Diary of Gideon Welles: Thursday, April 19, 1866

The President last evening addressed a large concourse who assembled under a call of soldiers and sailors who desired to serenade and thank him for a proclamation in their favor for government employment. His speech is bold and well enough if it was advisable that the Chief Magistrate should address such gatherings.

Senator Trumbull called upon me this morning for the first time in several months. It was to ask a favor, and for Mrs. Trumbull more than himself. I regretted that I could not without violating regulations grant it, for both of them have been a little miffed because I opposed his two great measures which have been vetoed. The speech of the President last evening was alluded to, and Trumbull was very emphatic in condemning Presidential speechmaking. We did not greatly differ on this subject, for it has never been regarded favorably by me. Sometimes it may be excusable, but omission is better than compliance with calls from irresponsible gatherings. Frequent harangues to promiscuous crowds lessen the dignity of the President.

Passing from this subject to the condition of the country, he asked me if I was willing, or would consent, that Senators and Representatives should be admitted to take part in the Government, coming from Rebel States and districts. I told him I was most assuredly willing, provided they were loyal and duly and properly elected. "Then," inquired he, "how could you deny one a seat in Congress from South Carolina during the existence of the Rebellion?" "That," said I, "is a different question, but I am by no means prepared to say I would not have been glad to have seen a true and loyal man like Andrew Johnson, or yourself, here from that State during the War. I regretted that more did not, like Johnson, remain in 1861. Would you have expelled them?" Without answering me direct, Trumbull became a good deal excited and was very emphatic against the Rebels. I said we would have no controversy on that point. I was not their apologist, though I was not their persecutor, now that the Rebellion was suppressed. They had greatly erred and wronged us, had slain our kindred and friends, wasted our treasure, etc., but he and I should not bear resentment. We had a country to care for and should, I thought, exert ourselves to promote reconciliation and reëstablish the Union in all its integrity at the earliest attainable moment.

"Without conditions?” inquired he. "The Constitution," replied I, "provides for all that is necessary to be done. The condition of affairs is anomalous, but the path is plain. Each State is entitled to the Senators and Representatives according to population. Why are eleven unrepresented and denied their rights by an arbitrary and despotic majority of Congress?"

He imputed the difficulty chiefly to the President, who, he declared, had failed to act up to the principles of his message; and he quoted a passage. I told him the course of the President I thought perfectly consistent and I knew it was honest. But why was Tennessee, for instance, more loyal than Kentucky, excluded from representation in either branch of Congress? He said the President was to blame for that, for had he not put his veto on the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, Tennessee, and he thought Arkansas and Louisiana also, would long before this have had their Representatives in Congress. I told him this did not appear to me very enlightened and correct statesmanship. Why those States should be denied their undoubted constitutional rights, because the President and Congress disagreed, I could not understand. He complained that the President was not frank, that he had advised civil rights in his message to all, and yet vetoed the very bill which confirmed those rights.

I remarked that the subject of civil rights—personal rights—belonged to the States, not to the Federal Government. The amendment to the Constitution had abolished slavery, and the blacks had the same remedies that the whites had to preserve their freedom. That undoubtedly some of the States would, at least for a time, make discriminating laws. Illinois, I presume, did, and I thought Connecticut also. He denied that Illinois made any distinction affecting the civil rights of the negro, and asked when and in what respects the civil rights were affected in Connecticut.

"Both States," said I, "deny them suffrage, which is claimed as a right by the extreme Radicals in Congress. He said there were not ten men in Congress who took that view; there were just eight, he finally remarked in the Senate, and perhaps double that number in the House. "But," said he, "suffrage is a privilege, not a right." I remarked I so considered it, but Sumner and others took a different view. "Well, then," said he, "in what other respects are the civil rights of the negro affected?" "He is not," said I, "by our laws put on terms of equality. He is not permitted to get into the jury box; he is not allowed to act as an appraiser of property under any circumstances, and there are other matters wherein distinctions are made." "These," replied he, "are all matters of privilege.”

