thereby giving aid and comfort to what one Boston editor still called the “slave power.” Copperhead leaders, Republicans charged, secretly plotted the Union’s destruction. Blasting Vallandigham’s speech, Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio accused Democrats of openly siding with Rebels. Even a conservative editor warned Democrats that partisan attacks on the government and open sympathy for the nation’s enemies would set them down in history as infamous traitors.⁴⁷

The political fragmentation in the northern states—hastened by military losses, divisions over emancipation, and the revival of the Democratic Party—left the American Union in peril. Ideologues debated the meaning of freedom while partisans maneuvered for advantage. Political wrangling no doubt deepened public despair over the war’s apparent lack of progress. In January 1863 it seemed entirely plausible that northern disunity might eventually destroy the republic. The war threatened to drag on indefinitely, and perhaps the prospect of more bloodshed with no end in sight proved to be the most depressing thought of all. Yet as a Pennsylvania captain declared on New Year’s Day, the Army of the Potomac simply had to win a battle. Military success would revive the government’s “timid supporters” and silence the “Peace shriekers of the Seymour ilk.” Like so many others on both sides, he placed freedom at the heart of the war: “This is a contest, not between North and South; but a contest between human rights and human liberty upon the one side and eternal bondage on the other.”⁴⁸

* * *

Whose definition of freedom would prevail? Confederates maintained they were fighting for white liberty and the right of self-determination. Sumner, Douglass, Lincoln, Seward, Seymour, Vallandigham, Davis, and countless others had their own ideas about what was at stake in the war. Events converging in late December 1862 and early January 1863 had brought each view into remarkably sharp relief. Recrimination, racism, and a politics of both loyalty and liberty made the debates especially rancorous.

Which view would eventually triumph still largely depended on those bluecoats camped along the Rappahannock. After Fredericksburg, soldiers’ calls for ending the war intensified; but how a settlement might be negotiated remained unclear, and the phrase “honorable peace” that cropped up in so many soldiers’ letters lacked any precise meaning. For some only an unconditional restoration of the Union was acceptable; for others giving up emancipation or even recognizing Confederate independence would be “honorable” enough.⁴⁹

Conservative soldiers felt the political winds blowing in the right direction. “We live in hopes of Democratic victories,” a Connecticut volunteer informed his home folks. Highly literate and politically savvy men commented about everything from Indiana legislative battles to Seymour’s message. Some had grown cynical and complained that Republican spoilsmen had descended to depths matched only during James Buchanan’s notoriously corrupt presidency, and a Massachusetts private declared the party “about dead.” More ominously, peace coupled with disunion no longer seemed unthinkable, and one Massachusetts private even applauded Vallandigham’s resolutions.⁵⁰

Most Federals, however, loathed Copperheads. One Hoosier railed against civilians who “find fault with everything connected with the war, and do all they can to discourage those who have friends in the army.” Such malcontents hardly ever criticized the Rebels but instead harped about white men being forced to fight for black men. The circulation of conservative newspapers in the camps greatly angered some soldiers, especially midwesterners reading about disaffection back home. Such men applauded efforts by Republican governors to thwart “traitors” in the state legislatures and cared little about civil liberties. Political prisoners should have been hanged, one Indiana major declared; a Massachusetts private proposed executing a few disloyal New York peace men, including Governor Seymour.⁵¹ Anger and disappointment fostered fear and uncertainty. Indeed, emotion more than ideology shaped attitudes during this tumultuous period. The frustrating military situation, the still-explosive question of emancipation, political disorder in several northern states, and signs of disarray in Washington all portended a bleak future for soldiers in their chilly camps.

