Lincoln and Reconstruction

1. From Restoration to Emancipation (March 1861–January 1863)

14 c h a p t e r o n e From R estor ation to Emancipation (March 1861–January 1863) The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 precipitated the secession crisis, which culminated in Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and in the fort’s surrender the next day. Immediately following Lincoln’s election, authorities in the eleven states that would form the Confederacy initiated the process by which their states seceded from the Union. South Carolina did so first, on December 20, and during the next several weeks, six more lower-South states followed suit, notwithstanding debate within each of them between advocates of immediate secession and those who encouraged the southern states to cooperate with each other before seceding. Although some outright opponents of secession joined the latter group, deliberations between “immediate secessionists” and “co-operationists” were largely over the method of seceding and not its legitimacy. Joining the seven states that had seceded by Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861 were the four upperSouth states that seceded after the start of hostilities. While South Carolina’s action ensured that the Union would undergo some kind of “reconstruction,” the events of April removed any doubt. Thus, Lincoln and most northerners originally went to war to restore the Union. However, just as a war for Union also became a war against slavery, a process of reconstruction initially limited to restoring the national authority over the seceded states was transformed into one in which those states faced the choice of submitting march 1861–january 1863 | 15 to that authority or seeing their slaves declared “forever free.” Restoring the national authority always remained central to Lincoln’s definition of reconstruction; and the Emancipation Proclamation, however revolutionary, was in many respects a narrowly conceived document. Yet by late 1862, the policy of emancipating slaves in the seceded states had become linked to the process of restoring the national authority over those states, even if the implications of that connection were entirely unclear. I As his inauguration approached, Lincoln’s response to secession revealed a misunderstanding of the southern white mindset. He had said almost nothing during the presidential campaign, believing that he had already made his position on the slavery question abundantly clear in years of speeches and writings. Even as president-elect, Lincoln continued this silence, causing debate ever since over whether he should have more actively sought a compromise. Part of Lincoln’s reasoning for keeping silent was the adverse effect any pronouncement might have on northern public opinion. But an equally important consideration was Lincoln’s mistaken belief that secession was the work of a small minority that had managed to inflame the public mind. Co-operationists had run well in the seceded states during the election of delegates to secession conventions, and secession in the upper South had apparently stalled. A pronouncement now, Lincoln believed, might further stir things up. Given time, cooler heads would prevail, southern Unionism would assert itself, and the crisis would be averted. This had happened previously—in 1820, 1832, and 1850—and might happen again. Lincoln was hardly alone in overestimating Unionism and underestimating secessionism in the South, but his misreading of secessionist sentiment profoundly shaped his initial approach to reconstruction. Even when Lincoln broke his silence, he wanted to see secession as a temporary crisis. In the dozens of speeches he gave during his well-publicized February trip from Springfield to Washington, he implored northerners to stand firm for the Union and make no compromises on slavery extension, but he repeatedly asked southerners 16 | from restoration to emancipation what wrongs had they suffered from the federal government. Although events in the South seemed to indicate that war might well be unavoidable, Lincoln continued to hope that white southerners would come to their senses. As Harold Holzer has shown, some of Lincoln’s remarks during the trip even suggest that he grossly underestimated the seriousness of the crisis, referring to it more than once as “artificial.” Perhaps guilty of wishful thinking, he was confident that southern loyalists would take charge.1 Lincoln’s speeches were designed to lay the groundwork for his inaugural address. Given all that had happened since the election, the inaugural had to incorporate two separate, almost contradictory, paths of reasoning. First, Lincoln argued that so long as war had not yet started, the situation could still be salvaged, and...