Peace Democrats in Iowa were vulnerable to criticism and arrest during the Civil War.  Across the North, the First Amendment arguably took a beating during the Lincoln Administration.  Fortunately, these rights were restored after the war ended.  Noted historian William A. Blair helps us think deeply about this aspect of Lincoln’s presidency. 

Your book, With Malice Toward Some:  Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (University of North Carolina Press:  2014) is an illuminating, thoughtful book.  You place things in context and give Lincoln the benefit of the doubt.  After all, Commander-in-Chief Lincoln had a quick learning curve to wage war and try to restore the Union.  Bult Lincoln had another role:  head of the young Republican Party.  To what extent, if any, did Lincoln’s actions initiate a campaign to malign and crush the Democratic Party (and Peace Democrats in particular)?

Actually, he wasn’t the lone person responsible for leading the party. It didn’t function then quite like it does today. Party managers played more important roles in campaigns and newspaper editors enjoyed enormous power and influence in mobilizing voters and creating messaging. Presidents, and those running for president, were not supposed to campaign but simply stand on the party’s platform.

That said, presidents played leading roles by doling out patronage and, in the case of Lincoln, allowing soldiers to be furloughed home at key moments either to campaign or vote for Republicans in elections. And he did issue statements from time to time that condemned the behavior of Peace Democrats in particular, which contributed to the framing of the political narrative.

But to say Lincoln’s actions launched a campaign to crush the Democratic party gives him too much credit. The parties warred with each other, even in the antebellum period.  They were no different in their partisan fighting from today—except arguably even more intense and combative. The political landscape meant that Republicans inevitably were going to castigate their opponents as traitors to the Union, and Democrats would impugn their rivals as proposing unconstitutional policies through arbitrary arrests and emancipation.

Lincoln was no different from many in the party who feared that Peace Democrats wrought real harm by trying to discourage the mustering of troops, and thus hurting the Union war effort.

Even without Lincoln, though, this dynamic of partisan warfare would have happened. It is one of the arguments in my book that the public in general, as well as military officers, were often acting on their own sentiments against supposed treasonous behavior without centralized direction from Washington.

When Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter, Congress was not in session.  Lincoln did not call them back to Washington until July 4, 1861.  During that nearly one hundred days, Lincoln acted as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  For example, he called up 75,000 troops (which led to several Southern states seceding), and he suspended habeas corpus (an action which eventually applied to the entire United States).  Would it be fair to say that Lincoln acted as a temporary dictator during those hundred days?

I don’t see it that way. He did take extraordinary measures, such as when he ignored the opinion of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (done in chambers and not as a Supreme Court decision) that the president acted improperly in holding prisoners without allowing them the right to a hearing. But Lincoln did not shut down all opposition newspapers. Nor did he close the courts. Taney likely wouldn’t have functioned in his office very long had Lincoln been a dictator. Nor did the president launch widespread persecution of Democrats.

The fact that the Democrat press could scream so loudly about his actions testifies to the presence of a flow of opinion that dictators normally wouldn’t tolerate. And when Congress finally convened, he asked that body to endorse the measures which he had taken, which it did.

Lincoln used war powers as a basis for suspending habeas corpus.  Historian Eric Foner paraphrases Lincoln as asking, “Is it legitimate to violate habeas corpus in order that the entire edifice of the law survives?” 

Foner states:

This is an impeccable argument, but it is also a loaded gun which passes down from generation to generation, which is seized upon by subsequent wartime Presidents, to justify egregious violations of civil liberties in wartime, such as happened in World War I, in World War II with the internment of Japanese-Americans, [and] has happened during the War on Terror.[i] 

Would you agree with Foner’s assessment?

Although I don’t see Lincoln as a dictator, I agree with Foner that some of the president’s rationale for arresting people could serve as a loaded gun for future generations.

As an example, I always point to one of the more chilling documents Lincoln ever produced: a letter in 1863 to Erastus Corning and other Democrats in defense of the arrest of Clement L. Vallandigham for what was clearly political speech.  Corning and his cronies had taken Lincoln to task for it, but the president refused to apologize for anything.

More to the point, he laid out a policy for arrests that should never be allowed. Lincoln indicated that arrests could and should be conducted as a PREVENTATIVE measure. That meant, he wrote, putting behind bars people “not so much for what has been done, as for what probably would be done.”

Lincoln added: “The man who stands by and says nothing, when the peril of his government is discussed, can not be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy.” In other words, silence at the wrong time could serve as a basis for arrest. These are dangerous policies that threaten the basis of democracy and the judicial system.

What saves Lincoln is that his words were tougher than his actions. He did not, as I said, shut down newspapers or lead a purge of his political opponents. And whenever the country tip-toed to the brink of a constitutional precipice, he pulled it back. But Lincoln left words that scholars like Foner justifiably consider a loaded gun. We should never look back at this moment for precedent. It was an extraordinary moment with the country facing a crisis the likes of which has not been seen since.

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[i] Eric Foner lecture, MOOC | Lincoln and Congress | The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1865, watched 12/12/2021