While it is true that Lincoln regarded slavery as an evil and harmful institution, it also true, as this paper will show, that he shared the conviction of most Americans of his time, and of many prominent statesmen before and after him, that blacks could not be assimilated into white society. He rejected the notion of social equality of the races, and held to the view that blacks should be resettled abroad. As President, he supported projects to remove blacks from the United States.
‘Military Necessity’
Lincoln himself specifically cited “military necessity” as his reason for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. After more than a year of combat, and in spite of its great advantages in industrial might and numbers, federal forces had still not succeeded in breaking the South. At this critical juncture of the war, the President apparently now hoped, a formal edict abolishing slavery in the Confederate states would strike a blow at the Confederacy’s ability to wage war by encouraging dissension, escapes, and possibly revolt among its large slave labor force.78
As the war progressed, black labor had become ever more critical in the hard-pressed Confederacy. Blacks planted, cultivated and harvested the food that they then transported to the Confederate armies. Blacks raised and butchered the beef, pigs and chicken used to feed the Confederate troops. They wove the cloth and knitted the socks to clothe the grey-uniformed soldiers. As Union armies invaded the South, tearing up railroads and demolishing bridges, free blacks and slaves repaired them. They toiled in the South’s factories, shipping yards, and mines. In 1862, the famous Tredegar iron works advertised for 1,000 slaves. In 1864, there were 4,301 blacks and 2,518 whites in the iron mines of the Confederate states east of the Mississippi.79
Blacks also served with the Confederate military forces as mechanics, teamsters, and common laborers. They cared for the sick and scrubbed the wounded in Confederate hospitals. Nearly all of the South’s military fortifications were constructed by black laborers. Most of the cooks in the Confederate army were slaves. Of the 400 workers at the Naval arsenal in Selma, Alabama, in 1865, 310 were blacks. Blacks served with crews of Confederate blockade-runners and stoked the firerooms of the South’s warships.80
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the legendary cavalry commander, said in a postwar interview: “When I entered the army I took 47 Negroes into the army with me, and 45 of them were surrendered with me ... These boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better Confederates did not live.”81
On several occasions, Lincoln explained his reasons for issuing the Proclamation. On September 13, 1862, the day after the preliminary proclamation was issued, Lincoln met with a delegation of pro-abolitionist Christian ministers, and told them bluntly: “Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds ... I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.”82
To Salmon Chase, his Treasury Secretary, the President justified the Proclamations’s limits: “The original [preliminary] proclamation has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure,” he explained. “The exceptions were made because the military necessity did not apply to the exempted localities. Nor does that necessity apply to them now any more than it did then.”83