Chapter 105: Last Acts
Chapter 105: Last Acts
“‘Those days of the winter of 1864 and 1865 would be the darkest of my life,’ Lincoln would later write in his 1876 memoirs. Darker than the Civil War, the British war, or even the worries of besieged Washington, the knowledge that he was almost powerless to shape the pivotal coming year of 1865 weighed on the president more than he might ever admit. His sons would all recount the “dark time” similar to when his beloved wife died. Many said he was watching another loved one die, his country.
The final months of the Lincoln Administration were marked by a lame congress, divided political movements, and no clear national strategy for the coming year. Lincoln had some success in shaping events, with the one notable military achievement of ordering the capture of Little Rock in Arkansas, a battle that saw over 4,000 Union casualties for 3,500 Confederate. Despite the small success, the greater national perception of the war was one of defeat.
More importantly, in Congress, the Republican Party could not present a united front tot he Democratic Party which, though outnumbered, was prepared to back the new administration simply on principle. Even the most ardent War Democrats agreed with the idea of attempting a negotiated peace after so much bloodshed. While the Unconditional Unionists and Ra dicals disagreed completely with this strategy, many moderates did not think that a ‘new bloodletting’ would let the nation move into the latter half of the 1860s with any chance of success…
Despite a number of meetings in person, and by proxy, Lincoln was little able to impress upon McClellan any major sense of urgency in the first months of 1865. McClellan, while listening attentively to some matters such as those of finance, would often tune out his predecessor on matters of politicking in the House, and most importantly on military matters. It seemed that the Young Napoleon believed he had nothing to learn from Lincoln regarding the arts of war…
While he could do little to cement a military legacy, Lincoln did work to do the bare minimum to try and ensure his political legacy was not completely ruined. The victory of a united Democratic coalition did, briefly, unite the Republicans and the Radical Democracy Party into ensuring that there was no ‘backsliding’ on war measures already passed. McClellan would find that he was not going to have allies in Congress if he completely moved to bring back the status quo of 1860.
The most lasting act would be the replacement of Roger B. Taney as Supreme Justice of the Supreme Court. Infamous for his declaration that African Americans were not, and could not be, citizens of the United States, he had been a fierce critic of the Lincoln Administration. Ruling against Lincoln on almost every matter, he had been publicly critical of the President and openly sympathetic towards the Southern states. To say Lincoln did not mourn his passing was perhaps an understatement.
With this opening, Lincoln saw a chance to at least cement some of his legacy despite an administration with opposing goals. To do so he needed a loyal and keen legal mind. In a choice which, depending on ones perspective, was either inspired or wildly vindictive, he appointed Edwin Stanton as to the Supreme Court of the United States…
As March approached, Lincoln resigned himself to merely seeing what “Providence shall deliver” to him. He attended church regularly in the months leading up to the end of his term, often with the African American congregations, notably in the company of Elizabeth Keckley. This small religious awakening would mark the turn of his later life and post-presidential career.
When the time came to go he bid the nation “A farewell from a man who has done his best,” merely wishing he could be remembered for all his efforts to restore the Union rather than “my actions however laudable or regrettable they may be…” - Snakes and Ladders: The Lincoln Administration and America’s Darkest Hour, Hillary Saunders, Scattershot Publishing, 2003
“The legacy of Abraham Lincoln is, for modern students of history, a difficult one. It has had different turnings throughout American history. In the immediate post war environment he was seen as a man who had blundered into a devastating foreign war and fractured the Republican Party, almost beyond repair. In the 1880s, after he had published his memoirs and the New Men had finally begun to shape the political scene in a way which was more sympathetic to the Republican Party and the nascent labor movements in the United States was getting off the ground, his post-war political career was more earnestly analyzed in a favorable light. In the aftermath of the Great War this, naturally, saw another change away from favorable press to critical examination right up until the 1940s. It was only after the Centennial of the Great American War that he would at last receive the more impartial and considerate scholarship of the recent generation.
With the changing face of Lincoln in mind for many historians, giving him a strange place in the pantheon of American presidents. He did not expand the United States, and much of his most important legislation was instead taken up by his successors, everything from the trans-continental railroad, the opening of the West, and even the issue of slavery that he cared so much about was only handled by those who came after.
The writers of the 1860s and 1870s would often say that Lincoln had ‘bumbled his way to power’ often in a self-serving attempt to turn the political causes he had championed into ideas that their own partisan needs were served by. For instance, the transcontinental railroad was not completed during his term in office, and it was his Democratic successors who would claim credit for connecting the East and West coasts of America, despite Lincoln having passed the legislative framework to make that possible.
Even his, for the time, progressive acts on racial issues were broadly ignored or coopted by different political factions in that day. The Radical Democracy Party would champion the Emancipation Proclamation all the way up to 1872 as though it had been their legislation all along, while the later Wigwam Republicans would disassemble over whether their party truly supported the act. But, both would stand firm beside Lincoln’s anti-slavery legacy, especially as Lincoln moved to mend fences in the early 1870s…
During the war he led the nation with a light hand, something later presidents would try to emulate. After the war he tried to mend the divide between sections, even when it cost him his personal reputation. Most importantly, however, he would lead the way in promoting racial harmony between sections, earning him the trust of Thaddeus Stevens, and cementing a lasting friendship for the two men...
In the modern day, we can at last examine Lincoln with the impartiality he deserved. A man caught in the greatest calamity to befall the United States, and a man who wrestled with his own views on everything from power to race, he was, as his son General William Lincoln would write “Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, always struggling to divine what was true and where he was going.” And through Lincoln’s writings we see a man who struggled with his thoughts, his goals, and whether or not he was doing the right thing. He doubted he had succeeded, and his later successors would for some time disparage his legacy. But, he did cement his legacy in 1874, a decade after the nation turned him out. However, in doing so, it showed that Lincoln was a man who cared about freedom and brotherhood above all else. That, more than anything, should be his legacy." - Abraham Lincoln, A Reconsideration, Marcus Laney, Liberty Press, Monrovia, 1992
