Post by Auset on Feb 13, 2004 11:29:39 GMT -5
Writing the Great Document
In December of 1861 Lincoln spoke a certain word to Senator Charles Sumner, Massachusetts abolitionist, but with the caution, "Don't say a word about that."
By C. Brian Kelly
In December of 1861 Lincoln spoke a certain word to Senator Charles Sumner, Massachusetts abolitionist, but with the caution, "Don't say a word about that." And no wonder: in a country already badly rent by civil war it was an issue that could tear even more. He would have to creep up on its blind side, even though--and perhaps because--others already were tossing around that word. And fighting over it. Various senators in fact urged Lincoln to take his stand, make his move--even the Confederacy, it was feared, might take the dramatic step, if only to win recognition from England and France.
Always, even if not yet time, it was in Lincoln's mind. And finally, in the summer of 1862, when things were going dismally for the Union armies in the field, he wrote a draft. As he presented it to his cabinet, his thinking on the timing of the great event, he later said, was this: "Things had gone from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game... I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject."
There was that word, almost hidden away in a small shrubbery of verbiage. Emancipation!
Rarely, though, had Lincoln been so wrong in his political instincts. And it was Secretary of State William Henry Seward who pointed out the problem. Such a moment, coming after a string of military defeats for the Union, was no time to attempt such a bold step. "His [Seward's] idea was that it would be considered our last shriek, on the retreat." Far better, argued Seward, to wait for military success, then issue the dramatic policy statement.
So Lincoln "put the draft of the proclamation aside." And thankfully so, since right after that John Pope lost the second Battle of Bull Run. But then, late in the summer, came the Battle of Antietam, a fearful slaughter also close outside of Washington, yet this time with a Northern tilt to the outcome. Lincoln was then staying at the Soldiers' Home three miles out of town, and there he finished writing a second draft. He invited his vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, for a supper at the Soldiers' Home one night after Antietam, then took Hamlin behind closed doors in the library and read him the document. "Now listen while I read this paper," said the recent circuit rider from Illinois. "We will correct it together as I go on." He did, they did, and the cabinet heard the results on September 22, 1862. (Note: For the moment, it would abolish slavery only in the Confederate states.)
At that meeting the course of the great document's development and issuance was determined, and that is the real-life story behind it... except for one little detail--a man, an old friend, named Swett, Leonard Swett, attorney-at-law back home in Illinois.
Still in the throes of finding his path, the right path, some months before, Lincoln had sent to Bloomington, a two-day train trip away, for his old friend and fellow trial lawyer from a legal circuit so rustic they occasionally had been required to share the same bed when traveling to try cases. Told by Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, the tale is that the president took Swett into the Cabinet Room at the White House, talked for a moment or two about mutual friends, then got down to the business at hand--emancipation. Yes, that, and yet it wasn't much of a discussion, really. Or perhaps it was--but a one-sided discussion, in which Lincoln did all the talking.
He pulled out first one letter (pro-emancipation), read it aloud to Swett, then another (anti), and yet a third (also anti). Lincoln then "began a discussion of emancipation in all its phases." As Swett listened, Lincoln went on and on.
"He turned it inside out and outside in," wrote Sandburg. "He reasoned as though he did not care about convincing Swett, but as though he needed to think out loud in the presence of an old-timer he knew and could trust."
After an hour or so, Lincoln stopped, wished Swett and their mutual friends back home well, and ended the interview. He never asked his friend for any comment, but it was only after this session that the Great Emancipator laid his historic decree before his cabinet, the country... the world: the Emancipation Proclamation.
In December of 1861 Lincoln spoke a certain word to Senator Charles Sumner, Massachusetts abolitionist, but with the caution, "Don't say a word about that."
By C. Brian Kelly
In December of 1861 Lincoln spoke a certain word to Senator Charles Sumner, Massachusetts abolitionist, but with the caution, "Don't say a word about that." And no wonder: in a country already badly rent by civil war it was an issue that could tear even more. He would have to creep up on its blind side, even though--and perhaps because--others already were tossing around that word. And fighting over it. Various senators in fact urged Lincoln to take his stand, make his move--even the Confederacy, it was feared, might take the dramatic step, if only to win recognition from England and France.
Always, even if not yet time, it was in Lincoln's mind. And finally, in the summer of 1862, when things were going dismally for the Union armies in the field, he wrote a draft. As he presented it to his cabinet, his thinking on the timing of the great event, he later said, was this: "Things had gone from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game... I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject."
There was that word, almost hidden away in a small shrubbery of verbiage. Emancipation!
Rarely, though, had Lincoln been so wrong in his political instincts. And it was Secretary of State William Henry Seward who pointed out the problem. Such a moment, coming after a string of military defeats for the Union, was no time to attempt such a bold step. "His [Seward's] idea was that it would be considered our last shriek, on the retreat." Far better, argued Seward, to wait for military success, then issue the dramatic policy statement.
So Lincoln "put the draft of the proclamation aside." And thankfully so, since right after that John Pope lost the second Battle of Bull Run. But then, late in the summer, came the Battle of Antietam, a fearful slaughter also close outside of Washington, yet this time with a Northern tilt to the outcome. Lincoln was then staying at the Soldiers' Home three miles out of town, and there he finished writing a second draft. He invited his vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, for a supper at the Soldiers' Home one night after Antietam, then took Hamlin behind closed doors in the library and read him the document. "Now listen while I read this paper," said the recent circuit rider from Illinois. "We will correct it together as I go on." He did, they did, and the cabinet heard the results on September 22, 1862. (Note: For the moment, it would abolish slavery only in the Confederate states.)
At that meeting the course of the great document's development and issuance was determined, and that is the real-life story behind it... except for one little detail--a man, an old friend, named Swett, Leonard Swett, attorney-at-law back home in Illinois.
Still in the throes of finding his path, the right path, some months before, Lincoln had sent to Bloomington, a two-day train trip away, for his old friend and fellow trial lawyer from a legal circuit so rustic they occasionally had been required to share the same bed when traveling to try cases. Told by Carl Sandburg in his Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, the tale is that the president took Swett into the Cabinet Room at the White House, talked for a moment or two about mutual friends, then got down to the business at hand--emancipation. Yes, that, and yet it wasn't much of a discussion, really. Or perhaps it was--but a one-sided discussion, in which Lincoln did all the talking.
He pulled out first one letter (pro-emancipation), read it aloud to Swett, then another (anti), and yet a third (also anti). Lincoln then "began a discussion of emancipation in all its phases." As Swett listened, Lincoln went on and on.
"He turned it inside out and outside in," wrote Sandburg. "He reasoned as though he did not care about convincing Swett, but as though he needed to think out loud in the presence of an old-timer he knew and could trust."
After an hour or so, Lincoln stopped, wished Swett and their mutual friends back home well, and ended the interview. He never asked his friend for any comment, but it was only after this session that the Great Emancipator laid his historic decree before his cabinet, the country... the world: the Emancipation Proclamation.
