第126章 THE MASTER OF THE MOMENT(2)

The fifth message urged Congress to submit to the States an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.Such action had been considered in the previous session,but nothing had been done.At Lincoln's suggestion,it had been recommended in the platform of the Union party.Now,with the President's powerful influence behind it,with his prestige at full circle,the amendment was rapidly pushed forward.Before January ended,it had been approved by both Houses.Lincoln had used all his personal influence to strengthen its chances in Congress where,until the last minute,the vote was still in doubt.[4]

While the amendment was taking its way through Congress,a shrewd old politician who thought he knew the world better than most men,that Montgomery Blair,Senior,who was father of the Postmaster General,had been trying on his own responsibility to open negotiations between Washington and Richmond.His visionary ideas,which were wholly without the results he intended,have no place here.And yet this fanciful episode had a significance of its own.Had it not occurred,the Confederate government probably would not have appointed commissioners charged with the hopeless task of approaching the Federal government for the purpose of negotiating peace between "the two countries."Now that Lincoln was entirely in the ascendent at home,and since the Confederate arms had recently suffered terrible reverses,he was no longer afraid that negotiation might appear to be the symptom of weakness.He went so far as to consent to meet the Commissioners himself.On a steamer in Hampton Roads,Lincoln and Seward had a long conference with three members of the Confederate government,particularly the Vice-President,Alexander H.Stephens.

it has become a tradition that Lincoln wrote at the top of a sheet of paper the one word "Union";that he pushed it across the table and said,"Stephens,write under that anything you want"There appears to be no foundation for the tale in this form.The amendment had committed the North too definitely to emancipation.Lincoln could not have proposed Union without requiring emancipation,also.And yet,with this limitation,the spirit of the tradition is historic.There can be no doubt that he presented to the commissioners about the terms which the year before he had drawn up as a memorandum for Gilmore and Jaquess:Union,the acceptance of emancipation,but also instantaneous restoration of political autonomy to the Southern States,and all the influence of the Administration in behalf of liberal compensation for the loss of slave property.But the commissioners had no authority to consider terms that did not recognize the existence of "two countries."However,this Hampton Roads Conference gave Lincoln a new hope.He divined,if he did not perceive,that the Confederates were on the verge of despair.If he had been a Vindictive,this would have borne fruit in ferocious telegrams to his generals to strike and spare not.What Lincoln did was to lay before the Cabinet this proposal:--that they advise Congress to offer the Confederate government the sum of four hundred million dollars,provided the war end and the States in secession acknowledge the authority of the Federal government previous to April 1,1865.But the Cabinet,complete as was his domination in some respects,were not ripe for such a move as this."'You are all against me,'said Lincoln sadly and in evident surprise at the want of statesmanlike liberality on the part of the executive council,"to quote his Secretary,"folded and laid away the draft of his message."[5]Nicolay believes that the idea continued vividly in his mind and that it may be linked with his last public utterance--"it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South.I am considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action is proper."It was now obvious to every one outside the Confederacy that the war would end speedily in a Northern victory.To Lincoln,therefore,the duty of the moment,overshadowing all else,was the preparation for what should come after.Reconstruction.

More than ever it was of first importance to decide whether the President or Congress should deal with this great matter.And now occurred an event which bore witness at once to the beginning of Lincoln's final struggle with the Vindictives and to that personal ascendency which was steadily widening.One of those three original Jacobins agreed to become his spokesman in the Senate.As the third person of the Jacobin brotherhood,Lyman Trumbull had always been out of place.He had gone wrong not from perversity of the soul but from a mental failing,from the lack of inherent light,from intellectual conventionality.

But he was a good man.One might apply to him Mrs.Browning's line:"Just a good man made a great man."And in his case,as in so many others,sheer goodness had not been sufficient in the midst of a revolution to save his soul.To quote one of the greatest of the observers of human life:"More brains,OLord,more brains."Though Trumbull had the making of an Intellectual,politics had very nearly ruined him.For all his good intentions it took him a long time to see what Hawthorne saw at first sight-that Lincoln was both a powerful character and an original mind.Still,because Trumbull was really a good man,he found a way to recover his soul.What his insight was not equal to perceiving in 1861,experience slowly made plain to him in the course of the next three years.Before 1865he had broken with the Vindictives;he had come over to Lincoln.Trumbull still held the powerful office of Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.He now undertook to be the President's captain in a battle on the floor of the Senate for the recognition of Louisiana.