Bates, the Attorney-General, his other border State coun-



526 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. II.

seller, wearied of the cares of office, and of the rapid cur
rent of that racial revolution which, in his slaveholding
section, he had helped originate. He carried now the
weight of threescore and ten, and while heartily devoted
to the essential cause of freedom for the negro, which no
one had better fortified by legal argument than himself, he
mistrusted the deep departure from precedent and sobriety
to which politics tended, especially in his own State of
Missouri. This excellent Whig of the older school resigned
office accordingly on the 24th of November; and the Presi
dent, failing to secure the conscientious Holt in his place,
who modestly thought himself no longer fit to conduct cases
before the Supreme Court, called in December to the vacant
place another Kentuckian, James Speed, an accomplished
lawyer of a family connected with Lincoln s youthful days.
Another change came with the new year when Fessenden,
once more elected from Maine to the Senate, resigned the
Treasury portfolio in consequence. For this vacancy came
a wide and spirited competition, which the President closed,
when entering upon his second term, by promoting Hugh
McCulloch of Indiana, whose record had been excellent as
comptroller of the currency. 1 None of these three changes
named was in the line of positive reconstruction, nor was
the President inclined to agree with his censors that offi
cial advisers had shaped his administration for him. They
who departed expressed warmly their personal and official
respect, and they who succeeded gave good promise of
bestowing it.

There is a suggestion in all this that Lincoln repelled
extreme Republicans from his Council, and meant to hold
personally the initiative which the plain people confided to
him, in a strife for controlling the terms of Southern res
toration, which was already impending between Executive
and Congress. But an opportunity came, just as the Novem-



1 9 N. & H. c. 15. Morgan of New York had declined appointment
to this station, preferring to continue in the Senate, and McOulloch s
support, which was exceedingly strong in financial circles, procured
him his merited promotion.



1864. CHASE APPOINTED CHIEF JUSTICE. 527

her election approached, to please those radicals of the party
who had tried to expel him from the canvass. On the 12th
of October died Chief Justice Taney, in the midst of rejoic
ings that hailed the reversal in his native State of the social
philosophy he had expounded from the bench. Taney was
an able lawyer, an honorable judge, an austere, upright
man, to whose virtues and talents it was impossible to
draw close attention or do full public justice while present
passions raged. Republicans welcomed the vacancy, and
friends of ex-Secretary Chase, claiming he was the ideal
successor, began canvassing for him without delay. Others
were mentioned for the place, such as Evarts and Swayne;
Montgomery Blair strongly wished and hoped for the ap
pointment. The Chief Justiceship is the noblest piece of
civil patronage at a President s disposal; but, together with
professional skill, perfect integrity, and prodigious indus
try, that office needs abstinence from politics and an un
swerving continuity of purpose and regard. Marshall and
Taney had each set the example of undivided industry, and
enjoyed a remarkably long tenure. Chase, with impressive
face and figure and unfailing dignity, was certainly the
ideal personage to appear with silken robes on grand occa
sions, and a certain solid weight of talents and character
belonged to him. Nor had he himself been unconvinced
in calmer moods that this superb position was the true one
for him ; but the sinister circumstances under which he had
lately left the Treasury, and his unreconciled mood towards
Lincoln s candidacy which continued for a longer space, cost
the President not a little moral struggle, to be magnani
mous. He waited, reticent of his intentions, not unyield
ing in demeanor, but disposed to await overtures. 1 Chase s
chief sponsors were of course from the "thorough" Sena
tors, though a mass of solicitations came from other quar-



1 When a loiter was brought from Chase himself, then in Ohio, Lin
coln asked his private secretary, "What is it about? "Simply a
kind of friendly letter," the secretary answered. The President smiled
shrewdly, and said, "File it with his other recommendations." 9 N.
& 11. 392.



