Abraham Lincoln and How Emancipation Came to Pass
When Abraham Lincoln was a small boy he began to show the keenest sympathy for the helpless and oppressed. The only time he betrayed anger as a child was, as you already have learned, when he saw the other boys hurting a mud-turtle. In his first school "composition," on "Cruelty to Animals," his stepsister remembers this sentence: "An ant's life is as sweet to it as ours is to us."
As you have read on an earlier page, when Abe grew to be a big, strong boy he saved a drunken man from freezing in the mud, by carrying him to a cabin, building a fire, and spent the rest of the night warming and sobering him up. Instead of leaving the drunkard to the fate the other fellows thought he deserved, Abe Lincoln, through pity for the helpless, rescued a fellow-being not only from mud and cold but also from a drunkard's grave. For that tall lad's love and mercy revealed to the poor creature the terrible slavery of which he was the[216] victim. Thus Abe helped him throw off the shackles of drink and made a man of him.
BLACK SLAVES AND WHITE
As he grew older, Abe Lincoln saw that the drink habit was a sort of human slavery. He delivered an address before the Washingtonian (Temperance) Society in which he compared white slavery with black, in which he said:
"And when the victory shall be complete—when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth—how proud the title of that land which may truly claim to be the birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions that have ended in that victory."
This address was delivered on Washington's Birthday, 1842. The closing words throb with young Lawyer Lincoln's fervent patriotism:
"This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth of Washington; we are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth, long since the mightiest in the cause of civil liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add to the brightness of the sun or glory to the name of Washington[217] is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe we pronounce the name and, in its naked, deathless splendor, leave it shining on."
It was young Lincoln's patriotic love for George Washington which did so much to bring about, in time, a double emancipation from white slavery and black.
Once, as President, he said to a boy who had just signed the temperance pledge:
"Now, Sonny, keep that pledge and it will be the best act of your life."
President Lincoln was true and consistent in his temperance principles. In March, 1864, he went by steamboat with his wife and "Little Tad," to visit General Grant at his headquarters at City Point, Virginia.
When asked how he was, during the reception which followed his arrival there, the President said, as related by General Horace Porter:
"'I am not feeling very well. I got pretty badly shaken up on the bay coming down, and am not altogether over it yet.'
"'Let me send for a bottle of champagne for you, Mr. President,' said a staff-officer, 'that's the best remedy I know of for sea-sickness.'
"'No, no, my young friend,' replied the[218] President, 'I've seen many a man in my time seasick ashore from drinking that very article.'
"That was the last time any one screwed up sufficient courage to offer him wine."
"THE UNDER DOG"
Some people are kinder to dumb animals—is it because they are dumb?—than to their relatives. Many are the stories of Lincoln's tenderness to beasts and birds. But his kindness did not stop there, nor with his brothers and sisters in white. He recognized his close relationship with the black man, and the bitterest name his enemies called him—worse in their minds than "fool," "clown," "imbecile" or "gorilla"—was a "Black Republican." That terrible phobia against the negro only enlisted Abraham Lincoln's sympathies the more. He appeared in court in behalf of colored people, time and again. The more bitter the hatred and oppression of others, the more they needed his sympathetic help, the more certain they were to receive it.
"My sympathies are with the under dog," said Mr. Lincoln, one day, "though it is often that dog that starts the fuss."
The fact that the poor fellow may have[219] brought the trouble upon himself did not make him forfeit Abraham Lincoln's sympathy. That was only a good lesson to him to "Look out and do better next time!"
THE QUESTION OF EMANCIPATION
After he went to Washington, President Lincoln was between two fires. One side wanted the slaves freed whether the Union was broken up or not. They could not see that declaring them free would have but little effect, if the government could not "back up" such a declaration.
The other party did not wish the matter tampered with, as cheap labor was necessary for raising cotton, sugar and other products on which the living of millions of people depended.
The extreme Abolitionists, who wished slavery abolished, whether or no, sent men to tell the President that if he did not free the slaves he was a coward and a turncoat, and they would withhold their support from the Government and the Army.
Delegations of Abolitionists from all over the North arrived almost daily from different cities to urge, coax and threaten the President. They did not know that he was trying to keep the Border[220] States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri from seceding. If Maryland alone had gone out of the Union, Washington, the national capital, would have been surrounded and forced to surrender.
Besides, at this time, the armies of the North were losing nearly all the battles.
