By John A. O'Brien
Denver, Colorado
Thursday, August 22, 2024
On August 22, 1862, New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley was astonished to read in a competitor newspaper an open letter to him from the President of the United States. Greeley had days earlier published an editorial, “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” in which he chastised Lincoln for not freeing more rebel slaves as permitted by the Confiscation Acts.
There was no precedent for a chief executive to respond to a newspaper opinion. Tradition held that such a gesture was beneath the dignity of the presidential office. But Greeley immediately discovered that Lincoln’s letter was not at all a response to his column. Lincoln had simply used him to deliver a public statement on the larger policy question of emancipation.
Lincoln had been crafting for weeks what became his "response" to Greeley. He had solicited advice on the wording. The final product was applauded by parties on all sides of the slavery issue. Lincoln clearly stated that his plan for ending slavery would depend solely on whether he believed his action would restore the Union more quickly. To conservatives, it was interpreted as demonstrating Lincoln’s determination not to attack slavery if military action was successful. To abolitionists, it was a clear signal that Lincoln was about to declare emancipation. But many antislavery men shared alarm that the letter did not contain a hint of moral concern for slavery. Abolitionist Wendell Phillips raged that with Lincoln, “public policy is everything, humanity and justice nothing.”
But in fact, Lincoln had built the rhetorical foundation for his emancipation policy on a deep appreciation for the fact that slavery was the tool of rebellion for the immoral act of destroying the Union. The Greeley letter was a product of Lincoln’s profoundly thoughtful analysis of God’s purpose for the war found in the “Meditation on the Divine Will.” This private memo is a deeply reasoned theological assessment with which Lincoln clarified his understanding of what God expected of him. It was likely written around July 18, 1862, as Lincoln was preparing the draft Emancipation Proclamation for his cabinet.
Lincoln concluded that God had guided his life and placed him in his elected position in order to perform a great moral work that would make the Union worth saving. The Meditation served to embolden his commitment and rhetoric to prepare the nation for the Proclamation. He accepted that he was God’s instrument for the task. Lincoln postulated in Meditation whether God’s purpose for the war was to “save or destroy the Union.” Once he determined his course, Lincoln revised that theme in the Greeley letter to assert his decision about whether it was necessary “to save or destroy slavery” to save the Union. In a letter to Quaker leader Eliza Gurney dated October 26, 1862, Lincoln for the first time publicly affirmed that he believed he was God’s instrument to end slavery.
We celebrate the Greeley letter as the most thorough explanation of Lincoln’s emancipation policy before he issued the Proclamation. It is a masterpiece of logic and demonstrates his gift for persuasion. But the letter needs to be understood as the culmination of Lincoln’s process of self-reflection and connecting a series of related events and concepts that included his thoughts on God’s purpose and his role under God’s providence. Lincoln concluded that God works through human instruments and that God had prepared him to serve a great moral purpose. While Lincoln never formally accepted the doctrines of any church denomination, it seems unlikely that he could still be considered a fatalist after he demonstrated such mastery of theological concepts and a personal relationship with God beginning in the consequential summer of 1862.
For the text of the Greeley letter and further context see David J. Kent, “Countdown to Emancipation - The Greeley Letter,” August 22, 2023. https://www.lincolnian.org/post/countdown-to-emancipation-the-greeley-letter.
For the text of “Meditation on the Divine Will” and information on Lincoln’s faith development and his emancipation policy, see John A. O’Brien, “On Lincoln’s Instrumentality to End Slavery: Meditation on the Divine Will and the Emancipation Proclamation,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 45, Number 1, Spring 2024, pages 17-49.
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