Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment (Concise Lincoln Library) by Christian G. Samito published by Southern Illinois University Press 188 pages (2015) Hardcover $24.93 Kindle $14.72.
Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Christian Samito examines the president’s role in ending slavery in America by amending the Constitution. The book is filled with quotes from Lincoln that are uttered by Daniel Day Lewis in the role of the president. Lincoln’s clever and insightful remarks are the spice of this nice little book, Samito’s tracing of Lincoln’s slow embrace of Constitutional change as the pathway to freedom is the meat. If you ever watched the movie Lincoln and wondered if the film followed the facts, this book will offer you some intriguing answers.
Up until the 1860s, Lincoln’s Constitutional thought was guided by a few seemingly fixed principles. According to Samito Lincoln had “a deep respect for the Constitution, a confidence that it could be interpreted within its boundaries to meet developments, and a belief he shared with most Americans that it should not be changed.” Lincoln believed in the secular religion that included republican reverence for the Constitution. Even as late as 1860, with the slavery crisis exploding, Lincoln said in his Cooper Union Speech;
“I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience—to reject all progress—all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand.”
The first year of war moved Lincoln towards the use of Constitutional amendment as a tool of Union victory. In the 100 days after he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Lincoln considered a raft of changes to the Constitution. Samito writes:
spent about 40 percent of his Annual Message dated December 1, 1862, urging Congress to propose a package of constitutional amendments designed to induce individual states to pursue gradual emancipation. While impractical, poorly timed, and politically inexpedient, the package shows Lincoln’s newfound willingness to use constitutional amendment to effect abolition.
In his dig into Lincoln’s evolving thoughts on what became the 13th Amendment, Samito disproves the idea that Lincoln had intended to press for such a Constitutional abolition from the first days of his administration. Instead, as Lincoln acknowledged at the end of 1862, “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”
While Lincoln was “thinking anew” about ending slavery in the Confederate states, as late as September 1863 he was still saying things indication that he was not yet behind a Constitutional amendment outlawing human bondage nationally. When he met with a delegation of Radicals from Missouri who wanted slavery banned, Lincoln responded that the “mode of emancipation in Missouri is not my business. That is a matter which belongs exclusively to the citizens of that state: I do not wish to interfere.” He said he would support a compensated emancipation program but made no mention of an abolition amendment.
The fun part for most readers will start in the second half of this book, when the politically shrewd Lincoln, finally fully committed to amending the Constitution, puts his wit and intelligence to work in the service of revolutionary change. When he finally does make his move, he needs to bring most of his party with him. Samito points out that at the beginning of 1864 the only Republican newspapers supporting a Constitutional amendment to end slavery were those that were opposed to Lincoln. When the Republican National Convention endorsed the passage of the 13th Amendment in June, 1864, Lincoln responded, “In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it legal form, and practical effect.” A month later, in response to peace feelers from supposed Confederate emissaries in Canada, Lincoln wrote in a letter that he would not compromise on “the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery.”
Patrick Guiney, the badly wounded commander of the Irish 9th Massachusetts, was one of the former Democrats brought around by Lincoln to the necessity of ending slavery. Slavery, he said, was “the strength of the rebellion.” Because of slavery, “the American people, who should have been the first in the race for liberty, yet were the last.” In his speech, the Irish immigrant said that while the Democrats only wanted to preserve the Union, Lincoln wanted to blot out “a great crime against the human race.”
The book kicks into high gear as the famous vote on the 13th Amendment in the House of Representatives approached. You will find that a surprising amount of the dialogue in the film Lincoln is lifted almost verbatim from the letters and memoirs of those who met with the president during this crucial period. Samito does a wonderful job of recounting this now well-known tale. He also continues the story through the first stage of ratification and through Lincoln’s other initiatives to protect the now-emancipated African Americans.
Smaito ends his short study by saying that the “Thirteenth Amendment accomplished Lincoln’s goal of bringing the Founding charter closer to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence while preserving its fundamental structure. For someone like Lincoln, who so greatly valued both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, there could be no more fitting monument to his legacy.”
This book is part of the Concise Lincoln Library series and is short and very focused, as are all of the volumes in the series. Christian Samito is both a legal scholar and an historian who has both a Juris Doctor from Harvard and a Ph.D. in history from Boston College. He is the author or editor of five books on the Civil War Era. A careful writer, he brings a great deal of scholarship to this work, but never lets it bog down in legal analysis. The discussion of issues of Constitutional doctrine are always moved along with anecdotes and real world examples that allow both the expert and the novice to read and enjoy this fine book.
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