The Limits of Lincoln's Mercy On a frosty day in late February 1862, at a little past noon, 400 people stood solemnly within the stone-walled courtyard of the Tombs, New York City's jail. Eighty were marines, dressed in Union blue and standing rigidly at attention with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets; the rest of the crowd consisted of reporters, politicians and observers who had cadged invitations to an unusual execution. The condemned, flanked by government officials, was a small, dark-haired man in a black frock coat. His arms were pinioned, a black hood covered his face and a noose encircled his neck. He had been convicted of having "piratically, feloniously, and forcibly" captured "800 negroes, with intent to make them slaves." His name was Nathaniel Gordon, and he was about to become the only man in American history to be executed for the crime of slave trading. After Gordon's conviction, his lawyers had exercised the one option open to them - a direct appeal to the president of the United States. The Constitution states that the president "shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons." And no president in the history of this nation has been so praised, or so criticized, for his use of the pardoning power as Abraham Lincoln. He was, to some, a man of compassion and mercy, to others, a sentimental meddler who continually undermined military discipline and the sanctity of the courts. But in this case the habitually merciful Abraham Lincoln withheld his customary clemency and allowed the execution to take place. There were three areas in which Lincoln's pardoning power could be applied. The first related to cases in the civil courts. During his tenure, Lincoln reviewed 456 civil cases; 375 of them - over 82 percent - received pardons. The second class had to do with those in rebellion against the government. This being the Civil War, more than half the country qualified. The third category was in military cases. It was here that Lincoln received the most criticism for what was perceived as his interference in the flow of military justice and discipline. He made it clear from the beginning that he was "unwilling for any boy under 18 to be shot," and he had a tendency to pardon youths who had fallen asleep on guard duty or had deserted. Gen. Joseph Hooker once sent an envelope to the president containing the cases of 55 convicted and doomed deserters; Lincoln merely wrote "Pardoned" on the envelope and returned it to Hooker. Two men who felt that Lincoln had to be protected from his own kinder instincts were members of his cabinet. Gideon Welles, the secretary of the Navy, confided to his diary that the president "is always disposed to mitigate punishment, and to grant favors," adding that "sometimes this is a weakness." Edward Bates, Lincoln's first attorney general, defined the president as an ideal man, with but one failing: "I have sometimes told him," Bates recalled, that "he was unfit to be entrusted with the pardoning power. Why, if a man comes to him with a touching story his judgment is almost certain to be affected by it. Should the applicant be a woman - a wife, a mother or a sister - in 9 cases out of 10 her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail. His inclination toward mercy was certainly not lost on his generals, either. William Tecumseh Sherman made his frustration known in an 1864 letter to the judge advocate general, writing that he planned to "execute a good many spies and guerrillas," without, as he put it "bothering the president." Lincoln did interfere freely in affairs of military discipline. Responsible for the conduct of an increasingly ferocious war, he would not countenance taking life if no good would be served. But his approach to clemency for those in the ranks was neither whimsical nor haphazard. He believed that the most serious offenders should be punished; he offered no pardon to bounty jumpers or recruiters for the Confederacy. He refused to show favoritism to officers over enlisted men, and turned a deaf ear to the pleas of soldiers whose offenses smacked of meanness or brutality. Lincoln once told a friend, I reckon there never was a man raised in the country on a farm, where they are always butchering cattle and hogs and think nothing of it, that ever grew up with such an aversion to bloodshed as I have and yet I've had more questions of life and death to settle in four years than all the men who ever sat in this chair put together. But, I've managed to get along and do my duty, as I believe, and still save most of them. Nevertheless, he added, "there are some cases where the law must be executed." It was in this frame of mind that Lincoln approached the Gordon case. Along with Gordon's lawyers came petitions containing thousands of names seeking mercy. The law under which the man been condemned, they argued, had been a dead letter for decades. Moreover, he harmed no Americans or committed treason. Rhoda White, the wife of a New York judge - a strong Lincoln supporter - actually visited the White House, taking with her the condemned man's wife and mother. It was a particularly difficult time for the Lincolns; their 11-year-old son Willie ill and dying of typhoid, and his parents were beside themselves with grief. Mrs. White had written Lincoln exactly the type of letter that had worked so often in the past: I would not intrude upon the sanctity of your sickroom and upon your hours of grief but for the sake of mercy, and for the sake of an afflicted mother and wife who are bowed down with sorrow and look to God and to you to lift the heavy burden they are suffering under. But Lincoln, the reputed soft touch for a weeping wife and grieving mother, refused to see them. The ladies were instead given an audience with the ever-emotional Mary Lincoln; deeply moved, Mary tried to discuss a commutation with her husband. He flatly refused. What was it about this case that failed to call forth Lincoln's widely touted mercy? He tells us himself. Although he had "always hated slavery, I think as much as any abolitionist," it was still legal in more than half the country, and as Lincoln had said in speech after speech, "I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free states" to "interfere with the question of slavery at all." But Lincoln had no such ambivalence regarding the slave trade; he abhorred it, and more to the point, the law forbade it. On one of the numerous occasions when Lincoln was asked to consider mercy for Gordon, he stated, I believe I am kindly enough in nature, and can be moved to pity and to pardon the perpetrator of almost the worst crime that the mind of man can conceive or the arm of man can execute; but any man, who, for paltry gain and stimulated only by avarice, can rob Africa of her children to sell into interminable bondage, I never will pardon. Nathaniel Gordon was executed on Feb. 21, 1862. Ron Soodalter is the author of "Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader" and a co-author of "The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today." He is a featured writer and columnist for America's Civil War magazine and a frequent contributor to Civil War Times and Military History.