1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [195]
Two days after Ellsworth’s death—just as the second group of fugitives was arriving at Fortress Monroe—a Baptist minister in Albany, New York, gave a sermon about the young colonel’s slaying before an audience of Union volunteers. The Reverend J. D. Fulton began with a passage from the Old Testament about David’s lament over the death of Jonathan: “Thy love to me was wonderful—passing the love of woman.” Lincoln, the minister said, was like David, and Ellsworth was his Jonathan. When David spoke those words, Fulton noted, the Kingdom of Israel was riven by civil war. King Saul had anointed David as his successor but had then suddenly turned on him and had heaped up obstacles “in the path of the choice of the people and the favorite of Heaven.” Jonathan’s death, terrible as it was, had signaled the moment when David the former shepherd boy became King David, the monarch who reunited his kingdom and brought the Tablets of the Law to Jerusalem. Perhaps the death of Ellsworth would mark a similar rebirth for Lincoln, and for America. However, the preacher continued:
If it be the business of the North to squander her millions, and to give up her sons, simply that we can place the old flag-staff again in the hands of those who ask protection to slavery, then … you will see an inglorious termination to the campaign. But, if we are to fight for freedom; if we are to wipe out the curse that infects our borders; if we are to establish justice, teach mercy, and proclaim righteousness, then will our soldiers be animated by a heroic purpose that will build them up in courage, in faith, in honor, and they will come back to us respected and beloved.73
Lincoln and his cabinet convened on Thursday, May 30—a week after the first three Hampton fugitives’ escape—to address Butler’s decision. Unfortunately, no detailed account of their deliberations survives. But a letter that Blair wrote to the general later that day suggests that they may have been fairly perfunctory. Previously the postmaster general had advised that he planned to argue for leaving the treatment of fugitive slaves up to Butler’s discretion—reminding him, however, that “the business you are sent upon … is war, not emancipation.” Needless to say, Fortress Monroe should not harbor any slaves belonging to pro-Union masters, or those not useful for military purposes. After the meeting Blair gloated, “I so far carried my point this morning about the negroes that no instructions will be given you for the present and I consider that I have in fact carried out my programme of leaving it to your discretion. I think this conclusion was arrived at by most from a desire to escape responsibility for acting at all at this time”—a common enough desire in Washington, then as now. (Another account suggests that Seward’s deft hand may have helped coax his colleagues toward this nonresolution.)74
By that point, the administration had already received a second dispatch from Butler, describing the influx of women and children into the fort. With this in mind, Blair suggested one pragmatic “modification” to Butler’s policy: “I am inclined to think you might impose the code by restricting its operations to working people, leaving the Secessionists to take care of the non working classes of these people.… You can … take your pick of the lot and let the rest go so as not to be required to feed unproductive laborers or indeed any that you do not require.” As to the slaves’ eventual fate, Blair wrote, of course no one was suggesting that all the Negroes be set free. Perhaps at the end of the war, those who belonged to men convicted of treason could be legally confiscated and sent off to Haiti or Central America—in fact, he was enclosing a speech that his brother Frank had once given in Congress about just such a plan. (The Blairs may have been rabid Unionists, but they