The American Scene; #651

Thank you and good evening. Welcome once again to viewpoint. This evening we're going to talk about an event that took place 15 days ago or so because on January 1st, 1963 we observed the hundredth anniversary of the formal issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln. This document has been acclaimed as one of the great written records in the evolution of man's freedom. Yet some historians have suggested that Lincoln issued the proclamation not because of his own inner convictions, rather because of political and military necessity. And it's that subject to which we should like to address ourselves so we may gain a deeper insight into the man Abraham Lincoln as well as the famous document that he proclaimed. With us this evening we're privileged to have Mr. Paul M. Angle, who is director of the Chicago Historical Society and Professor Mark M. Crue, who is associate professor of education in

history and the graduate school of education of the University of Chicago. Mr. Angle, I wonder if we might begin the discussion by asking you to perhaps explain briefly the background of the emancipation proclamation and what its significance indeed was then and is now. Well first of all I think I should say that you really have two proclamations of emancipation. The first one Lincoln issued on September 22nd 1862. In that proclamation he warned that if the states which were then rebelling against the union that is the states made up the Confederacy did not return to their national allegiance by the slaves in those states and parts of states on that date in rebellion against the union would be declared free.

So it's the second or definitive proclamation of emancipation issued on January 1st 1863 that we are really discussing this morning. If the slave states or the states in rebellion did not or did exceed to his demand is it possible that there would have been no emancipation proclamation? Oh yes I think entirely possible. It was a very explicit threat to be carried out under specific circumstances only and if those circumstances had been removed then I think there would have been no proclamation to be emancipation. I do believe however and this is pure conjecture on my part that Lincoln might very well have sought to end slavery by other means. He had already made an attempt in that direction. Mr. Krug what do you think motivated President Lincoln to issue such a proclamation?

President Lincoln was a complex man and like in all of his actions and important acts in office there must have been many motivations. I believe that it is as it is usually asserted that Lincoln was impelled to issue the proclamation hoping that it would have a beneficial effect on the fortunes of war which were not the war was not going too well for the union. There is no question that in a part at least the proclamation emancipation was a war measure as the president said because he issued the proclamation in his capacity as commander in chief. But I would also suggest and this seems to me has been overlooked or ignored that Lincoln had some very strong convictions on

the matter of slavery and I agree with Mr. Engel that if the southern states would have given up the rebellion and the proclamation itself of course would have been immediately ineffective. I do believe that because of his bitter convinced hatred of slavery that Lincoln would have found other ways to abolish slavery. He was not satisfied really with the emancipation proclamation and later when the 13th amendment was introduced in Congress several times it passed the Senate but it failed it to get the two thirds majority in the House. It was actually only through the personal effort and pressure exerted by Lincoln that finally the House approved the 13th amendment by the required two thirds majority. You know if I may say something Mr. Reagan it's curious thing that we do not know

exactly why Lincoln did issue a proclamation of emancipation. We can only conjecture and infer from the situation before and from what he said afterward. He was never explicit any more explicit than he was about the firing on Fort Sumter and his policy at the outbreak of the Civil War. So this becomes a matter of historical inference. And since it is a matter of historical inference I think that we have a hint for the reason why issued the proclamation and I think the hint is contained in a passage in the diary of Secretary of the Treasury Chase. Chase reported that at one time Lincoln told him about two months before he issued even the preliminary proclamation that he has promised himself and then he as Chase recalled he added I have

also promised it to my maker that once the military situation would get a little better that I will issue the proclamation. This statement to Chase seems to me to imply that Lincoln felt that it was his duty as president and that there was a moral obligation to do something about this problem of slavery which has plagued the nation and caused this unity for about 50 years. Mr. Angle would you place the same significance on that entry in the diary? Not quite I think I would certainly agree with Mr. Trude that Lincoln had come to believe that a proclamation of emancipation was an absolute necessity if the North were going to win the war. I would not attribute to it quite the degree of moral significance that Mr. Trude has.

