The Reputation of Presidents Takes a Hit in Their Second Term

[David Lockmiller]

(08-31-2022 06:15 AM)AussieMick Wrote:  A major problem for the South (as I understand it) was that the War had brought massive poverty ... and this continued for many decades. Compensation for the slaves would, yes, have been a huge impost on the national economy. But, like the Marshall Plan for Europe after WW2, the $$$ could have been used by the South to re-build and the massive poverty could have been addressed ... rather than lasting until, what, the 1960's. And that 'huge impost' could have been wiped out and the potential resources (brains, labour, initiative, etc ) of all peoples (regardless of skin colour) in the South would have been effectively used.

President Lincoln’s last effort at compensated emancipation was made to his cabinet on February 6, 1865. Both Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her Lincoln Prize winning work Team of Rivals (at and about pages 695 - 696), and Professor Michael Burlingame, in his Lincoln Prize winning work Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Vol. Two, at and about pages 759 - 760) wrote about the cabinet meeting on this topic.

Professor Burlingame wrote:

On February 6, [1865] Lincoln introduced to the cabinet a resolution embodying the proposal he made at the conference [with the Confederate delegation at Hampton Roads] – to offer $400 million as compensation to slaveholders if the Confederacy would surrender by April 1. Half would be paid upon that surrender and the other half if the Thirteenth Amendment were ratified by July 1. Should Congress pass this resolution, Lincoln pledged that he would fully exercise the power granted him and that the “the war will cease, and armies be reduced to a basis of peace; that all political offences will be pardoned; that all property, except slaves liable to confiscation or forfeiture, will be released therefrom, except in cases of intervening interest of third parties; and that liberality will be recommended to Congress upon all points not lying within executive control.” (Message to Congress, Feb. 5, 1865, Complete Works of Lincoln (CWL), 8:261.)

In justifying his proposal, Lincoln asked the cabinet, “how long has this war lasted, and how long do you suppose it will still last? We cannot hope that it will end in less than a hundred days. We are now spending three millions a day, and that will equal the full amount that I propose to pay, to say nothing of the lives lost and property destroyed. I look upon it as a measure of strict and simple economy.” The cabinet unanimously rejected this pragmatic argument, which Lincoln used to justify compensated emancipation back in 1862. Secretary of the Interior John P. Usher speculated that Lincoln’s “heart was so fully enlisted in behalf of such a plan that he would have followed it if only a single member of his cabinet had supported him in the project.” Sadly, Lincoln commented, “You are all against me” and dropped the matter.

Lincoln evidently intended the $400 million to help revive the blighted economy of the South. It was an enlightened proposal designed to help restore sectional harmony. (Page 760.)

Doris Kearns Goodwin added the following information in her text at pages 695-696:

“The proposition met with unanimous disapproval from the cabinet, all of whom were present except Seward. . . . Had Seward been there, Usher mused, ‘he would probably have approved the measure.’ Without a trace of support among his colleagues at the table, Lincoln felt compelled to forsake his proposition, which, in any event, as Jefferson Davis made clear, was unacceptable to the Confederacy. So the war would continue until the South capitulated.”