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252 allen c. guelzo Defending emancipation Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863 Allen C. Guelzo Abraham Lincoln might well have believed that “i never in my life was more certain that i was doing right than i do in signing” the emancipation Proclamation into military law on January 1, 1863. But doing what was right and what was politically viable were two different things. “At no time during the war was the depression among the people of the north so great as in the spring of 1863,” remembered James G. Blaine, and largely because “the anti-slavery policy of the President was . . . tending to a fatal division among the people.” The simple fact of announcing his intention to proclaim emancipation back in September had created morepublicangerthanLincoln had anticipated.Williamo.Stoddard,one of Lincoln’sWhite House staffers, gloomilyrecalled “howmanyeditors and how many other penmen within these past few days” rose in anger to remind Lincoln that this is a war for the union only, and they never gave him any authority to run it as an Abolition war. They never, never told him that he might set the negroes free, and, now that he has done so, or futilely pretended to do so, he 252 E The authorwishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance given him in the making of this article by Michael Burlingame, Thomas F. Schwartz (illinois State Historical Preservation Agency), kim Bauer (illinois State Historical Library), John Sellers (Libraryof Congress), and William C. Harris (north Carolina State university). Civil War History, vol. XLviii no. 4 © 2002 by The kent State university Press In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be checked in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding the option. Job Name: -- /358884t defending emancipation 253 1. FrederickSeward, in recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, eds. Don and virginia Fehrenbacher (Stanford: Stanford univ. Press, 1996), 397; James G. Blaine, Twenty years of Congress: from Lincoln to Garfield, 2 vols. (norwich, Conn.: Henry Bill, 1884–86), 1:488;“To Hannibal Hamlin,” Sept. 28, 1862, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. roy P. Basler, 9 vols. (new Brunswick, n.J.: rutgers univ. Press, 1953–55), 5:444 (hereafter cited as CW);William o. Stoddard, inside the White House in WarTimes:Memoirs and reports of Lincoln’s Secretary (1890), ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln:univ. of nebraska Press, 2000), 97. 2. Butler to edward L. Pierce, July 20, 1863, edward L. Pierce Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard university; Benjamin Flanders to Salmon P. Chase, nov. 29, 1862, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress. is a more unconstitutional tyrant and a more odious dictator than ever he was before. They tell him, however, that his edict, his ukase, his decree, his firman, his venomous blow at the sacred liberty of white men to own black men is mere brutem fulmen, and a dead letter and a poison which will not work. They tell him many other things, and, among them, they tell him that the army will fight no more, and that the hosts of the union will indignantly disband rather than be sacrificed upon the bloody altar of fanatical Abolitionism.1 it was not that Lincoln or the Proclamation lacked defenders. A long queue of prominent republicans—George Boker, Francis Lieber, Grosvenor Lowrey, and robert Dale owen—promptlyentered the listswith pamphlets and articles. But an equally formidable roster of northern Democratic critics and jurists— including Benjamin Curtis, Montgomery Throop, and Joel Parker—were there waiting for them.Agitation mounted in manyplaces for a negotiated settlement to the war or a national peace convention that would avoid emancipation. “The Darkest hour of our Country’s trial is yet to come,” warned Benjamin F. Butler. “nothing is surerthan an assemblyto settle this struggle on the basis of theUnion as it was!” even worse, it was rumored “that the President will recoil from his emancipation Proclamation” because of the heavy political costs it imposed.2 in the end, if Lincoln had any hope of turning public opinion in favor of emancipation by argument, the arguments would have to be his, and he would have to be his own best apologist for the Proclamation. The surest mark of how Lincoln rose to that challenge is the public letter he wrote on August 26, 1863, for James Cook Conkling and a “mass meeting of unconditional union men” in Lincoln’s own home town of Springfield, illinois . After months of...

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