8 Critics, both at home and abroad, had construed some ambiguous language in the preliminary Proclamation as serving to encourage a massive slave rebellion. The revision to the text of the final Proclamation to which Welles refers was designed to make clear that the administration wanted no such thing.
9 This sentence, which provided a rhetorical lift to a document that was otherwise and by intent dryly legalistic, read: “And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”
10 For an exceptionally illuminating account of the lead-up to the issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the interval between it and the final Proclamation’s promulgation on January 1, 1863, and the varied reactions to both measures, see Louis P. Masur, Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012).
11 A subsequent investigation found that Chiriquí Strip coal, if placed in a confined space such as the hold of a ship, was prone to ignite by spontaneous combustion.
12 Historians differ over whether the primary motive for Lincoln’s interest in colonization was political expediency, racial prejudice, or a humanitarian belief that black Americans could never attain equality in the U.S. and thus would be better off somewhere that was free of the intense racism pervading American society. For an insightful analysis of this complex issue, see Eric Foner, “Lincoln and Colonization,” in Eric Foner, ed., Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), pp. 135 – 166. Although Lincoln never mentioned colonization in public after issuing the final Emancipation Proclamation, recent scholarship has shown that he continued to pursue the idea for at least another year, and perhaps longer. See Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011).
13 Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals, p. 165.
14 By early 1863, voluntary enlistments in the Union army by whites had fallen sharply, prompting Congress to enact a conscription law in March that took effect in July. During this period, the large number of black volunteers helped make up the slack.
15 For the remainder of the war and long thereafter debate raged, largely along North-South lines, about whether there had indeed been a massacre at Fort Pillow. Today, most historians believe there was a massacre, but it is uncertain whether Forrest ordered it or rebel soldiers, outraged at the sight of blacks in uniform, acted on their own initiative. John Cimprich, “The Fort Pillow Massacre: Assessing the Evidence,” in John David Smith, ed., Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), pp. 150 – 168, provides a careful analysis of the conflicting claims about what occurred. Also see Cimprich, Fort Pillow, A Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005).
16 The Senate had approved the amendment by the required two-thirds vote in April of 1864, but two months later a vote in the House fell short of two-thirds. When the House reconsidered the measure in the second session of the 38th Congress, the two-thirds margin was attained, with two votes to spare, because enough Democrats and conservative border-state Unionists either switched their vote to “aye” or absented themselves from the balloting. Ratification of the amendment by the requisite three-fourths of the states was completed in December 1865.
Chapter 2
CABINET PROBLEMS AND CABINET CRISIS
This chapter deals with two interrelated topics. Section I contains a selection of Welles’s numerous complaints that Lincoln failed to make fuller, more-regular use of the cabinet as a consultative and advisory body, a failing he usually blamed on Secretary of State Seward at least much as on the president. The second section reproduces Welles’s detailed account of the cabinet crisis of December 1862, when a caucus of Republican senators, believing Seward was reluctant about emancipation and a drag on the administration and the war effort, tried to force Lincoln to oust him from the cabinet.
I
In the following excerpt Welles discusses at length what he sees as the fundamental problem with the cabinet’s functioning and how the problem originated during the early weeks of the administration. He emphasizes Seward’s desire to be the administration’s dominant force – a kind of prime minister or premier. Viewed in the light of modern Lincoln scholarship, Welles can be faulted for overstating Seward’s influence on the president and failing to understand Lincoln’s skill at protecting his power and prerogatives.1 (Significantly, in some of his post-war writings, Welles himself took issue with claims that Seward had dominated the administration.2) It is also possible that Welles’s criticisms of Seward, in both this and other chapters, reflect jealousy that Seward had established an unusually close personal relationship with the president – much closer than any other cabinet member.
September 16, 1862: At the Executive Mansion, the Secretary of State informed us there was to be no Cabinet meeting. He was authorized by the President to communicate the fact. Smith said it would be as well, perhaps, to postpone the Cabinet meetings indefinitely – there seemed no use latterly for our coming together. Others expressed corresponding opinions. Seward turned off, a little annoyed.
An unfavorable impression is getting abroad in regard to the President and the Administration, not without reason, perhaps, and which prompted Smith and others to express their minds freely. There is really very little of a government there at this time, so far as most of the Cabinet is concerned. Seward spends more or less of each day with the President, and absorbs his attention, and influences his action…. The President has, I believe, sincere respect and regard for each and every member of the Cabinet, but Seward seeks and has outstanding influence, which is not always wisely used. The President would do better without him, were he to follow his own instincts, and were he to consult all his advisers in council, he would find his own opinions confirmed. No one attempts to obtrude himself, or warn the President, or suggest to him that others than S. be consulted on some of the important measures of which they are not informed until they see them in operation, or hear of them from others. Chase is much chafed by these things, and endeavors, and to some extent succeeds, in also getting beside the President, and obtaining knowledge of what is going forward. But this only excites and stimulates Seward, who has the inside track and means to keep it. The President is unsuspicious – readily gives his confidence, but only one of his Cabinet has manifested a disposition to monopolize it. But important measures are sometimes checked almost as soon as introduced, and, without any consultation, or without being again brought forward, are disposed of, only the Secretary of State having had a view, or ear, or eye of the matter…. With greater leisure than most of the Cabinet officers, unless it be Smith of the Interior, he runs to the President two or three times a day, gets his ear, gives him his tongue, makes himself interesting, and artfully contrives to dispose of measures without [cabinet] action or give them direction independent of his associates….
I have administered the Navy Department almost entirely independent of Cabinet consultation, and I may say almost without direction of the President, who not only gives me his confidence