The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [204]
“It seems our fate never to get rid of the Negro question,” Sidney George Fisher, the Philadelphia lawyer and political commentator, observed in his diary. “What shall we do with the Negro?—seems as far from being settled as ever.”78 As the war neared its conclusion, it was apparent that the fate of the emancipated slaves would be the central issue of Lincoln’s second term as president.
Epilogue
“Every Drop of Blood”: The Meaning of the War
ON MARCH 4, 1865, Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time. The setting itself reflected how much had changed in the past four years. When Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address, the new Capitol dome, which replaced the original wooden one, was only half complete. Now the Statue of Freedom crowned the finished edifice, symbolizing the reconstitution of the nation on the basis of universal liberty. For the first time in American history, companies of black soldiers marched in the inaugural parade. According to one estimate, half the audience that heard Lincoln’s address was black, as were many of the visitors who paid their respects at the White House reception that day.1
When Lincoln spoke, the end of the war and of slavery was finally in sight. Early in February, William T. Sherman’s army had marched from Savannah into South Carolina, bringing, as one planter recorded in his journal, the “breath of Emancipation” to the heartland of secessionism. Only days later, Union forces, among them the celebrated Fifty-fourth Massachusetts singing “John Brown’s Body,” occupied Charleston. Meanwhile, Grant tightened his grip on Lee’s army, still besieged at Petersburg, the gateway to Richmond.2
It must have been very tempting for Lincoln to use his inaugural address to review the progress of the war and congratulate himself and the nation on impending victory. Instead, he delivered a speech of almost unbelievable brevity and humility.3 Lincoln began by stating that there was no need for an “extended address” or an elaborate discussion of “the progress of our arms.” He refused to make any prediction as to when the war would end. One week after the inauguration, Senator Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware wrote that he had “slowly and reluctantly” come to understand the war’s “remote causes.”4 He did not delineate them, but in the second inaugural Lincoln did. Slavery, he stated forthrightly, was the reason for the war:
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves. Not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Lincoln, as always, chose his words carefully. Referring to the slaves as one-eighth of the “population” suggested that they were part of the nation, not an exotic, unassimilable element, as he had once viewed them. “Peculiar,” of course, was how southerners themselves had so often described slavery. “Powerful” seemed to evoke Republicans’ prewar rhetoric about the Slave Power. To say that slavery was the cause placed responsibility for the bloodshed on the South. Yet Lincoln added simply, “And the war came,” seemingly avoiding the assignment of blame. But the war, Lincoln continued, had had unanticipated consequences:
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result