The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [172]
One of a series of addresses in 1863 in which Blair, claiming (without authority) to speak for the president, sought to counter “revolutionary attempts…to abolish the state governments for the interest of Negrodom,” the Rockville speech led to an angry counterattack from Radical Republicans. In November, Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan urged Lincoln to “stand firm” against conservative pressure, pointing out that Republicans had succeeded in the recent elections by taking “bold radical” positions in favor of emancipation and against “slaveholders.” As always, Lincoln sought to maintain party unity. On reading the Rockville speech, he remarked that the controversy between Blair and Sumner “is one of mere form and little else.” To Chandler, Lincoln responded, “I hope to ‘stand firm’ enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.”47
On December 2, 1863, to the roar of 100 cannons, Thomas Crawford’s colossal Statue of Freedom was hoisted to the top of the Capitol dome. Eight years earlier, Jefferson Davis, then the secretary of war, had ordered the statue’s original design changed, for the female figure wore a cap of liberty, a symbol in ancient Rome of emancipated slaves. Crawford replaced the cap with a feathered helmet. He could hardly have imagined that by the time the statue was completed, the liberty of hundreds of thousands of slaves would be real, not simply allegoric. Six days after the statue was put in place, Lincoln sent his annual message to the opening session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, along with the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction intended to secure the reuniting of the nation. Senator William E. Chandler of New Hampshire had written in November that Republicans desired “a policy radical enough to destroy slavery, conservative enough to save the nation.” This is what Lincoln sought to provide.48
Lincoln’s annual message included a long defense of emancipation and the enlisting of black soldiers. When announced the previous January, he reflected, these initiatives “gave to the future a new aspect, about which hope, and fear, and doubt contended.” Now, eleven months later, fear and doubt had dissipated. There had been no “servile insurrection,” and black soldiers had proven themselves in battle. The northern public had endorsed the new policy in the recent elections. Thus, what remained was hope. And for the nation to turn its back on the promise of freedom would not only relinquish an important “lever of power,” but constitute “a cruel and an astounding breach of faith.”
Lincoln then announced a new approach to Reconstruction. He offered full pardon and the restoration of all rights “except as to slaves” to Confederates who took an oath of future loyalty and pledged to accept the abolition of slavery “so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court”—an odd statement that reflected his continuing fear of the possible abrogation of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln excluded from pardon high-ranking civil and military officers and those who had abused Union soldiers, including black troops, whom he specifically singled out. When in any state the number of loyal southerners, defined as those who took the oath, amounted to 10 percent of the votes cast in 1860, this minority