Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Remember, while we think of Lincoln as an abolitionist, that is not how many abolitionists viewed him and, more critically, even if he was an abolitionist, that says nothing about his views on the equality of the races. He, like Senator Lyman Trumbull, who helped author the Thirteenth Amendment, opposed the spread of slavery. Neither, however, supported the recognition of black people as equal to whites in daily life (as distinct from the hypothetical view expressed in the Declaration). We need to remember that prior to Dred Scott, Lincoln’s personal dislike of slavery notwithstanding, he remained largely silent on the issue. Furthermore, early in his political career Lincoln had attacked then presidential candidate Martin Van Buren for having supported giving the right to vote to free blacks in New York. During his pursuit of the Senate seat in Illinois, he refused to sign H. Ford Douglas’s petition to grant free African Americans the right in Illinois to be witnesses at trials. His views may have evolved over time but practical politics appear to have dominated any personal beliefs.

Consider the following from Frederick Douglass’s pen in 1860, after Lincoln was elected but before he was inaugurated as president: “Mr. Lincoln . . . while admitting the right to hold men as slaves in the States already existing, regards such property as peculiar, exceptional, local, generally an evil, and not to be extended beyond the limits of the States where it is established by what is called positive law. Whoever live through the next four years will see Mr. Lincoln and his Administration attacked more bitterly for their pro-slavery truckling, than for doing any anti-slavery work.”50 Douglass’s views only became more positive toward Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a proclamation that surely would not have happened without the Civil War and which, in fact, freed no slave within a state controlled by the Union.

By the time of the 1864 election, Lincoln’s prophecy in the “House Divided” speech would surely have come back to bite him. Without the votes to pass an amendment, and given his cogent legal arguments in that speech, it is likely that if, as he predicted, the country was going all one way or the other, the way in which it would have been going in 1864 was all slave. Without the war and having failed to eliminate slavery, Lincoln would probably have had a tough time winning renomination, and even if he did, he would almost certainly have lost the general election. Without the war he would just be one of a long line of nineteenth-century presidents who did not accomplish much and, most important, failed to get reelected. Then, he would just be one of the many presidents on whose watch few Americans died in combat, greater prosperity probably would have followed, and we would barely remember him.

Reflections on Lincoln

WHAT IN PARTICULAR MAKES US THINK OF LINCOLN AS A GREAT president and how might we have ended up thinking otherwise? One arrow in his historical quiver is the simple fact that he was the first president to be reelected since Andrew Jackson in 1832. His reelection is all the more noteworthy when we recall that before the fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, just a few weeks before the election, Lincoln as a wartime sitting president was nevertheless expected to lose to George McClellan. His reelection, of course, is an important part of Lincoln’s legacy, but it is more indicative of his political success than being the cause of the reverence in which he is remembered. The same might be said of the fact that he did, of course, give fantastic speeches from which many still quote today. And who could fail to admire his terrific, self-deprecating sense of humor. What is more, his status in our collective memory surely rose following his assassination so shortly after his second inauguration and victory in the Civil War. All these elements have helped make him memorable, but his ultimate standing as the greatest president rests most firmly on the fact that he successfully passed the Thirteenth Amendment, thereby ending slavery. This consummate achievement followed a victorious war that killed more Americans than any war in history. That, of course, is far from laudable in itself. Still, weighing everything together, we ask, was Lincoln great? And we conclude, yes, we think so.

If judged by his noblest acts, he was quite remarkable. He did, after all, stake out what were for the time courageous views on African Americans. He argued vigorously that the ideas in the Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal—applied to all men, black or white, a view that was exceedingly unpopular in his time. He understood when to be silent on an issue (a campaign strategy he used to great effect) and when to be clear about his intentions. He was slow to find an effective leader for the Union Army, but he persisted and carried the war to victory, even though logic and evidence suggest he should have won the war much more quickly, and he mapped out a noble—and sadly unimplemented—plan for the reunification and reconstruction of the country.

If judged by his less noble acts, then his limitations loom large and draw our attention to the very concerns that James Madison expressed about the dangers of presidents at war. His personal ambition (and the dirty tricks he used to advance it), when combined with shortsighted choices by a handful of southern leaders, ensured war (and with it, the end of slavery). Did the ends justify the means? Certainly for those held in bondage, the answer must be yes. For those who were committed to ending slavery, as much of the Western world was, the answer is probably yes. For those millions of Americans whose families suffered personal, devastating losses during the Civil War the answer may be more questionable. The United States, after all, lost a substantial portion of its future. With 1,087,000 northerners and southerners killed, wounded, or missing, out of a prewar population of 31 million, America suffered indescribable grief and vast economic losses that surely lingered for decades after the war’s four years. That was a price Lincoln was prepared to risk to become president; it was a price the fire-eaters and such men as Jefferson Davis were prepared to pay to try to preserve their dying and oppressive way of life.

Whether slavery would have persisted long without the war is a hotly debated subject. Lincoln seemed to fear that it would. Against that, the influx of cheap labor from Ireland and elsewhere might have produced insurmountable pressure against slavery over the following two decades. In addition to economic pressure, we must remember that slavery had already been eliminated in Europe, Latin America, and much of Asia. The United States was not a leader in the movement to eradicate the scourge of slavery; it was Johnny-come-lately. How great a leader Lincoln was must ultimately rest on the benefits gained and the costs endured under his presidency. History has decided on his side.

What If?

AS WE HAVE SEEN, ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS UNWILLING TO COMPROMISE with secessionist leaders. As we have also seen, the secessionists made a grave mistake in leaving the Union, given their interests. Had they remained in the Union, he would not have been able to amend the constitution to outlaw slavery. Now we must ask, given that they did secede, why didn’t Lincoln just let them go? Had he simply said good riddance to the Confederate states, he would have had a Congress through which, in time, he could have amended the Constitution. Then, the remaining states would have ratified the amendment, as in fact they did. The difference would have been that there would not have been more than a million killed and wounded. Of course, the other difference would have been that the slave institutions would have persisted in the eleven states that formed the Confederacy, at least for a time. The tragedy—admittedly with hindsight—of Lincoln’s decision to fight rather than accept secession, which he earlier had called a “most sacred right,” is that by fighting he and his successors failed as a practical matter to reunite the country.