Chapter 4: Heroic Transforming Leadership: Touching the Better Angels of Our Nature

Late in the summer of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was sorely tempted to make a deal with Confederate President Jefferson Davis that might have prolonged American slavery for decades. The agreement could have completely betrayed the promises of Lincoln’s own Emancipation Proclamation. During one of the Union’s bleakest periods in the long Civil War, there was intense pressure from the Democratic Party and some Republicans. Many wanted Lincoln to make peace by backing off his insistence that the war could only be ended by the complete capitulation of the South, and the emancipation of all slaves. They decried the bloodshed of battles in June and July, and insisted that the South would return to the Union if only Lincoln would relax his demand that slaves be “forever free.” The mounting toll of dead and wounded, with no ending in sight, weighed heavily on the President. At one point he drafted a letter saying he would let Jefferson Davis “try me” (McPherson, 2008, p. 239). He would insist only on reunion, with other issues, including emancipation, considered later.