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Chapter 4: Enforcement of the Second Act: Lincoln and Bates
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Enforcement of the Second Act: Lincoln and Bates A lthough Lincoln acknowledged the importance of the second act in a number of instances in the weeks after its passage, he and Attorney General Edward Bates chose not to implement the law vigorously. Lincoln used the second act in various ways, but not to punish those who aided the rebellion or to change the property relations in the South. In the end, the second act proved important before it became law as a threat of change and as a symbol to both slaves and Southerners of what the government could do if it wished to reconstruct the South. As a law, however, it accomplished little. It was a poorly designed measure without an enforcement mechanism, and the administration had little interest in using it to effect change in the South either during the war or as the basis of Reconstruction. Moreover, Congress paid almost no attention to whether or not the law was implemented.1 On July , the day after Congress passed the second act, Lincoln told Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that he had decided to begin emancipation. Nine days later the cabinet heard the first draft of the preliminary proclamation. The first paragraph, issued three days later as a proclamation to the public, invoked the second act and its sixth section , warning ‘‘all persons . . . to cease participating in aiding, countenancing, or abetting the existing rebellion’’ against the United States. The emancipation proclamation would be announced on January , . On July Lincoln also wrote a memorandum authorizing the recruitment of ‘‘free negroes,’’ slaves of disloyal owners, and slaves of loyal owners who had their owners’ consent. An executive order to military commanders the same day authorized seizure and ‘‘use of any property, real or personal’’ for military purposes and the employment as wage laborers of ‘‘persons of African descent.’’ It required an account ‘‘from whom both property, and such person shall have come’’ as the basis of future compensation. Three days later Lincoln issued a proclamation, which repeated the first paragraph of the preliminary emancipation.2 Lincoln also tried to pursue his colonization plans, which the second act had authorized. The bill to free blacks in the District of Columbia, passed in March , provided $,, while the second act supplied $, for the project. On August , Lincoln appointed Reverend James Mitchell as commissioner of emigration in the Interior Department. Mitchell then arranged a White House PAGE 55 ................. 11265$ $CH4 03-11-05 11:39:04 PS T C W C A meeting for Lincoln on August with a group of five black men, led by Edward M. Thomas, president of an institute to encourage black art and industry. This was the only time when Lincoln directly discussed colonization with blacks. The president urged them to embrace colonization because of the prejudice they would encounter ‘‘even when you cease to be slaves, [for] you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single of ours. . . . [But] for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other.’’ And so, Lincoln concluded, it would be ‘‘better for both of us, therefore, to be separated.’’ He then shifted much of the blame to whites, for there was ‘‘an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us.’’ Although some had once suggested Liberia as the place to colonize, Lincoln now urged them to consider Central America instead. He closed by asking if this appeared to them a practical plan. The reaction among both blacks and abolitionists was hostile, however. Although Lincoln continued to pursue this dream for several more months, nothing materialized from the plan or the money authorized in the second act.3 Nonetheless, the second act’s passage in July clearly played a major part in that momentous summer when the focus of the war changed, as Mark Grimsley noted, from conciliation to hard war and the nation’s politics became even more partisan. To be sure, a number of pressures encouraged Lincoln to consider emancipation, the use...
