As the night wore on, the news from Ohio and Indiana proved better than anyone expected. The Republicans in Ohio gained twelve congressional seats, and the state provided a fifty-thousand-vote Republican majority. In Indiana, the Republican candidate for governor, Oliver Morton, won by a large margin, and Republicans captured eight of the eleven congressional seats.
The results in Pennsylvania were less decisive. Sometime after midnight, Lincoln sent a telegram to Simon Cameron. "Am leaving office to go home," he wrote. "How does it stand now?" No answer was received from Cameron, which seemed "ominous" to Hay. It turned out that the margin was so close that neither party could declare victory. Only when the absentee soldier vote was tallied in the days ahead could the Republicans claim a slight margin.
Welles observed that "Seward was quite exultant over the elections-feels strong and self gratified. Says this Administration is wise, energetic, faithful and able beyond any of its predecessors. That it has gone through trials which none of them has ever known." Lincoln, characteristically, reacted with more caution than his debonair colleague. Though delighted by Ohio and Indiana, he found the close vote in Pennsylvania sobering.
Two nights after the state elections, appearing "unusually weary," Lincoln returned to the telegraph office in the War Department to calculate the probability of his election in November. Taking a blank sheet of telegraph paper, he made two neat columns. The one on the left represented his estimate of the electoral votes McClellan would win; the one on the right tabulated the states he thought would be his. The cipher operator David Homer Bates noted that he wrote "slowly and deliberately, stopping at times in thoughtful mood to look out of the window for a moment or two, and then resuming his writing." The president guessed he would lose both New York and Pennsylvania, which meant his best hope was to squeak through by a total of only 3 electoral votes: 117 to 114. If these calculations were correct, he lamented, "the moral effect of his triumph would be broken and his power to prosecute the war and make peace would be greatly impaired."
During the anxious four-week period that stretched between the state and presidential elections, Lincoln received the heartening news that voters in Maryland had ratified a new const.i.tution officially terminating slavery in their state. The margin had been perilously close, with the absentee soldier vote making the difference. "Most heartily do I congratulate you, and Maryland, and the nation, and the world, upon the event," Lincoln told a group of serenaders. Speaking that same day with Noah Brooks, he said: "I had rather have Maryland upon that issue than have a State twice its size upon the Presidential issue; it cleans up a piece of ground." Brooks admired the "frank homeliness" of Lincoln"s choice of words: "Any one who has ever had to do with "cleaning up" a piece of ground, digging out vicious roots and demolishing old stumps, can appreciate the homely simile applied to Maryland, where slavery has just been cleaned up effectually."
It was clear to both parties that the absentee vote could prove critical in the presidential election. Democrats, remembering the fanatical devotion McClellan had inspired among his men, believed their man would receive an overwhelming majority of the soldier vote. "We are as certain of two-thirds of that vote for General McClellan as that the sun shines," the Democratic publisher Manton Marble jauntily predicted.
Lincoln thought differently. He trusted the bond he had developed with his soldiers during his many trips to the front. After every defeat, he had joined them, riding slowly along their lines, boosting their spirits. He had wandered companionably through their encampments, fascinated by the smallest details of camp life. Sitting with the wounded in hospital tents, he had taken their hands and wished them well. The humorous stories he had told cl.u.s.ters of soldiers had been retold to hundreds more. The historian William Davis estimates that "a quarter-million or more had had some glimpse of him on their own." In addition, word of his pardons to soldiers who had fallen asleep on picket duty or exhibited fear in the midst of battle had spread through the ranks. Most important of all, through his eloquent speeches and public letters he had given profound meaning to the struggle for which they were risking their lives.
Provisions for soldiers to cast absentee ballots in the field had recently been introduced in thirteen states. Four other states allowed soldiers to vote by proxy, placing their ballots in a sealed envelope to be sent or carried for deposit in their hometowns. In several crucial states, however, soldiers still had to be in their hometowns on Election Day to cast their ballots. In an attempt to remedy this situation before the October state elections, Lincoln had wired General Sherman about Indiana, "whose soldiers cannot vote in the field. Any thing you can safely do to let her soldiers, or any part of them, go home and vote at the State election, will be greatly in point." He emphasized that "this is, in no sense, an order," but merely a request.
