The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [192]
“No man,” declared Harper’s Weekly, “will complain that we are not now making war in earnest.” But much of the northern public saw no need for bloodshed of such magnitude, especially with victory nowhere in sight. The result was a crisis of morale and a growing clamor for peace. Even Martin F. Conway, the congressional Radical who had excoriated Lincoln for failing to pursue the war more vigorously, now begged him, “For god’s sake try and arrange [peace] with the South, on any basis short of their resumption of federal power on the cornerstone of slavery…. The war-spirit is gone.”31
Almost from the beginning of the war, what the New York Herald called “amateur peace negotiators” had sought to bring an end to the conflict. In May 1863, James F. Jaquess, an army chaplain from Illinois, persuaded Lincoln to authorize him to travel to Richmond in the hope of arranging terms of reunion. Two months later, Lincoln approved a letter written by James R. Gilmore, publisher of the Continental Review, to Zebulon Vance, the governor of North Carolina, proposing “a reunion of all the States on the basis of the abolition of slavery…and the full reinstatement of every Confederate citizen in all the rights of citizenship.”32
Nothing came of these initiatives. But early in July 1864, with a sense of desperation over the course of the war taking hold in the North, the mercurial Horace Greeley informed Lincoln that two Confederate emissaries “empowered to negotiate for peace” had arrived at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. (In fact, there were three, and they had been instructed to “harass the Northern government in every possible way” and do what they could to encourage peace sentiment in view of the coming northern election.) Greeley proposed his own “plan of adjustment”: the restoration of the Union, the abolition of slavery, amnesty to all Confederates, $400 million in compensation to slaveowners, representation in Congress based on total population (which would increase southern political power, since the entire former slave population would now be counted rather than three-fifths), and a national convention to propose changes in the Constitution. Surely realizing that nothing would come of the initiative but not wanting to seem averse to peace, Lincoln designated Greeley to travel to Canada to meet the emissaries. On July 18, Lincoln sent Greeley a letter, addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” offering to receive “any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery.” When Greeley presented the letter, the commissioners issued a public statement expressing “profound regret” that Lincoln had proposed terms the Confederacy could never accept.33
While these events were transpiring, Jaquess and Gilmore traveled to Richmond, where they met with Jefferson Davis to present peace terms approved by Lincoln. These closely followed Greeley’s proposals with one alteration: the number of congressmen would be based not on the total population of a state but on the number of voters, presenting the South with the choice of seeing its congressional representation reduced or allowing black men to vote. (In somewhat different form, the Fourteenth Amendment passed by Congress in 1866 would also offer the southern states this choice.) Gilmore later claimed that Lincoln approved of the mission in order to demonstrate the impossibility of a negotiated peace. If this was Lincoln’s aim, Davis obliged. He indignantly told the emissaries that the war would continue until the Union acknowledged “our right to self-government.”34
Lincoln felt vindicated. But Democrats seized on the To Whom It May Concern letter to argue that the only thing preventing peace was Lincoln’s unwillingness to withdraw the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln, charged the New York World, preferred to “continue a war for the abolition of slavery rather than entertain