The Emancipation Proclamation was the most dramatic expansion of any president’s constitutional authority, amounting to the confiscation of the largest part of the movable wealth in the secessionist states. But it wasn’t Lincoln’s only stretch. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus on various occasions to permit the detention of Confederate sympathizers. When Roger Taney, still chief justice, ruled against Lincoln, the president ignored the ruling. Lincoln contended that he was right and Taney wrong on the merits of the case. But even if not, reason was on his side, he said. Dire necessity justified extraordinary measures. “Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?” he asked rhetorically in a message to Congress. Of course not.
Lincoln didn’t like evading the commands of the Constitution. In the case of emancipation, he proposed a thirteenth amendment writing freedom for the slaves into the Constitution. “As slavery was the cause and now constitutes the strength of this rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic,” said the platform on which Lincoln ran for reelection in 1864. This should be accomplished by “such an amendment to the Constitution to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.”
The Senate swiftly approved the amendment by the required two-thirds majority. The House of Representatives took longer. In his annual message to Congress in December 1864, Lincoln gave the lower chamber a nudge. Lincoln and the Republicans had swept to victory in the elections, making emancipation certain. “There is only a question of time as to when the proposed amendment will go to the states for their action,” Lincoln said. “And as it is to so go at all events, may we not agree that the sooner the better?”
Not everyone did agree. In fact some members of the House concluded the opposite: that since the amendment was sure to pass, why hurry? They hoped to extract some benefit from their support.
Lincoln grew worried. He feared a loss of momentum. He hated to think what might happen if the war ended with the amendment unapproved. Ratification required 27 of the 36 states. Lincoln could count on the 21 free states. He needed 6 of the slave states. While the fighting persisted, they might ratify simply to make it stop. But once the guns fell silent, Lincoln would lose leverage with them.
He directed his allies to apply all pressure to get the required House votes. Promises were made. Palms were greased. Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican leader in the House, approved the goal but questioned the means. “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption aided and abetted by the purest man in America,” Stevens said of Lincoln and the amendment.
The House approved, and on February 1, 1865, the amendment went to the states. By the end of that month, 18 states had ratified. Getting two more took till early April.
On April 9 Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant, effectively ending the Civil War.
On April 14 the 21st state ratified.
On the evening of April 14 Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died the next morning.
Lincoln’s death and the accession to the presidency of Andrew Johnson threw the ratification process into confusion—as part of the larger confusion surrounding Reconstruction. The central question involved who governed the defeated states. In early ratifiers Virginia and Louisiana, the Union army propped up legislatures that couldn’t honestly be said to speak for the people of those states. Were these ratifications legitimate?
Ratification became a bargaining chip between the Johnson administration and the other rebel states. Getting to 27 required almost the rest of the year. It also required ignoring complaints of irregularity and corruption.
The effort might have failed if anyone had seriously thought slavery had a future in America. The Confederate states had put slavery to the test of battle and lost. Nothing in politics was going to change that fact.
When Georgia, the 27th state ratified on December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” it said.
The quote by Thad Stevens got to the heart of why Lincoln was a remarkable president. Lincoln knew what was needed and yet there was a greatness in his inspiring idealism. Idealism and moral directon is needed to guide political outcomes. The chain of events during that time and what was accomplished deserves study. One of the great moments i American history.
The infamous Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision, was a thorn in Lincoln’s side.