When the Times Change, How Quickly Men Change with Them

When the Times Change, How Quickly Men Change with Them

Aiséirithe

Ch. 4

1

CHAPTER FOUR

ABOLITIONISTS AND THE 1864 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

At a Fourth of July celebration in 1863, Wendell Phillips uttered another of his predictions with regard to the outcome of the war. “The next year,” he said, “is, as I believe, to be the climax of the struggle. Not that we are to conquer yet: a longer battle than that is before us; but the next year is to decide whether this is to remain a revolution….”[1] By “revolution,” Phillips probably meant to refer to the opportunity he recognized, created by the Southern rebellion, for the federal government to abolish slavery and help to reshape black-white relations in the South. Yet his use of the term is both poignant and revealing. From the outbreak of the war in 1861, Garrisonian abolitionists in particular had effectively abandoned their former stance of valuing liberty above country. As between the Union and the Confederacy, the vast majority of abolitionists sided with the Union. On the one hand, that move appears logical given that, as Garrison often pointed out, the federal government that they had formerly criticized so harshly was now at war with the Slave Power. On the other hand, however, their having so hastily yielded their critical posture to declare their support for the government served to muffle and cloud the grounds on which they might then urge the government to strike decisively against slavery. The government’s strikes against slavery up to that point were still not as decisive as abolitionists wished, while the latter cautiously confined their criticism of the Union government within limits. Thus Phillips’s hearers might well have asked themselves, ‘whose revolution?’

The anti-abolitionBoston Post likened Phillips to Danton in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. A few months earlier, Phillips himself had expressed his fear of a military coup by Union generals opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation. For Garrison, nothing fulfilled fears of a Reign of Terror so much as the New York City draft riot that followed shortly after Phillips’s speech. Hence, a number of Phillips’s contemporaries, unsurprisingly, were using the word ‘revolution’ to describe some or other of the changes taking place around them. And, like just about everything else in the midst of the Civil War, the word was used at one and the same time to refer to conflicting, or opposite, things.[2]

But in at least one sense, Phillips’s prediction proved true. When Garrisonian abolitionists abandoned their revolutionary doctrine of disunionism, they did so because the Union government now had motive, means, and opportunity to abolish slavery. Inevitably however, the war notwithstanding, the government’s course would be shaped and directed by the very truck and barter of party politics from which Garrisonians had long claimed to hold themselves aloof. As Phillips spoke that Fourth of July in 1863, he had already begun contemplating his next bold move as the country’s best-known agitator (second only to Garrison): he and a number of other reformers would attempt to revolutionize electoral politics.

The effort to elect John Frémont president was less about actually trying to install Frémont himself in the White House, andrather more of an attempt to define a new role for self-described radical reformers vis-à-vis the political process. Certainly by the start of the war, if not before, Wendell Phillips had become one of the most sought-after speakers on the lyceum circuit. Frequently proclaiming his faith in “the people,” he had come to believe he possessed considerable power to shape public opinion.[3] The people, Phillips believed, could be brought to demand universal emancipation and equal rights for black Americans, and overwhelm the petty horse-trading of the party functionaries (the traditional means to presidential nomination) to elect to the presidency someone of their choice.

Nor was this some wild idea of Phillips’s alone. A good many Republicans, both in and outside Congress, were growing increasingly dissatisfied with Lincoln’s conduct of the war. At the same time, a small but vocal body of German immigrants had rallied to Frémont’s cause against critics in both the Union army and the Republican party; the Germans nurtured similar aspirations about circumventing entrenched party hacks and structures to elect a president who would represent their interests. The well-known woman’s rights reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, long allied with abolitionists, shared Phillips’s assessment of the possibilities for social change offered by the war. Determined that such change should benefit women, Cady Stanton too joined the Frémont movement. For much of the election year, their movement gained momentum.

Garrison, however, did not join this movement, nor did many of his followers. Yet Garrison in his own way perceived that events had ushered in a new order. His efforts to integrate Garrisonian abolitionism into the mainstream of Northern public opinion represented no less a departure from abolitionists’ former nonpartisanship than Phillips’s third-party activity. In the end, everyone emerged from the election disillusioned, and many of these constituencies stood divided. Among Garrisonian abolitionists, the divisions would prove bitter and long-lasting, despite a shared determination to downplay them. The election year had indeed decided “whether this is to remain a revolution,” and the answer—as regards a united effort to achieve universal emancipation, equal rights for all, and a more inclusive participatory democracy—was no.

Abolitionists had disagreed before 1864. Around Garrison's and Phillips's differing views on Lincoln's re-election, however, converged all the issues that had been simmering since the emergence of the Republican party ten years earlier: the centrality of equal rights for black Americans to abolitionists' mission; the related questions of when the antislavery societies might safely disband and the place of freedmen's aid in that mission; abolitionists' relationship with and posture toward the Republican party—all of which challenged white abolitionists' understanding of themselves as disinterested as well as their sense of what "radicalism" signified in an era of shifting loyalties.

