The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [153]
At Lincoln’s urging, Louisiana’s military governor, George F. Shepley, organized an election in December in and around New Orleans in order, as he impolitically put it, to enable residents to avail themselves of “the benefits” of exemption from emancipation. The turnout of 7,700 amounted to 60 percent of the vote cast in 1860. Military Governor Andrew Johnson called elections for late December in parts of Tennessee, but Confederate raids made holding them impossible. Nonetheless, Johnson and other Tennessee Unionists “urgently” requested Lincoln to exempt the entire state from the proclamation. Joseph Segar, whom Congress had earlier seated to represent eastern Virginia, pressed Lincoln to exempt that region. Lincoln seemed anxious to comply. On December 31, he wired General John A. Dix that time was “nearly up” but he had received no word of an election. Dix replied that one had just been held in Norfolk.74
Western Virginia took a different route to exemption. Early in the war, as previously related, Unionists there had created the Restored Government of Virginia, which Congress and Lincoln recognized as the state’s legitimate regime. Early in 1862, the legislature called for the creation of a separate state of West Virginia, whose population of 378,000 included about 18,500 slaves and 2,800 free blacks. In June, the U.S. Senate approved the idea, so long as West Virginia provided for the emancipation of the children of slaves born after July 4, 1863. In December 1862, the resolution passed the House. Lincoln then had to decide whether to sign it.75
The Constitution allows for the division of a state if authorized by its legislature. But the idea that the Restored Government truly represented Virginia, as Thaddeus Stevens remarked, was a “mockery.” Asked by Lincoln for its opinion about the creation of this new state, the cabinet divided. Seward thought it essential to “plant a free state south of the Ohio.” Bates declared the entire proceeding unconstitutional. Welles agreed, and pointed out that were West Virginia not admitted, all its slaves “would probably be free by Tuesday when the Proclamation emancipating slaves would be published.” To Lincoln, the key issue was not constitutionality, but whether admission would assist the war effort. Deciding that it would, on December 31 he signed the resolution admitting West Virginia to the Union. In February 1863, the state amended its constitution to incorporate the required plan for gradual emancipation.76
Also on the final day of 1862, Lincoln took his most concrete step to implement the idea of colonization. With James R. Doolittle, one of the idea’s most avid proponents, present, Lincoln signed a contract with Bernard Kock, a businessman originally from Charleston, to transport blacks to Île à Vache (Cow Island), located just off the coast of Haiti. Kock had persuaded the Haitian government to grant him the right to cut timber there. In the fall he had issued a public letter to Lincoln waxing poetic about the resources of his “beautiful, healthy, and fertile island.” Lincoln’s commissioner of emigration, James Mitchell, lobbied on Kock’s behalf. Less enthusiastic was Attorney General Bates, who told the president, “This Governor Kock is an errant humbug…a charlatan adventurer.” But Lincoln arranged for Kock to be paid $250,000 for transporting 5,000 blacks to Cow Island. Doolittle and the Blairs were overjoyed. They believed, wrote Elizabeth Blair Lee, the sister of Frank and Montgomery Blair, “it is the beginning of the 2nd great Exodus.”77
IV
THE NEXT DAY, January 1, 1863, Lincoln presided at the annual White House New Year’s reception. Beginning in late morning, he greeted “an immense line” of visitors that included the diplomatic corps, justices of the Supreme Court (led by Chief Justice Taney), military officers, and members of the general public who managed to enter before the doors were closed at two o’clock. Later that afternoon,