As the date of the “Union Convention” approached, Lincoln put aside an opportunity to gratify the Vindictives.  Following the Emancipation Proclamation, the recruiting offices had been opened to negroes.  Thereupon the Confederate government threatened to treat black soldiers as brigands, and to refuse to their white officers the protection of the laws of war.  A cry went up in the North for reprisal.  It was not the first time the cry had been raised.  In 1862 Lincoln’s spokesman in Congress, Browning, had withstood a proposal for the trial of General Buckner by the civil authorities of Kentucky.  Browning opposed such a course on the ground that it would lead to a policy of retaliation, and make of the war a gratification of revenge.(5) The Confederate threat gave a new turn to the discussion.  Frederick Douglas, the most influential negro of the time, obtained an audience with Lincoln and begged for reprisals.  Lincoln would not consent.  So effective was his argument that even the ardent negro, convinced that his race was about to suffer persecution, was satisfied.

“I shall never forget,” Douglas wrote, “the benignant expression of his face, the tearful look of his eye, the quiver in his voice, when he deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures.  ‘Once begun,’ said he, ’I do not know where such a measure would stop.’  He said he could not take men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others.  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."(6)

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.  The President was to make a speech at a fair held in Baltimore, for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission.  The audience was keen to hear him denounce the reputed massacre, and eager to applaud a promise of reprisal.  Instead, he deprecated hasty judgment; insisting that the rumor had not been verified; that nothing should be done on the strength of mere report.

“It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent in this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it.  We do not to-day know that a colored soldier or white officer commanding colored soldiers has been massacred by the Rebels when made a prisoner.  We fear it—­believe it, I may say-but we do not know it To take the life of one of their prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a mistake."(7)

What a tame, spiritless position in the eyes of the Vindictives!  A different opportunity to lay hold of public opinion he made the most of.  And yet, here also, he spoke in that carefully guarded way, making sure he was not understood to say more than he meant, which most politicians would have pronounced over-scrupulous.  A deputation of working men from New York were received at the White House.  “The honorary membership in your association,” said he, “as generously tendered, is gratefully accepted. . . .  You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing rebellion means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of African slavery-that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working people.”