Free Our One Common Country by James B. Conroy Page B

would be victory and defeat following war.” [Emphasis added]
    And then came the salient point: “What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause is not necessarily true of those who follow. Although he cannot re-accept the Union, they can.” It was a call to the Southern people to ignore their elected leader. “They can, at any moment, have peace simply by laying down their arms, and submitting to the National authority under the Constitution.” If they did, Washington could not keep warring on them even if it wanted to. The loyal people would not allow it. Any issues that remained would be adjusted by lawful means. Some were beyond the executive’s power, which the end of the war would diminish. But pardons and remissions of forfeited property were within his control, and the people of the South could expect their liberal use. He had offered pardons a year ago to all but a few Rebel leaders. Even they had been told that they could earn one, and many already had. The door was still open. “But the time may come—probably will come—when public duty shall demand that it be closed” and “more rigorous measures” taken. The rigors were left unnamed.
    The president set only one other condition for peace. “I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery.” He would never revoke the Emancipation Proclamation, nor return to slavery any person freed by its terms, or by any act of Congress. “If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it. In stating a single condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.”
    Lincoln called on the lame-duck House to vote once again on the Constitutional amendment banning slavery, before the new Congress convened. The Republicans had run on an abolition platform. The people had been heard. Prompt, united action abolishing slavery forever would help win the war by erasing the evil that had caused it.

    The Radicals loved it. Thaddeus Stevens was thrilled. Jacobin in chief in the House, the grim Pennsylvanian chaired the Ways and Means Committee, feeble at seventy-two, with a miraculous mop of dense brown hair that did his wig-maker no credit,but sharp of wit and tongue. He would soon attack Andrew Johnson, whom a colleague would defend as a self-made man. “Glad to hear it,” Stevens would say, “for it relieves God Almighty of a heavy responsibility.” Stevens had been skewering Lincoln for years. Now he rushed to his side. The president had “never made much pretension to a polished education,” Stevens said, but no fault could be found in his message “that the war must go on without seeking negotiation,” and be waged until slavery was gone.
    The president had said neither of these things. There were reasons why his message had been difficult to compose. It did not invite negotiations but nor did it preclude them, so long as they included reunion and no backward steps on abolition. It said not a word about fighting the South to the death, or warring until slavery was gone. In practical effect, the Emancipation Proclamation had only freed the slaves in the conquered parts of the Confederacy, and the Constitutional amendment banning slavery had not yet passed the Congress, let alone been ratified by the states. If peace came now, there was room for negotiation on the timing, particulars, and rewards of moving forward with abolition, a priority that Lincoln embraced but had always ranked second to the restoration of the Union.
    In the end, Lincoln had invited Southern peacemakers to proceed where “the insurgent leader” would not go.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Wise Men Are Those Who Would End It
    A week before Lincoln sent his message to Congress, Horace Greeley resumed