The Reputation of Presidents Takes a Hit in Their Second Term

[David Lockmiller]

(09-03-2022 08:08 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(09-03-2022 02:15 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Offhand I think I agree with the Cabinet. A plan that gives money to the slaveholders, but not to the slaves themselves, just doesn't seem right to me. If the proposal had also included help for the former slaves, then I would be more supportive of it. I realize adding such a proposal would be dismissed by the Confederacy, but it (the Confederacy) wasn't going to accept Lincoln's proposal anyway.

That is a good point: "A plan that gives money to the slaveholders, but not to the slaves themselves, just doesn't seem right to me."

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.

(Abraham Lincoln: A Life Vol. Two, at and about pages 759 - 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.”

I can't think of what more President Lincoln could have done, under all of the circumstances that he faced.