People who insist on precedent and Presidential dignity

[David Lockmiller]

Lincoln's unprecedented public letter caused a sensation. A Washington correspondent for the New York Times reported that people "who insist on precedent, and Presidential dignity, are horrified at this novel idea of Mr. Lincoln's, but there is unanimous admiration of the skill and force with which he has defined his policy."

To what policy of the President Abraham Lincoln administration was the New York Times correspondent making reference?

No Googling please.

[mbgross]

Black troops?

[Gene C]

I can't recall what the circumstances were, but Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley which was a response to an editorial that Greeley had written in his widely read newspaper.

[Rob Wick]

Emancipation.

Best
Rob

[David Lockmiller]

(03-17-2025 04:55 PM)Gene C Wrote:  I can't recall what the circumstances were, but Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley which was a response to an editorial that Greeley had written in his widely read newspaper.

Gene's detailed answer was correct and a correct answer was also made by Rob Wick. Michael's (mbgross) "black troop's" answer would be a correct "down the road" answer.

Professor Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume Two, Chapter 28 - "Would You Prosecute the War with Elder-Stalk Squirts, Charged with Rose Water?": The Soft War Turns Hard (July-September 1862) at pages 400-401 reads:

"Greeley on August 20, 1862, in the Tribune, ran the editor’s “Prayer of Twenty Millions.” [It was the editor's blast at the administration of President Lincoln.] “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” scolded the president, asserting that many of his
early supporters were now “sorely disappointed and deeply pained” by his foot-dragging on emancipation. [page 400.]

Lincoln responded swiftly with a letter that soon became famous. Tactfully he assured Greeley that he took no offense at what might be considered the editor’s “impatient and dictatorial tone,” nor would he controvert any seemingly erroneous
“statements, or assumptions of fact” or false inferences in the editorial. Rather he would ignore them in “deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.” [page 400.]

In dealing with the charge that he only seemed to have a policy dealing with slavery, the president tersely described the course he had been pursuing all along: “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’” [page 401.]

By having his letter published in a Washington paper and by not forwarding it to Greeley, [President Lincoln] let the truculent editor know that finger-wagging lectures were not appreciated.

“If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.”

By stating that he might free some slaves and leave others in bondage, Lincoln foreshadowed the proclamation that he would soon issue.

In his final sentence, he made clear what anyone familiar with his speeches and actions in the 1850s already knew: that he hated slavery. Still, he emphasized that as a president bound by an oath, he could not ignore constitutional and political constraints.