The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [126]
Lincoln asked Congress to adopt a joint resolution pledging to provide financial compensation to any state that enacted a plan for the “gradual abolishment of slavery.” Such a measure, he argued, would help to preserve the Union, since Confederates continued to expect the border states to join them. “To deprive them of this hope,” which the adoption of a plan of emancipation would accomplish, “substantially ends the rebellion.” Lincoln made clear his preference for “gradual, and not sudden emancipation.” He reiterated that the federal government had no right to “interfere with slavery within state limits,” and that the border states had complete “free choice” whether to accept or reject his idea. Yet he also included a not-too-veiled warning: so long as the war continued, no one could foresee the consequences.64
Determined to keep leading Radicals on his side, Lincoln called Sumner to the White House and read the message aloud before sending it to Congress. To everyone else, the announcement came as a complete surprise, as “unexpected,” Wendell Phillips said, “as a thunderbolt in a clear sky.” If Lincoln had “not entered Canaan,” Phillips told one audience, “he has turned his face Zionward.” Other abolitionists were even more enthusiastic. On the day Lincoln dispatched his message to Congress, a New York meeting sponsored by the Emancipation League greeted word of his action with “transports of joy.” “We could hardly believe the news,” declared the Weekly Anglo-African. “Who could have prophesized this three months ago?”65
Lincoln seemed to have gauged the state of public opinion precisely. All the major New York newspapers, including the radical Tribune, Democratic World, anti-abolitionist Herald, and ever-cautious Journal of Commerce, applauded his plan. The Tribune’s correspondent in the capital called the message “perhaps the most important document ever addressed to Congress.” Conservatives saw the message as a counter to “the drift of abolition schemes” in Congress. They praised Lincoln for envisioning gradual, not immediate, emancipation, and for acknowledging the states’ exclusive power to determine slavery’s future. Many northern Democrats, to be sure, criticized his plan as unwarranted by the Constitution. But for the moment, Lincoln had “given the Republican party a policy,” presenting “ground where all might stand, the conservative and the radical,” declared Owen Lovejoy. Lovejoy and other Radicals remained determined to press for further action against slavery. But Lincoln’s proposed resolution quickly won congressional approval, with virtually every Republican voting in favor (but not Thaddeus Stevens, who abstained, thinking the plan far too weak). Overshadowed by later events, Lincoln’s March 6 message marked an important milestone on the road to abolition. While Lincoln had privately been promoting border emancipation since the previous November and had asked Congress to provide funds for this purpose in his annual message of December, he now publicly made the eventual end of slavery a national goal, and claimed a new national authority to promote it. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly explained why it considered Lincoln’s message important enough to publish in full, rather than providing only a summary, its usual practice with public documents: gradual emancipation had become “the policy of the nation.”66
Lincoln moved to drum up support for his proposal when he met with Wendell Phillips at the White House late in March. The meeting lasted an hour, with Lincoln doing most of the talking. He seemed to feel that Phillips did not appreciate “quite enough” the March 6 message. According to Phillips, Lincoln affirmed his hatred of slavery and that he “meant it should die.” Lincoln assured the abolitionist that runaways would not be returned: “The Negro who has once