Lincoln's Leadership

[Thomas Thorne]

Sensitive political antenna
Ability to set priorities
Adaptability to achieve ends

Perhaps nothing illustrates Lincoln's outstanding political abilities in these areas than the myriad ways he juggled the sometimes conflicting and sometimes complementary goals of Union and Emancipation.

We know that Lincoln detested slavery and part of him must have toyed at the idea from the earliest days of the war that a mere stroke of his pen could demolish slavery. Yet he realized that the enormous Union coalition he assembled in 1861 which secured the loyalty of sufficient numbers to retain the upper border states could not survive if the war had been converted into an anti-slavery crusade at that time.

In the summer of 1862 this broad coalition collapsed. Lincoln realized that there was no longer sufficient appeal to expend unlimited amounts of blood and treasure merely to restore the status quo ante. By making Freedom and Union his war aims Lincoln created a smaller but hardier coalition. The paradox of freeing no slaves under his control on the date of the Final Emancipation but undermining the existence of slavery simultaneously made it impossible for Britain and France to intervene and reassured the border state Unionists that their slavery would not be abolished without their consent. It also undermined slavery in the Confederacy by combining Emancipation with the success of Union arms and helped create a military constituency of Black Union soldiers whose existence made it impossible for Unionists to abandon back into slavery.

The final turn in Lincoln's policy in this area came in 1864 when by pushing for the the Thirteenth Amendment, he sought to make permanent against all challenges to his abolishing slavery in the Confederacy via his War Powers. It is interesting that he did not make his views known on this subject until most Republicans and a significant of Democrats came out in support of the amendment.
Tom