* * *

Some Rebels, too, expressed dismay over the horrific costs of the war. Meditating on what he had seen at Fredericksburg, a Georgia soldier agonized over the suffering that even a victory brought: “Many a good and brave woman [who] could say ‘husband’ last Saturday morning when they rose... were widows when the sun set and many children that could say ‘father’ were orphans.” These somber reflections, however, hardly expressed genuine despair. Conversations with Yankee stragglers and prisoners convinced many Confederates that their enemies were about to give up. The war would surely be over by spring, Jedediah Hotchkiss informed his wife. Civilians, including once-staunch Unionists, saw Confederate prospects brightening. “The papers are very encouraging,” young Lucy Breckinridge noted in her diary. “We are beginning to hope for peace.”⁵²

Rumors of Federal officers resigning en masse, the Senate attempting to drive the Yankee president from office, and continuing cabinet divisions led some soldiers and civilians to conclude that the South could never be subjugated. Even a wildly implausible tale of a fistfight between Halleck and Stanton boosted confidence. A Virginian welcomed talk of foreign mediation and northern disaffection that “keep our spirits up and our hopes alive.” Confederates eagerly devoured reports of a possible separation between the old Northwest and New England. To a sanguine Tar Heel editor, the victory at Fredericksburg had sealed the old Union’s fate: “The people of the North are not blind nor deaf, nor will they always remain dumb. These failures have doomed the Lincoln Administration and . . . their hopes vanish.”⁵³

Word of powerful northern Democrats calling for negotiations gave Confederate optimism an even more tangible basis. Accounts of peace meetings in New York and other cities heartened Lee’s men and even convinced a few skeptics that a settlement might be in the offing. Confederates greeted the statements of Seymour and Vallandigham with equal enthusiasm. Referring to a possible convention of the states, one North Carolina editor breezily decided that “the Yankees are getting sick of this war.”⁵⁴

But war-weary Rebels had heard it all before. Shortly after Fredericksburg a South Carolina plantation mistress had hoped the war might end soon, but by mid-January she found the “political horizon . . . again over-cast.” Peace seemed an elusive dream, a wish that overblown newspaper reports of troubles in Yankeeland could not fulfill. Col. Clement A. Evans wisely noted that despite all the press criticism of Lincoln, the Federals had shown no sign of abandoning the struggle.⁵⁵

Soothing words from northern Democrats about restoring the old Union did not satisfy southerners determined to build their own nation. Several congressional resolutions made it clear that there could be no peace without recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign power. Far too much blood had already been shed to accept a patched-together compromise. “Too late!” commented one War Department official about overtures for a convention of the states.⁵⁶

Who could rely on the slippery promises of northern conservatives? To hold out hope for a peace settlement only invited disappointment, and soldiers especially warned their families against unrealistic expectations. Reports of peace meetings and diplomatic moves in the Yankee papers might simply be ploys to lull unsuspecting southerners into a perilous complacency. After all, northern Democrats had betrayed their southern allies in 1861 and still cared more about spoils than justice. Seymour’s states’ rights pronouncements meant nothing, the Charleston Mercury proclaimed. So long as greedy Yankees—including conservative ones—could earn blood money from the war, they would never recognize Confederate independence.⁵⁷ Therefore southerners would have to fight on, relying on unity and determination in the face of a still-powerful enemy.

Just like northern Republicans, however, southern leaders faced internal divisions. A strongly pro-Davis Charleston editor presented the official line: “The voice of Government is the voice of God, and all its requirements and commands are clothed with authority and power. It simply gives utterance to obligations which have been binding by the Lord of all, and in making known these duties, the Government we ourselves created simply acts as the organ and instrument of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Thus citizens obeyed both their rulers and their God. In contrast to this high-blown theory, however, New Year’s Eve editorials in rival North Carolina newspapers mirrored actual political practice. While the Raleigh Weekly Register denounced factious opposition to the Confederate government in the state legislature, the Raleigh Weekly Standard inveighed against southerners who would ignore constitutional limitations to uphold military despotism. Should he survive the war, a disgusted South Carolina soldier promised his wife “never to dabble in the dirty pool of politics.” So far at least, “our young republic” had successfully defended the “great principles of liberty.”⁵⁸