Stanton followed up, making certain that furloughs were liberally granted wherever possible. "All the power and influence of the War Department...was employed to secure the re-election of Mr. Lincoln," Charles Dana later a.s.serted. When Thurlow Weed alerted the White House that among the sailors "on Gun Boats along the Mississippi," there were "several thousand" New Yorkers ready to vote if the government could provide a steamer to reach them and gather their ballots, Lincoln asked Welles to put a navy boat "at the disposal of the New York commission to gather votes."
As the election drew close, Lincoln told a visitor: "I would rather be defeated with the soldier vote behind me than to be elected without it." It is likely that McClellan shared Lincoln"s sentiment. The election would tell which man had won the hearts and minds of the more than 850,000 men who were fighting for the Union.
ON ELECTION DAY, November 8, 1864, the New York Times editorialized that "before this morning"s sun sets, the destinies of this republic, so far as depends on human agency, are to be settled for weal or for woe." To elect Lincoln was to choose "war, tremendous and terrible, yet ushering in at the end every national security and glory." To choose McClellan was to choose "the mocking shadow of a peace...sure to rob us of our birthright, and to entail upon our children a dissevered Union and ceaseless strife."
In Washington, it was "dark and rainy." Arriving at the White House about noon, Noah Brooks was surprised to find the president "entirely alone." Seward and Usher had gone home to vote, as had William Dennison, Blair"s replacement as postmaster general. This would be the tenth time Seward had cast a presidential ballot in Auburn; he had voted in more than half of the nineteen presidential elections since the beginning of the country. Fessenden was in New York working out the details of a new government loan, while Stanton was at home with a fever. Lincoln could not vote that day, for Illinois required voters to be present in the state.
Lincoln felt no need to conceal his anxiety from Brooks. "I am just enough of a politician to know that there was not much doubt about the result of the Baltimore convention; but about this thing I am very far from being certain. I wish I were certain." Brooks remained with Lincoln through most of the afternoon, noting that the president "found it difficult to put his mind on any of the routine work of his office." The only respite he found was in telling a humorous story about Tad, whose pet turkey apparently roamed at will among the Pennsylvania soldiers quartered at the White House. When the day had come for the Bucktail soldiers to cast their absentee ballots before their state"s commission, Tad had excitedly rushed into his father"s office so they could watch the voting from the window. Teasing his son, Lincoln had asked if the turkey, too, intended to vote. Tad"s clever reply delighted his father. "No," he said. "He is not of age." Brooks noted that Lincoln so "dearly loved the boy" that "for days thereafter he took pride in relating this anecdote ill.u.s.trative of Tad"s quick-wittedness."
As the clock struck seven, the president, accompanied by John Hay, walked over to the telegraph office to begin the long vigil. "It is a little singular," Lincoln remarked to Hay, "that I who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canva.s.ses marked for their bitterness." The lights of the War Department, bursting with dozens of orderlies and clerks, provided a welcome contrast to the murky night.
The muddy grounds had caused Thomas Eckert to fall on his face, which, "of course," Hay noted, "reminded the Tyc.o.o.n" of a story. "For such an awkward fellow," Lincoln began, "I am pretty sure-footed. It used to take a pretty dextrous man to throw me. I remember, the evening of the day in 1858, that decided the contest for the Senate between Mr. Douglas and myself, was something like this, dark, rainy & gloomy. I had been reading the returns, and had ascertained that we had lost the Legislature and started to go home. The path had been worn hog-backed & was slippering. My foot slipped from under me, knocking the other one out of the way, but I recovered myself & lit square: and I said to myself, "It"s a slip and not a fall."" Even at the time Lincoln had understood that his defeat for the Senate was "a slip and not a fall." Little could he then have imagined, however, that on another dreary night six years later, he would be waiting to hear if he had been elected to a second presidential term.
The early returns were positive, revealing larger Republican majorities than in the state elections. Lincoln asked to have the good news carried to Mary at the White House. "She is more anxious than I," he commented. Shortly afterward, Welles and Fox arrived. Fox was thrilled to hear that Winter Davis had been defeated in Maryland. "You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I," Lincoln said. "A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him."