Let's approach the thing from this angle. We can be pretty sure that a very important motive as far as Lincoln was concerned was weakening this Confederate army and building up the northern army. Here you had no Negroes in the Confederate army but they were the men that were keeping this out alive economically. Now if you could induce them to come into the northern lines through a promise of freedom you would weaken this out almost as effectively as if you took away that many troops. Another thing that impels me to believe this was a very strong motive was the fact that immediately after the second proclamation was issued. Lincoln exerted himself and put pressure upon generals in the field to recruit Negroes for the northern forces thus building up the union armies at the same time that the weakened the southern

armies and this had not been done before the proclamation of emancipation was issued. This I think was a very strong motive on his part. Now this does not mean of course that he was not doing something in which he believed heartily on different basis. I'm strangled you'd say that we must conjecture and infer the real motives behind his action but if we look at just the surface statements that he makes wouldn't this lead to the interpretations that many historians have given that this basically is a military and political and economic necessity? Yes I think so. Now on the other hand you can find I believe I'm correct in this you can find nothing and anything that Lincoln ever said that would indicate that there was an international significance in the proclamation of emancipation and yet I think most historians are agreed that this must certainly have been in his mind. The Great Britain had been on the whole sympathetic

to the south and lenient to the confederacy in the matter of supplying ships and munitions and so forth. France had followed Great Britain's lead. There was a definite possibility that both of those nations might have recognized the confederacy and given even more active support but the masses in Great Britain particularly could never have stood for a government would never have stood for a government which would recognize another that would perpetuate slavery when the union had decided that slavery had must come to an end. This I think is an important factor and yet you will find nothing as far as I know in Lincoln's words I really indicate that this was in his mind but it must have been. Mr. Crude? This is a rather important question to assess the importance of this document because if you examine

and this I found this rather interesting then if you examine the reaction of the contemporaries to the emancipation proclamation if you examine the reaction of very shrewd editors like Joseph Medell, Horace White of the Chicago Tribune, Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, the Springfield Republican and Republican newspapers throughout the country. They did not interpret the proclamation emancipation as a more measure and not as an instrument in getting England and France to give up their plans to recognize the confederacy as a separate state. They in a series of editorials that appeared in these in the Republican newspapers and in the Democratic newspapers including our own Chicago Times here are very important to Democratic newspaper. They stressed the fact that the emancipation proclamation actually

created a new situation in the civil war that had converted the civil war into a social revolution because it made the abolition of slavery one of the central issues of the war. As a matter of fact it seems to me from the reading of the Congressional Globe and the debates on the emancipation proclamation that both especially the debate on the House when the Democratic congressmen introduced the resolution to nullify the emancipation proclamation that were only several speeches were made by leading Republican and Democratic congressmen. What is interesting to note is that the spokesman of both parties stressed the fact that the emancipation proclamation created a social revolution in the history of the United States because it made the slavery the central issue of the war and because it committed the federal government

to the abolition of slavery and for that reason it seems to me that the emancipation proclamation was a much more important document than just a war measure and that the our hesitation which seems to be quite general now with so many historians to call Lincoln the great emancipator doesn't have any basis in fact really. Well it was the emancipation proclamation applicable to all the states. It was applicable when it was issued of course only through the states under the federal jurisdiction but as Alan Evans pointed out just recently I think believe in an article in a side of the review of literature side of the review that the fact that the emancipation proclamation was limited only to Confederacy does not in any way minimize its significance because what

it meant actually is that with every forward step of every union soldier slavery became extinct so that actually it became an important social force. I'm awfully glad you brought that up Mr. Cruz because good many present day historians in minimizing the significance of the proclamation of emancipation have also minimized its effect. They have said all right sure it freed slaves in 10 states and parts of states but the union couldn't enforce it and I know one very well known historian who some years ago made the flat statement it is doubtful whether the proclamation of emancipation freed a single slave well now that's sheer bunk because perhaps on the 1st of January 1863 the proclamation of emancipation couldn't be enforced in very many parts of the south the union armies kept moving southward and wherever the union

