The Prayer of Twenty Millions - Comments/Analysis

Greeley's entire premise for his letter is simple: Enforce the Second Confiscation Act. His letter is mainly concerned with the fact that Union generals and other officers are ignoring a law that was duly passed. He gives example of a group of fugitive slaves who made their way to New Orleans, which under the terms of the Act should have been a safe haven. Yet, rather than being declared free and allowed to pursue gainful employment, they were set upon “maimed, captured, and killed”. This at the hands of Union troops.

                Even though he is an abolitionist, Greeley's letter does not spend much effort in trying to convince Lincoln to take stronger steps toward abolishing slavery. He is simply admonishing Lincoln to do his job: enforce the duly and properly enacted laws of the land. He is not urging him to do more, and, apart from the example from New Orleans, does not lament the state of negroes held in bondage. His letter has a point, and for the most part, stays focused on that point. The point of his letter is not the freeing of the slaves, as one  may be led to wrongfully conclude from Lincoln's reply.

Lincoln's reply, like Greeley's letter, is to the point. Curiously, it is not a point that bears any relation to the letter to which it replies. Nonetheless, in late August of 1862, Lincoln stated unequivocally that freeing the slaves was not a war aim. In fact, if he could achieve his goal of restoring the Union without freeing any slaves, he would have done so. “ If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it . . .” That brings up an interesting question: How much longer would slavery have lasted if the Confederates had lost Bull Run and the war ended in 1861? Personally, Lincoln abhorred slavery, but he felt he did not have the constitutional  authority to outlaw it. So, as of 1861, had the war ended then, the most recent piece of slavery legislation was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Would the Northern man on the street really care enough about slaves if the war had ended then and the collective way of life not been disrupted? Imagine if all the boys came home a few months after it all started and the war was over with fewer than 1000 casualties. It is doubtful that Reconstruction would have been as it truly was, so the South would have remained largely intact. The Emancipation Proclamation could not have been enacted as a war measure, it would have had to go through a ratification process, being championed by a president who felt he had no authority to do it. It would have had to pass ratification against an intact South, rather than a reconstructed South being overseen by carpetbaggers. A dismal scenario for the abolitionists.

                But, that is all pure speculation. The fact of this reply to Greeley's letter remains: freeing the slaves was not Lincoln's objective for the war. It was not even one of his objectives.