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Updated: May 8, 2025
* Walter L. Fleming, "The Sequel of Appomattox". In "The Chronicles of America". There was a faction in the Union Party which we may justly name the Vindictives. The "Manifesto" gave them a rallying cry. At a conference in New York they decided to compel the retirement of Lincoln and the nomination of some other candidate.
What were the Vindictives about? As yet they had made no Sign. But it was incredible that they could pass over his defiance without a return blow. When would it come? What would it be? He spent his nights at the Soldiers' Home. As a rule, his family were with him. Sometimes, however, Mrs. Lincoln and his sons would be absent and his only companion was one of the ardent young secretaries.
If he could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill the innocent for the guilty." In April, 1864, the North was swept by a wild rumor of deliberate massacre of prisoners at Fort Pillow. Here was an opportunity for Lincoln to ingratiate himself with the Vindictives.
Sumner's answer was that he would employ against the measure every instrument he could find "in the arsenal of parliamentary warfare." With the aid of the Democrats, the Vindictives carried the day. The resolution was "dispensed with." As events turned out it was a catastrophe. But this was not apparent at the time.
But the spring wore through and the summer came, and still the Vindictives were not certainly in control of Congress. No bill to free slaves by congressional action secured a majority vote. At the same time it was plain that the strength of the Vindictives was slowly, steadily, growing. Outside Congress, the Abolitionists took new hope. They had organized a systematic propaganda.
His own theory that the States never had been out of the Union because constitutionally they could not go out, that their governmental functions had merely been temporarily interrupted; this theory had always been roundly derided by the Vindictives and even by a few who were not Vindictives.
But if it were submitted to the larger group; and if every Reconstructed State, before Congress met, should adopt the amendment; and if it was apparent that with these Southern adoptions the amendment must prevail, all the great power of the anti-slavery sentiment would be thrown on the side of the President in favor of recognizing the new State governments and against the Vindictives.
This was in May when Lincoln's difficulties with McClellan were at their height; when the Committee was zealously watching to catch him in any sort of mistake; when the House was within four votes of a majority for emancipation by act of Congress; when there was no certainty whether the country was with him or with the Vindictives.
Lincoln held a hand of trumps. Confidently, but not rashly, he looked forward to his peaceful war with the Vindictives. They were enemies not to be despised. To begin with, they were experienced machine politicians; they had control of well-organized political rings. They were past masters of the art of working up popular animosities.
The Vice President, Andrew Johnson-the new president of the Senate-appeared at this time to be cheek by jowl with the fiercest Vindictives of them all. It would be interesting to know when the thought first occurred to them: "If anything should happen to Lincoln, his successor would be one of us!" The ninth of April arrived and the news of Lee's surrender.
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