everywhere. On September 13, he was visited by an influential deputation from the religious denominations of Chicago, urging him to issue at once a proclamation of universal emancipation. Courteously, but with an understanding of the matter and with a knowledge of his previous action and his future intentions, he answered them with true Lincoln wisdom, his argument being one of his direct, unanswerable

statements.

"I am approached," he said, “with most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represented the Divine Will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps, in some respects, both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal His Will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me. *** What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet.

** I view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion."

Four days after this interview the battle of Antietam was fought, and when after a few days of uncertainty it was ascertained that it could be reasonably claimed a Union victory, the President resolved to carry out his long mature purpose.

Lincoln came at last to the Emancipation Proclamation, came to it by such well lighted roads, and with such high and holy steps that, in his own words it came as "gently as the dews from heaven, not rending or wrecking anything." It came to be irrevocably joined to the Union which its promul

gation at an earlier date might have destroyed. It came after Lincoln had long striven to show the owners of slaves an easier way, a way which as he told them would have given to them the undying glory that will forever crown the brow and illumine his name as the Great Emancipator.

Chapter XVIII

RED FIELDS OF WAR

N THE SPRING of '61 the wrinkled front of war was to

be smoothed in three months. But it was not so. Before

I

a year went by there were under arms, North and South, at least half a million men. General McClellan with the Army of the Potomac commanded the largest army that the world had ever seen, more than 200,000 men reporting for duty. Union generals in other departments had armies of from 20,000 to 30,000 men and these sometimes were joined in battle under their separate commanders forming a force of upwards of

100,000.

Besides these great armies there was good fighting going on all the way from the Atlantic seaboard to the foothills of the Rockies. Cavalry brigades acting almost independently fought heroic engagements. Wild riders from the great plains, an entire regiment mounted on white horses sweeping down from the plateaus of Colorado to clash in sabre encounters with Quantrel and his equally wild and adventurous riders from the field of Missouri and the far stretched prairies of Texas; detachments of both North and South fighting back and forth across the border throughout Missouri; Indian regiments recruited in the Indian Territory for both sides dashing into the barbarous conflict; all this gave a romantic color to the fringe of the struggle outside the great armies assembled

and assembling from the Mississippi to the plains before Washington.

While McClellan, with a Napoleon's ambition to win the war with one stupendous battle in the Peninsula, was calling for more men and more men to make success certain when he should move, Grant, with untrained troops formed of regiments from Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio-not soldiers, merely, but patriots one and all—with dogged determination drove forward, taking Fort Henry and Fort Donnelson, Pittsburg Landing, and, finally investing Vicksburg, roused the Nation to cheering enthusiasm with his unconditional surrender demands, in reply to requests for an armistice.

A West Pointer with a record of cool bravery and ability in the Mexican War as a Lieutenant, Grant found little encouragement from the politicians in Illinois when from a small tannery at Galena he offered his services to the Union. Finally given a commission as Colonel of Volunteers by the Governor of Illinois, he drilled his men and got into action without delay. He moved on like some ponderable substance propelled by its own weight until after his capture of Donnelson, when Lincoln recognized his energy and indomitable courage and made him a Major General of Volunteers. Under Halleck, who had command of the Department of Missouri, he won his battles. Halleck took credit to himself for the territory and forts gained, and Grant, close mouthed, grim, taciturn, asked for no promotion but only for victories.

Before Washington, lay McClellan's own army of 200,000 well-fed, well-equipped, perfectly drilled soldiers, fretting for action. Action came, but so manipulated under division commanders jealous for preferment and willing only to win when they, and not their brother generals should be credited with

victory, that successful engagements were allowed to lapse into drawn battles or general defeats. Out of this tangled skein of selfish ambitions, with General McClellan himself the chief offender, grew up that strange controversy between the General-in-Chief of all the Armies and the Administration which, as is well seen today, prolonged the war and cost the Nation immeasurable blood and treasure.

Lincoln, the civilian from the Illinois prairies, with no military training beyond that of a Captain of a few volunteers in the Black Hawk War, now Commander-in-Chief of all the Union Armies, was the rock against which beat the storm of criticism for McClellan's refusal to move his army until he should have a force so large as to overwhelm the enemy. This criticism also came from officers and soldiers in the field who had somehow come to look upon McClellan as the one military genius of war. Backed by this unaccountable worship of the soldiers, McClellan grew every day more arrogant and felt his gorge rise with every suggestion of the President that he move upon the enemy. His troops were so numerous, so altogether fit, and had such stores of arms and supplies, that Lincoln's patience was tried to the limit to see them inactive in their miles of white tents before the Capitol, while the Southern Armies ravaged the fair fields of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and sometimes threatened Washington. At one time, despairing of getting McClellan to use the magnificent army which the country had freely given him, Lincoln said:

"If McClellan is not going to use his army I should like to borrow it for a little while."

Could he have done so, there is no doubt now of the practical use to which he would have put it. Not being able to take the army himself, and knowing of no other military man in