528 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. U

ters, for Chase had won the respect of the whole country.
The idea that he would uphold judicially the general issues
of the war, if appointed, was widely urged in his favor;
one is needed, wrote Sumner, "whose position on the
slavery question is already fixed, and who will not need
argument or counsel to convert him." But Lincoln had
his personal misgivings: "If I were sure," he observed,
"that he would go on the bench, give up other aspirations,
and do nothing but make himself a great judge, I would not
hesitate a moment." Waiving, however, all such doubts
on his own part, hoping for the best, generous of impulse,
and strongly disposed to pacify and unite all the elements
of national support, Lincoln, on the 6th of December,
nominated Chase to the Senate for Chief Justice. He had
confided his decision to no one, and wrote out the nominat
ing letter himself. The appointment was confirmed at once,
without reference to a committee, and was hailed through
out the land with perfect satisfaction. 1



Congress had reassembled for its short and final session
on the 5th of December. Its memorable action was now
to complete the passage of a joint resolution, which sub-
186*. De- mitted to the States a constitutional amendment
isIS!** f r prohibiting slavery throughout the Union.
March 4. That resolution, first reported to the Senate by
Lyman Trumbull, chairman of its judiciary committee, had
passed that branch in April of the long session, but was
afterwards lost in the House for want of the requisite two-
thirds vote in its favor. 2 But the issue had since gone
before the people in the platform of the Baltimore conven
tion which accompanied Lincoln s renomination, and Lin
coln himself supplied the proposal for that platform, which
Senator Morgan offered amid thunders of applause when
opening the convention, and Breckinridge, the Kentucky
divine, indorsed as temporary chairman. 3 Upon no decla-

1 9 N. & H. c. 17. 3 Supra, p. 467.

8 The vote June 15, in the House, stood 93 to 65.



1864-65. CONSTITUTIONAL PROHIBITION OF SLAVERY. 62l>

ration of the late canvass had voters rallied more heartily
to the polls and won their overwhelming victory, than upon
this pledge to extirpate by constitutional means the whole
vital cause of the Southern rebellion. Hence, in the Presi
dent s opening message, instant deference was urged to the
public will as expressed at the polls, and they whose terms
in the House were soon to expire were exhorted not to wait
until a new Congress would surely pass this measure, but
to reconsider their former votes and reach at once the laud
able end. James M. Ashley of Ohio, being charged with
this resolution, had, at the test of the previous session in
this branch, changed his vote so that he might move a recon
sideration; he now called up that motion and opened a new
debate. That debate was earnest, but the logic of events
was of more convincing force than any party strategy or
appeal to argument; and most moving was the pregnant
fact, that in the loyal border States, the last citadel of
legalized slavery, this old serpent was expiring. Maryland
had already freed her slaves ; Missouri prepared to follow,
and the same spirit of change was perceptible in Tennessee
and even in Kentucky. Elsewhere, under the President s
proclamation and the fervent flames of Civil War, this
peculiar institution, with its mammon of unrighteousness,
was shrivelling like a parched scroll, and blackening into
ashes. Thus, then, was the conservative opposition itself
of the House divided in conviction, and with help from the
more liberal of Northern Democrats and from members of
border slave States who heeded their constituents wishes,
the two-thirds vote needful for a final passage was presently
obtained. The climax came in the Representatives chamber
on the 31st of January, when the galleries were filled to
overflowing and members on the floor watched results with
visible anxiety. The final roll-call came at four in the
a.fternoon, and when the Speaker announced the final pas
sage of the joint resolve by a two-thirds vote, 1 the whole
hall cheered and applauded wildly, members setting the
example, regardless of parliamentary rules, while they in

1 Yeas 119, nays 50 ; not voting, 8.



530 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. II.

the crowded galleries followed with waving of hats and
handkerchiefs. This turbulence lasted several minutes and
then an adjournment was carried. 1

