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.William O.Stoddard, one of Lincoln s WhiteHouse staffers, gloomily recalled how many editors and how many otherpenmen within these past few days rose in anger to remind Lincolnthat this is a war for the Union only, and they never gave him any authorityto run it as an Abolition war.They never, never told him that he might setthe negroes free, and, now that he has done so, or futilely pretended to doso, he is a more unconstitutional tyrant and a more odious dictator thanever he was before.They tell him, however, that his edict, his ukase, hisdecree, his firman, his venomous blow at the sacred liberty of white mento own black men is mere brutem fulmen, and a dead letter and a poisonwhich will not work.They tell him many other things, and, among them,they tell him that the army will fight no more, and that the hosts of theUnion will indignantly disband rather than be sacrificed upon the bloodyaltar of fanatical Abolitionism.1153 154 defending emancipationIt was not that Lincoln or the proclamation lacked defenders.A long queueof prominent Republicans George Boker, Francis Lieber, Grosvenor Low-rey, and Robert Dale Owen promptly entered the lists with pamphlets andarticles.But an equally formidable roster of Northern Democratic critics andjurists including Benjamin Curtis, Montgomery Throop, and Joel Parkerwere there waiting for them.But the agitation mounted beyond what Lincoln sfriends could hold off, with cries in many places for a negotiated settlement tothe war or a national peace convention that would avoid emancipation. TheDarkest hour of our Country s trial is yet to come, warned Benjamin F.Butler. Nothing is surer than an assembly to settle this struggle on the basis of theUnion as it was! Even worse, it was rumored that the President will recoilfrom his Emancipation Proclamation because of the heavy political costs itimposed.2 In the end, if Lincoln had any hope of turning public opinion infavor of emancipation by argument, the arguments would have to be his, andhe would have to be his own best apologist for the Proclamation.The surestmark of how Lincoln rose to that challenge is the public letter he wrote onAugust 26, 1863, for James Cook Conkling and a mass meeting of uncondi-tional Union men in Lincoln s own home town of Springfield, Illinois.TheConkling letter signaled, after months of political uncertainty, that Lincoln scommitment to emancipation was absolute and would not be bargained awayin return for concessions or submissions by the Confederates.Thus, a straightline runs from the Proclamation through the Conkling letter to the ThirteenthAmendment and the final abolition of slavery.The tradition of the public letter a personal commentary on policy orevents, cast in the ostensibly private form of a letter but intended for officialor newspaper publication had a long history in antebellum politics, bothfor presidents and presidential candidates, and it stood more or less in theplace of what might today be described journalistically as a press briefing. Lincoln s skill with the public letter was second only to the rhetorical skills hemanifested in his formal and informal speeches.One of his most famous docu-ments, his reply to Horace Greeley s own impatient pre-emancipation publicletter, The Prayer of Twenty Millions, was cast in the form of a public letterand never sent to Greeley at all as a personal communication.Chauncey M.Depew thought that Lincoln s series of letters were remarkable documents.Hehad the ear of the public; he commanded the front page of the press, and hedefended his administration and its acts and replied to his enemies with skill,tact, and extreme moderation. As James Rawley observes, the public letterbecame Lincoln s most perfect vehicle to explain his views, counter criticism,and manifest his humanity
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