Executive Mansion,
Washington, April 4, 1864.
A. G. Hodges, Esq.
Frankfort, Ky.
My dear Sir:
You ask me to put
in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in yours
presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon – It was about as follows:
"I am
naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not
remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood
that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially
upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it
my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath using the
power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even
forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral
question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways.
And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to
my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my
oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me
the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government – that
nation – of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to
lose the nation, and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law life and
limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but
a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right
or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the
best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save
slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country,
and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted
military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an
indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of
War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet
think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted
military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the
indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made
earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation,
and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure, They declined
the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of
either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying
strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I
hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident.
More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations,
none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, – no loss
by it any how, or [any] where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a
hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. There are palpable
facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling – We have the men; and
we could not have had them without the measure.
And now let any
Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one
line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next,
that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union
side, and placing them where they would be but for the measures he condemns. If
he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the
truth.
I add a word which
was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no
compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but
confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years
struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised,
or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God
now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as
well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong,
impartial history will find therein no new cause to question applaud attest and
revere the justice [ or?] and goodness of God.
Yours truly
A. Lincoln
SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers
at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
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