To declare all the slaves down South freed, when the Government could not enforce such a statement and could not even win a battle, would be absurd. To one committee the President said: "If I issued a proclamation of emancipation now it would be like the Pope's bull (or decree) against the comet!"
A delegation of Chicago ministers came to beg Mr. Lincoln to free the slaves. He patiently explained to them that his declaring them free would not make them free. These men seemed to see the point and were retiring, disappointed, when one of them returned to him and whispered
solemnly:
solemnly:
"What you have said to us, Mr. President, compels me to say to you in reply that it is a message from our divine Master, through me, commanding you, sir, to open the doors of bondage that the slave may go free!"[221]
"Now, isn't that strange?" the President replied instantly. "Here I am, studying this question, day and night, and God has placed it upon me, too. Don't you think it's rather odd that He should send such a message by way of that awful wicked city of Chicago?"
The ministers were shocked at such an answer from the President of the United States. They could not know, for Mr. Lincoln dared not tell them, that he had the Emancipation Proclamation in his pocket waiting for a Federal victory before he could issue it!
THE PROCLAMATION
Then, came the news of Antietam, a terrible battle, but gained by the Northern arms. At last the time had come to announce the freeing of the slaves that they might help in winning their liberties. The President had not held a meeting of his Cabinet for some time. He thought of the occasion when, as a young man he went on a flatboat trip to New Orleans and saw, for the first, the horrors of negro slavery, and said to his companions:
"If ever I get a chance to hit that thing I'll hit it hard!"[222]
Now the "chance to hit that thing"—the inhuman monster of human slavery—had come, and he was going to "hit it hard."
He called the Cabinet together. Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War, has described the scene:
"On the 22nd of September, 1862, I had a sudden and peremptory call to a Cabinet meeting at the White House. I went immediately and found the historic War Cabinet of Abraham Lincoln assembled, every member being present. The President hardly noticed me as I came in. He was reading a book of some kind which seemed to amuse him. It was a little book. He finally turned to us and said:
"'Gentlemen, did you ever read anything from "Artemus Ward?" Let me read you a chapter that is very funny.'
"Not a member of the Cabinet smiled; as for myself, I was angry, and looked to see what the President meant. It seemed to me like buffoonery. He, however, concluded to read us a chapter from 'Artemus Ward,' which he did with great deliberation. Having finished, he laughed heartily, without a member of the Cabinet joining in the laughter.]
"'Well,' he said, 'let's have another chapter.'
"I was considering whether I should rise and leave the meeting abruptly, when he threw the book down, heaved a long sigh, and said:
"'Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.'
"He then put his hand in his tall hat that sat upon the table, and pulled out a little paper. Turning to the members of the Cabinet, he said:
"'Gentlemen, I have called you here upon very important business. I have prepared a little paper of much significance. I have made up my mind that this paper is to issue; that the time is come when it should issue; that the people are ready for it to issue.
"'It is due to my Cabinet that you should be the first to hear and know of it, and if any of you have any suggestions to make as to the form of this paper or its composition, I shall be glad to hear them. But the paper is to issue.'
"And, to my astonishment, he read the Emancipation Proclamation of that date, which was to take effect the first of January following."
Secretary Stanton continued: "I have always[224] tried to be calm, but I think I lost my calmness for a moment, and with great enthusiasm I arose, approached the President, extended my hand and said:
"'Mr. President, if the reading of chapters of "Artemus Ward" is a prelude to such a deed as this, the book should be filed among the archives of the nation, and the author should be canonized. Henceforth I see the light and the country is saved.'
"And all said 'Amen!'
"And Lincoln said to me in a droll way, just as I was leaving, 'Stanton, it would have been too early last Spring.'
"And as I look back upon it, I think the President was right."
It was a fitting fulfillment of the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed that:
"All men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
That Declaration young Abe Lincoln first read in the Gentryville constable's copy of the "Statutes of Indiana."
At noon on the first of January, 1863, William[225] H. Seward, Secretary of State, with his son Frederick, called at the White House with the Emancipation document to be signed by the President. It was just after the regular New Year's Day reception.
Mr. Lincoln seated himself at his table, took up the pen, dipped it in the ink, held the pen a moment, then laid it down. After waiting a while he went through the same movements as before. Turning to his Secretary of State, he said, to explain his hesitation:
"I have been shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning, and my arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say:
"'He hesitated.'"
Turning back to the table, he took the pen again and wrote, deliberately and firmly, the "Abraham Lincoln" with which the world is now familiar. Looking up at the Sewards, father and son, he smiled and said, with a sigh of relief:
"That will do!"