Lincoln's Public Letters

Throughout the eighteenth century a popular means used by political leaders to disseminate their positions on critical issues was the public letter. Though addressed to a particular individual, the public letter was written with the intent that it would be shared with a larger audience, either by having it read aloud at a public forum or published in newspapers or pamphlets, or sometimes all three [1]. Abraham Lincoln used the public letter frequently and to great effect while president, especially in response to opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation. 

 

The letter to James Conkling of August 26, 1863 is an excellent example of how president Lincoln used this medium to reach a broad audience, address a range of concerns over his emancipation policy, and convey his point of view as both the president of the United States and man of the people. 

 

Lincoln’s letter to James Conkling was actually a reply to an invitation Conkling had sent Lincoln on August 14, 1863 to speak at a “Grand Mass Meeting” of “unconditional union men” in Springfield, Illinois on September 3rd. James Conkling was a long-time friend and political ally of Lincoln’s. He was a former mayor of Springfield, a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, and the chief organizer of what was billed to be one of the largest gathering of Unionists ever assembled since the War began [2]. 

 

Like the Public Letter, the Mass Political Meeting was a “staple of antebellum politics [3].” Both Democrats and Republicans held these widely attended meetings with great frequency throughout the Union and Border states, though especially where the partisan divide was sharpest. Similar to the party nominating conventions of today, the mass meetings of the Civil War era were political rallies that often carried a “circus-like  atmosphere” where local politicians and party organizers rallied support for their party’s platform [4]. 

 

By the summer of 1863 both Democrats and Republicans had already held several Mass Meetings in Illinois. Despite being the self-appointed home state of president Lincoln, Illinois was in a state of political upheaval at this time. Support for the president and the Republican party was waning, in large part due to the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln officially declared on New Years Day of that year. Galvanized by their opposition to emancipation, Northern Democrats, especially the faction known as the Peace Democrats, or Copperheads by their critics, quickly organized several Mass Meetings in the months following the Proclamation to great effect. Illinois voters responded by giving Democrats back both houses in the state legislature and amended their constitution to forbid black suffrage and immigration [5]. The sentiment prevailing among Illinois voters in 1863 was in favor of negotiating a compromise to end the war, even if it meant restoring slavery. It didn’t help that one of Lincoln’s loudest critics was his former general, George B. McClellan, who would accept the Democratic nomination for president and challenge Lincoln in the election of 1864.

 

Meanwhile, the Republican party was in its own state of disunion over emancipation. Many of the ardent abolitionists in its ranks felt the Proclamation’s dry legalese lacked conviction and was vulnerable to repeal as a condition of a peace surrender with the Confederates, as was rumored. Of the official Emancipation Proclamation, Adam Gurowski, a diarist, amateur historian, and translator in the State Department remarked that it was “written in the meanest and most dry routine style; and not a word to evoke a generous thrill [6].” Opposite that faction, were those Republicans who worried the Proclamation was unconstitutional and therefore threatened any future peace negotiation. By 1863, Lincoln was, and had been for some time, firmly committed to unconditional emancipation as a condition of peace, yet he had not, up to this point, publicly defended the Emancipation Proclamation with any of the eloquence and lawyerly logic for which he was known [7]. It was in this tumultuous summer, into the fourth year of the War, where Lincoln’s second term looked uncertain, that Illinois Republicans urgently organized to rally support for the president and the War. They planned a giant Mass Meeting for September 3rd and billed it not just as a Republican rally, but a Unionist rally, hoping to lure pro-Union Democrats who hadn’t yet sided with the Copperheads [8]. 

 

James Conkling knew some serious star power was needed to attract a large audience of wide ranging opinion, and though Lincoln’s being able to attend was a long shot, he reached out to the president in the faint hope he would be able to accept the invitation. Lincoln actually considered it briefly, but in the end attention to the War tethered him to Washington, D.C.[9]. However, in his place he sent a letter addressed to Conkling, with the instructions it be read aloud “very slowly” at the Mass Meeting and later be published in newspapers and as pamphlets for public consumption. Lincoln may have ostensibly been addressing the meeting in Illinois, but he was targeting a much wider audience of dubious Americans. It was his first public defense of the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln was keenly aware of the public’s concerns over the Proclamation’s call for immediate emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers [10].

 

A close reading of President Lincoln’s Letter to James Conkling provides and excellent window into the prevailing doubts many Northerners had about the Emancipation Proclamation. It also reveals Lincoln’s defense of the Proclamation as a war time measure carried out by a commander in chief justifiably using the war powers granted to him in the Constitution.

 

 

It would be very agreeable to me, Lincoln began, to thus meet my old friends, at my own home; and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation’s gratitude to those other noble men, whom no partizan malice, or partizan hope, can make false to the nation’s life. 

 

But, he quickly acknowledged, There are those who are dissatisfied with me…

 

The president wasted no time in addressing those Republicans who feared he would forego his commitment to emancipation in order to capitulate to Confederate conditions of surrender. To them, he wrote:

​

Now allow me to assure you that, no word or intimation, from that rebel army, or

from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever

come to my knowledge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the contrary are

deceptive and groundless.

 

Though, in this instance, he was addressing the friendliest faction of his audience, his declarative tone was no doubt reassuring to those within it who questioned his resolve.

 

The more significant challenge Lincoln faced was in convincing Unionist lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, that the Emancipation Proclamation was constitutional. Lincoln’s critics were skeptical as to whether or not he had the authority to declare “forever free” “all persons held as slaves within any State … in rebellion against the United States” and to “receive [those freed slaves] into the armed service of the United States [11].” 