The President hailed heartily this constitutional cure-all,
in consummation of the grand policy initiated by his proc
lamation. From that act of initiation, as he had said and
reiterated, he would never retreat nor retract a word once
written; yet as a military act, purporting only a partial
application, the validity of that edict might later be raised
in the courts. But this amendment constitutionally pro
posed, would, when constitutionally adopted by three-fourths
of the States, eradicate slavery in the whole Union, wholly,
fundamentally, and forever. This new year of grace did not
pass without accomplishing that full fruition, though stu
pendous political change was destined to occur before the
nation s new birth of freedom. No happier incident at
tended the canvass of legislatures now following, to " consti-
tutionalize, " as Garrison happily styled it, "our declaration
of independence," than the conciliation of that sage, now
honored where he had been detested, to the conserving
forces of the Union. Recognizing that his life s mission
was accomplished, he left the future to work out its own
normal results, discontinued his press, wound up his
society of agitators, and gave the remnant of his life
to assuaging national malice and bitterness, and culti
vating peace with his fellow-men. In this he showed
a genial heart, and something, withal, of a statesman s
sagacity. 2



1 Globe, 531 ; 10 N. & II. c. 4. This joint resolution, which the
President approved February 1st (though needlessly, since constitu
tional law requires no such approval) follows in general expression the
Ordinance of 1787. Article XIII. (1) Neither slavery nor involun
tary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,
or any place subject to their jurisdiction. (2) Congress shall have
power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

2 4 Garrison, c. 6. But Phillips, his eloquent associate, who here
parted company with him, led into deeper shades of negro agitation.
Ib.



18U4-65. COMPASSION FOR THE NEGRO. 531

A tender compassion was now widely felt in the North
for a race long benighted in bondage. The dullest and
most ignorant, even, of these uneducated souls, seemed
stirred with the consciousness that a new deliverance was
being wrought, which would lift them to the plane of equal
opportunities with the white man, and, like children in
simplicity, they asked guidance from their benefactors. Of
all mortals they worshipped Father Abraham as a leader
and liberator. At his New Year s reception in 1865, a
throng of colored folks of both sexes, some in tatters and
some gaily and even gaudily dressed, hung about the outer
porch of the White House, while ceremonious guests took
precedence within; then, timidly entering the hall and
reception rooms, they shook in turn with energy the Presi
dent s huge hands, wild with joy, weeping and laughing. 1
And so, too, when Sherman marched to the sea, the Georgia
negroes, men, women, and children, were frantic to greet
the "angel of the Lord"; they clustered about his horse,
as he rode, shouting and praying, with "a natural elo
quence," as he describes it, "that would have moved a
stone." 2 The first impulse of freedom, when it comes, is
to wander far and wide; and the swarms of blacks that
followed this army to Savannah, despite all injunction that
they should remain where they were, gave much concern
to Stanton; upon whose visit there Sherman issued orders
in January, with that Secretary s consent, which, besides
enlisting colored troops, provided for the time being that
freedmen and their families should occupy the abandoned
seacoast from Beaufort to Jacksonville, adjacent to the
St. John s River. 3 To this policy Congress gave further
direction, by an act, approved at the close of this short
session, which established in the War Department a tem
porary "freedman s bureau," sanctioned the issue of provi
sions, clothing, and fuel to negro refugees, and set apart
for their temporary occupancy such abandoned or confiscated
tracts of land as might rightfully vest in the United States. 4



1 Am. Cycl. 1864, 800. 3 Ib. 250.

2 2 Sherman, 180. * 13 U. S. Stats. 507.



532 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. II.

With little real conception, however, of the vast problem
before the nation, public opinion in the free States pro
gressed swiftly towards raising at once the social and
political condition of the negro to something of the white
man s plane. Fred Douglass, a mulatto manifesting the
highest type in this era of intellect rescued from early
bondage, urged eloquently that his race should have perfect
equality before the law, in the jury box, at the ballot box,
on the battle-field, and in the distribution of public offices.
Wendell Phillips pledged himself never to cease negro
agitation until that perfect equality was obtained. Many
earnest anti-slavery leaders at the Xorth sincerely wished
to confer the franchise at once upon the liberated race as
an act of moral justice; others, intent more upon political
chances, inclined in the same direction, hopeful that racial
gratitude would cement a powerful alliance and keep the
present party uppermost when slave States became recon
structed. "The ballot is itself an educator," was a com
mon answer, when doubts were expressed of the sufficient
morality and intelligence of a race uncultured and but just
emerging from the dense darkness of irresponsible exist
ence. "Recognition," argued Chase, now Chief Justice, in
an open letter, "should be made of the defenders of the
flag, and ballots should go with bullets." 1 That allitera
tive phrase took mightily with a large element among those
loyal citizens who had sunk preferences to bring in Lincoln
safely for his own successor.