armies went the slaves could be freed you'll find Sherman for example enormously embarrassed by the constant advent daily of hundreds of slaves who somehow or other had heard about the proclamation of emancipation became a military problem to take care of them why the proclamation of emancipation must have freed certainly several hundred thousand slaves I don't know that there could ever be a way of competing that number but I think it's reasonable to make a statement to that effect don't you? I fully agree and I would add that in addition to the very fact that it brought physical freedom to hundreds of thousands of Negroes I think its moral influence in on the three or three and a half million Negroes in the south was even more significant it is one of the most rather inexplicable mysteries of how it happened but we know now from letters and

documents and that the news about the proclamation emancipation spread almost immediately among the Negroes in the south and even in the lower deep south and that that of course made them feel that their day of freedom is coming and it influenced I am sure that it influenced their attitude because the Confederacy has been using slaves and I'm sure that from that point on they had difficulty in using Negro labor which was very much needed by the Confederate army. The the influence Mr. Angle already mentioned the influence of the emancipation proclamation abroad especially in England but actually I believe that it was very influential in swinging public opinion and actually forcing both Russell and Palmerston to change their policy of sympathy for the Confederacy

so all in all it would seem to me that it was a great historical document and I must add one more thing what I regret that Mr. Angle I'm sure does and I know from his many books on Lincoln that actually the minim the minimizing of the effects and the importance of the emancipation proclamation also tends to diminish or at least there is there's an implied attempt to diminish the statuary of Lincoln and the moral grandeur of this what I would believe to be the greatest president of the United state in the United States history. Well Mr. Angle do not some historians tend to picture Lincoln as having issued the proclamation with a great deal of reluctance after much soul searching. Certainly he did a lot of soul searching I don't know well no I don't think I'd say that he did a lot of soul searching. He had to consider very carefully the political implications of the

proclamation. Any president can't go too far ahead of public sentiment. Now here was Lincoln in what you might call a pretty tight spot in his first inaugural address which bear in mind had been delivered on March 4th 1861 only a little more than a year and a half earlier. He had said that he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed and this was the official republican party attitude on the question. Now he has to reverse himself and so of course he has to ponder the pros and cons. I think the best evidence of that is his famous letter to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune where Greeley had been urging him I think this was either in date August or early September 1862 to issue a proclamation of emancipation and Lincoln said what I do with reference to slavery

will be determined by the effect it has on a war and on the union if I could end this war by abolishing slavery I would do it if I could end this war and maintain the union by preserving slavery I would do that. And then he went on to say this does not affect my longstanding wish that all man everywhere could be free. Doesn't this to a certain extent weaken your argument though Professor Krug of the moral grandeur and his concern with slavery? I don't think so. As a matter of fact I have a feeling that we have greatly exaggerated the significance of the Greeley letter. I think that when we know that when the letter was written that Lincoln already had the proclamation written and that he has actually told many several cabinet members that he will issue the proclamation and he has consulted them about it. So Lincoln was a brilliant politician and as Mr. Engel said very well that and I fully agree that he being

a brilliant politician he had to be sure that public opinion would be prepared. I look upon the Greeley letter as a kind of a preparation for the very act so that the people of the United States especially the populations in the border states and the Lincoln was properly concerned about the sentiment of the border states which of course were slave states that the people of the United States and especially the population in the border states would be convinced that if and when the proclamation will be issued that it will be issued because the president considers the issuance of the proclamation in the national interests and for the victory of the union. But I have not a shadow of a doubt from the from what we know about Lincoln's views about slavery. I think it was really Mr. Engel who was the first American historian to my knowledge who has taken the position that he will disagree with many historians who be little let's say the significance of the great debates between

