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By Root 1809 0

the largest majority since Andrew Jackson in 1828. Nineteen states counted the votes of the soldiers cast in army camps, and Lincoln won over 70 percent of these ballots. The soldiers, one officer wrote, believed in Lincoln because he recognized that “this war is not a failure, that slavery must die.” Republicans also strengthened their control of Congress, ensuring that if the second session of the Thirty-eighth Congress did not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, the Thirty-ninth would certainly do so. To a crowd that gathered at the White House to celebrate his victory, Lincoln called the fact that elections had been held in the midst of the war a vindication of popular self-government. The aristocratic New York diarist George Templeton Strong agreed. The result of “the most momentous election ever held since ballots were invented,” he wrote, had somewhat mitigated “my contempt for democracy and extended suffrage.”51

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1864

III

DESPITE REPUBLICANS’ rather cautious embrace of emancipation during the campaign, they chose to interpret the election as an endorsement of irrevocable abolition. Richard J. Oglesby, who had just been elected governor of Illinois, assured Lincoln that he was now “at liberty to say to the rebels about what you said to ‘whom it may concern.’” Lincoln himself understood the result in this way. In his annual message to Congress in early December 1864, he claimed that “the voice of the people” had been heard in favor of ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Since “the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not,” he added, “may we not agree that the sooner the better?” Lincoln then discussed prospects for peace, reiterating his offer of amnesty to rank-and-file Confederates who took an oath of loyalty but also warning that the day would “probably” come when he would adopt “more rigorous measures” to secure reunion. He repeated his previous declarations that he would not return to slavery any person freed by the Emancipation Proclamation or Congress. The message made no mention of colonization. “We shall hear no more of that suicidal folly,” wrote a correspondent of the black-owned New Orleans Tribune.52

Lincoln took further steps to cement party unity and ensure the completion of emancipation. In December he appointed James Speed of Kentucky, the brother of his friend Joshua Speed, as attorney general. Unlike his brother, James Speed was one of the most radical Kentucky Unionists; early in the war, he had described himself to Lincoln as “almost an abolitionist.” And Lincoln named Salmon P. Chase chief justice of the Supreme Court. He did so in part to placate the Radicals, who had bombarded him with letters urging Chase’s appointment, but also, Lincoln told a group of visitors, to guarantee that the Court did not challenge the constitutionality of the Emancipation Proclamation. “You at the head of the Nation—and Chase at the head of the Supreme Court,” Lincoln’s old friend Norman D. Judd exulted. Judd was not the only person who could scarcely believe how the national government had been transformed since 1860. “Mr. Speaker,” a Democratic member of Congress proclaimed, “the anti-slavery party is in power. We know it; we feel it.”53

The first order of business of the Republican majority when Congress reconvened in December 1864 was to reconsider the House vote of the previous June that had failed to approve the Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln threw his support to the endeavor, intervening more directly in the legislative process than at any other point in his presidency. He pressured border Unionists, most of whom had opposed the amendment in June, to change their position. Congressman John Alley of Massachusetts later claimed that Lincoln told him to procure votes in any way he chose, remembering that the president is “clothed with immense power.” One border congressman who voted for the amendment was subsequently appointed ambassador to Denmark. Lincoln also authorized Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax to announce that if the amendment failed again, Lincoln