Jealousy and distrust of Executive reconstruction had
not ceased, in Congress, with the discomfiture of Wade and
Henry Winter Davis the preceding summer; 2 and inter
vention by statute was attempted once more at this final
session. Ashley, in the House, offered measure after meas
ure, in an effort to conciliate the President s friends while
asserting the general principle of supremacy in Congress ;
but that popular branch shunned the issue as premature
and put all such measures aside. 3 In the Senate, however,



1 Am. Cycl. 1864, 800. * Supra, p. 470.

8 Globe, 1002 (Feb. 22, 18G5) ; 9 N. & H. 453.



1864-65. THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS. 53?>

this issue came up in a somewhat different form, upon a
question of credentials from the State of Louisiana, which
had lately reorganized under Lincoln s guidance. Trum-
bull, in February, submitted a joint resolution which rec
ognized Louisiana s new government, set up by local
convention the previous April, as a legitimate one; but
against the main body of their Republican colleagues, a
minority of five, including Sumner, Wade, and Chandler,
interposed dilatory motions, and the session closed with the
point itself undecided. 1 All this was ominous of approach
ing difference in the dominant party; with Sumner in the
lead, who inflexibly opposed the President s plan of prompt
and practical reconstruction. Slavery, to be sure, was elim
inated from the problem, but the party minority was for
mulating other irreversible guarantees, prominent among
which was that of peremptory negro suffrage. As advocate
for an oppressed race, none could equal this Massachusetts
senator for vigilance and effective energy, but as pacificator
of sections he was less admirable. " State suicide " was
still his theory against party colleagues like Sherman, Fes-
senden, Dixon, and Doolittle; confiscation and punishment
interested him, and he planned to break ground early and
prepare the Northern mind to follow him. Finding that
the President on points of penal reconstruction differed
from him, lie prepared, when this session closed, for a
contest in the coming Congress. 2

How events might have shaped out on this novel and
difficult problem, had Lincoln survived to another March,
we need hardly speculate.. The tender, tolerant spirit
which he would have brought to that solemn task, vanished
with his mortal presence, and public confidence did not
vest in his immediate and casual successor. But his own
purpose was to make restoration as nearly as possible his
military work as commander-in-chief, leaving to Congress
in each branch the undoubted discretion to refuse admission
to members sent thither as from a reconstructed State, and
submitting to that body as a whole the power to undo his

i 9 N. & H. c. 19. 2 4 Pierce s Sumner, 76, 233-247.



534 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. II.

work by regular legislation, should public opinion sustain
its constructive discretion against his own. The pardoning
power was constitutionally his, and his inclinations were
just and merciful ; the abolition of slavery was practically
accomplished, and for imposing other conditions upon the
South he was not prepared. Harsh and inflexible plans, at
all events, he clearly disfavored; he would not risk party
schism upon abstractions, nor tear open sectional wounds,
nor reconstruct otherwise than on the most generous basis
which promised national safety. He had already lent the
spur that brought in West Virginia as a loyal State ; and
the Peirpoint government of Virginia herself, though re
duced in consequence to almost ridiculous limits, he had
permitted to remain de facto as a convenient nucleus for
future occasion. He had chosen military governors in the
insurrectionary States, wherever repossession justified such
a course, under his amnesty and reconstruction offer of
December, 1863. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee had
all in convention set up reorganized governments that he
wished protected. 1 And he kept it well in view that, to
complete a constitutional three-fourths vote of the whole
United States to the newly proposed amendment for abol
ishing slavery, one at least of these rehabilitated common
wealths must expressly ratify.

