The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [140]
Presented without fanfare and appearing almost an afterthought, this final sentence constituted the initial version of the Emancipation Proclamation. It went well beyond anything Congress or Lincoln had previously envisioned. Apart from the act freeing a few slaves in the territories, previous steps toward emancipation had carefully distinguished between loyal and Confederate owners. They kept up, one northern newspaper complained, “the confounded distinction between the slaves of one class of people and those of another,” making emancipation a punishment for rebellion and permitting slaveowning “as a reward for devotion to the government.”31 Moreover, the Second Confiscation Act, despite its potential for future emancipation, did not apply to the vast majority of slaves until they came within Union control. Now, Lincoln audaciously proposed to extend wartime emancipation to all the slaves in most of the places where the institution existed. Abolition would be immediate and without compensation. Whether the owner was loyal to the Union or a rebel would make no difference.
Lincoln’s cabinet seems to have been stunned by this announcement. Chase, the most radical member, remained silent. He admitted shortly after the meeting that the plan went “beyond anything I have recommended.” But he worried that state courts would not recognize the freedom of those liberated by such a proclamation, and feared the proposal would lead to “depredation and massacre.” He preferred incremental emancipation by local commanders as the army occupied southern territory. Stanton, who had favored emancipation for months, supported the immediate promulgation of the document. Montgomery Blair expressed opposition, fearing that emancipation would cost Republicans votes in the fall elections. Welles said nothing. Lincoln’s plan, he later wrote, was “fraught with consequences, immediate and remote, such as human foresight could not penetrate.” It would bring about “a revolution of the social, civil, and industrial habits and condition of society in all the slave states.”32
Perhaps most surprising was Secretary of State Seward’s reaction. On the day before Lincoln presented his draft proclamation to the cabinet, Seward had written to James Watson Webb, the ambassador to Brazil, stating bluntly, “Slavery is the cause of this civil war.” For months, American diplomats had been recommending that emancipation be made an explicit war aim in order to forestall foreign recognition of the Confederacy or some kind of international mediation proposal. Britain, the leading world power, which had abolished slavery in its own empire in the 1830s, would be far less likely to assist the Confederacy if the issue were changed from the South’s right to self-determination to the future of slavery. Given the international situation and his long career of antislavery politics, Seward would have been expected to offer enthusiastic support to Lincoln’s proposal. But Seward had long believed that the war had doomed slavery, making government action unnecessary. Now, he argued that the announcement of an emancipation policy would actually make foreign interference more likely, since Britain would fear a permanent disruption of its cotton supply. Moreover, issuing the proclamation immediately, as Lincoln intended, would seem an act of desperation. It would be far better to wait for a military victory. That evening, Lincoln met with Seward’s political alter ego, the Albany editor and “wizard of the lobby