CHAPTER XIII

POLITICS AND WAR

Two good effects of the Emancipation Proclamation were immediately seen, a slightly more favorable European attitude and a greater use of negro troops, which was found to have comparatively little effect on the soldiers from the border states. Never, on the other hand, had "Copperheadism," or lukewarmness approaching Southern sympathy, been so bad in the North. In dealing with Copperheads the President showed tact equal to his skilful manipulation of the border states. The army, too, required all his gentle but clear-cut insight. Compulsory service had now to be resorted to, and the result was a lowering of the average character of the soldiers and a great bickering among the states, each trying to avoid its quota, with many charges of partisanship against the administration. Moreover, there were defeats and no great victories, the struggle was long and dreary, and the President looked upon the increasing desertions from the army with the leniency of sympathetic comprehension. His story from January 1 to July 4,

1863, is one of patience, tact, kindness, and steady although hardly visible progress. At no time in his whole life does he show in complete fulness more sides of a great nature.

To Major General Dix on January 14 he wrote, marked "private and confidential," the following:

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"The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding at best were progressing too slowly — without it. Now that we have it, and bear all the disadvantages of it (as we do bear some in certain quarters), we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I, therefore, will thank you for your well-considered opinion, whether Fortress Monroe and Yorktown, one or both, could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by colored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places to be employed elsewhere."

Even before the proclamation had been issued the President's feelings about the policy of returning slaves had progressed so far that he wrote a private letter, which on reflection he did not send, thus:

"Your despatch of yesterday is just received. I believe you are acquainted with the American classics (if there be such), and probably remember a speech of Patrick Henry in which he represented a certain character in the Revolutionary times as totally disregarding all questions of country, and 'hoarsely bawling, “Beef! beef!! beef!!!"'

“Do you not know that I may as well surrender the contest directly as to make any order the obvious purpose of which would be to return fugitive slaves?"

By March we find him writing to Andrew Johnson, military governor of Tennessee and afterward Vice-President and President of the United States:

"I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability and position to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave state and himself a slaveholder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once; and who doubts that we can present that sight if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it, please do not dismiss the thought."

To General Banks a few days later he says that to raise colored troops is "very important, if not indispensable." To General Hunter he writes privately on April 1:

"I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is important to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in precisely the same

proportion it is important to us that it shall.

Hence the utmost caution and vigilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them, and we should do the same to preserve and increase them."

Rage at the South over the use of negro troops was unbounded. In 1862 Jefferson Davis had declared Generals Hunter and Butler, and their commissioned officers, outlaws, robbers, and criminals, who, if captured, were not to be treated as prisoners of war but to be held for execution. When the proclamation was issued he extended this principle to all commissioned officers captured in the territory covered. The Confederate Secretary of War wrote to General Kirby Smith the suggestion that white men leading negro troops "be dealt with red-handed on the field of war or immediately after." Such amenities naturally raised at the North a demand for reciprocity. In the summer the well-known negro Frederick Douglass, who was recruiting colored soldiers, called on the President and said that if these troops were to be a success four things were necessary:

1. Colored soldiers must have the same pay as white soldiers.

2. The government must compel the Confed erates to treat captured negro soldiers as prisoners of war.

3. Brave and meritorious service should lead to promotion precisely as with white soldiers. 4. If any negro soldiers were murdered in cold blood, the North should retaliate in kind.

Lincoln, in reply, Douglass tells us, described the opposition to employing black soldiers at all, and the advantage to the colored race that would result from employment in defence of their country. He regarded it as an experiment. He had with difficulty got them into United States uniforms, against the opposition of those who proposed a different dress, and that was something gained. In the matter of pay, also, he felt that some concession must be made to prejudice; and besides it was not proved that the negro could make as good a soldier as the white man. I assure you," the President added, however, "that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers." He admitted the justice of the demand for promotion, and said that he would insist on their being entitled to all the privileges of prisoners of war; but in regard to retaliation he said, with a quiver in his voice, “once begun, I do not know where such a measure would stop," and added that, although if he could get hold of the actual perpetrators of the crime the case might be different, he could not kill the innocent for the guilty. He did, however, after the summer victories, order that "for every soldier of the