previous next
[85] advocating immediate and unconditional emancipation, and in the preliminary movements to that end which were among the issues of the November election, it found itself in the ascendancy in both States. In Tennessee and1 Arkansas, also, prominent slaveholders, perceiving that slavery was crumbling from mere attrition between the opposing armies on their soil, advocated immediate emancipation as the most sensible method of disposing of the vexed question and bringing matters to a settled basis, and they deemed it folly to talk of compensation. The Missouri emancipationists complained bitterly, however,2 that they received no encouragement or support from Mr. Lincoln, who deprecated haste and still argued in3 favor of gradualism, and they felt the weight of the Administration against their radical measures. The reluctance of the President to press upon the Border States the immediate abolition of slavery which he had decreed for the rebellious States, and his readiness to allow a small4 fraction of the (white) voting population in the latter to form new State governments and legislate for the freedmen, will be, and have been already in large measure, forgotten, while the brief address which he gave at5 Gettysburg, between his interview with the Missourians and his transmission to Congress of the Amnesty Message,6 will live as long as his name and fame.

1 Lib. 33.197, 198.

2 Lib. 33.181, 198.

3 Raymond's History of Lincoln's Administration, p. 401.

4 Lib. 33.202.

5 Nov. 19.

6 In his anxiety to disintegrate the rebel Confederacy politically, and to reestablish loyal State governments, Mr. Lincoln proposed, in this message, to allow one-tenth of the voters of 1860 (excepting the prominent leaders of the rebellion, and certain other classes) to organize such new governments, provided they took the oath of allegiance to the Constitution, and to the proclamations and Congressional acts relating to slavery, ‘so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court.’ Legislation by such States for the freedmen must recognize and declare their permanent freedom, and provide for their education, but yet might make ‘temporary arrangement’ for their tutelage. ‘While it allows those who have been in bloody rebellion to vote, it disfranchises the whole body of loyal freedmen!’ wrote Mr. Garrison of it. ‘It opens the way for duplicity and perfidy to any extent, and virtually nullifies the confiscation act of Congress, a measure next in importance to the abolition of slavery. Mr. Lincoln's magnanimity is weakness, and his method of disposing of those who have been emancipated by his proclamation that of giving the sheep over to the guardianship of wolves. This must not be tolerated’ (Lib. 33: 202).

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Tennessee (Tennessee, United States) (1)
Raymond (Mississippi, United States) (1)
Arkansas (Arkansas, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Abraham Lincoln (4)
Lib (4)
Nov (1)
George T. Garrison (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1860 AD (1)
November (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: