{"id":1052,"date":"2013-06-29T12:52:59","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2016-06-19T19:56:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-19T19:56:57","slug":"letter-to-john-dix-january-14-1863","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-john-dix-january-14-1863\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to John Dix (January 14, 1863)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n

#104<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

“The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding—at best, were progressing too slowly—without it. Now, that we have it, and bear all the disadvantage of it, (as we do bear some in certain quarters) we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable.”<\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

HD Daily Report, January 14, 1863<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, January 14, 1863<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

\"Screen
\n<\/a>View in Larger Map<\/a><\/p>\n

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

“By spring the President was urging a massive recruitment of Negro troops. \u00a0When neither General Butler not General Fremont accepted his offer to go South and raise a black army, Lincoln turned directly to men already in the field. \u00a0‘The colored population is the great\u00a0available<\/em> and yet unavailed<\/i> of, force for restoring the Union,’ he reminded Andrew Johnson, whom he had appointed military governor of Tennessee, and he urged Johnson to take the lead in raising a force of black troops. \u00a0‘The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi,’ he predicted, ‘would end the rebellion at once.'”<\/p>\n

\u2013David Herbert Donald,\u00a0Lincoln\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 431<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“Before he implemented his matured political strategy he moved to adopt a measure which was an extension and logical consequence of his Emancipation Proclamation. He announced that those blacks freed by the proclamation would ‘be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places.’ In this way Lincoln planned for manpower difficulties to be significantly eased by tapping this new source of soldiers, ‘the great available and as yet unavailed of, force for the restoration of the Union.’\u00a0Arming southern blacks most effectively harmonized with the basic anaconda strategy because Lincoln saw that it worked ‘doubly, weakening the enemy and strengthening us,’ for it took ‘so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men.’\u00a0Lincoln correctly believed that the program weakened the enemy in another way: psychologically. He thought that ‘the bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once.’ He did not believe that the rebellion could survive if such a black military force could ‘take shape, and grow, and thrive, in the South.'”<\/p>\n

\u2013Herman Hattaway, \u201cLincoln’s Presidential Example in Dealing with the Military,\u201d\u00a0Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 7<\/em>.1 (1985)<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“In justifying his hesitancy to\u00a0endorse the recruitment of black troops and to issue the order of retaliation, Lincoln\u00a0(according to Douglass) ‘said that the country needed talking up to that point. He\u00a0hesitated in regard to it when he felt that the country was not ready for it. He knew that\u00a0the colored man throughout this country was a despised man, a hated man, and he knew\u00a0that if he at first came out with such a proclamation, all the hatred which is poured on the\u00a0head of the negro race would be visited on his Administration. He said that there was\u00a0preparatory work needed, and that that preparatory work had been done.’ He described\u00a0that ‘preparatory work’ accomplished by black troops: ‘Remember this, Mr. Douglass;\u00a0remember that Milliken\u2019s Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner are recent events; and\u00a0that these were necessary to prepare the way for this very proclamation of mine.’ If he\u00a0had issued it earlier, he said, ‘such was the state of public popular prejudice that an\u00a0outcry would have been raised against the measure. It would be said \u2018Ah! We thought it\u00a0would come to this. White men are to be killed for negroes.\u2019'”<\/p>\n

\u2013Michael Burlingame,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/em>\u00a0(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)\u00a0Unedited Manuscript By Chapters, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 30 (PDF), pp. 3371-3372<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE TO READERS<\/h3>\n

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new \u201cUnderstanding Lincoln\u201d online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n
Private & confidential<\/span><\/div>\n
Executive Mansion,\u00a0Washington,<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
January 14, 1863.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Major General Dix<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
My dear Sir:<\/span><\/div>\n
The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding—at best, were progressing too slowly—without it. Now, that we have it, and bear all the disadvantage of it, (as we do bear some in certain quarters) we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I therefore will thank you for your well considered opinion whether Fortress-Monroe, and York-Town, one or both, could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by colored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places, to be employed elsewhere.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yours very truly<\/span><\/div>\n
A. LINCOLN<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking #104 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript “The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding—at best, were progressing too slowly—without it. Now, that we have it, and bear all the disadvantage of it, (as we do bear some in certain quarters) we must also take some benefit from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10858],"tags":[10901,10900,6088,11642,11630,11669,10865,10862],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-great-emancipator","tag-black-soldiers","tag-emancipation","tag-letter","tag-management-style","tag-military-affairs","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-private","tag-wartime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4404,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/4404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}