Incident at an Antique Store

[David Lockmiller]

Lincoln's last speech, primarily on the subject of reconstruction.

Lee surrendered the remains of his army to General Grant on April 9, 1865; on the night of April 11, 1865, President Lincoln began his last public address to a huge war-ending celebratory crowd in the following manner:

“Fellow-Citizens:--We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten.

A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked. Their labors must not be parceled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you. But no part of the honor for plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skillful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach take active part. By these recent successes, the inauguration of the national authority—reconstruction—which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty.”

The balance of President Lincoln’s carefully prepared speech that night, and in an unusual manner read to his audience, was devoted entirely to the subject of reconstruction. For President Lincoln, the most significant and potentially contentious issue with the more radical members of the Republican Congress on the subject of reconstruction was “the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it.” This question was exceedingly important because, according to Professor Michael Burlingame, “[s]ome Radicals insisted that by seceding, the Confederate states had reverted to the status of territories and therefore could be governed by Congress.” (Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Vol. Two, page 802.)

President Lincoln explained his opposition to any consideration of this specific question by the members of Congress:

“[T]hat question is bad as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all—a merely pernicious abstraction. We all agree that the seceded states, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the Government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again get them into their proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether those States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether why had been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between these States and the Union, and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it.”

It is perhaps ironic that the more Radical Republicans would have no one thereafter with whom to argue this question. Soon after his speech, the martyred President was dead and “the question whether the seceded States are in the Union or out of it” could no longer be considered a contentious object for winning public opinion approval, given President Lincoln’s previous pronouncement and argument upon this specific question. If those most Radical Republicans in Congress had had their way, insisting that the Confederate states revert to the status of territories and be governed thereafter by Congress for many years or decades, it is impossible to know now what would have been all of the harmful consequences of such a national governmental decision.