What, then," said I, "do you mean by civil rights? Please to define it." "The right," replied he, "to his liberty, to go and come as he pleases, have the avails of his own labor, not to be restricted in that respect. Virginia," continued he, "has passed a law that they shall not leave the estate on which they reside without a permit." I know not that Virginia denies or restricts the right to emigrate. The other rights mentioned the negro possesses.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 487-90

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: February 6, 1865

Bright and frosty. As I supposed, the peace commissioners have returned from their fruitless errand. President Lincoln and Mr. Seward, it appears, had nothing to propose, and would listen to nothing but unconditional submission. The Congress of the United States has just passed, by a two-thirds vote, an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.

Now the South will soon be fired up again, perhaps with a new impulse and WAR will rage with greater fury than ever. Mr. Stephens will go into Georgia, and reanimate his people. Gen. Wise spoke at length for independence at the Capitol on Saturday night amidst applauding listeners, and Governor Smith speaks to-night.

Gen. Breckinridge is here and will take his seat to-morrow. Every effort will be made to popularize the cause again.

Hon. Mr. Foote is at Washington, in prison.

Gen. Wise's brigade has sent up resolutions consenting to gradual emancipation—but never to reunion with the North.

There is a more cheerful aspect on the countenances of the people in the streets. All hope of peace with independence is extinct and valor alone is relied upon now for our salvation. Every one thinks the Confederacy will at once gather up its military strength and strike such blows as will astonish the world. There will be desperate conflicts!

Vice-President Stephens is in his seat to-day, and seems determined.

Mr. Hunter is rolling about industriously.

Gen. Lee writes that desertions are caused by the bad management of the Commissary Department, and that there are supplies enough in the country, if the proper means were used to procure them.

Gen. Taylor sends a telegram from Meridian, Miss., stating that he had ordered Stewart's corps to Augusta, Ga., as Sherman's movement rendered a victory necessary at once. The dispatch was to the President, and seems to be in response to one from him. So we may expect a battle immediately near Augusta, Ga. Beauregard should have some 20,000 men, besides Hardee's 15,000—which ought to be enough for victory; and then good-by to Sherman!

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 2, p. 410-1

Diary of Gideon Welles: Tuesday, January 31, 1865

I made a short stay at Cabinet to-day. The President was about to admit a delegation from New York to an interview which I did not care to attend. The vote was taken to-day in the House on the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, which was carried 119 to 56. It is a step towards the reëstablishment of the Union in its integrity, yet it will be a shock to the framework of Southern society. But that has already been sadly shattered by their own inconsiderate and calamitous course. When, however, the cause, or assignable cause for the Rebellion is utterly extinguished, the States can and will resume their original position, acting each for itself. How soon the people in those States will arrive at right conclusions on this subject cannot now be determined.

John P. Hale is giving his last venomous rants against the Navy Department. He has introduced a resolution calling for certain information, the adoption of which was opposed by Conness, the small-pattern Senator from California. I should have been glad to have it slightly amended and adopted, although it might give me some labor, at a time when my hands are full, to respond.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 234

Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, July 8, 1864

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, at the late session Congress passed a bill to "guarantee certain States, whose governments have been usurped or overthrown, a republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed;

And whereas, the said bill was presented to the President of the United States for his approval less than one hour before the sine die adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him;

And whereas, the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union, which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their consideration:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known that, while I am (as I was in December last, when by proclamation I propounded a plan for restoration) unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration; and while I am also unprepared to declare that the free State constitutions and governments already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same as to further effort, or to declare a constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States, but am at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the Nation may be adopted, nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it, and that I am, and at all times shall be, prepared to give the executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in which cases military Governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the bill.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

[L. S.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By the President:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

 Secretary of State.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series III, Volume 4 (Serial No. 125), p. 477-8

Abraham Lincoln’s Last Speech, April 11, 1865

FELLOW-CITIZENS:— We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten.

