The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [196]
Union, military victory, and Democratic “treason” formed the keynotes of the Republican campaign. “The platform of the Chicago Convention,” announced Harper’s Weekly, “will satisfy every foreign and domestic enemy of American Union and Liberty.” Stung by Democratic charges that emancipation was the sole reason the war continued, Republicans initially tried to play down the subject of slavery, although as the campaign neared its conclusion more and more speakers defended abolition on moral and pragmatic grounds. But even Radicals like William D. Kelley, who insisted that the war was “a conflict between two orders of civilization” in which slavery must perish, added that once emancipation had been secured, not only would southern blacks lose any desire to move to the North, but “there are not a thousand negroes in Pennsylvania who would not leave [for] the tropics.” Republicans, Frederick Douglass wrote in disgust in October, seemed “ashamed of the Negro.” But, along with nearly all the abolitionists, Douglass ended up supporting Lincoln’s reelection. He would have preferred a candidate “of more decided antislavery convictions,” Douglass wrote, but since the choice had come down to Lincoln and McClellan, “all hesitation ought to cease.”48
Partly to get discussion of the postwar rights and status of blacks onto the political agenda, a national black convention, the first since 1855, assembled in October in Syracuse, New York, with delegates from throughout the North and parts of the South. Some, including Abraham H. Galloway of North Carolina (who had led a black delegation to the White House in May to present a petition for the right to vote), James H. Ingraham of Louisiana, and Francis L. Cardozo of South Carolina, would go on to play major roles in Radical Reconstruction. Written by Douglass, the address of the convention demanded complete abolition, equality before the law, and black suffrage. It condemned the racism of the Democratic party but complained that Republicans, too, remained “largely under the influence of the prevailing contempt for the character and rights of the colored man.” It noted that neither Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan nor the Wade-Davis Bill recognized blacks as having “any political existence or rights whatever.” The convention established the National Equal Rights League to press the cause of equality.49
In keeping with tradition, Lincoln did not campaign, although he delivered impromptu remarks to a number of army units in Washington and penned public letters. He spoke of the need to preserve a form of government based on “liberty and equality,” which guaranteed to all “an open field and a fair chance…in the race of life.” “Mr. Lincoln,” observed the North American Review, “represents and contends for the democracy of free labor.” When he received resolutions of support from a group of Methodists opposed to slavery, Lincoln responded, “I trust it is not too early for us to rejoice together over the speedy removal of that blot upon our civilization.” Lincoln also sent a letter to be read to a mass meeting in Maryland supporting ratification of the state’s new antislavery constitution. “I wish all men to be free,” he wrote. “I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring. I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.”50
As late as mid-October, Lincoln expected to lose half a dozen or more states and to be reelected by only three electoral votes. But early in November, he swept to a resounding victory, carrying every state except New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. Lincoln won 55 percent of the popular vote,