Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [422]
Lincoln shared a draft of his reply with Douglass and requested his advice on whether or not to send it. “To me it seems plain,” the draft began, “that saying reunion and abandonment of slavery would be considered, if offered, is not saying that nothing else or less would be considered.” Having written these evasive words, however, he at once emphasized that as a “matter of morals” and a “matter of policy,” it would be ruinous to recant the promise of freedom contained in his proclamation “as it seems you would have me to do…. For such a work, another would have to be found.” Nonetheless, he acknowledged that if the rebels agreed to “cease fighting & consent to reunion” so long as they could keep their slaves, he would be powerless to continue the war for the sole purpose of abolition. The people would not support such a war; their congressional representatives would cut off supplies. All such figuring was irrelevant, in any case, for “no one who can control the rebel armies has made the offer supposed.”
Douglass saw clearly that Lincoln was trying “to make manifest his want of power to do the thing which his enemies and pretended friends professed to be afraid he would do.” Regardless of his personal convictions, he seemed to be saying, he “could not carry on the war for the abolition of slavery. The country would not sustain such a war, and [he] could do nothing without the support of Congress.” Douglass emphatically urged Lincoln not to send the letter. “It would be given a broader meaning than you intend to convey; it would be taken as a complete surrender of your anti-slavery policy, and do you serious damage.”
After listening carefully to the impassioned advice of Douglass, Lincoln turned the conversation to other topics. While they were talking, a messenger informed Lincoln that the governor of Connecticut wished for an audience. “Tell Governor Buckingham to wait, I want to have a long talk with my friend Douglass,” Lincoln instructed. Douglass could barely “suppress his excitement” when he encountered John Eaton later that day. “He treated me as a man; he did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins! The President is a most remarkable man. I am satisfied now that he is doing all that circumstances will permit him to do.” Eaton believed that Douglass “had seen the situation for the first time as it appeared to Mr. Lincoln’s eyes.” For his part, Lincoln told Eaton that “considering the conditions from which Douglass rose, and the position to which he had attained, he was…one of the most meritorious men in America.”
That same night, perhaps buoyed by his conversation with Douglass, Lincoln invited Governor Randall and Judge Joseph Mills to the Soldiers’ Home for a further discussion of the Robinson letter. “The President was free & animated in conversation,” Mills recorded in his diary. “I was astonished at his elasticity of spirits.” Lincoln admitted from the outset that he could not help “but feel that the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided in the approaching canvas.” This was not “personal vanity, or ambition,” but rather a firm belief that the Democrats’ strategy of mollifying the South with a promise to renounce abolition as a condition for peace would “result in the dismemberment of the Union.” He pointed out that there were “between 1 & 200 thousand black men now in the service of the Union.” If the promise of freedom were rescinded, these men would rightly give up their arms. “Abandon all the posts now possessed by black men surrender all these advantages to the enemy, & we would be compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks.”
Lincoln’s tone grew more fervent as he continued, as if he were arguing with himself against sending the reply to Robinson. “There have been men who have proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson & Olustee to their masters to conciliate the South. I should be damned