Lincoln and the Union Governors

The Altoona Conference

59 c h a p t e r f o u r The Altoona Confer ence On September 10, 1862, Radical Republican senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan wrote to his colleague Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, “Nothing will now save us but a demand of the loyal governors, backed by a threat, that a change of policy and men shall instantly be made.”1 A few days earlier, Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania sensed the need for the governors to confer and adopt a strong statement backing the war and strengthening the hand of the government. On September 6, Curtin telegraphed Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, “In the present emergency would it not be well that the Loyal Governors should meet at some point in the border states to take measures for the active support of the government.”2 On the same day, Andrew replied to Curtin that he would gladly attend such a meeting. Curtin sent a similar message to several other governors. Encouraged by their positive responses, on September 14 the Pennsylvania governor issued a formal invitation for the state executives to meet at Altoona in his state on the twenty-fourth. He added the names of David Tod of Ohio and Francis H. Pierpont of the Restored (Union) Government of Virginia to the call.3 Pierpont’s constituency was mainly in western Virginia, which then was in the process of forming the state of West Virginia. His Virginia government had been recognized by both the president and Congress, and the rump Union legislature had approved of the separation of the western counties to form the new state. 60 | The Altoona Conference By placing Tod and Pierpont’s names on the call for the Altoona conference, Curtin, a middle-of-the-road Republican, hoped to avoid criticism that the meeting was designed to advance a radical New England agenda. The ploy did not work. The invitation to the governors had hardly cleared the telegraph wires in the state capitals when border state conservatives and Northern Democrats charged that Andrew and other New England governors had planned the meeting to attack the president, demand the reorganization of the cabinet, and secure the ouster of General McClellan in favor of General Frémont, who had been the 1856 Republican candidate for president. They believed the New Englanders had concluded that, unlike McClellan, if Frémont were commander of the Army of the Potomac, he would conduct a hard war to save the Union and end slavery. Conservatives claimed that the New England Radicals, led by Andrew, planned nothing less than a coup against the government. The intentions of Andrew and like-minded Radicals were not as extreme as the conservatives charged. Although the Massachusetts governor had come out boldly for emancipation in August 1862, by this time it was hardly a radical proposal as a war measure. Andrew declared that the war could not and should not end until the “dreadful iniquity” of slavery had been “trodden beneath [their] feet.”4 Instead of wanting to replace Lincoln, however, Andrew wrote to a friend that he sought “to save the Pres[iden]t. from the infamy of ruining his country.”5 At Altoona, Andrew and other New England governors, like their counterparts elsewhere, wanted to avoid a divisive confrontation over the president and the conduct of the war, which could further undermine the Union effort to suppress the rebellion. They hoped, however, that Lincoln would see the wisdom of acting against slavery in the rebel states, which the Second Confiscation Act in July had authorized him to do, but he had virtually ignored this new power. Governor William A. Buckingham of Connecticut, though he failed to arrive in time to participate in the Altoona conference, had made this point clear to the president when he and a delegation from his state met in August with Lincoln at the White House. They were taken aback by Lincoln’s immediate response to their suggestion that he issue a The Altoona Conference | 61 proclamation freeing the slaves in the rebel states. “I suppose,” he said, “what your people want is more nigger” in Connecticut.6 Despite his Indiana and Illinois background, in which the use of the n-word, even by antislavery men, was common, Lincoln rarely expressed such racist epithets. In the meeting with Buckingham and his delegation, the president’s racist comment reflected his own inner struggle to act in a constitutional manner...