Preserving the Union

     The man who would emancipate slaves in the United States was not an abolitionist. Abraham Lincoln hated slavery but he believed the U.S. Constitution prohibited congress and the federal government from interfering with it in those states where it was legal. In an attempt to placate the South, and especially to stop Border States from joining the seven that had already seceded, his first inaugural address contained support for a proposal to amend the constitution and make the prohibition explicit. Lincoln’s active opposition to slavery was limited to its spread into new territories. Because of that the famous orator, abolitionist, and ex-slave Frederick Douglas was one of Lincoln’s most frequent and caustic critics. So why did Lincoln’s election prompt seven states to leave the Union and form an independent Confederacy? Well for one thing slavery wasn’t the only issue. There was also the North’s tendency to favor protective tariffs to the advantage of their industrial base and to the disadvantage of southern exports like tobacco, sugar, and cotton. Northern States lobbied for federal projects to build canals, bridges, and roads. Southerners didn’t like the idea of subsidizing such projects in the North. There were more Northern States, they were more populous, and they had begun to dominate the congress. For years it had been only the threat of secession that restrained Northern interests. Most of all, the newly formed Republican Party that had elected Lincoln contained only a minority of abolitionists but was comprised entirely of anti-slavery elements, mostly disaffected Democrats and refugees from the collapsed Whig party. Southerners saw themselves losing their ability to influence events at the federal level and Republicans as having no need to compromise. They had been threatening to secede long enough. It was time to act.
     Lincoln was willing to compromise on slavery but was not willing to see it extended and he saw secession as a violation of sacred trust. He often used the analogy of marriage, a union freely entered into but once formed impossible to dissolve. If states were free to leave there was no Union at all. It was mere cohabitation and could not stand. Lincoln would fight to preserve the Union and when a Confederate Army fired on Ft. Sumter he prepared for war. Four more states seceded to join the Confederacy. Had a fifth, Maryland, the war might well have been over almost before it began. Sandwiched between Maryland and Virginia it would probably have been impossible to defend the capitol. Had Confederates taken Washington they would have controlled all the symbols of power, and quite possibly the Army, in an effective coup d'état. But Maryland did not secede and the war proceeded in earnest. More than 600,000 American soldiers would die before it was over, more than in all other wars combined, including the war in Iraq.
     By 1862 abolition had become an accepted war aim and in the fall of that year Lincoln prepared The Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln, along with most of his cabinet, thought it was probably unconstitutional and when issued it contained conditions so restrictive as to have the immediate effect of freeing not a single slave. The document was designed as a propaganda weapon, intended to demoralize the South. After the war, fearing courts would reinstate slavery on constitutional grounds, congress passed the 13th Amendment. By the time it was ratified it had practical effect only in Kentucky. Anti-slavery sentiment had already forced emancipation in Maryland and Missouri. Reconstruction legislatures had followed suit in the Confederate South. Lincoln would have been proud. Slavery was gone and through constitutionally legitimate instruments.