A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you. But no part of the honor for plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part. By these recent successes, the reinauguration of the national authority — reconstruction — which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with —no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with and mould from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows. In the Annual Message of December, 1863, and the accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State, would be acceptable to and sustained by the Executive Government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable, and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was in advance submitted to the then Cabinet, and approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the Emancipation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana: that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members of Congress. But even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new Constitution of Louisiana, declaring emancipation for the whole State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applied to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any professed emancipationist came to my knowledge until after the news reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested in seeking a reconstruction of a State Government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident that the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such has been my only agency in getting up the Louisiana Government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise and break it, whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest; but I have not yet been so convinced. I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps add astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to answer that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me, that question has not been nor yet is a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may become, that question is bad as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all — a merely pernicious abstraction. We 'all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the Government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again get them into their proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether those States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the Louisiana Government rests, would be more satisfactory to all if it contained fifty thousand, or thirty thousand, or even twenty thousand, instead of twelve thousand, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana Government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government? Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore Slave State of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State Government, adopted a Free State Constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. This Legislature has already voted to ratify the Constitutional Amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetuate freedom in the State—committed to the very things, and nearly all things, the nation wants — and they ask the nation’s recognition and its assistance to make good this committal. Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in fact, any to the white man: You are worthless or worse; we will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the blacks we say: This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, held to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new Government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. [Laughter.] Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the National Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each ate, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. 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 set, when satisfied that action will be proper.

SOURCE: Henry J. Raymond, The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, p. 684-7

Edward Everett to William Cullen Bryant, January 4, 1865

boston, January 4th

I have this day received your favor of the 2d, with an enclosed printed paper, to which my signature is requested, to be “immediately” returned. I should have preferred a little time for reflection on a proposal of so much gravity, and it would be presumptuous in me to decide off-hand that a law might not by possibility be framed in the present state of the country by which slavery should be constitutionally prohibited by Congress. I must own, however, that I do not find in the Constitution (from which alone Congress derives not only its powers but its existence) any authority for such a purpose. If this view is correct (and I am not aware that it has ever been contested by any party), the passage of a law like that proposed would be the inauguration of a new revolution; that is, the assumption of powers of the widest scope, confessedly not conferred by the frame of government under which we live. The legislation to which General Washington referred, in his letter of 1786, quoted in the printed paper, was, of course, State legislation. So was that of Pennsylvania, so justly commended in the paper. I would fear that an attempt like that prayed for would not only render more difficult the adoption of the constitutional amendment now pending, but throw obstacles in the way of the prohibition of slavery now in rapid progress under State authority, with reference to which there is no doubt.*

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* This letter was among the last Mr. Everett wrote; eleven days after the date of it he died ; and Mr. Bryant, though he had been no admirer of his earlier political course, paid handsome tributes to his memory in speeches before the New York Historical Society and the Union League Club. (a)

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(a) See “Orations and Addresses.” D. Appleton & Co.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 224

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, December 11, 1864

New York, December 11,1864.

. . . War to the knife to slavery. Let us have no “slavery is dead.” It is not dead. Nothing is dead until it is killed. I trust our President feels this in his inmost soul. His message seems to pin him down to it. Now let the nation pin itself down by the Amendment. This Amendment is the clear idea, the distinct formulation, motto and principle, of all the inarticulated roar of our battles — the test, the battle-cry, the article of faith. The sooner it is pronounced, so that no receding is possible, the better for all concerned. . . .

Slavery dead? Why, did you see how the secretary of the Citizens' Association but yesterday spoke of Abolitionists? A man who now declares himself for the Union but not against slavery seems to me much like one who might have begged St. Chrysostom to baptize him fully and wholly unto Christ, but to allow him not to give up his Jove and Venus, and the rest. We fight for our country, that is, for its integrity, and slavery cuts it asunder far more clearly and injuriously than any geographic division could do. Such a division can be removed by a treaty, by force of arms, by the brush of the map-maker; but slavery is an institution, and has all the tenacity of institutions, whether they be for weal or woe, until they are destroyed, and the life is bruised out of their head.

