By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
The Civil War was a transformational event that had an enormous impact on American history perhaps more so than the Revolutionary War and that is its appeal to author and historian James M. McPherson, the retired Princeton University history professor.
Mr. McPherson, who has written several books on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, outlined the events that led up to President Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation at The Lawrenceville School Tuesday, which also marked the Civil War president’s 204th birthday.
The Civil War transformed the United States by bringing an end to slavery, which had “plagued, divided and nearly destroyed the nation,” Mr. McPherson said to the audience of nearly 80 people who had gathered at the school’s Gruss Center of Visual Arts.
And although the result of the Civil War was the abolishment of slavery, the issue for President Lincoln at the outset of the conflict was not about whether to free the slaves so much as it was about preserving the Union and defending the U.S. Constitution.
In December 1861, President Lincoln said he did not want the conflict to “degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.” The integrity of the Union was the primary goal. He was prepared to allow the Southern states to keep slavery intact, but not to let it expand to other states.
Yet almost from the start of the Civil War, President Lincoln had been urged to seize the property of the enemy their slaves as a means of ending the war, Mr. McPherson said. It was a tactic that the wartime commander-in-chief could have used under the guise of “military necessity,” but one that he sought to avoid.
In fact, Union army Gen. David Hunter had issued an order freeing the slaves in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, which had come under Union control in 1862. President Lincoln revoked that order and told his military commanders that such action should not be done without asking him, Mr. McPherson said.
Seeking to avoid alienating the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky and to keep them in the Union, President Lincoln offered three times to initiate a plan that would gradually free the slaves and compensate the slave-owners in Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky. Slavery did not exist in Delaware.
But when they declined, President Lincoln decided to issue an emancipation proclamation to free the slaves in the Southern states, Mr. McPherson said. Freeing the slaves would take away the South’s labor force and hasten the war’s end. It had become a military necessity to free the slaves, he said.
In response to criticism by New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley about the conduct of the war soon after he had decided to free the slaves, President Lincoln wrote that if he could save the Union without freeing all of the slaves, he would do it; if he could save the Union by freeing the slaves, he would do it; and if he could save the Union by freeing some and not others, he would do that, too. The objective was to preserve the Union.
President Lincoln was ready to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in July 1862, but the war had taken a turn for the worse, Mr. McPherson said. The Confederate army had won several victories, and President Lincoln was advised not to issue the proclamation until the Union had won a victory.
With the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, it was time for President Lincoln to issue the proclamation. He issued a preliminary proclamation that said he would free all the slaves in the 10 Southern states on Jan. 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863.
Mr. McPherson noted that slaves constantly slipped away from their Southern masters and crossed the Union line. Some slaves also sneaked away in boats and made their way to U.S. Navy ships in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Southern states.
The Navy accepted slaves who enlisted as sailors and integrated them into the ship’s crews, Mr. McPherson said during the question-and-answer sessions that followed his remarks. He noted that ex-slaves accounted for about 17 percent of the sailors.
The Union army also accepted slaves who enlisted, but the regiments were racially segregated, he said. The women and children who accompanied the male ex-slaves who had enlisted in the Army or Navy lived in “contraband” camps the ex-slaves were considered to be wartime contraband.
Asked about the Reconstruction, which followed the Civil War, Mr. McPherson answered that it was a complicated process. There were two major goals that sometimes conflicted reconstructing the Union, but also reconstructing race relations now that slavery had been abolished under the 13th Amendment.
Bringing the Southern states back into the Union was not as difficult as protecting the former slaves, he said. The 14th and 15th amendments defined the rights of citizens, such as equal protection under the law and the right to vote. The federal government tried to enforce those rights, but gave up in the face of violent Southern opposition until the 1950s and 1960s, he said.
Reconstruction might have turned out differently, had President Lincoln lived, Mr. McPherson said. His successor, President Andrew Johnson, was hostile to the effort and vetoed every Reconstruction-related bill. He also encouraged the Southern states to reject the 14th and 15th amendments. Things would have gone much more smoothly, had President Lincoln lived, Mr. McPherson said.
And asked about the legacy of the Civil War, Mr. McPherson was quick to respond that it was taking the necessary steps to win the war as quickly as possible, and the concept of unconditional surrender. There is no negotiating over the terms of surrender the losing side takes the terms that are offered by the victor, he said.

