George Eggleston - The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 2 of 2

In the meantime great events were occurring which were in some respects more important in their bearing on the war than battles would have been. In these events the war recognized itself and adapted itself to its conditions.

From the beginning the abolitionists had clamorously and ceaselessly demanded of Mr. Lincoln that he should recognize the actual cause of the war by proclaiming freedom for the slaves at the South. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that the war was simply the culmination of that "irrepressible conflict" between the systems and sentiments of free and slave labor which had constituted the burden of the country's history for nearly half a century. If there had been no slavery there would have been no war.

It is true that a very large proportion of the Southern people regretted slavery, deprecated its existence, and earnestly desired to be rid of it. It is also true that the great mass of the Southerners were non-slaveholders, and that their fighting was done not for the perpetuation of that institution, in which they had no interest, but in assertion of those reserved rights of the individual states upon the maintenance of which they sincerely believed that the liberty of the people depended. These people desired to take their states out of the Union, not for the sake of slavery, but for the sake of that right of local self-government which they regarded as the fundamental condition of liberty among men.

On the other hand a large proportion of the Northern people cared little or nothing about slavery – many of them even approving the institution as the only practicable arrangement under which blacks and whites could live peaceably together, and as a condition eminently proper for the incapable black man. But these believed in the maintenance of the Union as a condition of liberty and progress, and were ready to sacrifice their lives and their possessions in behalf of that end.

Nevertheless it was clear from the beginning that in the last analysis, the war involved as its issue the maintenance of slavery, or the destruction of that system root and branch.

Personally Mr. Lincoln hated slavery and very earnestly desired its extermination. But, as he reminded those who beset him with unsolicited advice, he was restrained by his oath of office while they were free to advocate any principle or policy that might seem good in their eyes.

Moreover, he had upon him the tremendous task of preserving the Union and in aid of that supreme purpose he was ready to sacrifice all other considerations of what kind soever. In answer to an impassioned appeal from Horace Greeley in August, 1862, Mr. Lincoln set forth his attitude in these words:

"My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

At the beginning Mr. Lincoln had clearly seen the necessity of winning all the support he could to his war measures. He had seen that while practically the whole population of the North would stand by him in a war for the preservation of the Union, there must be a very great and dangerous defection, should he make the war one for the extirpation of slavery in those states in which the institution existed under protection of the Federal Constitution. By thus resolutely refusing to make the war a crusade against slavery, and declaring – as he did in his official utterances – that it was no part of his purpose to interfere with the domestic institutions of any state, Mr. Lincoln had drawn to his support a vast body of influential citizens who would otherwise have opposed, and whose influence was great enough perhaps, if it had been offended, to have robbed him of the means of restoring the disrupted Union. Had he adopted the policy of the extremists at the North, had he begun by declaring war upon slavery rather than upon disunion, there is little doubt that Maryland, Kentucky and the whole strength of Missouri would have been thrown into the Confederate side of the scale with disastrous effect. Even New York, the financially and otherwise dominant Northern state, would have given him at best only a divided and ineffective allegiance, while in all the other states of the North, heavy minorities, and in some cases perhaps commanding majorities, would have opposed his measures and deprived him of that support in Congress and the country upon which depended his success in his effort to restore and perpetuate the Union.

By his policy of waging war at the outset only for the salvation of the nation's integrity he won to his measures the support of hundreds of thousands whose antagonism, or whose dissatisfied inactivity, would have threatened the National arms with defeat and disaster. So far-reaching indeed was the effect of his wiser policy that it gave to the country in its hour of sorest need the services of the great War Minister, Edwin M. Stanton, with all that his inclusion in the cabinet implied.

Mr. Stanton and Mr. Lincoln were not friends. They were very nearly enemies. Stanton was a Democrat of very pronounced views; Mr. Lincoln represented a party which Stanton had strongly and even bitterly assailed, holding it to be sectional in origin, impulse and purpose, and therefore scarcely less than a treasonable conspiracy against the Nation. But when Mr. Lincoln resolutely formulated his policy, as one that had for its sole object the restoration of the American Union of States and the preservation of the Nation from disruption, Mr. Stanton gladly consented to bear his share in the conduct of affairs with that end in view.

It was a daring thing for Mr. Lincoln to do, thus to place at the head of the War Department when actual war was on, a Democrat whose Democracy was everywhere known to be pronounced and aggressive. Mr. Lincoln foresaw that such an appointment would inevitably invite hostile criticism and probably active opposition. But Mr. Lincoln was a man of exalted moral courage. He needed the peculiar abilities of Edwin M. Stanton at the head of the War Department at a time when the war seemed almost everywhere to be going against the Union cause, and he needed Stanton's influence in the country. He therefore risked criticism and made the appointment as one that would tend better than any other to marshal the Federal strength into an effective force and perhaps extort victory at the last from a situation which had thus far brought mainly disappointment.

Perhaps the sagacity of the President had still another object in view in the appointment of Stanton. Mr. Lincoln was a shrewd and far-seeing politician. By appointing Stanton, his personal enemy and a distinguished Democrat, to the second most important place among his Constitutional advisers, he did more than in any other way he could have done, to reconcile Northern Democrats to his administration and to make of them earnest supporters instead of active antagonists of his measures for the preservation of the Union.

Mr. Lincoln had several opportunities to emphasize his attitude and purpose. The best of these was furnished by Horace Greeley's article, in reply to which he wrote the passages already quoted in this chapter.

But the matter was made more emphatic in other ways. When McClellan, early in the war, advanced into Western Virginia, that general issued a proclamation to all slaveholders there assuring them that it was no part of the Government's purpose or policy to interfere with the institution of slavery; that on the contrary the Federal forces would promptly restore to their masters any fugitive slaves who might escape to the Union lines, and that the Federal armies would themselves suppress every attempt at slave insurrection which might be made in the interest of the Union cause. "Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors," he wrote, "to induce you to believe our advent among you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly; not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at insurrection on their part."