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By Root 1671 0

explanation of his thinking on the war’s relationship to slavery in the late summer of 1861. Later, his outlook would change. He would end up doing what the letter indicated he could not do—abolish property in slaves “by proclamation” in the absence of legislative authority. All this proves is that five months into the Civil War, Lincoln, like the vast majority of his countrymen, had not yet arrived at a coherent policy regarding how to deal with slavery.

The controversy over Frémont’s order opened the floodgates of public discussion of slavery. As William O. Stoddard, one of Lincoln’s three secretaries, wrote in a New York newspaper, it reconfigured northern politics, dividing it “as by a saber cut, permanently, into the new shape of ‘conservatives’ and ‘radicals.’” For the moment, Stoddard added, the conservatives, led by Lincoln, had things “their own way.” Yet, he noted, the distinction was less rigid than heated rhetoric sometimes suggested. “For the most part,” the two groups sought “the same ends but by different means.”29

Nonetheless, this difference was significant. Radicals and abolitionists, many of whom had refrained during the summer from direct criticism of the administration, condemned Lincoln’s modification of Frémont’s order. “Where is the war power now?” wondered the Weekly Anglo-African. Some comments included disdainful remarks of a kind that would resurface again and again during Lincoln’s presidency. Benjamin F. Wade wrote of Lincoln’s “imbecility and perverseness,” claiming he had done “more injury to the cause of the Union…than [General Irvin] McDowell did by retreating at Bull Run.” Lincoln’s action, Wade added, “could only come of one born of ‘poor white trash’ and educated in a slave state.”30

For months, abolitionists had insisted that the war could not be won without emancipation. Now they embarked on a campaign to persuade the administration and the northern public. A group in Boston formed the Emancipation League to present the case for abolition in terms that would attract the widest support. “I have been advocating of late,” wrote the abolitionist editor Charles G. Leland, “emancipation for the sake of the Union—and of free white labor,” not the slaves. On October 1, Charles Sumner, who to the surprise of many constituents had said nothing about slavery during the special session of Congress, called for emancipation in a speech at the Republican state convention in Massachusetts.

Even in Massachusetts, however, most Republicans had no desire to break with the president. The moderate Republican press denounced Sumner’s speech, and the delegates rejected a resolution that advocated freeing all slaves within Union lines, with compensation for loyal owners. Yet Sumner also received many letters of support, not all of them from Radicals. Even Montgomery Blair praised his remarks: “Your speech is noble, beautiful, classical, sensible. I would have timed it differently, but I will take it now.” In any event, the debate had become public, and it would not go away. In October, his former congressional colleague Richard W. Thompson reported to Lincoln from Indiana that “public sentiment” had reached a “peculiar” condition, marked by “a very free examination and discussion of the policy of the administration.” No president, he added, had “ever been subjected to a severer or more searching scrutiny.” People of all parties strongly supported the war effort, but they demanded “vigorous policy—decided and prompt action” against the South. Ironically, Thompson observed, Lincoln’s strongest support came from his former opponents, while “Republicans, thus far, complain the most.”31

III

LINCOLN WAS unquestionably thinking seriously about slavery in the fall of 1861. In November, George Bancroft, the noted historian and former member of James K. Polk’s cabinet, conveyed to Lincoln his conviction that “Divine Providence” had brought on the war as a way to “root out social slavery.” Lincoln replied that the matter “does not escape my attention.” He promised to deal with it “in all due caution, and with the