Lincoln and Douglas in 58. There were some historians who suggested that actually in reality there was no difference on the issue of slavery between Douglas and Lincoln. It was Mr. Engel and his book created equal who pointed out that Lincoln did not agree with that position that Lincoln said several times during the debates the difference between myself and my opponent Mr. Douglas is very simple he does not care whether slavery exists or is being extinguished I consider slavery a political social and moral evil and I'm looking to its eventual distinction he did promise that when he becomes president he will not interfere with slavery in the states but he did say several times that the reason why he takes this position is that he is convinced he was convinced that if slavery were to be confined to the southern states and not allowed to expand into the territories that it will actually die

because it will have no possibility of existing only in the south. Mr. Engel? Well I'd like to say two things there. You must recognize the fact that under the constitution of the United States which Lincoln had sworn to uphold he could not buy anything other than an amendment. An amendment? Interfered with slavery where it was unless he could put it on the basis of military power and even that was questionable and even I think Lincoln himself was not at all sure that the proclamation would hold up and be upheld by the Supreme Court after the end of the war and this was one reason why he was so anxious to see the 13th Amendment to the Constitution for every eliminating slavery was passed. The other comment I'd like to make and this is purely hypothetical and then a historian gets on dangerous ground when he goes into the realm of the superstitious historians do it most of the time. But

they're always sticking their neck out. Lincoln's closest rival for the presidency in 1860 was Stephen A. Douglas. They only other of the four candidates who could have been elected. Now suppose that Stephen A. Douglas had been elected. I suppose that the war had come just the same which I am convinced it would have been the case. The South would have attempted to secede. Do you think Mr. Krug that Douglas would have issued a proclamation of emancipation? No I don't. I think that he might have issued it much later. Not I was asking whether he would have issued it in September. No on any time during the war. I think probably later he would have had to issue it. Douglas was a politician who did things as it suited his own views, his own interests and he might have issued it later but not in September. Well isn't that

in a sense self -contradictory to the extent that if some of the reasons that Lincoln had to justify the issuance of this document were based on political and military reasons, wouldn't Douglas, regardless of his moral feelings about the subject, have come to the same conclusions? He was indeed a naval man wasn't he? Not necessarily because two different people can take the same set of facts and arrive at a wholly different conclusions. So we don't know. This reminds me of something that I'd like to say in this connection because I think it illustrates aptly the kind of person Abraham Lincoln was. Just a few days before he issued the first or preliminary proclamation of emancipation, the delegation of ministers from Chicago called on him to urge him to do this. And their big argument was that it was the will of God that he should. We're upon Lincoln replied and I'm sure with a little glint of humor in his that he too wanted to do the will of God.

But presumably if God were going to reveal his will he would do it to him as president to make some position to do something about it rather than to anyone else. Let me add another very significant note from this interview too. To with the interview with the Chicago ministers and that interview Lincoln expressed the fear that if he should arm Negro soldiers that the arms given to the Negro soldiers would be within a very short time in the hands of the Confederacy implying of course lack of faith in the battlefield prowess of the Negro soldiers that might go into the Union Army. It is to me as man always a source of joy to see the growth of the president. Lincoln really was able to grow and change his mind. And when he did change his mind he did acknowledge it because later he paid full centribute to the bravery of the Negro soldiers and their contribution to the victory

of the Union. How is the party? Was this party behind him, the Republican Party? Most of them were ahead of him. Yes as a matter of fact I think that the Republican party on all of its wings, the conservatives, the moderates and the Liberals fully and completely approved with some exceptions like our own Senator Browning of Illinois and a weed of New York and possibly maybe with some reservations, maybe sword had some reservations, but I would think that and would you agree Mr. Engel that the Republican party as a whole and I know the Republican press unanimously approved arguments and recommendations. Well then you would say in general that this is certainly a good example of a moral man using political and economic military reasons in a sense and where the two of the mesh and one does not conflict with the other but

he actually emphasized the political and military reasons for his action. Well gentlemen I'm going to have to call this discussion to a close and I thank you for being with us this evening on viewpoint. Thank you Mr. Paul Engel Director of the Chicago Historical Society and Professor Mark M. Krug who is Associate Professor of Education in History and Graduate School of Education at the University of Chicago. Thank you for being with us this evening to express your viewpoint on viewpoint.