84 MARCH 2020
Culture & Critics BOOKSKNOPFCONGRESS
AT WAR: HOW
REPUBLICAN
REFORMERS
FOUGHT THE
CIVIL WAR, DEFIED
LINCOLN, ENDED
SLAVERY, AND
REMADE AMERICAFergus M.
Bordewichthem hopelessly retrograde.) Radicalism is a disposition.
The same is true of its contrary, moderation. Lincoln’s
moderation was so infuriating to the Radicals because
it reflected a hierarchy of values different from theirs.
The ultimate concerns for Stevens and his fellows
were the liberation of the enslaved, the punish ment
of the enslavers, and the reorganization of southern
society. The ultimate concern for Lincoln was the
survival of the Union, to which he had an almost
mystical attachment. The old question—was the war
fought to preserve the Union or to free the slaves?—
underestimates how closely the two causes were
entwined in his mind. Lincoln’s goal was to uphold
the kind of government under which slavery could not
in the end survive. This was a government, as Lincoln
said, dedicated to a proposition.
In a hectoring letter written at a low point in 1863,
a Radical senator insisted that Lincoln “stand firm”
against conservatives in his government. It was a com-
mon complaint of the Radical Republicans that Lin-
coln was hesitant, easily led, timid—weak. “I hope
to ‘stand firm’ enough to not go backward,” Lincoln
replied, “and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck
the country’s cause.” Lincoln struck this balance with
unmatched skill and sensitivity.
It was a feat of leadership peculiar to self- government,
captured most famously by the only 19th-century
American who could rival him as a prose artist and
a statesman. Frederick Douglass was an enthusiastic
admirer of Lincoln, once calling him, not long after the
assassination, “emphatically the black man’s president:
the first to show any respect for their rights as men.” Years
later, Douglass’s enthusiasm had cooled—and ripened.
Lincoln “was preeminently the white man’s Presi-
dent, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men,”
Douglass now said. “Viewed from the genuine abolition
ground”—the ground, that is, from which Bordewich
and many of today’s historians want to judge him, and
the ground from which the Radicals did judge him—
“Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent.”
Douglass knew, though, that Lincoln never claimed
to govern as an abolitionist, and Douglass knew why.
“But measuring him by the sentiment of his country,
a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he
was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.”
The italics are mine, but the insight belongs
to Doug lass. Lincoln was radical without being a
Radical— and never more radical than a leader can
afford to be when he leads a government of, by, and
for the people.Andrew Ferguson is a staff writer at The Atlantic
and the author of Land of Lincoln: Adventures in
Abe’s America.collapse of this delicate alliance—brought on by a
sudden call for immediate, nationwide abolition, for
instance—would have doomed the war effort.
Lincoln was required to be more cautious than a
Radical congressman had to be—more serious, in a
word. Bordewich credits the Radicals with forcing
Lincoln year by year to pursue the war more sav-
agely, culminating in the elevation of General Ulysses
S. Grant in 1864. But his evidence is thin that Lincoln
paid anything more than lip service to the Radicals’
pleas for bloodshed. Bordewich is a particular admirer
of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War—
“this improvised vigilante committee,” Lincoln called
it, “to watch my movements and keep me straight.”
It was put together by Benjamin Wade and stocked
with his fellow Radicals.
The committee researched and rushed into print
massive reports after failed and sometimes catastrophic
military engagements. The accounts totaled millions
of words and accused officers and bureaucrats of hor-
rifying lapses in military judgment and execution.
Some of the accusations were implausible; others were
all too real. Historically, the reports are invaluable. At
the time, however, their primary effect was to second-
guess generals disliked by the committee’s majority
and to advance the generals with whom the majority
was politically aligned. The committee’s “greatest pur-
pose,” Lincoln told a friend, “seems to be to hamper
my action and obstruct military operations.”
Shelby Foote, in his history of the Civil War, tells a
story that illustrates why Lincoln and the Radicals were
destined to be so often at odds. One evening Wade
rushed to the White House to demand that Lincoln
fire a weak-willed general who had failed to press the
Union advantage. Lincoln asked Wade whom he
should enlist to take the general’s place. “Anybody!”
Wade cried. “Anybody will do for you,” Lincoln replied,
“but I must have somebody.” Lincoln had to be serious.
As Bordewich concedes, the Radicals were as
bloody-minded as the Wigfalls of the world. “Noth-
ing but actual extermination or exile or starvation will
ever induce [southern rebels] to surrender,” Stevens
once said, in a speech Bordewich doesn’t quote. There
can, of course, be no moral equivalence between Ste-
vens and a slavery apologist like Wigfall. One of them
was on the side of the angels, and it wasn’t Wigfall.
But both were radicals.
Radicalism is more than a packet of views or
policies. The contents of the packet will change with
circumstances and over time. (One reason Bordewich
admires the Radical Republicans is that their views on
race are so close to current mainstream attitudes; today’s
radicals, valorizing group identity above all else, will
likely find both the views and the politicians who held