The returns, including those from Pennsylvania, continued to be promising, though New York, with its large number of traditionally Democratic Irish immigrants, remained in doubt. By the hour of midnight, however, when a supper of fried oysters was served, Lincoln"s victory was a.s.sured, though his lopsided electoral college win would not be known for several days. In the end, he would win all but three states-New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky-giving him 212 electoral votes against McClellan"s 21. The popular vote was closer; the two candidates were separated by about 400,000 votes. Nonetheless, the results were far better than Lincoln had predicted. The Republican/Union Party had gained thirty-seven seats in Congress and placed twelve governors in office. It had also seized control of most of the state legislatures with the power to name the next round of U.S. senators.
It was after 2 a.m. when Lincoln left the telegraph office. The rain had stopped, and along Pennsylvania Avenue, an impromptu crowd had gathered, "singing "The Battle Cry of Freedom" at the tops of their voices." As he went to sleep that night, Lincoln carried with him the knowledge, as Brooks put it, that "the verdict of the people was likely to be so full, clear, and unmistakable that there could be no dispute," thereby affording him the chance to continue the war until both liberty and Union were secured.
Most impressive, the soldier vote had swung overwhelmingly in his favor. In the armies of the West, he won eight out of ten votes, and even in McClellan"s Army of the Potomac, Lincoln earned the votes of seven out of every ten soldiers. Many of these soldiers still admired McClellan but could not countenance the defeatist Democratic platform or the fact that the Confederacy was obviously hoping the young Napoleon would win. But there was something else, something Democrats had failed to understand. Over the years, Lincoln had inspired an almost mystical devotion among his troops. "The men had come to regard Mr. Lincoln with sentiments of veneration and love," noted an Illinois corporal. "To them he really was "Father Abraham," with all that the term implied." By supporting Lincoln, the soldiers understood that they were voting to prolong the war, but they voted with their hearts for the president they loved and the cause that he embodied.
CHAPTER 25
"A SACRED EFFORT"
ON THURSDAY NIGHT, November 10, 1864, an immense crowd, "gay with banners and resplendent with lanterns," gathered on the White House lawn to congratulate the president on his reelection. "Martial music, the cheers of people, and the roar of cannon, shook the sky." When the joyful throng demanded his appearance, Lincoln spoke to the crowd from a second-floor window. Acknowledging that the recent canva.s.s had been marred by "undesirable strife," he nonetheless felt it had "demonstrated that a people"s government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility."
When Lincoln drew his little speech to a close, the revelers moved on to Seward"s Lafayette Square home. They found the secretary of state, who had just returned from Auburn, "in an exceedingly jocose frame of mind." He predicted that the time was near when "we will all come together again...when the stars and stripes wave over Richmond," and "you will have to look mighty sharp to find a man who was a secessionist, or an aider of the rebellion." He recollected that when he was a boy in the early 1800s, his parents had told of "the vast number of tories" who opposed the government during the American revolution; yet, thirty years later, "there was not a tory to be found in the whole United States."
Seward"s good humor infected the crowd, who responded with cheers and laughter. In closing, he observed that the night was young. "I advise you to go and see Mr. Fessenden, for if he gets discouraged we shall all come to grief; also be good enough to poke up Mr. Stanton; he needs poking up, for he has been seriously sick, I hear, for several days past. You cannot do better also than to call upon my excellent friend Gideon Welles, and ask him if he cannot make the blockade off Wilmington more stringent, so that I shall not need to have so much trouble with my foreign relations."
Seward"s playful remarks about his colleagues reflected the improved atmosphere in the cabinet now that Chase and Blair were gone. Both men had symbolized the animosity between radicals and conservatives in the country at large; their clashing emotions had long reverberated through the cabinet. The periodic jealousy Welles felt over the superior access Seward and Stanton enjoyed with the president had been intensified a hundredfold so long as Blair was there to fuel the flames. Likewise, when Stanton was angry with Lincoln over pardons or appointments, Chase had eagerly lent an approving ear to his complaints. Never initiated into this contentious drama, Fessenden and Dennison brought cooperation and amity to the cabinet. Strife abated, and Welles even acknowledged that his relations with Seward had grown more "amicable" and that Stanton was sounding more reasonable and less radical regarding Reconstruction.