If you see the President, and have an unofficial conversation with him, tell him how much those citizens who have no office or place, but simply love their country with all their heart, and have given their sons for that country, have thanked God for the passages in his message which relate to slavery. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 352-3

Francis Lieber to Senator Charles Sumner, February 12, 1864

February, 12, 1864.

Yes, my dear Sumner, that vote of which you write me — namely, thirty-one out of thirty-nine for your death-blow to slavery — is wonderful. It amazes and rejoices me. Still, I say we want four, perhaps five, amendments; we want them not by way of theoretic perfection or publicistic symmetry, but for plain common-sense adjustment of the Constitution to the state of things, and by the great behest of history.  . . . You know I am not given to extravagance; on the contrary, I consider the constant tendency of over-doing and over-saying things one of our most developed and least manly characteristics; nevertheless I boldly state that, calmly reflecting and keenly remembering the whole course of human affairs, I cannot bring to my mind any change of opinion, conviction, and feeling, as by an afflatus, equal to the change that has been wrought in the American mind concerning slavery within the last one year. I stand amazed. I, for one, would never have dared to believe it possible that but yesterday a Taney could give his opinion boldly and an Abolitionist was treated like a leprous thing, and that to-day a Winter Davis can declare in Congress that the Constitution of the United States never acknowledged man as property. I rub my eyes, and say, “Where are we?” . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 341

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, July 24, 1864

Ashfield, Mass., 24 July, 1864.

. . . This week, let us hope, we shall hear that Sherman is in Atlanta, and that he is breaking up the army opposed to him. His work is not better done than Grant will do his. But I do not want peace till there is certainty of our carrying the Amendment to the Constitution. We must have that to make peace sure.

The Rebel self-appointed peacemakers took nothing by their move, and Lincoln showed as usual his straightforward good sense. What a contrast between him and the politicians who fancy themselves his superiors in insight and shrewdness! What does Raymond¹ mean by his Saturday's article on Lincoln's statement of terms? Is he hedging for a reconstruction with slavery? If so, he is more shortsighted and more unprincipled than I believed. I never fancied, indeed, that he had principles, and I thought he had learned enough not to confess such bad ones. . . .

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¹ Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 274

Congressman James M. Ashley to Abraham Lincoln, January 31, 1865

House Of Representatives, January 31, 1865.

Dear Sir: The report is in circulation in the House that Peace Commissioners are on their way or in the city, and [it] is being used against us. If it is true, I fear we shall lose the bill. Please authorize me to contradict it, if it is not true.

Respectfully,

J. M. Ashley.

To the President.

SOURCE: John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Editors, The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 10, p. 349

Abraham Lincoln to Congressman James M. Ashley, January 31, 1865

So far as I know there are no Peace Commissioners in the city or likely to be in it.

A. Lincoln.

January 31, 1865.

SOURCE: John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Editors, The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 10, p. 349

13th Amendment to the United States Constitution

AMENDMENT XIII

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary 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.

Section 2.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, March 5, 1861

Shady Hill, 5 March, 1861.

Is it not a great satisfaction to have the dignity and force of the government once more asserted? To feel that there are strong and honest hands to hold it, in place of the feeble and false ones which for four months past have let it fall?

Lincoln's Inaugural is just what might have been expected from him, and falls but little short of what might have been desired. It is manly and straightforward; it is strong and plain enough to afford what is so greatly needed, a base upon which the sentiments of the uncorrupted part of the Northern people can find firm ground; and from which their course of action can take direction. But what will the seceded States say about it — still more, what will they do? I incline to believe that they will not try violence, and that their course as an independent Confederacy is nearly at an end.

