cordance with the wish of the Executive conveyed in a channel unknown to the Constitution, the feeling broke out, in the debate of July 16, that the President had magnified his office. Sherman intimated that they were acting under "duress," while Lane, of Indiana, further declared that the duress was the "threat of a veto from the President." Preston King, of New York, and Trumbull thought that Congress was coerced by this mode of proceeding; and Wade sneered at the practice of learning the "royal pleasure" before they could pass a bill. When Congress adjourned the next day, some of the radical senators and representatives went home with a feeling of hostility to Lincoln, and of despair for the Republic.2

They misjudged him, but not unnaturally, for although he was thinking about slavery as earnestly as any of them, the indiscretion of a general had obliged him to take a position which seemed to them to indicate a reactionary policy. Hunter, who commanded the Department of the South, issued an order, May 9, declaring free all the slaves in South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. The first knowledge of this came to Lincoln through the newspapers one week later. Chase urged him to let the order stand. "No commanding general shall do such a thing upon my responsibility without consulting me," was the President's reply.3 May 19 he declared Hunter's order void, and in his proclamation appealed to the people of the border slave States to adopt some measure for the gradual abolishment of slavery, and accept the compensation for their slaves proffered them by the President and by Congress. "I do not argue," he said, "I beseech you to make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes

1 Globe, p. 3375 et seq.

2 Julian, Recollections, p. 220; Washington despatch to N. Y. Herald, July 17, also editorials of July 17, 18.

3 Warden, p. 433.

4 See vol. iii. p. 631.

common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time, as in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it." This fervent and reasonable appeal did not convince those to whom it was addressed, but it showed the people of the North that the President desired to rid the nation of slavery if it could be done in a constitutional manner. In spite of the muttering at Washington, the declaration that Hunter's emancipation order was void received general approval throughout the country, since many Republicans, who were eager to see blows struck at slavery from any quarter, felt that they must yield to Lincoln, who had the power and responsibility.2

Two events happening previously to this indicated that the administration was keeping step with the march of human freedom. The first man in our history to suffer death for violating the laws against the foreign slave trade was hanged at New York in February.3 In April Secretary Seward con

1 Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 156.

2 N. Y. Herald, May 17, 20, Tribune, May 19, 20. R. H. Dana wrote Sumner, June 7: "If two papers were opened — one for Hunter's proclamation and the other for the President's present position on that point-to be signed only by voters, the latter would have three to one in Massachusetts." Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. But see Governor Andrew's opinion in his letter to Stanton, May 19, Schouler's Mass. in the Civil War, p. 333. Chase, urging the President to let Hunter's order stand, had written: "It will be cordially approved, I am sure, by more than nine-tenths of the people on whom you must rely for support of your administration.” – Warden, p. 434. Senator Grimes wrote his wife: "The President has to-day rescinded Hunter's proclamation. The result will be a general row in the country. All the radical Republicans are indignant but me, and I am not, because I have expected it and was ready for it. . . . But the end must come, protracted by the obstinacy and stupidity of rulers it may be, but come it will nevertheless."-Salter, p. 196.

3 Sumner's Works, vol. vi. p. 474; DuBois, Suppression of the Slave Trade p. 191. On the subject generally of the coastwise slave-trade and

cluded an honorable and efficient treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the African slave trade.1

So

How the government could treat slavery and the slaves to redound to the advantage of the Union cause was made the overpowering question in Lincoln's mind by his visit of July 8 to the Army of the Potomac at Harrison's Landing, which brought home to him with telling force the disastrous event of the Peninsular campaign. Gradual emancipation of the slaves, compensation of their owners, and colonization of the freed negroes, this is the policy that he adopted. vital did he deem some action of this kind that he could not allow the senators and representatives of the border slave States to go home on the adjournment of Congress before he had brought the matter again to their attention. July 12 he called them to the White House, and asked them earnestly if they would not adopt his policy and accept compensation for their slaves. He spoke of the hope entertained by "the States which are in rebellion" that their sister slave communities would join their Confederacy. "You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces and they can shake you no more forever. . . . If the war continues long. . . the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion by the mere incidents of war. . . . Much of its value is gone already. How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event." He then told them and the public of a difficulty he had to contend with," one which threatens division among those who, united, are none too strong." Out of

the non-enforcement of the laws against it, see DuBois, pp. 154, 162, 178, 180-187.

