President Abraham Lincoln’s methods of dealing with anti-war Democrats during the Civil War was the topic of the first Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Symposium event Wednesday night at the Granada Theatre.
The symposium was put together to celebrate Lincoln’s 200th birthday anniversary.
The night’s featured speaker was Jennifer Weber, assistant professor of history at the University of Kansas, giving a talk entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Copperheads.”
According to Weber, “Copperheads” was a term used by Republicans to refer to northern Democrats who opposed the war and what they considered Lincoln’s violation of civil liberties, particularly in the wake of his suspension of habeas corpus. The Copperheads feared that Lincoln was on his way to becoming a tyrant, and they objected to everything he did.
The talk also addressed how the outcome of the war affected Lincoln’s legacy.
Weber said that by the summer of 1864, Lincoln was facing what was essentially a two-front war: the fight against the Confederacy and the fight against northerners in fierce opposition to the war.
“In his message, (Lincoln) told Congress that the laws were not being enforced in a third of the states,” Weber said, “and he had to impose federal authority. The administration could not protect habeas corpus if the government were overthrown, he said, and it should not protect habeas corpus if doing so would threaten the government’s continued existence.”
This established the pattern for Lincoln’s dealings with the peace Democrats, Weber said.
“Lincoln addressed their complaints, but he never mentioned them by name, either as a group or as individuals.”
Weber said Lincoln’s response to the peace Democrats demonstrated the traits that made him a good president.
“But these same traits could just as easily have ended Lincoln’s presidency and resulted in historians dismissing him as a failed president,” she said. “Contingency, it turns out, is as important a factor in Lincoln’s enduring legacy as are his own immense gifts as a politician and a leader.”
“While he may not have been responsible for the most egregious violations of civil liberties during the Civil War, Lincoln endorsed many of the actions that were taken on behalf of his administration,” she said, adding that he claimed they were in the best interest of public safety during a rebellion.
Weber went on to discuss the unpopularity of the Emancipation Proclamation with the peace Democrats.
“They thought Lincoln had reached far beyond his Constitutional limits, and frankly they did not want a bunch of freedmen flooding across the Mason-Dixon line into the north,” she said.
The proclamation pointed to a number of Lincoln’s qualities, she said, including his habit of not moving too quickly on anything, of deliberating his moves and waiting for the right moment to make them. He didn’t act on the proclamation until over a year into the war.
“He wrote out the proclamation and stuck it in a desk drawer for two months,” Weber said, “while he waited for something he could at least claim to be a Union victory, which was the Battle of Antietam.”
When his political allies encouraged him to drop the proclamation because of it’s “political toxicity,” Lincoln insisted it was the only way to win the war because it denied the South its labor force and gave the North moral authority.
Weber said that by the summer of 1864, the public was growing ever more tired of the war. In fact, Lincoln almost dropped the Emancipation Proclamation, going so far as to write a memo to Jefferson Davis offering concessions. He then tucked the memo into a drawer and never acted on it.
“He told the party chairman that if he compromised on this issue, if he abandoned the freedmen, if he went back on his promise to them, he would be damned for all time in eternity,” she said. “And so he made his peace with losing the election in November (1864), as he felt he was sure to do.”
As it happened, Gen. Sherman took Atlanta in September of that year, and the war came to an end soon after.
“Any evaluation of Lincoln’s leadership has to account for contingency,” Weber said. “Lincoln and his presidency came close to being a failure in the summer of 1864. ... If Sherman had not taken Atlanta before the election of 1864, ... Lincoln most probably would have lost. Emancipation for sure would have been the first thing off the table had the Democrats returned to power.”
In that case, Weber contended, historians would have blamed Lincoln’s leadership style for the Union’s defeat.
“Many of the leadership characteristics that we credit Lincoln for, that we argue made him great, could equally have been blamed for his downfall had Atlanta not fallen in September,” Weber said.
And with his death just a few months later, Lincoln became a martyred president.
“As a historical figure, he was the beneficiary of contingency and timing.” Weber said. “He was reelected because election day came after important Union victories in the fall of 1864. ... His death, by any measure a tragedy, ... sealed his legacy.”
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Symposium series will continue with events each Wednesday for the next three weeks at 7 p.m. at the Granada Theatre.