Rumormongers had speculated that Lincoln would now want to replace his entire cabinet. It was positively a.s.serted that Seward would give way to Charles Francis Adams, that General Butler would replace Stanton, and that Welles and Bates had outlived their usefulness. It was surmised that Lincoln would prefer more controllable colleagues. The busy, hypothetical cabinetmakers did not understand that Lincoln had no wish to disturb the rhythm of his relationships with his colleagues, which, to his mind, worked exceedingly well.
Lincoln"s friendship with Seward had deepened with each pa.s.sing year. "His confidence in Seward is great," observed Welles that autumn. Seward "spends more or less of every day with the President." On subjects "of the gravest importance," Seward was the president"s "only confidant and adviser." Whenever Lincoln bounced an idea off Seward, he received straightforward advice. When a plan to foster Union sentiment in the South through confidential government purchase of a controlling share in a number of failing Southern newspapers was presented to Lincoln, he turned to Seward for advice. "It seems to me very judicious and wise," Seward responded. It would provide a forum for Union men to help sway the opinion of fellow Southerners. If government funds were not readily available, he suggested that Thurlow Weed "might find money by contribution."
Though some still considered the talkative New Yorker the "power behind the throne," Seward had long since understood that Lincoln was the master. "There is but one vote in the Cabinet," a.s.serted Seward, "and that is cast by the President." Two days after the election, Seward told a crowd of supporters, "Henceforth all men will come to see him, as you and I have seen him.... Abraham Lincoln will take his place with Washington and Franklin, and Jefferson, and Adams, and Jackson, among the benefactors of the country and of the human race."
Lincoln"s partnership with his volatile secretary of war, though not as intimate and leisurely, was equally effective. Stanton was only fifty in the fall of 1864, but he "looked older," his clerk Benjamin recalled, "by reason of the abundant tinging of his originally brown hair and beard with iron-gray." The war had taken a toll on his const.i.tution, already weakened by the lifelong struggle with asthma that caused periodic "fits of strangulation." The illness that kept him in bed on election eve lasted for nearly three weeks. For a time it seemed he would not rally. His doctor begged him to take a leave of absence from his post. "Barnes," Stanton replied, "keep me alive till this rebellion is over, and then I will take a rest...a long one, perhaps." In a letter to Chase written shortly after Lincoln"s reelection, he acknowledged that his health could be restored only by "absolute rest and relief from labor and care," though nothing could keep him from his post until he had brought the soldiers home in peace.
By late November, Stanton was back working fifteen-hour days at his stand-up desk, directing his subordinates with a steely determination. The complex relationship between the president and his secretary of war was not easy to comprehend. At times it seemed as if Stanton controlled the president; at other times it was clear that Lincoln was the dominant force in dictating policy. In fact, there was an unwritten code between the two powerful men: "Each could veto the other"s acts, but Lincoln was to rule when he felt it necessary."
Lincoln used his veto over Stanton sparingly, as two of his congressional friends learned to their dismay. Having obtained the president"s a.s.sent to a military appointment for one of their const.i.tuents, they carried the endorsed application to Stanton. Stanton flatly refused to consider it. "The position is of high importance," Stanton explained. "I have in mind a man of suitable experience and capacity to fill it." When informed that Lincoln wanted this man, Stanton bellowed, "I do not care what the President wants; the country wants the very best it can get. I am serving the country...regardless of individuals."
The two congressmen walked back to the White House, a.s.suming the president would override his secretary, but Lincoln refused: "Gentlemen, it is my duty to submit. I cannot add to Mr. Stanton"s troubles. His position is one of the most difficult in the world. Thousands in the army blame him because they are not promoted and other thousands out of the army blame him because they are not appointed. The pressure upon him is immeasurable and unending. He is the rock on the beach of our national ocean against which the breakers dash and roar, dash and roar without ceasing. He fights back the angry waters and prevents them from undermining and overwhelming the land. Gentlemen, I do not see how he survives, why he is not crushed and torn to pieces. Without him I should be destroyed. He performs his task superhumanly. Now do not mind this matter, for Mr. Stanton is right and I cannot wrongly interfere with him."