Congress could not have done less harm than it has done in passing the proposal for a Constitutional Amendment.¹ I am sorry that Lincoln should have volunteered any approbation of the proposal, — though I have little fear that the Amendment can be adopted by a sufficient number of States to make it part of the Constitution. I do not wish to bind the future. I fully adopt the principle in regard to “domestic institutions” (what a euphuistic people about slavery we are!) of the Republican platform, but I do not want Congress bound never to pass laws to prevent the internal Slave Trade. Let Slavery alone in each state, — very well; but let us not promise never to try to stop Virginia from being nothing but a breeding ground of slaves.

The first act of this great play of Destruction of the Union has ended well. It seems now as if before the play were ended it would be generally found out that, as you and I have believed from the beginning, its proper name is, Destruction of the Slave Power.

When the history of American Slavery is written its open decline and fall will be dated from the day in which the South Carolina Declaration of Independence was signed. . . .

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¹ The Thirteenth Amendment as proposed by Congress in 1861, and approved by Lincoln in his inaugural address, forbade the passage of any amendment empowering Congress “to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” As adopted and declared in force before the end of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 219-20

John C. Fremont’s Acceptance of the Radical Democratic Party’s Nomination for President of the United States, June 4, 1864

New York, June 4, 1864.

GENTLEMEN: In answer to the letter which I have had the honor to receive from you, on the part of the representatives of the people assembled at Cleveland, the 31st of May, I desire to express my thanks for the confidence which led them to offer me the honorable and difficult position of their candidate in the approaching Presidential election.

Very honorable, because in offering it to me you act in the name of a great number of citizens who seek above all things the good of their country, and who have no sort of selfish interest in view. Very difficult, because in accepting the candidacy you propose to me, I am exposed to the reproach of creating a schism In the party with which I have been identified.

Had Mr. Lincoln remained faithful to the principles he was elected to defend, no schism could have been created, and no contest could have been possible. This is not an ordinary election. It is a contest for the right even to have candidates, and not merely, as usual, for the choice among them. Now, for the first time since 76, the question of constitutional liberty has been brought directly before the people for their serious consideration and vote. The ordinary rights secured under the Constitution and the laws of the country have been violated and extraordinary powers have been usurped by the Executive. It is directly before the people now to say whether or not the principles established by the Revolution are worth maintaining.

If, as we have been taught to believe, those guarantees for liberty which made the distinctive name and glory of our country, are in truth inviolably sacred, then here must be a protest against the arbitrary violation which had not even the excuse of a necessity. The schism is made by those who force the choice between a shameful silence or a protest against wrong. In such considerations originated the Cleveland Convention. It was among its objects to arouse the attention of the people to such facts, and to bring them to realize that, while we are saturating Southern soil with the best blood of the country in the name of liberty, we have really parted with it at home.

To-day we have in the country the abuses of a military dictation without its unity of action and vigor of execution — an Administration marked at home by disregard of constitutional rights, by its violation of personal liberty and the liberty of the press, and as a crowning shame, by its abandonment of the right of asylum, a right especially dear to all free nations abroad. Its course has been characterized by a feebleness and want of principle which has misled European powers and driven them to a belief that only commercial interests and personal aims are concerned, and that no great principles are involved in the issue. The admirable conduct of the people, their readiness to make every sacrifice demanded of them, their forbearance and silence under the suspension of everything that could be suspended, their many acts of heroism and sacrifices, were all rendered fruitless by the incapacity, or to speak more exactly, by the personal ends for which the war was managed. This incapacity and selfishness naturally produced such results as led the European powers, and logically enough, to the conviction that the North, with its greatly superior population, its immense resources, and its credit, will never be able to recover the South. Sympathies which would have been with us from the outset of this war were turned against us, and in this way the Administration has done the country a double wrong abroad. It created hostility, or at best indifference, among those who would have been its friends if the real intentions of the people could have been better known, while, at the same time, it neglected no occasion for making the most humiliating concessions.

Against this disastrous condition of affairs the Cleveland Convention was a protest.

