34. A STATESMAN SPEAKS
Surely Mr. Lincoln's letter to Mr. Hodges, of
Kentucky, in the spring of 1864 is one of the most remarkable documents
he ever penned. It is a confession of faith. It reviews a war policy. It
states his understanding of the oath he took to preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution. It is masterful prose. The reasoning is close,
the composition compact and terse. Every word serves a purpose. None
could be omitted without destroying the precise intent of the writer.
Throughout there is a dignity, and at the same time a humility, which
graces every word. This letter is a document that deserves the closest
study of every student of American constitutional history, of the war
policy of the Lincoln administration in relationship to the emancipation
of the slaves, and of the man, Lincoln, himself. Of its kind, it is
unfellowed.
My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the
substance of what I verbally said the other day in your presence, to
Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon.
It was about as follows:
"I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong,
nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel,
and yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me
an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.
It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I
could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view
that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the
power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this
oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment
on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many
times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no
official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on
slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the
Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of
preserving, by every indispensable means, that governmentthat
nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible
to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law,
life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to
save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt
that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming
indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the
preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and
now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had
even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any
minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and
Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Fremont
attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then
think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General
Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity.
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I
again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable
necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest
and successive appeals to the border States to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military
emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that
measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment,
driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it
the Constitution or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I
chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss;
but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now
shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular
sentiment, none in our white military forceno loss by it anyhow or
anywhere. On the contrary it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty
thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about
which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could
not have had them without the measure.
"And now let any Union man who complains of the
measure test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing
the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking
these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing
them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he cannot
face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot face the
truth."
I add a word which was not in the verbal
conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own
sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly
that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years'
struggle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man,
devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems
plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also
that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for
our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new
cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.
LINCOLN TO A. G. HODGES, APRIL 4, 1864.
|
|
|