The 1864 election dispute thus constitutes a fulcrum in the divisions and disputes that rocked the self-described radical reformers between 1854 and 1870. The differences over the election grew very bitter; it is clear from the sources that abolitionists' passions ran so high because all of them believed that decisions made now would shape the freedmen's status for years to come. As a result of their dispute, so-called radical reformers no longer recognized one another as fellow radicals or trusted their judgment; they even accused one another of appropriating the radical label in order to disguise and advance conservative ends. Nonetheless, in many respects the dispute remains puzzling as to what precisely the grounds of difference were; who took which stance and why; what so upset other erstwhile comrades; and most of all as the passions ran so high, why there was not more direct, forthright engagement with the substantive differences that underlay them. Despite this reticence in the sources, however, there is no doubt that the dispute over the 1864 election severely weakened the reformers' effort to achieve universal emancipation, equal rights for all, and a more inclusive participatory democracy.

Emergence of the 1864 Election Controversy

Up through 1863, Garrison and Phillips had not seemed to disagree significantly. But in December of that year, in his message to Congress, President Lincoln had sketched a preliminary basis for the re-admission of conquered Southern states: where 10 per cent of those eligible to vote under the state’s 1860 constitution could be found to be loyal to the Union and accept emancipation, they could assemble and begin re-constituting civil government in that state.[4] At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society the following January, the two abolitionist leaders differed openly in their assessments of Lincoln's course. Garrison objected to a resolution proposed by Phillips which began, “Resolved, That in our opinion, the government in its haste is ready to sacrifice the interests and honor of the North to a sham peace….” Garrison objected that the resolution represented “an impeachment of motives.” He moved to amend the resolution to read, “Resolved, That in our opinion, the government, in its haste, is in danger of sacrificing, etc.” Phillips rejected Garrison’s amendment. In the ensuing discussion, both men had praise for Lincoln as well as for Frémont. But Garrison declared that President Lincoln stood more publicly and firmly committed to emancipation than Frémont orthe other well-known Union generals whom Phillips had praised in his speech (and who were already being spoken of as possible presidential candidates),Grant andButler. Whereas Garrison formerly criticized Republicans for any compromises on slavery, here he offered as one reason for his support of Lincoln, that "No other candidate would probably carry so strong a vote in opposition to copperhead democracy." Some of Garrison's other comments also show how it can be difficult to discern when the two men's views diverged. He brought up Phillips’s earlier speeches in support of Lincoln (including, he said, a speech given only the night before), and noted that Phillips “had also eulogized Frémont.” Acknowledging that he himself had formerly praised Frémont, Garrison explained that Frémont’s failure to say a single word in favor of the Emancipation Proclamation had “lessened [his] interest” in the General.[5]

Phillips acknowledged “some hope lies in the fact that Lincoln’s obstinacy is not so long as the course of events." But, he protested, "I cannot trust him in reconstruction." The central theme both in resolutions he presented to the meeting as well as in his exchange with Garrison, turned on the president's evident willingness to leave the freed disfranchised, in a "technical liberty which…is no better than apprenticeship." Pointing out that the Massachusetts Society stood committed to securing equal rights for black Americans, Phillips concluded of the president, "If he is our pilot, I shall criticize his capacity to carry us into port." At the same time, Phillips seemed to shrink from framing the discussion in electoral terms. "To mention the contingencies which are possible under such a policy is not to impeach motives…. I am not here,” he insisted, “to oppose the re-nomination of Abraham Lincoln.”[6]

If Garrison and Phillips' differences thus seem plain, here Garrison's position appears strange. Pointing out that Lincoln could beat any candidate of the anti-abolition Democrats seems consistent enough. But questions turn on what was not said. Toward Phillips's speech, remarks, and resolutions all insisting on equality for black Americans, Garrison appears from the papers to have offered only silence. Nor, it seems, did anyone ask him about it. He acknowledged that Lincoln moved more slowly than he, Garrison, would have wished toward emancipation, but declared his belief that Lincoln's steps in that direction were sure and would never be reversed. But on any aspect of freedmen's or other blacks' rights and freedoms after emancipation—nothing.

The fact of abolitionists’ differences about the administration was picked up by the Associated Press and subsequently appeared in newspapers all over the country.[7] In the weeks following the meeting the antislavery press hastened to deny reports that Phillips and Garrison had entered the campaign as partisans respectively for Frémont and Lincoln.[8] Of perhaps more significance than the tenor of the men’s exchange was the Society’s vote on the resolutions. The Standardreported it thus: “[Garrison’s] amendment was declared to be lost, but the number of those voting on either side (quite large) was not given. The original [Phillips’s] resolution was then adopted, by almost the same majority….”[9] Phillips subsequently claimed that this vote, along with later ones, demonstrated the Society’s support for his position as against Garrison’s.

