40 e lusive v ictories
hoped to avoid, he could never turn back. Th e commitment to the
total destruction of the centuries-old social foundation of the South
now drove policy and opened new challenges. Once the slaves were
freed, they became an obvious military resource, and after some hesi-
tation Lincoln approved the organization of black regiments by the
army. In turn, this further stiff ened southern resolve to fi ght to the
bitter end. What to do with the former slaves also became a major
challenge for postwar planning. Th e broadened war goals, moreover,
contributed to a shift in the character of military operations, which had
initially been conducted with careful attention to the personal and
property rights of the southern white population. As the war progressed,
Union commanders began to think in terms of breaking the will of
southerners to resist, which implied a much more aggressive and
destructive approach. With slavery and southern social and economic
institutions now a target of Union war policy, this kind of “hard war”
gained legitimacy in the eyes of northern troops and the broader
northern public.
Finally, in a war for total objectives, few terms remained upon which
peace might be negotiated. Through 1862, the South might have
rejoined the Union by disavowing secession, with no changes in the
region’s underlying racial hierarchy. Northern opinion would not have
countenanced the return to servitude of the limited numbers of slaves
who had sought protection from the Union armies, but that problem
could have been fi nessed through compensated emancipation. Once
the Emancipation Proclamation went into eff ect at the start of 1863, by
contrast, reunifi cation of the nation could not be achieved on the same
forgiving terms. Lincoln never declined to consider peace overtures
from any quarter. But southern initiatives late in the war, even up to its
fi nal weeks, always presupposed that the proclamation would be with-
drawn or negated. Having cast the die for a diff erent kind of struggle,
the president could not possibly accept anything less than a peace that
included an end to chattel slavery, regardless of the human cost.
Lincoln captured the non-negotiable character that the confl ict had
assumed—with his deliberate endorsement—in his second inaugural
address in March 1865, when he said of the war, “Yet, if God wills that
it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred
and fi fty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of