 

Though Union troops had been authorized to harbor escaped slaves as contraband of war or as punishment for treason under the Second Confiscation Act, the Emancipation Proclamation allowed them to entice slaves to freedom and to join the Union army [12]. 

 

Historian, Alan Guelzo, notes that Lincoln privately shared some misgivings regarding the constitutionality of the Emancipation Proclamation, which is likely why he insisted on the passage of Thirteenth Amendment before agreeing to any peace negotiations with the Confederates [13]. However, Lincoln did not share this in the summer of 1863. Instead, he used his letter to James Conkling as an opportunity to inform his critics that the Emancipation Proclamation was constitutional under the purview of powers granted to the president as commander in chief in time of war [14]. 

Lincoln wrote:

​

You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional—I think differently. I think the constitution invests its commander in chief, with the law of war, in time of war…

The most that can be said…is that slaves are property. Is there—has there ever been—

any question that by the end of the war, property, both of enemies and friends, may 

be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever taking it, helps us, or hurts the

 enemy?

 

But Lincoln also knew that for many of his critics, it was not a concern over constitutional powers that drove their opposition to the Proclamation, it was deep seated racism. Historian Alan Guelzo notes that for most Unionists, it was a hatred of “the economic scale of the plantation economy…rather than…slavery itself” that fueled their support of the War [15]. To pacify this demographic of his audience, Lincoln asserted his belief in the immutability of the Proclamation by linking it to the fallen soldiers who had already sacrificed their lives for the War [16].

 

But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose you do not. But the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.

 

It is hard not to see hints of the Gettysburg Address in this passage from the Conkling Letter. Fallen soldiers can not be resurrected, Lincoln reasoned, but their sacrifice can represent something higher. As he would later assert in the Gettysburg Address,“[the] dead shall not have died in vain,” but gave their lives to preserve the founding principle of the Union, that “all men are created equal[17].” 

 

In a similar vain, Lincoln also addressed the concerns over arming black troops, using powerful imagery, as well as ethos and pathos to persuade the racist element in his audience that emancipation was not only necessary to restore the Union, it was a moral obligation [18]:

 

I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should

cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance

to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to 

do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in saving the Union…

But negroes, like other people, act on motives. Why should they do any thing for us,

if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted

by the strongest motive—even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made,

must be kept.

 

However, no where did Lincoln perhaps do so more effectively, that in the closing of his letter, in which he contrasted the bravery of black soldiers willing to die in order defend emancipation with whites eager to stand in their way [19]: 

 

…there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have stroved to hinder it.

 

In the final paragraphs of the letter, Lincoln shifted to a more positive, even light-hearted tone as he commented on the general progress of the War [20]:

 

The signs look better. He wrote, The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North-West for it. Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up, they meet New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The Sunny South too, in more colors than one, also lent a hand. On the spot, their part in history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one; and let none be banned who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have learned the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely, and well done, than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam’s Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou…

 

To his contemporaries, including his secretary, William O’Stoddard, who critiqued his use of folksy similes such as “Father Waters” for the Mississippi River and “Uncle Sam’s Webbed Feet” for the Navy, Lincoln replied, “I reckon the people will know what it means [21].” Lincoln understood that not only would he have to show the people that he was a resolute commander and chief, but that he was still one of them, a man of and from their class.

 

The Conkling Letter is an excellent example of Lincoln’s skill as a politician and communicator.  

Not surprisingly, the public response to it was overwhelmingly positive. An editorial in the New York Times from September 3, 1863 “declared ‘the message has all [Lincoln’s] characteristic solidity of sense and aptness of expression…The great charm of this free-and-easy familiar letter, is its utter freedom from everything like partisan spirit [23].’”

 

The public’s positive reception of the Conkling Letter no doubt bolstered the President’s resolve to push for the Thirteenth Amendment and thereby “finish the work,” he would recognize in the Gettysburg Address. The Conkling letter provided Lincoln an opportunity to reassure his allies, challenge his detractors, and persuade the people in the righteousness of the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

 

Works Cited

 

1. Wilson, Douglass, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, Knopf Doubleday, 2011, Google Books, pp. 193 - 194

2. Masur, Louis P., “Read it Very Slowly,” New York Times, August 22, 2013http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/read-it-very-slowly/?_r=0

3. Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

4. Masur, Louis P., “Read it Very Slowly,” New York Times, August 22, 2013http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/read-it-very-slowly/?_r=0

5. Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

6. Qutd in Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

7. Foner, Eric,“The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln,” New York Times, December 31, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/the-emancipation-of-abe-lincoln.html

8. Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

9. Masur, Louis P., “Read it Very Slowly,” New York Times, August 22, 2013http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/read-it-very-slowly/?_r=0

10. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

11. Lincoln, Abraham, The Emancipation Proclamation, Washington, D.C., January 1, 1863. http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/emancipation-proclamation-january-1-1863/

12. Foner, Eric,“The Emancipation of Abe Lincoln,” New York Times, December 31, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/01/opinion/the-emancipation-of-abe-lincoln.html

13. Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

14. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

15. Guelzo, Alan, “Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863, Civil War History, Volume 48, Number 4, December 2002

16. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

17. Lincoln, Abraham, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/gettysburg-address-november-19-1863/

18. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

19. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

20. Lincoln, Abraham, Letter to James Conkling, August, 26, 1863http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/lincoln/letter-to-james-conkling-august-26-1863/

21. Masur, Louis P., “Read it Very Slowly,” New York Times, August 22, 2013http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/read-it-very-slowly/?_r=0

22. Winkle, Kenneth J., “Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made Man,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 21 (Summer 2000) http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0021.203

23. Qutd in Masur, Louis P., “Read it Very Slowly,” New York Times, August 22, 2013http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/read-it-very-slowly/?_r=0