Any consensus on those “great principles of liberty” kept threatening to unravel. Jefferson Davis attempted to hold his nation together despite internal divisions, economic weaknesses, and the military losses of the past year. Toward the end of his western tour, in a speech at Jackson, Mississippi, he reminded Confederates of unbridgeable sectional differences. Pointing to recent Yankee atrocities and long-standing conflicts between Puritans and Cavaliers, he declared any further political connection between two such different “peoples” impossible. Yet the president could not escape the history that had once united Americans. Back in Richmond he publicly praised Virginians for fighting, just as in 1776, for the sake of freedom. Robert E. Lee, “emulating the virtues of the heroic Light-horse Harry, his father,” had just won a great victory at Fredericksburg. With a rhetorical flourish Davis maintained that the experience of war had knit together the states of the Confederacy.⁵⁹

In a message to the Confederate Congress a few days later, the president exuded confidence. The southerners’ successful fight for their “rights and liberties” had taught the nations of the world once again “the impossibility of subjugating a people determined to be free.” Buoyed by Fredericksburg, Davis expressed “profound contempt” for the “impotent rage” of the Emancipation Proclamation. But he also rejoiced that the document proved, finally and without doubt, the impossibility of reunion. Davis’s defiant optimism struck just the right note, or so many Confederates believed, and for once even his most persistent critics held their fire.⁶⁰

Yet the fledgling southern nation still faced a most uncertain future. Despite recent victories on the battlefield, price increases ravaged the economy, and the value of Confederate money kept falling. Secretary of the Treasury Christopher G. Memminger admitted that the large volume of treasury notes needed to finance the war had fueled a dangerous inflation. Complaints about “extortioners”—denounced by Davis as the “dregs and refuse of the land”—grew sharp and were sometimes tinged with anti-Semitism. Grain and potatoes needed to feed the people had reportedly been snapped up by distillers. Editorials against profiteering provoked decidedly defensive and somewhat frightened responses from businessmen. Petitions complaining about greedy merchants gouging widows and orphans poured in to the governors. Recognizing the connections between desertions and suffering on the home front, states devoted much of their budgets to aiding soldiers’ families, and some congressmen even favored national relief measures.⁶¹ These unprecedented laws provoked opposition to the expansion of government power. Impressments of supplies, especially with official compensation below market prices, seemed “gross oppression” even to the pro-Davis Richmond Daily Enquirer. Debates erupted in Congress pitting advocates of emergency powers against defenders of property rights.⁶²

To many Confederates, conscription presented the most serious threat to fundamental liberties. The question of exemption, enlivened by charges of bribery and corruption, became a veritable tug-of-war between national, state, and local interests. Even a brief exchange in the Confederate House over the wisdom of allowing ministers to escape the draft turned into an impassioned discussion of centralized power.⁶³ The heat generated by these arcane questions is understandable. They touched matters that deeply affected the lives of ordinary people. While editors and politicians debated the theoretical wisdom of conscription, women across the Confederacy petitioned the War Department for the release of men whose health had failed or who were badly needed back home. Touching stories of families left with little to eat generally met with a curt bureaucratic dismissal. Yet the plaintive question of a Mississippi woman to Governor John J. Pettus begged an answer: “What is to become of the women and children, if you call out all the men?”⁶⁴

Indeed, larger issues of manpower loomed. Confederate armies simply needed more soldiers, regardless of state objections or pleas for exemptions. Even Davis’s critics deplored political divisions and judicial challenges to conscription. Support for the draft remained strong in the military, where people were in the best position to realize that a victorious struggle for liberty required enrollment of enough men. Constitutional questions, one Richmond editor suggested, could be deferred until later.⁶⁵ But many Confederates could never lay aside such objections. So even with southern fortunes improving, debates over the meaning of freedom continued. But for all the theorizing and politicking, not to mention talk of peace, the main arbiters of the future course of freedom were for the moment dormant, shivering in army camps along the Rappahannock.