In his last public utterance on this subject, and within a
week of his death, Lincoln reviewed the whole question in
the light of existing facts, with intent to gain popular
support. "We all agree," he said, "that the seceded
States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation
with the Union, and that the sole object of the Govern
ment, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to
again get them into that proper practical relation. I
believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to
do this without deciding or even considering whether these
States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.
Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly
immaterial whether they had ever been abroad." Yet with

1 See, in detail, 8 N. & H. cs. 16, 17, 18.



1865. LINCOLN S VIEWS ON RECONSTRUCTION. 535

so great peculiarities pertaining to eacli State, with sudden
changes liable, and the whole problem, withal, so new
and unprecedented, details, he admitted, might have to be
varied. "In the present situation, as the phrase goes,
it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the
people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail
to act, Avhen. satisfied that action will be proper." 1



Following Lincoln s triumphant reelection by popular
and electoral majorities so decisive, all signs now pointed
to the speedy collapse of the Confederate States, and the
failure of all plans for pacification which should recognize
in any way the existence of a distinct Southern government
to treat with, or of States capable of negotiating sovereign
terms. Yet efforts to so negotiate and save sectional pride
were not wanting, nor was the President disposed to refuse
those efforts a decent countenance. Francis P.Blair, Sr.,
who was Southern born himself, and knew well the indi
vidual character and temper of the Southern political lead
ers, made a journey to Richmond at the close of December,
1864, upon his personal request, receiving his President s
safeguard through the lines. In a confidential interview
with Jefferson Davis, on the 12th of January, he disclaimed
all diplomatic character, and was received as an old familiar
friend, who had rendered kindnesses in other years. Blair s
proposal, which was of his own framing, had de- 1SG5
cidedly the Jacksonian color. It was to stop the January-
effusion of fraternal blood, and open out a new
channel for bitter waters by turning the arms of North and
South against Maximilian in Mexico, making common cause
to enforce the Monroe doctrine against the European in
vaders. Davis considered such a project not unfavorably,
and gave Blair a letter which stated his willingness to
negotiate for peace without finding obstacles over forms,
and to send commissioners for preliminary conference.
But Lincoln was not to be turned from his humane and



i 9 N. & H. c. 19 (April 11, 1865).



536 HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR. CHAP. II.

patriotic task into a scheme which might degenerate into a
joint spoliation foray upon Mexico, with national slavery
undisposed of; and the whole interest he took in Blair s
mission was in the despondency it disclosed of rebellion s
choicest leaders, and their desire to abandon armed resist
ance to the constitution. In a response, on the 18th, he
signified his willingness, now and at all times, to receive
agents informally sent him. Blair covered his retreat from
the Mexican project, while Davis, on the 28th, appointed
for conference three commissioners, Alexander H. Stephens,
E. M. T. Hunter, and John A.Campbell, all of whom felt
convinced that armed resistance was hopeless, yet were
unwilling to admit the logical consequences of that situa
tion. 1 The three reached Grant s headquarters in the
Union lines, and after a telegraphic interchange, Seward
left Washington to meet them at Hampton Roads. Upon
Grant s strong request, the President went down besides
in person; and on the morning of February 3d, on board
a steamboat which lay at anchor near Fortress Monroe, a
free conference was held for four hours. No memorandum
of that conference was made, on either side, and no account
ever written out except from memory. A former personal
acquaintance and reciprocal good feeling made mutual in
tercourse easy and cordial, but radical differences in the
political point of view, Southern and Northern, forbade
agreement. Stephens, who led discussion on his side,
dangled Blair s glittering bait of an allied Mexican expedi
tion, as though credulous that Lincoln could be allured to
it; he also pleaded for an armistice. The President point
edly refused an armistice on any terms, before the great
and vital question of reunion was disposed of. A man of
paradoxes, whose good sense was too often led astray by
his speculative philosophy, Stephens contended, as in his
writings of this period, for an "ultimate absolute sover-



1 President Lincoln s note promised to receive commissioners sent
" with the view of securing peace to the people of our one common
country." Davis sanctioned the conference, instead, "for the pur
pose of securing peace to the two countries." 10 N. & H. c. 5.



1865. CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON ROADS. 537

eignty of each State" as a "continental regulator," a
dogma which, if duly applied, might bring them back to
the Union as it had taken them out of it, leaving them
free, moreover, to secede again. Conversation taking pres
ently a more practicable channel, the President, in circum
spect and guarded phrase, while discriminating as between