The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [137]
If the border states rejected Lincoln’s offer, one participant in the July 12 meeting told a northern journalist, the president would “irresistibly be swept into the vortex of the revolution.” The military situation heightened the pressure for a new departure. By early July, it had become apparent that McClellan’s Virginia campaign launched the previous spring had failed. The impact was traumatic. “A profound gloom…settled upon the public mind,” declared the New York Times, “in regard to the conduct and prospects of the…war.” Lincoln’s friend Richard Yates, now the governor of Illinois, issued a public letter calling for a more vigorous effort to save the Union: “The crisis of the war and our national existence is upon us. The time has come for the adoption of more decisive measures.” John Sherman, the moderate from Ohio, told the Senate that while he respected “the rights of the southern people,” it had become imperative to confiscate the slaves and other property of “the disloyal” and mobilize the full power of the nation to “enter into the war in earnest.” It was in the context of a broad shift in thinking about how the war should be conducted that Congress broke the long logjam on the use of black troops and the confiscation of Confederate property, and Lincoln made the decision for emancipation.19
With manpower needs now extending into the indefinite future, Congress in July moved forward on the contentious issue of raising black soldiers, which Radicals had advocated, to no effect, since the session began. As adjournment neared, it began debate on a bill amending the Militia Act of 1795 to authorize the president to receive blacks for “constructing intrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent.” If owned by supporters of the Confederacy, black men who enlisted along with their immediate families (identified as the mother, wife, and children) would become free. This was a remarkable acknowledgment that slaves had families, even though no state accorded them legal recognition. While opening the door to black recruits serving in combat, the bill envisioned them mainly as military laborers, freeing white troops for combat. Hence it set their pay at ten dollars per month minus a three-dollar clothing ration, six dollars less than that of white soldiers. Representatives of the border states, where the measure offered an immediate path to freedom for many male slaves and their families, objected vociferously. Willard Saulsbury of Delaware called the bill “the most magnificent scheme of emancipation yet proposed.” White soldiers, he warned, would never “fight side by side with negroes.”20
But moderate Republicans lined up behind the proposal. The war, declared Senator William P. Fessenden, must be fought on “different principles.” Fessenden’s long speech in favor of admitting blacks into military service marked a crucial turning point. It “amazed the Radical Republicans,” reported one northern journalist, noting that Fessenden, “a crabbed conservative,” was among the Senate’s most influential members: “When he moves, it signifies that the whole glacier has started.” Lincoln signed the Militia Act on July 17. But for it to go into effect, a presidential order was needed.21
On July 11 and 12, 1862, after months of ideological deadlock, Congress also approved and sent to the president the Second Confiscation Act. The importance of this law, Congressman Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois would later write, “has not been fully appreciated.” This resulted, in part, from the fact that it consisted of contradictory elements, drawn from divergent proposals of the previous few months. Early sections of the measure provided for fines, imprisonment, and possible death sentences, as well as the loss of slaves, for anyone convicted of assisting the rebellion,