Abraham Lincoln: Timing is everything

Leadership lessons of the presidents

Abraham Lincoln understood from the start of the Civil War that the conflict was about two things: states’ rights and slavery. The proximate cause was the insistence of seven southern states that they possessed a constitutional right to leave the Union, against Lincoln's insistence that they had no such right and he had a constitutional obligation to resist their departure. The underlying cause was slavery, which the seven states declared to be endangered by the election of Lincoln at the head of the antislavery Republican party. Lincoln said he had no designs against slavery in the states where it existed but only in the federal territories. The seceding states said they did not believe him.

For the first year of the war, Lincoln took pains to keep the two causes separate. He sent troops into battle to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. In an open letter to editor Horace Greeley in August 1862, Lincoln said, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Lincoln weighed various factors in developing this position. Before the actual fighting began, only seven states had proclaimed secession. This meant that a majority of the fifteen slave states had not. These included the strategically important border states plus Virginia, the largest of the slave states. Virginia joined the seceders after the battle of Fort Sumter, as did three other slave states. But Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware remained in the Union. A declaration by Lincoln that the war was against slavery might drive them into the arms of the Confederacy, making defeat of secession much more difficult. It almost certainly would compel removal of the Union government from Washington, which would be surrounded by Confederate territory.

Beyond this, Lincoln thought any proclamation against slavery would stretch his presidential powers unconstitutionally. Nor did Congress possess authority over slavery in the states. Lincoln had said this again and again before his election. To act by himself or in conjunction with Congress against slavery in the states would make him out to be a liar, confirming the charge of hypocrisy southerners had long leveled against him.

Yet the longer the war lasted, the more Lincoln realized how unsatisfactory a peace settlement would be that didn't end slavery. The same tensions that had given rise to the current conflict would continue to exist. A successor to Lincoln ten years hence might have to fight the war all over again.

Even as he wrote to Horace Greeley avowing agnosticism on slavery, Lincoln was preparing a proclamation to the opposite effect. Secretly, in a small room in the telegraph office of the war department, he drafted a proclamation emancipating slaves in the states in rebellion against the United States.

The proclamation was framed as a war measure under his authority as commander-in-chief. This would shield Lincoln — to his satisfaction if not that of the rebels — against charges of having said one thing and now doing the opposite. They had instigated the war and thereby brought emancipation upon themselves.

There remained the question of timing. The war was going badly for the Union. Initial northern expectations that the rebellion would be quickly crushed had themselves been shattered. A proclamation against slavery might be interpreted as an act of desperation. Better to wait for the fortunes of war to turn in the Union's favor.

But he mustn't wait too long. The British government had refrained from recognizing the Confederacy. Having abolished British slavery in the 1830s and since campaigned against slavery in other countries, the British were loath to give their support to a new country conspicuously based on slavery. Yet their loathing lessened with each month Lincoln continued to assert that the struggle in America wasn't about slavery. If the president of the United States refused to take action against slavery when the slaveholders were waging war against the United States, why should Britain risk its lucrative cotton trade by alienating the Confederacy?

Lincoln waited for good news from the front and hoped Britain’s patience wouldn't end. He tried to ignore criticism from the likes of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said Lincoln's deliberateness made him look weak and indecisive.

Finally, in September 1862, Union forces fought the Confederates to a bloody draw at Antietam, Maryland. Lincoln decided to call this a victory.

He issued a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, giving the rebellious states until the end of the year to put down their weapons. In states still in rebellion at that time, slaves would be declared freed by Lincoln's executive order.

The rebellion persisted. And so on January 1, 1863, the president issued the definitive version of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln's timing achieved its purpose. The border states stuck with the Union. Britain never recognized the Confederacy. The war for the Union but not for freedom for slaves became a war for the Union and for freedom.

Much fighting remained. But two years later those twin goals were accomplished. The president who had been assailed as indecisive was recognized as the greatest president of all.