Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [324]
Lincoln did not need any such confirmation of the historic nature of the edict. “Fellow-citizens,” he had said in his annual message in December, “we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
When Joshua Speed next came to visit, Lincoln reminded his old friend of the suicidal depression he had suffered two decades earlier, and of his disclosure that he would gladly die but that he “had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.” Now, indicating his Emancipation Proclamation, he declared: “I believe that in this measure…my fondest hopes will be realized.”
GRAVE QUESTIONS REMAINED: Had Lincoln chosen the right moment to issue his revolutionary edict? Would the Union cause be helped or hindered? Even Republican papers worried that the edict would create “discord in the North and concord in the South,” strengthening “the spirit of the rebellion” while it diminished “the spirit of the nation.” Lincoln’s most intimate counselor, Seward, repeatedly warned that the situation demanded “union and harmony, in order to save the country from destruction.”
All his life, Lincoln had exhibited an exceptionally sensitive grasp of the limits set by public opinion. As a politician, he had an intuitive sense of when to hold fast, when to wait, and when to lead. “It is my conviction,” Lincoln later said, “that, had the proclamation been issued even six months earlier than it was, public sentiment would not have sustained it.” If the question of “slavery and quiet” as opposed to war and abolition had been placed before the American people in a vote at the time of Fort Sumter, Walt Whitman wrote, the former “would have triumphantly carried the day in a majority of the Northern States—in the large cities, leading off with New York and Philadelphia, by tremendous majorities.” In other words, the North would not fight to end slavery, but it would and did fight to preserve the Union. Lincoln had known this and realized that any assault on slavery would have to await a change in public attitudes.
The proposition to enlist blacks in the armed forces had required a similar period of preparation. “A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit,” Lincoln explained. “Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap!” He had watched “this great revolution in public sentiment slowly but surely progressing.” He saw this gradual shift in newspaper editorials, in conversations with people throughout the North, and in the views expressed by the troops during his own visits to the field. He had witnessed the subtle changes in the opinions of his cabinet colleagues, even those who represented the more conservative points of view. Although he knew that opposition would still be fierce, he believed it was no longer “strong enough to defeat the purpose.”
Events soon tested Lincoln’s belief. In the weeks that followed the issuance of the proclamation, the tenuous coalition of Democrats and Republicans that had supported the war showed signs of disintegration. In New York, the newly elected Democratic governor Horatio Seymour denounced emancipation in his inaugural message. In Kentucky, Governor