The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [191]
Viewing abolition by congressional enactment as unconstitutional and fearing that the bill would force him to repudiate the new regimes in Arkansas and Louisiana, Lincoln pocket vetoed it (allowed it to die by not signing it before Congress adjourned). Lincoln obviously felt strongly about the measure. He almost always went along with congressional enactments; this was one of only a handful of vetoes during his entire presidency and the only one of a bill of any significance. In his veto message, Lincoln called again for ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and added that he had no objection if any southern state voluntarily adopted the Wade-Davis plan, hardly a likely occurrence. If this was an effort at conciliation, it did not succeed. The bill’s authors issued a public statement accusing Lincoln of exercising “dictatorial usurpation” and of surreptitiously seeking to keep slavery alive despite the Emancipation Proclamation. Like the Pomeroy circular of the previous February, the Wade-Davis manifesto backfired; even Radical newspapers denounced it as “ill-tempered.” But this should not obscure the fact that the bill had won overwhelming support among congressional Republicans. Even moderates were convinced that Congress had a role to play in Reconstruction and desired “something more Radical” than Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan.28
These debates revealed significant differences in Republicans’ approach to Reconstruction. Lincoln saw Reconstruction primarily as an adjunct of the war effort—a way of undermining the Confederacy, rallying southern white Unionists, and securing emancipation. Radicals believed Reconstruction should be postponed until after the war (as the Wade-Davis Bill clearly envisioned in the requirement that a majority of whites take an oath of loyalty) and that the federal government should attempt to ensure basic justice to the emancipated slaves. At this point, equality before the law, not black suffrage, was the key issue for most congressional Republicans. But some already wondered whether truly loyal governments could be established without black votes, given that, as the Massachusetts Radical George Boutwell pointed out, in many parts of the South the freedmen “are almost the only people who are trustworthy supporters of the Union.” “The whole subject of Reconstruction is beset with difficulty,” Secretary of the Navy Welles noted in his diary. But the immediate task for Republicans was the coming presidential campaign.29
II
THE MILITARY SITUATION cast a dark shadow over Lincoln’s prospects for reelection. In May 1864, Ulysses S. Grant, who had been brought east to take command of the Army of the Potomac, launched an assault against Robert E. Lee’s forces in Virginia. Rather than limiting the campaign to a few days of combat as his predecessors in the eastern theater did, Grant was determined to keep pressure on the Confederate army. Every day saw bloody engagements. After a month of fighting, Grant’s casualties numbered more than 40,000, almost the size of Lee’s army. Eventually, Grant broke off contact and headed for Petersburg, the rail junction south of Richmond. Lee got there first, and Grant began a siege. Meanwhile, Nathaniel P. Banks failed in an effort to bring the Red River valley in Louisiana under Union control, and William T. Sherman seemed to be making little progress as his army moved out of Tennessee toward Atlanta. Early in July, a Confederate division under Jubal Early reached