The principles which form the basis of its platform have my unqualified and cordial approbation, but I cannot so heartily concur in all the measures which you propose. I do not believe that confiscation extended to the property of all rebels, is practicable and if it were so, I do not think it a measure of sound policy. It is, in fact, a question belonging to the people themselves to decide, and is a proper occasion for the exercise of their original and sovereign authority. As a war measure, in the beginning of a revolt which might be quelled by prompt severity, I understand the policy of confiscation, but not as a final measure of reconstruction after the suppression of an insurrection.

In the adjustments which are to follow peace no considerations of vengeance can consistently be admitted.

The object of the war is to make permanently secure the peace and happiness of the whole country, and there was but a single clement in the way of its attainment. This element of slavery may be considered practically destroyed in the country, and it needs only your proposed amendment of the Constitution, to make its extinction complete.

With this extinction of slavery the party divisions created by it have also disappeared. And if in the history of the country there has ever been a time when the American people, without regard to one or another of the political divisions, were willed upon to give solemnly their voice in a matter which involved the safety of the United States, it is assuredly the present time.

If the Convention at Baltimore will nominate any man whose past life justifies a well-grounded confidence in his fidelity to our cardinal principles, there, is no reason why there should be any division among the really patriotic men of the country. To any such I shall be most happy to give a cordial and active support.

My own decided preference is to aid in this way, and not to be myself a candidate. But if Mr. Lincoln should be nominated — us I believe it would be fatal to the country to indorse a policy and renew a power which has cost w the lives of thousands of men, and needlessly put the country on the road to bankruptcy — there will remain no other alternative but to organize against him every element of conscientious opposition with the view to prevent the misfortune of his re-election.

In this contingency, I accept the nomination at Cleveland, and, as a preliminary step, I have resigned my commission in the army. This was a sacrifice it gave me pain to make. But I had for a long time fruitlessly endeavored to obtain service. I make this sacrifice now only to regain liberty of speech, and to leave nothing in the way of discharging to my utmost ability the task you have set for me.

With my earnest and sincere thanks for your expressions of confidence and regard, and for the many honorable terms in which you acquaint me with the actions of the Convention, I am, gentlemen,

Very respectfully and truly yours,

J. C. FREMONT.

To Worthington G. Snethen of Maryland, Edward Gilbert of New York, Casper Butz of Illinois, Charles E. Moss of Missouri, N. P. Sawyer of Pennsylvania, a Committee, &c.

SOURCE: Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America, during the Great Rebellion, p. 413-4

Constitutional Amendment

The Proposed Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting Slavery will beautifully harmonize with the great ends it was ordered to secure, namely:

To effect a more perfect Union.
Establish justice.
Insure domestic tranquility.
Provide for the common defence.
Promote the general welfare, and
Secure the blessings of liberty (not of slavery) to us and our posterity.

From the beginning even until now, slavery has been at perpetual war with each and all of these designs, for it has ever tended to and threatened disunion; it established injustice to the fugitive slave act; it has incessantly disturbed domestic tranquility; it has always endangered the common defence; and has caused the present civil war. In brief, its history and spirit are that of irreconsilable, irrepressible, necessary, hostility to every object proposed in the Preamble to the Constitution, to the fundamental doctrines of the Declaration of Independence. Happily this great charter of National Government provides for its amendment, which can now be readily affected, for the last four years has created a revolution in the public mind, which will not only permit, but demands as a “necessity,” this onward step in civilization.

The Constitution provides that a convention for proposing amendments shall be called by Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, or on the application of two thirds of the several States. The spirit of Liberty now commands those two thirds, and the convention will be called. The proposed amendments must be ratified by three fourths of the States, either by their Legislatures or State conventions, as the one or other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress. There would seem to be no doubt that, by the time the subject goes to the State[s] for settlement the requisite number can be obtained. The question, brought home to the people in a form which nobody can disapprove, will call forth the real opinion of the masses on slavery, unmixed with any political prejudices and passions; and that opinion must be on the side of liberty. – Boston Transcript.

– Published in The Union Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa, Friday, December 30, 1864