Lincoln and Equal Rights for Negroes: The Irrelevancy of the "Wadsworth Letter"

LINCOLN AND EQUAL RIGHTS FOR NEGROES: The Irrelevancy of the "Wadsworth Letter" Harold M. Hyman The question keeps reviving whether at any time Lincoln favored a reconstruction policy that included Negro suffrage. The latest entry in this interpretive sweepstakes is Professor Ludwell H. Johnson 's suggestion that portions of a letter, ca. January, 1864, from Lincoln to General James S. Wadsworth are spurious. As a consequence , authors who have employed the dubious paragraphs of the Wadsworth letter as evidence that Lincoln favored equal political rights for Negroes have been misled. If Professor Johnson is correct, that the paragraphs he questions in the Wadsworth letter are untrustworthy , then, according to his article, an important link is snapped in the short chain of evidence that connects Lincoln to midnineteenth -century advocates of civil and political equality for Negroes .1 Here is the text of the Lincoln letter to Wadsworth: You desire to know, in the event of our complete success in the field, the same being followed by a loyal and cheerful submission on the part of the South, if universal amnesty should not be accompanied with universal suffrage. Now, since you know my private inclinations as to what terms should be granted to the South in the contingency mentioned, I will here add, that if our success should be thus realized, followed by such desired results, I cannot see, if universal amnesty is granted, how, under the circumstances, I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or, at least, suffrage on the basis of intelligence and military service. How to better the condition of the colored race has long been a studv which has attracted my serious and careful attention; hence I think I am clear and decided as to what course I shall pursue in the premises, regarding it a religious duty, as the nation's guardian of these people, who have so !Johnson, "Lincoln and Equal Rights: The Authenticity of the Wadsworth Letter," Journal of Southern History, XXXII (1966), 83-87. His note 2, p. 83, surveys several recent employments by historians of the dubious portions of the Wadsworth letter. 258 heroically vindicated their manhood on the battle-field, where, in assisting to save the life of the Republic, they have demonstrated in blood their right to the ballot, which is but the humane protection of the flag they have so fearlessly defended. The restoration of the Rebel States to the Union must rest upon the principle of civil and political equality of both races; and it must be sealed by general amnesty.2 Professor Johnson offers convincing evidence and logic to show that the third paragraph is probably not of Lincoln's composition and the fourth paragraph certainly not. Unquestionably it is important to have a document analyzed and to know whether or not it may be employed as evidence. Professor Johnson deserves gratitude from all Civil War students for this service. Less convincing, however, is his conclusion that the lack of authenticity of one or both of the last paragraphs of the Wadsworth letter seriously affects the proposition that Lincoln was moving toward equal rights for Negroes in the southern states as a condition for reconstruction. In fact, the Wadsworth letter is irrelevant to the problem involved, of ascertaining how, at certain times, Lincoln defined the government's role in the complex and volatile matter of white-Negro relationships. Professor Johnson has wasted his talents and energy in a fruitless scholarly overkill. Despite his effort to sunder the links that bind Lincoln to the egalitarians of a century past, the chain still holds. Perhaps the irrelevancy of the Wadsworth letter is best suggested by a recasting of the events with which Professor Johnson dealt in his article into a structure which may be truer to the realities of the past. It is clear that Lincoln came to the White House possessed of ideas on race, and the allowable roles for government to play in affecting white-Negro relationships, that were then common in white, midwestern , Republican circles. As of 1860 the evils of slavery, not the virtues of Negroes, was the bedrock Republican premise. This conviction obtaining, the most mine-run Republican wished to employ the weak...