Lincoln and the Radical Republicans

[David Lockmiller]

At the Capitol on July 4, 1864, as Congress prepared for adjournment, the President was busy examining and signing various last-minute bills. One of the Radical Republican leaders, Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, expressed concern about his intentions with respect to the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill.

Lincoln responded: Mr. Chandler, this bill was placed before me a few minutes before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be swallowed in that way.

Referring to one section of the measure that emancipated all slaves in the rebel states, he said: That is the point on which I doubt the authority of Congress to act.

When Chandler remarked that it was no more than he himself had done, Lincoln replied: I conceive that i may in an emergency do things on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress.

After Chandler's departure, he continued: I do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict all we have always said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the states . . . .

This bill and this position of these gentlemen seems to me to make the fatal admission (in asserting that the insurrectionary states are no longer in the Union) that states whenever they please may of their own motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Now, we cannot survive that admission, I am convinced. If that be true, I am not president, these gentlemen are not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid that question ever since it first began to be mooted and thus to avoid confusion and disturbance to our own counsels. It was to obviate this question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the Senate and failed in the House. I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the Union without the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends as to whether certain states have been in or out of the Union during the war - a merely metaphysical question and one unnecessary to be forced into discussion. ("Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay," pp 204-5.)

Concerning how his attitude toward the Wade-Davis bill might affect his relation with the Radicals, Lincoln said:

If they choose to make a point upon this I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly to me, and I don't know that this will make any difference as to that. At all events, I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself. ("Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and Letters of John Hay," pp 205-6.)

(Source: Collected Words of Abraham Lincoln, Collected and Edited by Don and Virginia Fahrenbacher, pp. 228-9.)

[LincolnMan]

Mr. Chandler is one of my heroes but Lincoln was correct on this. Thanks for posting.