66

1 Ratified by the Senate, April 24, without dissent. Sumner hastened to the State Department to inform the Secretary of the vote. Seward leaped from his lounge, where he had been sleeping, and exclaimed: 'Good God! the Democrats have disappeared! This is the greatest act of the administration."" - Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 68.

General Hunter's order the discord had lately arisen. "In repudiating it," Lincoln continued, "I gave dissatisfaction if not offence to many whose support the country cannot afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me and increasing." In conclusion he averred that "our common country is in great peril,” and besought them to help him save our form of government.1 A majority of the representatives of Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and Maryland in the two houses of Congress, twenty in number, replied that the policy advocated seemed like an interference of the national government in a matter belonging exclusively to the States; they questioned the constitutional power of Congress to make an appropriation of money for such a purpose; they did not believe that the country could bear the expense proposed; they doubted the sincerity of Congress in making the offer, and thought that funds for the compensation of slave owners should be placed at the disposal of the President before the border States were called upon to entertain such a proposition.2 One other objection must have weighed with them, which is only hinted at in their reply. It was a

1 Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 109.

2 McPherson, Political History of the Great Rebellion, p. 215. In the course of their reply they said: "It seems to us that this resolution [of March, see vol. iii. p. 631] was but the annunciation of a sentiment which could not or was not likely to be reduced to an actual tangible proposition. No movement was then made to provide and appropriate the funds required to carry it into effect; and we were not encouraged to believe that funds would be provided." Senator Henderson, who made an individual reply favorable to the President's views, wrote: "I gave it [the resolution of March] a most cheerful support, and I am satisfied it would have received the approbation of a large majority of the border States delegations in both branches of Congress, if, in the first place, they had believed the war with its continued evils the most prominent of which, in a material point of view, is its injurious effect on the institution of slavery in our Statescould possibly have been protracted for another twelve months; and if in the second place they had felt assured that the party having the majority in Congress would, like yourself, be equally prompt in practical action as in the expression of a sentiment."

Minority replies favorable to the President's position were made by seven representatives and by Horace Maynard of Tennessee, as well as by Senator Henderson. McPherson, p. 217 et seq.

part of the plan that payment for the slaves should be made in United States bonds, and while negro property had become admittedly precarious the question must have suggested itself, whether, in view of the enormous expenditure of the government, the recent military reverses, and the present strength of the Confederacy, the nation's promises to pay were any more valuable. Gold, which June 2 was at three and onehalf per cent. premium, fetched now, owing to McClellan's defeat and the further authorized issue of paper money,2 seventeen per cent.: its price from this time forward measures the fortunes of the Union cause.

During a drive to the funeral of Secretary Stanton's infant son, the day after his interview with the border State representatives, Lincoln opened the subject, which was uppermost in his mind, to Seward and to Welles. The reverses before Richmond, the formidable power of the Confederacy, made him earnest in the conviction that something must be done in the line of a new policy. Since the slaves were growing the food for the Confederate soldiers, and served as teamsters and laborers on intrenchments in the army service, the President had "about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity, absolutely essential for the salvation of the nation, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued." In truth, he was prepared to go as far in the path to liberation as were the radical Republicans of Congress. The inquiry therefore is worth making, why he did not recommend to Congress some measure to this end, which, with his support, would undoubtedly have been carried. It would appear reasonable that if the President under the rights of war could emancipate the slaves, Congress with the executive approval

4

1 Henderson said that in Missouri" a third or more of the slaves owned at the time of the last census" had been lost. - McPherson, p. 219.

2 The Act approved July 11 authorized the additional issue of $150,000,000 United States legal-tender notes.

3 Sunday, July 13.

Diary of Secretary Welles, Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 121; Welles's article in the Galaxy, Dec. 1872. C. E. Hamlin says that Lincoln read to the Vice-President, June 18, a draft of a proclamation freeing the slaves. — Life of Hannibal Hamlin, p. 429.