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."

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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 by Allen Jasper Conant.

LINCOLN AND EMANCIPATION

ΙΟΙ

North as of the South; and in any scheme to get rid of it,
the North as well as the South was morally bound to do its
full and equal share. He thought the institution wrong and
ought never to have existed; but yet he recognized the rights
of property which had grown out of it, and would respect
those rights as fully as similar rights in any other property;
that
property can exist, and does legally exist. He thought
such a law wrong, but the rights of property resulting must
be respected; he would get rid of the odious law, not by vio-
lating the right, but by encouraging the proposition, and
offering inducements to give it up. The representatives as-
sured Mr. Lincoln before they left that they believed him to
be" moved by a high patriotism and sincere devotion to the
happiness and glory of his country;" they promised him to
"consider respectfully" the suggestions he had made, but
it must have been evident to the President that they either
had little sympathy with his plan or that they believed it
would receive no favor from their constituents.

Although the message failed to arouse the Border States, it did stimulate the anti-slavery party in Congress to complete several practical measures. Acts of Congress were rapidly approved forbidding the army and navy to aid in the return of fugitive slaves, recognizing the independence of Liberia and Haiti, and completing a treaty with Great Britain to suppress slave trading. One of the most interesting of the acts which followed close on the message of March 6 emancipated immediately all the slaves in the District of Columbia. One million dollars was appropriated by Congress to pay the loyal slaveholders of the District for their loss, and $100,000 was set aside to pay the expenses of such negroes as desired to emigrate to Haiti or Liberia.

The Administration was now committed to compensated emancipation, but there were many radicals who grew restive at the slow working of the measure. They began again to call

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102

LIFE OF LINCOLN

for more trenchant use of the weapon in Lincoln's hand. The commander of the Department of the South, General David Hunter, in his zeal, even issued an order declaring:

Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.

Mr. Lincoln's first knowledge of this proclamation came to him through the newspapers. He at once pronounced it void. At the same time he made a declaration at which a man less courageous, one less confident in his own policy, would have hesitated-a declaration of his intention that no one but himself should decide how the weapon in his hand was to be used:

I further make known that, whether it be competent for me, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field.

It was a public display of a trait of Mr. Lincoln of which the country had already several examples. He made his own decisions, trusted his own judgment as a final authority.

In revoking Hunter's order, Mr. Lincoln again appealed to the Border States to accept his plan of buying and freeing their slaves, and as if to warn them that the unauthorized step which Hunter had dared to take might yet be forced upon the administration, he said:

I do not argue-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 considera