When Lincoln took office in March of 1861, then took our nation to war in April of that same year, he forfeited a golden opportunity to end the scourge of slavery in America without bloodshed. Due to the secession of seven Slave States, his party held a super majority in both the House and the Senate, which gave him a lot of latitude to take other actions to limit the exercise of slavery, or make it economically more expensive.
In November of 1860, when Lincoln won the election, there where thirty-three States in the Union, after the departure of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, the remaining Slave States (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri) were politically marginalized by the eighteen Northern Free States.
Even with eighteen Free States to eight Slave States, America was still three Free States shy of the three fourths needed to ratify a Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, but the writing was on the wall for its abolition anyway. Due to the secession of the seven Slave States, Congress would have maintained an anti-slavery super majority into the indefinite future. It also only needed to admit three more Free States, into the Union, to pass an Abolition Amendment; an inevitable event.[1]
Excluding West Virginia, which was created as a result of the war, Kansas (1861), Nevada (1864), and Nebraska (1867) were the next three States admitted into the Union. Assuming the admission of States would be neither expedited nor stalled, an Abolition Amendment, therefore, could have been passed and ratified around two years after when the war historically ended. Regardless of the timing, due to the admission of Free States, the North could have eventually passed and ratified an Abolition Amendment. If Lincoln had chosen to avoid war by pursuing this peaceful means of abolition, he would have unwittingly saved America from the untimely deaths of approximately seven-hundred thousand (700,000) Americans, severe economic ruin, and interracial animosity that has lasted until today.
Conceivably, given the evident eventual demise of slavery, one or more of the older remaining slave holding States, like Delaware, Maryland, Virginia or North Carolina, might have been willing to ratify an Abolition Amendment sooner than 1867. Alternatively, in the face of a coordinated Northern effort to abolish slavery, all or some of the remaining Slave States may have chosen to secede. Either of these two actions, helping to ratify an Abolition Amendment or seceding from the Union, would have made ratification of an Abolition Amendment and the repeal of the fugitive slave clause,[2] in the Constitution, a faster foregone conclusion.
Without the departure of more Slave States from the Union or Slave States ratifying an Abolition Amendment, the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause required the Northern States to continue to return runaway slaves to their Southern masters in States that remained in the Union. Yet, the anti-slavery super majority in Congress could have, in the interest of protecting non-runaway free Africans, made repatriating runaway slaves a longer and much more difficult process. While Congress could neither abolish slavery nor repeal the fugitive slave clause without a Constitutional Amendment, they could regulate both slavery and the fugitive slave clause more stringently. The Constitution tells us what must be done or not done, but it is up to Congress to determine how to carry out the specific decrees. By making the process longer and more difficult, the Southern slave owners would have incurred more cost in dealing with runaways and made slave holding that much less lucrative.
The anti-slavery super majority in Congress also would have enabled Lincoln to immediately pass legislation curtailing slavery in other imaginative ways, such as stopping the expansion of slavery into the US territories. The expansion of slavery into America’s western territories was critical to the slave trading industry, because cotton, the crop most responsible for slave labor demand, depleted its soil faster than other crops. As a result, Southern cotton plantation owners moved their agricultural interests west, to virgin soil, instead of attempting to re-fertilize the soil once they depleted its nutrients.
Among the slave owners, moving westward was all too frequently a matter of necessity and not of choice between a smaller or a larger profit. Cotton and tobacco exhausted the soil far more rapidly than did grain or corn. With a labor force representing a sizable capital investment, it was ruinous to continue to employ it upon lands which yielded an ever diminishing return.[3]
Had Lincoln, early in his administration, used his newly acquired super majority to stop the expansion of slavery into the territories, it would have seriously impeded the cotton and tobacco industries, and significantly reduced the demand for slave labor.
Another imaginative way to curtail slavery while waiting to accrue the requisite number of States to ratify an Abolition Amendment was for Congress to regulate and tax the interstate commerce of slaves. Congress had authority to stop the importation of slaves, from the seceded States to the non-seceded States, via an Act signed by President Jefferson, the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807, and they also had the authority to regulate and tax slaves that were sold or transported across State borders. These last two measures could, simultaneously, demand improved treatment of slaves transported across State borders as well as make transferring them across borders much more cost prohibitive.
If slavery were as reprehensible to the Northern States as modern historians make it seem, Lincoln, or any other enterprising person since 1789, could have acted without Congress to promote a Northern boycott, of products made by slave labor, similar to how the Colonies’ boycotted English goods preceding the American War for Independence. Additionally, given the anti-slavery position of England and France in the 1860s, Lincoln could have coordinated with those and other foreign governments to join in the boycott. A national and international boycott would have brought the cotton plantation owners, including those in the seceded Southern States, to their knees without warfare, and, absent the financial incentive to maintain slaves, they most likely would have voluntarily emancipated their slaves and possibly consented to an Abolition Amendment if they were still in the Union.
Finally, Lincoln, and every other President who preceded him beginning in 1808, should have done more to hold slave ship captains, who sallied forth from ports in the United States, accountable. The majority of captains, who still participated in the international slave trade after 1808, came from New York and New Orleans, but other ships came from other US ports, and mostly from Northern States. The slave ship captains were protected, however, by the local governments that had jurisdiction over their home-port harbors. The record of slavers in America is appalling.
Many slave captains had been captured, but none had been severely punished … even though the offense of slave trading had been a capital one since 1820. Between 1837 and 1860 seventy-four cases had been brought in the United States on charges related to slaving, but few captains had been convicted, and those had received trifling sentences, which they had usually been able to avoid.[4]
Holding slave ship captains, who home-ported in Northern ports, accountable is something the North could have done without having to pass legislation in Congress, but they failed to do.
Lincoln’s party’s super majority in Congress and the overwhelming ratio of Free to Slave States, after the secession of seven Slave States, provided an unprecedented opportunity to achieve a goal that had eluded our nation since the Constitutional Convention in 1787; the abolition of slavery. While waiting for the necessary conditions to ratify an Abolition Amendment, Lincoln could have: signed into law numerous anti-slavery bills that would make slavery less lucrative; coordinated a national and international boycott against products produced by slave labor; and put an end to slave ship captains who home-ported in America. All of these actions, combined, would have ended the scourge of slavery while avoiding the death, destruction, and interracial animosity that the Civil War caused.
If the abolition of slavery was Lincoln’s objective, war should not have been on his list to achieve that goal. Every other western nation abolished slavery in the nineteenth century without bloodshed, except for Venezuela, and so could have the United States. As horrendous as American slavery was, the American Civil War was far worse. The extreme economic damage that the war caused pales in comparison to the nearly two percent of the American population that America lost, which is equivalent to loosing approximately seven million people out of today’s society. War should always be the last potential solution to any issue after every other means to end an evil has been earnestly and honestly attempted.
[1] While the secession of States may seem catastrophic to some, it is constitutional and in line with the understanding of the States that ratified the Constitution, see The Case Against Secession and The American Civil War, Just or Unjust?
[2] Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3.
[3] George W. Van Vleck, The Panic of 1857: An Analytical Study (New York: AMS Press, 1967), 30.
[4] Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440-1870 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 774.