time I thought he would send in the message on New Year's Day; and I said something about what a glorious thing it would be. But he stopped me in a moment; 'Don't say a word about that,' he said; I know very well that the name which is connected with this act will never be forgotten.' Well, there was one delay and another, but I always spoke to him till one day in January he said sadly that he had been up all night with his sick child. I was very much touched, and I resolved that I would say nothing to the President about this or any other business if I could help it till that child was well or dead. And I did not. I had never said a word to him again about it—one morning here, before I had breakfast, before I was up indeed, both his secretaries came over to say that he wanted to see me as soon as I could see him. I dressed at once, and went over. 'I want to read you my message,' he said; 'I want to know how you like it. I am going to send it in to-day.'"

It was on the morning of March 6, 1862, that Mr. Lincoln sent for Mr. Sumner to read his message. A few hours later, when the Senator reached the Capitol, he went to the Senate desk to see if the President had carried out his intention. Yes, the document was there.

As Mr. Sumner's history of the message given to Dr. Hale shows, Mr. Lincoln for months quietly prepared the way for his plan. One of his most adroit preparatory manoeuvers, and one of which Mr. Sumner evidently knew nothing, was performed in New York City, through the Hon. Carl Schurz, who at that time was the American Minister to Spain.*

Mr. Schurz, who had gone to Madrid in 1861, had not been long there before he concluded that there would be great danger of the Southern Confederacy being recognized by France and England unless the aspect of the situation was

*The following accounts of Mr. Schurz's interviews with Mr. Lincoln and the plan the two gentlemen arranged for introducing the subject of compensated emancipation to the public was given me by Mr. Schurz himself. The manuscript has been corrected by him, and is published with his permission.

speedily changed, either by a decisive military success, or by some evidence on the part of the Administration that the war was to end in the destruction of slavery. If the conflict were put on this high moral plane, Mr. Schurz believed the sympathy of the people in Europe would be so strong with the North that interference in favor of the South would be impossible. All of this he wrote to Mr. Seward in September of 1861, but he received no reply to his letter other than a formal acknowledgment.

After a little time, Mr. Schurz wrote to Mr. Lincoln, saying that he wanted to come to Washington and personally represent to the Administration what he conceived to be the true nature of public opinion in Europe. Mr. Lincoln wrote to him to come, and he arrived in Washington in the last week of January, 1862. He went at once to the White House, where he was received by the President, who listened attentively to his arguments, the same he had made by letter to Mr. Seward. When he had finished his presentation of the case, Mr. Lincoln said that he was inclined to accept that view, but that he was not sure that the public sentiment of the country was ripe for such a policy. It had to be educated up to it. Would not Mr. Schurz go to New York and talk the matter over with their friends, some of whom he named?

Mr. Schurz assented, and a few days afterwards reported to Mr. Lincoln that the organization of an "Emancipation Society," for the purpose of agitating the idea, had been started in New York, and that a public meeting would be held at the Cooper Union on March 6.

"That's it; that is the very thing," Mr. Lincoln replied. "You must make a speech at this meeting. Go home and prepare it. When you have got it outlined, bring it to me, and I will see what you are going to say."

Mr. Schurz did so, and in a few days submitted to Mr.

Lincoln the skeleton of his argument on "Emancipation as a Peace Measure."

"That is the right thing to say," the President declared after reading it, " And, remember, you may hear from me on the same day."

On March 6 the speech was delivered, as had been arranged, before an audience which packed Cooper Union. No more logical and eloquent appeal for emancipation was made in all the war period. The audience received it with repeated cheers, and when Mr. Schurz sat down "the applause shook the hall," if we may believe the reporter of the New York "Tribune." Just as the meeting was adjourning, Mr. Schurz did hear from Mr. Lincoln, a copy of the message given that afternoon to Congress being placed in his hands. He at once read it to the audience, which, already thoroughly aroused, now broke out again in a " tremendous burst of applause."

The first effect of the message was to unite the radical supporters of Mr. Lincoln with the more moderate. "We are all brought by the common-sense message," said "Harper's Weekly," "upon the same platform. The cannon shot against Fort Sumter effected three-fourths of our political lines; the President's message has wiped out the remaining fourth." But to Mr. Lincoln's keen disappointment, the Border State representatives in Congress let the proposition pass in silence. He saw one and another of them but not a word did they say of the message. The President stood this for four days, then he summoned them to the White House to explain his position.

The talk was long and entirely friendly. The President said he did not pretend to disguise his anti-slavery feeling; that he thought slavery was wrong, and should continue to think so; but that was not the question they had to deal with. Slavery existed, and that, too, as well by the act of the

From photograph taken at Springfield, Illinois, early in 1861, by C. S. German, and owned b Allen Jasper Conant.