At the same time, Lincoln expected Stanton to be aware of the special burdens he faced as president. For weeks, Lincoln wrote Stanton, he had been pressed by relatives of "prisoners of war in our custody, whose homes are within our lines, and who wish...to take the oath and be discharged." He believed that "taking the oath" was an act of honor, that "none of them will again go to the rebellion," though he acknowledged that "the rebellion again coming to them, a considerable per centage of them, probably not a majority, would rejoin it." With "a cautious discrimination," however, "the number so discharged would not be large enough to do any considerable mischief." Moreover, looking forward to the day when the two sides would once again be united, he thought the government "should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society." With all these considerations in mind, it would provide "relief from an intolerable pressure" if he could have Stanton"s "cheerful a.s.sent to the discharge of those names I may send, which I will only do with circ.u.mspection." Stanton replied the following day: "Your order for the discharge of any prisoners of war, will be cheerfully & promptly obeyed."
Lincoln"s liberal use of his pardoning power created the greatest tension between the two men. Stanton felt compelled to protect military discipline by exacting proper punishment for desertions or derelictions of duty, while Lincoln looked for any "good excuse for saving a man"s life." When he found one, he said, "I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends."
Stanton would not allow himself such leniency. A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, "the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of their heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turned, apparently unmoved, and walked into his private room." The clerk thought Stanton an unfeeling tyrant, until he discovered him moments later, "leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. "G.o.d help me to do my duty; G.o.d help me to do my duty!" he was repeating in a low wail of anguish." On such occasions, when Stanton felt he could not afford to set a precedent, he must have been secretly relieved that the president had the ultimate authority.
When Stanton thought he was right, however, he tenaciously pursued his purpose. When a group of Pennsylvania politicians received the president"s a.s.sent for discharging some prisoners of war in their district who were willing to take the oath and join the Union army fighting Indians in the West, Stanton flatly refused to execute the order. The order specified that the discharged prisoners would receive a bounty and be credited against Pennsylvania"s draft quota, thus reducing the number of troops required of the Keystone State. "Mr. President, I cannot do it," he a.s.serted. "The order is an improper one, and I cannot execute it." Lincoln was equally firm in his reply: "Mr. Secretary, it will have to be done." And so it was.
When the order was publicized, a storm of criticism descended upon Stanton. To give a bounty to soldiers who were already in government custody seemed wasteful and wrong, as did counting the discharged prisoners against the quota that Pennsylvania, like every other state, was required to supply. Lincoln learned that Grant, too, was unhappy and blamed Stanton. "I send this," Lincoln promptly wrote Grant, "to do justice to the Secretary of War." He then explained that he had responded to the idea "upon pressing application...and the thing went so far before it came to the knowledge of the Secretary of War that in my judgment it could not be abandoned without greater evil than would follow it"s going through. I did not know, at the time, that you had protested against that cla.s.s of thing being done; and I now say that while this particular job must be completed, no other of the sort, will be authorized, without an understanding with you, if at all. The Secretary of War is wholly free of any part in this blunder."
In this instance, Stanton was transparently blameless, but Lincoln protected his volatile secretary even when criticism was justified, when "his firmness degenerated, at times, into sheer obstinacy; his enthusiasm, into intolerance; his strength of will, into arrogance." Even the equitable George Templeton Strong acknowledged that it was "hard to vote for sustaining an Administration of which Stanton is a member. He is a ruffian."
Implacable and abrasive as Stanton could be, his scrupulous honesty, energy, and determination were invaluable to Lincoln. When one caller complained bitterly about Stanton"s bearish style, Lincoln stopped him cold: "Go home my friend, and read attentively the tenth verse of the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs!" The verse reads as follows: "Accuse not a servant to his master, lest he curse thee, and then be found guilty." When people speculated about cabinet changes after his reelection, Lincoln made it clear that Stanton would not be leaving. "Folks come up here and tell me that there are a great many men in the country who have all Stanton"s excellent qualities without his defects," he commented. "All I have to say is, I have n"t met "em! I don"t know "em!"
Nor did Lincoln consider dismissing his "Neptune," Gideon Welles. Reserved by nature, Welles did not enjoy the easy camaraderie with Lincoln that Seward did. The discreet New Englander looked askance at the curious pleasure both Lincoln and Seward took in talking with "the little newsmongers" and hearing "all the political gossip." And he was often vexed by the odd intimacy between Lincoln and Stanton. Unlike Chase, however, he confined his complaints to his diary and remained totally loyal to the president whose natural sagacity he greatly admired.
