Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution

Although peaceful by nature, Lincoln understood the Civil War as necessary, and he had always insisted on the unconditional surrender of Confederate forces as a condition of peace talks. Lincoln’s presidency was dominated by the war, and Lincoln studied military strategy intensively, making many crucial decisions in deciding the course of battles. In 1864 Lincoln made Ulysses S. Grant (67) the general in chief, allowing himself to step back slightly from war decisions. Grant’s actions at Petersburg, the Valley, and the Carolinas are held as the three events that defeated the Confederate army and forced its surrender.

Though a huge part of his presidency, very little Lincoln scholarship deals with Lincoln as a war leader. Scholarship that does focuses only on military strategy without considering the larger political strategy that enfolded it. McPherson explains that “national strategy is the shaping and defining of a nation’s political goals in time of war. Military strategy is the use of armed forces to achieve those goals” (69-70).

Lincoln elected several “political generals” (70), generals wholly inexperienced in war command who received their posts to secure political support for Lincoln. For example, Lincoln elected a German American named Schimmelfennig based solely on the sound of his name to appease the large German American population supporting him. This allowed constituencies that did not support the war to have political patronage in it, maintaining overall Northern support of the war effort.

Legally, Lincoln saw the Confederates as a rebel insurrection within the sovereignty of the United States. Therefore, his initial strategies resembled “police action to quell a rather large riot” (75) more than they did a war based around territories and frontiers. After multiple defeats, Lincoln’s strategy changed. Enlisting 1 million more volunteers, Lincoln created a blockade on the North-South border. This shifted the metaphor of the Civil War as a limited war to “gain or defend territory” (73) into a total war between adjacent nations.

Consistent resurgence of Southern forces convinced Grant and Lincoln that they needed to completely destroy the Confederate army, not just occupy its territory. This shift toward total war was sealed when Grant convinced Lincoln that the conquest of the South required the destruction of its property and resources. By 1862 Lincoln endorsed such a policy, and the Union army confiscated all valuable civilian land. Initially against the emancipation or confiscation of slaves in rebel states, Lincoln’s emancipation plans became a strategy to weaken the Confederates in his new paradigm of total war.

Lincoln also appreciated emancipation as “an act of justice” (86). This pursuit of justice eventually became inseparable from the overall war effort. Around the time emancipation was proclaimed, Lincoln also issued the reconstitution policy, which offered pardon to Southerners who swore allegiance to the Union and the process of emancipation. Most Southerners despised the policy, and the emancipation effort created a deep ideological divide between Northern and Southern forces.

By 1864 weariness from war on both sides seemed to be leading toward the South winning independence for the sheer sake of peace. While many called for armistice, Lincoln was inflexible in his conditions: He required reunification of the Republic and complete emancipation of slaves as the terms of peace talks. As so many freed slaves were fighting in the Union army, and victory without emancipation would mean their return to the South, Confederate surrender and emancipation of its slaves were inextricably fused.

Despite thoughts of abandoning emancipation for peace and reunification through negotiations with the South, Northern victories at Atlanta and Shenandoah Valley spurred morale and secured Lincoln’s re-election in March 1865. More victories brought about renewed peace talks, at which Lincoln maintained total surrender, reunification, and emancipation as his unwavering terms.