Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of WarStephenson, Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright)
History
Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War
Stephenson, Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright)
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865; Presidents -- United States -- Biography
The vindictive Spirit of the extremists had been rebuffed by Lincoln
in another way. Shortly after Bull Run, Wade and Chandler appealed to
Lincoln to call out negro soldiers. Chandler said that he did not care
whether or no this would produce a servile insurrection in the South.
Lincoln's refusal made another count in the score of the extremists
against him.(6)
During the late summer of 1861, Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, were all
busily organizing their forces for an attack on the Administration.
Trumbull, indeed, seemed out of place in that terrible company. In time,
he found that he was out of place. At a crucial moment he came over
to Lincoln. But not until he had done yeoman service with Lincoln's
bitterest enemies. The clue to his earlier course was an honest
conviction that Lincoln, though well-intentioned, was weak.(7) Was this
the nemesis of Lincoln's pliability in action during the first stage
of his Presidency? It may be. The firm inner Lincoln, the unyielding
thinker of the first message, was not appreciated even by well-meaning
men like Trumbull. The inner and the outer Lincoln were still
disconnected. And the outer, in his caution, in his willingness to be
instructed, in his opposition to extreme measures, made the inevitable
impression that temperance makes upon fury, caution upon rashness.
Throughout the late summer, Lincoln was the target of many attacks,
chiefly from the Abolitionists. Somehow, in the previous spring, they
had got it into their heads that at heart he was one of them, that he
waited only for a victory to declare the war a crusade of abolition.(8)
When the crisis passed and a Democrat was put at the head of the army,
while Fremont was left in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, Abolition
bitterness became voluble. The Crittenden Resolution was scoffed at as
an "ill-timed revival of the policy of conciliation." Threats against
the Administration revived, taking the old form of demands for a wholly
new Cabinet The keener-sighted Abolitionists had been alarmed by the
first message, by what seemed to them its ominous silence as to slavery.
Late in July, Emerson said in conversation, "If the Union is incapable
of securing universal freedom, its disruption were as the breaking up of
a frog-pond."(9) An outcry was raised because Federal generals did not
declare free all the slaves who in any way came into their hands.
The Abolitionists found no solace in the First Confiscation Act which
provided that an owner should lose his claim to a slave, had the slave
been used to assist the Confederate government. They were enraged by an
order, early in August, informing generals that it was the President's
desire "that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected
and maintained; in cases of fugitives from the loyal Slave States, the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial
proceedings must be respected by the military authorities; in
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