Moreover, Lincoln recognized that Welles had accomplished a Herculean task-he had built a navy almost from scratch, utterly revamping a department initially paralyzed by subversion and strife. Even the normally critical Times of London was forced to concede the extraordinary growth of the American navy under the leadership of Gideon Welles. When Welles took office, there were only 76 vessels flying the American flag; four years later, there were 671. The number of seamen had increased from 7,600 to 51,000. In the span of only four years, the American navy had become "a first cla.s.s power."
A shrewd judge of character, Welles had a.s.sembled an excellent team, including his dynamic a.s.sistant secretary, Gustavus Vasa Fox, and the industrious commandant of the Navy Yard, John Dahlgren. Welles had opposed the blockade but, once overruled, had enforced it with determination and skill. He had fought Lincoln on the admission of West Virginia as a state and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, but he had never publicly vented his objections.
With Seward, Stanton, and Welles secure in their cabinet places, the resignation of Edward Bates provided the only opening for change in the immediate aftermath of the election. The seventy-one-year-old Bates had contemplated resigning the previous spring, after suffering through a winter of chronic illness. In May, his son Barton had pleaded with him to return to St. Louis. "The situation of affairs is such that you are not required to sacrifice your health and comfort for any good which you may possibly do," urged Barton. "As to pecuniary matters, I know well that you have but little to fall back on...for the present at least make your home at my house & Julian"s, going from one to the other as suits your convenience.... You"ve done your share of work anyhow, & it is time the youngsters were working for you. If you had nothing at all, Julian and I could continue to take good care of you and Ma and the girls; & you know that we would do it as cheerfully as you ever worked for us, and we would greatly prefer to do it rather than you should be wearing yourself out as now with labor and cares unsuited to your age."
The prospect of going home to children and grandchildren was attractive, especially to Julia Bates, whose wishes remained paramount with her husband after forty-one years of marriage. On their anniversary in late May, Bates happily noted that "our mutual affection is as warm, and our mutual confidence far stronger, than in the first week of marriage. This is G.o.d"s blessing."
However, during the dark period that preceded the fall of Atlanta, when Bates believed "the fate of the nation hung, in doubt & gloom," he did not feel he could leave his post. Nor did he wish to depart until Lincoln"s reelection was a.s.sured. "Now, on the contrary," he wrote to Lincoln on November 24, 1864, "the affairs of the Government display a brighter aspect; and to you, as head & leader of the Government all the honor & good fortune that we hoped for, has come. And it seems to me, under these altered circ.u.mstances, that the time has come, when I may, without dereliction of duty, ask leave to retire to private life."
Bates went on to express his profound grat.i.tude to Lincoln "not only for your good opinion which led to my appointment, but also for your uniform & unvarying courtesy & kindness during the whole time in which we have been a.s.sociated in the public service. The memory of that kindness & personal favor, I shall bear with me into private life, and hope to retain in my heart, as long as I live."
Bates had served his president and his country faithfully. In his first months as Attorney General, though he had been uncomfortable confronting Justice Taney on the issue of arbitrary arrests, he had composed an elaborate opinion justifying Lincoln"s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. When McClellan had refused to divulge his plans in early 1862, Bates had urged Lincoln to a.s.sume control of his commanders, advising him that the authority of the presidency stood above that of his generals, even on military matters. When the president read his first draft of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation to the cabinet in July 1862, Bates had been one of the first to speak favorably. Though Bates never fully escaped from the racial prejudices formed in his early years-he continued to believe until the end of his life that emanc.i.p.ation should be accompanied by colonization-his ideas had evolved to the point where he supported some very progressive measures. When asked in 1864 to deliver a legal opinion on the controversial question of the unequal pay scale for black soldiers, he declared "unhesitatingly" that "persons of color" who were performing in the field the same duties as their white counterparts should receive "the same pay, bounty, and clothing."
Abolitionists applauded this opinion along with an earlier one declaring blacks to be citizens of the United States. The citizenship issue had arisen when a commercial schooner plying the coastal trade was detained because its captain was a black man. The Dred Scott decision had declared that blacks were not citizens, and naval law required one to be a citizen to command a ship flying the American flag. When the question was put to him, Bates carefully researched definitions of citizenship dating back to Greek and Roman times. After much consideration, he concluded that place of birth, not color of skin, determined citizenship. The Dred Scott decision was wrong; free blacks were citizens of the United States.