Perhaps a sign that the atmosphere had become charged with suspicion and distrust, more than Garrison and Phillips’s discussion at the January meeting, was the paper’s insistence that their difference of opinion was being misrepresented to serve base ends. A Standard editorial appeared the very next week, titled “Garrison and Phillips.” It began, “The open and concealed enemies of Emancipation—the genuine Copperheads and the counterfeit Republicans—have made as much as they could out of the very moderate capital afforded them by the difference of opinion at the late meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society between Messrs. Garrison and Phillips.” In contrast toearlier editorials, which acknowledged “great division of opinion among Abolitionists,” the editorial on the election dispute went on to affirm that “Enemies and friends may be assured that no schism exists in, or impends over, the Anti-Slavery body.”[10]

This perceived danger of “open and concealed enemies of Emancipation” is key to understanding the election controversy. Before the war, abolitionists found it fairly easy to distinguish between those who favored or supported emancipation and equal rights, and those who opposed them. Even with regard to Republicans, they understood that the party’s pledge in 1860 was confined to opposing slavery’s extension into newly forming settlements in the western territories; and they further appreciated that compromise formed an inherent feature of electoral politics. As there are always naysayers in any war, however, following the attack on Fort Sumter it was feared that not all Northerners supported a war to force the Confederate states back into the Union, much less a war to end slavery.[11] Northerners believed to sympathize with the South were referred to by the epithet “Copperheads.” Supporters of the war, particularly Republicans, also frequently voiced the belief that the Democratic party harbored substantial numbers of such Northerners whose loyalty to the Union, as well as support for the extinction of slavery, was highly dubious. Whether or not efforts to undermine the Union government from within were ever substantial, and whether or not Copperheads wielded influence in and received support from the Democratic party, plenty of abolitionists as well as Republicans spoke and wrote as though they believed both were true.[12]

Once emancipation emerged as a war aim and a Republican party measure, as well as a goal of the presidential administration, abolitionists began to articulate the perception that some ambitious persons merely sought to appear to endorse emancipation, as a means of courting favor with those in power in order to advance aims unrelated or even hostile to emancipation and equal rights. For instance, abolitionists perceived Copperhead sentiments and the attendant opposition to emancipation in Lincoln’s commander General George B. McClellan, and already by 1862 expressed the fear that the Democrats would nominate him as their candidate and pursue a peace that left slavery intact, and perhaps recognized Confederate independence as well. Significantly, however, abolitionists also expressed the belief that opposition to emancipation was growing within the Republican party—led, abolitionists suspected, by Secretary of State Seward.[13] Thus abolitionists’ disagreements over which of the presidential candidates was the more committed to emancipation and equal rights were overshadowed by this knowledge that ambitious persons were now claiming to endorse emancipation merely to secure power in the pursuit of contrary aims. Before the election was over, abolitionists had begun suspecting this of one another as well.

At that January meeting, one of the points Garrison raised about Frémont concerned Frémont’s having failed publicly to express support for the Emancipation Proclamation. Nonetheless in March, when the English abolitionist George Thompson visited the United States, the Young Men’s Republican Union of New York City hosted a reception in his honor, and Frémont was chosen to preside. Garrison’s letters suggest not only that he had played a part in arranging it, but that he had done so jointly with Phillips. To Oliver Johnson, he wrote, “Phillips will tell you what our desires are. We wish a reception to be given to G. T. in New York, similar in character to the one that is to be given to him here—i.e., under the auspices of loyal men of standing and character, such as [Republican mayor of New York George] Opdyke…."[14]

Early in his remarks, Frémont expressed humility that he had been chosen to preside, rather than “some one of older date in the anti-slavery struggle.” Interestingly, however, Frémont suggested that his selection might be apt as an illustration of the changes which had occurred since Thompson’s last visit some twenty-odd years earlier. He referred to himself as “one belonging to the body of the people to whom conviction has been brought by the logic of events which forced their consideration upon every man,” and suggested that his selection might “ai[d] our guest to realize the unanimity with which the nation is moving to the accomplishment of its object….” Frémont seemed to wish to imply that he had not been anti-slavery always, and even perhaps not for very long; one wonders if this remark surprised any abolitionists. Frémont himself was apparently confident that abolitionists would approve of his performance, for shortly afterward he wrote to Garrison, “It is very agreeable to me that you approve…emphatically my part in the reception of Mr. Thompson”; and he enclosed reports of the meeting from the New York papers, adding that they had reported his own words accurately.[15] Moreover, at the conclusion of his own speech, Thompson told Frémont that his name had become “a household word among all friends of liberty and humanity in England,” and that millions there would rejoice to see him elected president of the United States.[16]