By the end of 1862, the United States was in the middle of the Civil War and the country was on the brink of separation. A conflict that started with a call for volunteers to serve 90 days to stop a rebellion had turned into a bloody war that encompassed the entire nation. Guiding America through its most troubling time was President Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer whose election prompted Southern states to secede from the Union. Abraham Lincoln kept his resolve and the Union together through unbelievable personal, moral, and political pressure.
On December 1, 1862, Lincoln delivered his annual address to Congress, or what today would be the State of the Union. As was the custom of the time and in a tradition started by President Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln did not give his address in person. Rather, it was written and read aloud in the House of Representatives and the Senate (Jefferson believed delivering the address in person to Congress looked too much like a monarchy). What followed is considered by many to be the best State of the Union speech in American history. To appreciate it fully, a better understanding of America’s situation in December 1862.
In 1862, the Union war effort was not going well. Soldiers were dying by the thousands. Two of the bloodiest battles in American history were fought. In April, the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, although a Union victory, produced over 23,000 casualties. In September, the single bloodiest day in American military history came at the Battle of Antietam. Another almost 23,000 casualties in only one day of combat.
As Commander in Chief, Lincoln’s burden for such losses weighed heavy. In Washington, D.C., thousands of wounded had to be cared for. The administration of the war was a daily preoccupation for Lincoln, who always worked long hours to deal with the many issues the war presented. Because of the lack of Union progress in the war, Lincoln had to replace General George McClellan as the head of the Union Army, a pattern with generals that was repeated several times before the appointment of Ulysses S. Grant in 1864.
While the burdens of being president during the country’s most trying time were difficult enough, Lincoln also had to deal with the worst kind of personal suffering. In February, his 11-year-old son Willie became ill. Although doctors initially believed the boy would be fine, his symptoms worsened. He contracted typhoid, likely due to poor water quality in Washington, D.C. At the same time, his youngest son, 8-year-old Tad, also came down with typhoid and was also quite ill in the White House. Lincoln spent days going from the Oval Office and all the matters of the war to his very ill sons’ bedrooms to check on them. Tad survived, but tragically, Willie did not. On February 20, 1862, Willie died. The Lincolns had previously lost their second son, Edward, to what was believed to be tuberculosis in 1850 at the age of 3.
Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said about Willie’s death, “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die.” The grief was overwhelming. For First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, the death was too much. She never recovered.
Through his anguish, the president continued to attend to the war and the country’s other issues. He was criticized sharply at times in the press and was lampooned in Southern newspapers. Lincoln also had to deal with disagreements within his cabinet about his wartime decision-making and criticism from other politicians, both inside and outside his own party.
For Lincoln, saving the Union was paramount. To do that, the Union had to win the war. He had to keep the North unified in this effort despite the debate over how best to accomplish this. However, in the North, there was no clear course on how to address the central issue of the Civil War – slavery.
Historic figures said to be “ahead of their time” still had to live within the constraints and realities of their own time. Lincoln was no different. He spoke before and during his presidency about the moral case for the abolition of slavery. Accomplishing this was another matter.
In 1862, Lincoln waited for a time to declare slaves in the Confederacy free, a power he believed he had under the Constitution as Commander in Chief. He patiently waited for a Union victory in the East, believing that emancipation would look like a desperate political maneuver without one. Although not decisive, one came at Antietam. On September 22, 1962, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in areas still in rebellion within 100 days to be free.
Issuing the Emancipation Proclamation came at a political price. In the November 1862 elections, Lincoln and his Republican Party lost 34 seats in the House of Representatives, mainly to a segment of Northerners who did not want to fight to free the slaves. This was also a rejection of Lincoln’s management of the war.
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Under these circumstances, Lincoln penned his annual address to Congress, considered one of the best in American history. In it, he discussed the different issues involved with the emancipation of the enslaved while preserving the Union. Lincoln made an effort to find a common path forward.
The beginning of the address is much like a typical State of the Union today. It contains a dry list of government expenditures and a foreign policy discussion. From there, the address discusses the central issues of the time – slavery and the war. Lincoln discusses the impracticability of separating the nation into two countries, both for the current states and what became future states in the Western Territories. “That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family…” Lincoln states. For Lincoln, the reality of what a separate Confederacy meant was unimaginable and needed to be stopped at all costs. “Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them.”
Lincoln then discussed three proposed Constitutional Amendments to be used together with the Emancipation Proclamation issued just ten weeks before. The first was for “compensated emancipation,” a plan to compensate states for emancipating their slaves by 1900 (37 years in the future at the time of the address). Lincoln believed this measure to be “both just and economical.” Second, Lincoln proposed that all free slaves remain free forever, but any previous owner not disloyal to the Union should be compensated. Third, Lincoln believed that freed black slaves should be able to relocate voluntarily throughout the country with funds appropriated by Congress.
Within the context of the three proposed amendments, Lincoln states plainly the connection between slavery and the war: “Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.”
While Lincoln is rightfully portrayed as an abolitionist who saved the Union in its darkest hour, these proposed amendments show a pragmatic man who needed to end slavery with public support on his side to save the nation. He believed these amendments would do this. He states, “The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country.” He believed that ensuring these ideas as Constitutional Amendments would incentivize rebelling states to end the war. “This assurance would end the struggle now and save the Union forever.”
Through all his personal hardships and the immense burden of seeing so many of his fellow Americans die in a war to save the United States of America at a time when many questioned if the price being paid was worth it, Abraham Lincoln was at his core one of the great American patriots. He especially cherished what the Founding Fathers articulated through the Declaration of Independence and understood better than most what the loss of America as one nation would mean to the future of the world and millions yet unborn.
Lincoln understood the magnitude of this moment in history. This comes across in the final paragraphs of his Address to Congress on December 1, 1862. The final part reads:
…The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another or us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.
Lincoln went on to win re-election for a second term in 1864 and saw the North win the war. He lived long enough to witness the passage of the 13th Amendment that officially freed all slaves pass the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865. Just two and a half months later, Lincoln was assassinated. With the Amendment’s previous passage in the Senate in 1864, it went to the states for the required three-quarters vote for ratification. On December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified by the state of Georgia, making it part of the Constitution. Lincoln’s struggle to both win the war and free the slaves was achieved. A price he paid with his life.
The phrase that describes America as “the last best hope of earth” has been referenced by others since Lincoln used it in his December 1, 1862 address (Most notably in a speech by future President Ronald Reagan in 1964 in the context of the Cold War). It remains a recognition that the United States is a special nation. A country whose values have created so much good for millions worldwide through the sacrifice of so many. This description of America remains just as true today as when Lincoln first expressed it.
The Full Text is below: