While Abraham Lincoln had a well-deserved reputation as a soft touch during the Civil War, readily finding excuses to offer mercy to Union soldiers who had fallen asleep or abandoned their posts, he also approved the hanging of the only slave trader ever to be executed by the United States. Captain Nathaniel Gordon was a repeat offender, caught with nearly 900 enslaved men, women, and children crammed into the tiny space below decks off the coast of Congo. But Gordon wasn’t particularly worried. For the first 40+ years of the law that made international slave trading illegal and punishable by death, no man was ever executed. Why now? And why by Lincoln?
Lincoln’s personal secretary, John Hay, once said that he was “amused at the eagerness with which the President caught at any fact which would justify him in saving the life” of a condemned man despite a War Department policy to use executions as a deterrent to other soldiers considering going absent without leave. Others also noted that Lincoln always leaned toward mercy. Even in his legal career, he called on lawyers to “discourage litigation” as “there will still be business enough.”
But while he often had a soft spot for minor offenses, he could be hard as stone in cases of brutality against women and breaking the law ending international slave trading. According to Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt, Lincoln was “prompt to punish…outrages upon women” and other abuses. He could allow for mistakes, but not wanton cruelty.
Nathaniel Gordon had been captured in the act of transporting Africans to become slaves in August of 1860, months before Lincoln’s election as president. Of the 897 captives taken, 563 were children, which he preferred because they were unlikely to rise up to free themselves. His first trial ended in a split jury, the result of bribery, but in the second trial in September 1861 he was convicted and sentenced to death. Still, Gordon and his supporters expected that he would be given clemency, just as every slave trader before them had received. Indeed, there were hundreds of prominent politicians and merchants writing Lincoln on Gordon’s behalf.
On February 4, 1862, when the execution was nearing, Lincoln wrote a letter that caught many off-guard. Lincoln acknowledged the pressure put on him:
And whereas, a large number of respectable citizens have earnestly besought me to commute the said sentence of the said Nathaniel Gordon to a term of imprisonment for life, which application I have felt it to be my duty to refuse;
Anticipating that Gordon expected a much different outcome and thus had not fully prepared himself mentally for execution, Lincoln gave Gordon not a commutation, but a pause:
Now, therefore, be it known, that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, have granted and do hereby grant unto him, the said Nathaniel Gordon, a respite of the above recited sentence, until Friday the twenty-first day of February, A.D. 1862, between the hours of twelve o’clock at noon and three o’clock in the afternoon of the said day, when the said sentence shall be executed.
In granting this respite, it becomes my painful duty to admonish the prisoner that, relinquishing all expectation of pardon by Human Authority, he refer himself alone to the mercy of the common God and Father of all men.
Gordon was executed on the revised date.
Yes, Lincoln tended toward mercy. But he also understood that some crimes rose above the norm. They were crimes against humanity and required strong, definitive punishment as deterrent to similar choices by other actors. A common denominator was the cruelty, which Lincoln could not abide.
Nathaniel Gordon was the first slave trader to be executed. He was also the last. As the Civil War shifted toward ultimate United States victory over Confederate insurrectionists, Lincoln’s support would lead to the 13th Amendment banning slavery everywhere in the United States, now and forever. The work of reaching full equality would remain, as racist forces would continue – and still continue – to deny constitutional freedom and equality to large segments of Americans. Clearly, if he were alive today, Lincoln would be a force for freedom, for equality, and even more adamantly against insurrection and treason.
[I highly recommend a book by Ron Soodalter called Hanging Captain Gordon.]
[Photo from WikiMedia Commons]
Coming in February 2026: Unable to Escape This Toil
Available now – Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Abraham Lincoln was a steady proponent of Internal Improvements projects in Illinois. That said, there were problems. The few projects initiated randomly to encourage widespread district support resulted in a hodgepodge of disconnected rail lines, many of which ran only a few miles to nowhere in particular. Most projects simply disappeared.
Abraham Lincoln was always interested in technology, so when the Civil War arrived as soon as he was inaugurated, he worked hard to convince the usually conservative military to employ the latest technological advances. One such advance caused him to look to the skies to give every advantage to Union troops. That was the use of balloons in war.
As 2024 comes to an end, it’s time to recap how it all went in the writer’s life. At least for this one writer. Once again, it was a busy year, with some residual events related to Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, some new obligations, and some really big news (really!). You can check out my other year-end posts by reading about 
Traveling seems to be done for the year. At least mostly (there might be one short overnight trip squeezed in before New Years). Enough to look back on the year in a traveler’s life. You can see the 
How time flies. The year 2024 is almost over and I think I’ve finished accumulated new books for the year, to it’s time for my annual Abraham Lincoln book acquisitions post. As you’ll quickly see, my goal to reduce the number of books I buy has been relatively successful-the total number of books acquired is definitely fewer-coming in at 25 new acquisitions. Reducing the total number of books? Not so successful. You can read about past years acquisitions by 
On this date, December 11, 1862, Abraham Lincoln transmitted to the U.S. Senate his response to their request that he “furnish the Senate with all information in his possession touching the late Indian barbarities in the State of Minnesota, and also the evidence in his possession upon which some of the principal actors and head men were tried and condemned to death.”
Back in the days when inciting an insurrection against the government was considered disqualifying, on December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged.
Abraham Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks” at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, which we now know as the Gettysburg Address (i.e., “Four score and seven years ago today…”) is a major milestone in Lincoln’s historical legacy. Less remembered is that Lincoln was weak and dizzy as he rose to speak, with the symptoms intensifying on the train back to Washington. Back pains developed, and by the fourth day of being bedridden he experienced a scarlet rash, which soon became vesicular. Lincoln had virus-induced smallpox, or at least a less virulent form called variola or varioloid. Over the next three weeks, lesions appeared and worsened, finally drying and peeling. He remained in bed recovering for weeks.
No doubt everyone in the Lincoln world has heard repeatedly about the document we’ve all come to know as the “blind memorandum.” But what about the “reveal party” when Lincoln showed his cabinet what he had written? That event happened on November 11, 1864.
