The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [194]
Lincoln decided not to send the letter to Robinson. But demands for a change of policy continued to mount. On August 22 the Republican National Committee, meeting in New York, concluded that Lincoln could not be reelected. They dispatched Henry J. Raymond to Washington to urge the president to send a peace commissioner to Richmond to propose an end to the war on the “sole condition” of reunion. Raymond assured Lincoln that this would involve “no sacrifice of consistency” and would be a shrewd political move. Jefferson Davis would reject any such overture, thus dispelling “all the delusions about peace that prevail in the North.”40
Lincoln was convinced he faced defeat. He asked his cabinet to affix their signatures to an envelope containing a document whose contents remained hidden. Only after his reelection did he reveal what they had signed:
This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.41
The “blind memorandum” did not mention slavery; it could be interpreted as envisioning a situation in which emancipation might be sacrificed to save the Union. On August 24, 1864, the day after the cabinet signed it, Lincoln composed a letter authorizing Raymond to proceed to Richmond to propose “that upon the restoration of the Union and the national authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful modes.” Were this rejected, Raymond should ascertain “what terms of peace” the Confederacy would accept. The following day, Lincoln discussed the draft letter with Raymond, Senator William P. Fessenden, and Secretaries Seward and Stanton. Overnight, it appears, Lincoln had changed his mind. He and the others agreed that the Raymond mission should not go forward; it would amount to an “ignominious” surrender, “worse than losing the Presidential contest.” Thus, after a moment of hesitation, Lincoln reaffirmed the transformation that had taken place in the character and purpose of the Civil War. Begun as a means of preserving the Union, the war, as Seward put it, had evolved into “a popular revolution against African slavery.” Emancipation had become an end in itself, which Lincoln would not abandon even if it meant risking his own reelection.42
The painful events of August 1864 forced Lincoln to define with greater precision his understanding of the scope and permanence of the Emancipation Proclamation. He had always worried about its constitutionality and what would happen to it when the war ended. The quest to make emancipation more secure helps to explain why he pressed in 1863 and 1864 for the writing of new state constitutions that abolished slavery and why he eventually came to support abolition by constitutional amendment. As the New York Times noted, while the Emancipation Proclamation had “set free” all the slaves in areas in rebellion, many had not yet been “made free.” Lincoln made a similar distinction. He had always insisted that black soldiers could not be reenslaved. He had announced that he would not “return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress,” by which he seemed to mean those who had actually enjoyed freedom within Union lines. He assumed that such persons would remain free even if the Democrats won the coming election, which is why he asked Douglass to devise a means of increasing their number.
The stark fact remained, however, that in August 1864, a majority of the 3.1 million slaves covered by the proclamation still resided in parts of the South where the Union army had not yet