President Lincoln vignettes in F.B. Carpenter's "Six Months at the White House"

[David Lockmiller]

(05-31-2018 06:02 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  I cannot understand what possible reason that F.B. Carpenter would have to make up a story about Seward raising the issue of timing for public release notice of the proposed Emancipation Proclamation.

Carpenter wrote what Lincoln said to him as follows (pages 21 - 22):

Nothing, however, was offered that I had not already fully anticipated and settled in my own mind, until Secretary Seward spoke. He said in substance: 'Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help . . . . His idea," said the President, "was that it would be considered our last shriek, on the retreat." (This was his precise expression.) "'Now,' continued Mr. Seward, 'while I approve the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue until you can give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war!'" Mr. Lincoln continued: "The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, waiting for a victory."

In Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, at page 268, she [wrote]: "Seward's argument was reinforced later that day by Thurlow Weed, who met with Lincoln on a visit to Washington."

The problem is that Burton Hendrick in his book Lincoln's War Cabinet, at page 363, has a quite different interpretation of the same event after quoting extensively from Carpenter's book: "It seems a fair assumption, in view of Seward's evident hostility to emancipation, that he was seeking delay, hoping perhaps that time and events would cause the President to rescind his unhappy mistake."