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dismissal. This decision was so far modified that instead a committee was instructed to present to the President resolutions requesting him to reconstruct the cabinet. Reporting this interview, Lincoln afterward said, "While they seemed to believe in my honesty, they also appeared to think that when I had in me any good purpose or intention Seward contrived to suck it out of me unperceived." At the time, he merely asked the committee to meet him in the evening. Meantime, he laid the whole matter frankly before his cabinet, explaining that he did not mean to intimate a desire for the resignation of any of them, and requested them to meet again in the evening. Seward stayed away. Having brought the cabinet and the committee together, Lincoln required a frank statement of the views of both sides. The final result of the complaints was that both Seward and Chase resigned. This outcome delighted Lincoln, who valued Seward highly. He knew of Chase's wire-pulling against the Secretary of State, and yet felt the difficulty of resisting the immense opposition to Seward. The President was now able, by declining to accept either resignation, to seem impartial between the two elements in his party, whereas had he not succeeded in getting Chase's resignation at the same time, a refusal to accept Seward's would have identified him with one wing. After it was all over, and

the two Secretaries were back in the cabinet, Lincoln said to a friend, "Now I can ride; I have got a pumpkin in each bag." Later he said, as recorded in Mr. Hay's diary: "If I had yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward, the thing would all have slumped over one way, and we should have been left with a scanty handful of supporters. When Chase gave in his resignation, I saw that the game was in my hands, and I put it through."

A few days after this Lincoln took his great final step of emancipation, not without fears. To a visitor a little while before he said: "As for the negroes, Doctor, and what is going to become of them: I told Ben Wade the other day, that it made me think of a story I read in one of my first books, Æsop's Fables. It was an old edition, and had curious rough woodcuts, one of which showed four white men scrubbing a negro in a potash kettle filled with cold water. The text explained that the men thought that by scrubbing the negro they might make him white. Just about the time they thought they were succeeding, he took cold and died. Now, I am afraid that by the time we get through this war the negro will catch cold and die."

On the afternoon of January 1, with some half jocose remarks about the trembling of his hand, he signed the document which formally declared

all slaves in the rebellious states forever free and added that they would be received into the armed service of the United States. At the suggestion of Secretary Chase, the President invoked "the gracious favor of the Almighty God."

CHAPTER XIII

POLITICS AND WAR

Two good effects of the Emancipation Proclamation were immediately seen, a slightly more favorable European attitude and a greater use of negro troops, which was found to have comparatively little effect on the soldiers from the border states. Never, on the other hand, had "Copperheadism," or lukewarmness approaching Southern sympathy, been so bad in the North. In dealing with Copperheads the President showed tact equal to his skilful manipulation of the border states. The army, too, required all his gentle but clear-cut insight. Compulsory service had now to be resorted to, and the result was a lowering of the average character of the soldiers and a great bickering among the states, each trying to avoid its quota, with many charges of partisanship against the administration. Moreover, there were defeats and no great victories, the struggle was long and dreary, and the President looked upon the increasing desertions from the army with the leniency of sympathetic comprehension. His story from January 1 to July 4,

1863, is one of patience, tact, kindness, and steady although hardly visible progress. At no time in his whole life does he show in complete fulness more sides of a great nature.

To Major General Dix on January 14 he wrote, marked "private and confidential," the following:

"The proclamation has been issued. We were not succeeding -at best were progressing too slowly-without it. Now that we have it, and bear all the disadvantages of it (as we do bear some in certain quarters), we must also take some benefit from it, if practicable. I, therefore, will thank you for your well-considered opinion, whether Fortress Monroe and Yorktown, one or both, could not, in whole or in part, be garrisoned by colored troops, leaving the white forces now necessary at those places to be employed elsewhere."

Even before the proclamation had been issued the President's feelings about the policy of returning slaves had progressed so far that he wrote a private letter, which on reflection he did not send, thus:

"Your despatch of yesterday is just received. I believe you are acquainted with the American classics (if there be such), and probably remember a speech of Patrick Henry in which he represented a certain character in the Revolutionary times as totally disregarding all questions of country, and 'hoarsely bawling, "Beef! beef!! beef!!!""

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