ties, holding opposing views on the subject of slavery, gave utterance, in their respective houses of Congress, to those strikingly similar predictions, based on exactly opposite conditions. Said one of them:

"There is a niche in the temple of fame, a niche near to Washington, which should be occupied by the statue of him who shall save this country. Mr. Lincoln has a mighty destiny. It is for him, if he will, to step into that niche. It is for him to be but a President of the people of the United States, and there will his statue be. But if he choose to be, in these times, a mere sectarian and a party man, that niche will be reserved for some future and better patriot. It is in his power to occupy a place next to Washington, the Founder and Preserver, side by side."

The other prediction ran as follows:

"I, too, have a niche for Abraham Lincoln; but it is in Freedom's holy fane, and not in the blood-besmeared temple of human bondage; not surrounded by slave-fetters and chains, but with the symbols of freedom; not dark with bondage, but radiant with the light of Liberty. In that niche he shall stand proudly, nobly, gloriously, with shattered fetters and broken chains, and slave-whips beneath his feet. If Abraham Lincoln pursues the path evidently pointed out for him in the Providence of God, as I believe he will, then he will occupy the proud position I have indicated. That is a fame worth living for; aye, more: that is a fame worth dying for, though that death led through the blood of Gethsemane and the agony of the accursed tree. Let Abraham Lincoln make himself the emancipator, the liberator and his name shall not only be enrolled in this earthly temple, but it will be traced on the living stones of that temple which rears itself amid the thrones and hierarchies of Heaven."""

It will readily be inferred what were the conditions attached to these parallel predictions. With the first it was that Lincoln should use his authority that the institution of slavery might be protected and perpetuated in the States where it already existed; with the second, that slavery should be ultimately exterminated. Both predictions have been fulfilled by subsequent results: The first, in spite of its qualifications, and the last in accordance with

1Congressional Globe, 37th Congress (Second Session), Speech of Senator John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, on the Confiscation Bill, April 23, 1862.

2The same; Speech of Hon. Owen Lovejoy, of Illinois, in the House of Representatives, on the same measure, April 24, 1862.

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them. By common consent, not only of his own countrymen but of the civilized world, Abraham Lincoln has been assigned the place beside Washington here predicted for him. Neither prophet lived to see the entire fulfillment of his prediction, but while the heart of a succeeding generation is thrilled by the fervid eloquence of a Lovejoy, it seems like one of the revenges of history when one of the purest, most patriotic and loyal of the apologists for slavery was permitted to predict the renown of the man most responsible for its overthrow-a result over which his most bitter enemies now rejoice.

Yet the attempt has been renewed at intervals-though less frequently in later years than formerly to detract from Lincoln a part of the honor due to his memory, by claiming that he was not, in any proper sense of the term, a positive factor in securing the abolition of slavery on this continent; but that, so far as he was concerned, the result was an accident, the outcome and consequence of events and circumstances which he lacked the power to control. At times it has been some Northern representative of a class who opposed the war policy of the Government and predicted disaster from the attempt to resist secession by force of arms; while, again, it has been some adherent of the "Lost Cause," who has thus essayed to apologize for the effort to perpetuate the existence of an institution which was abhorrent to the moral sense of the age and condemned by universal Christendom. Both seek to justify their positions by assuming that the great leader in the cause of practical emancipation had no loftier motive than that which inspired their own action; but they only succeeded in stultifying themselves in face of the fact that their chief argument against both Lincoln's first election and his subsequent war policy was, that he contemplated precisely what they now affect to deny that he accomplished. They were wrong in the one case as they were in the other.

Invaluable as was the service which Lincoln rendered to his country and the cause of free government by his successful efforts for the preservation of the Union, there is no part of his public and official life that will have a stronger fascination for the student of history in the future than that connected with the framing and promulgation of his proclamation of emancipation. In fact, this is already regarded by many as the most conspicuous act of his grand career-the very climax and culmination of a life given for the salvation of the Republic. It is this fact which makes the story of the evolution of his emancipation policy of such absorbing interest.

There were two leading features of Lincoln's character which influenced the steps in his war policy leading up to the issue of his Emancipation Proclamation, viz: his love of freedom-which meant also his love of justice and his respect for the Constitution and the laws. By nature and his deep sympathy with every species of human suffering a "radical" in respect to the former, he was, at the same time, inherently and strongly conservative as to the latter. It was this characteristic which enabled him to effect all that the most zealous champion of emancipation hoped for, while adhering most closely to legal and constitutional methods in its accomplishment. This was evident in his whole career from the scene in New Orleans, when, as a young flatboatman, he had his indignation aroused by a revolting exhibition of the horrors of slavery, down to the final and crowning act in the great drama in which he was the chief actor, the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the approval of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in all the States. While his spoken and written words during this period do not show that he always held to the same position in regard to methods, they indicate a conscientious and consistent adherence to the same principles. When circumstances required a change of policy, he had the courage to make it. This never im

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plied a backward step, but every change indicated progress in accordance with existing conditions. This was especially evident in his official policy after he was entrusted with the direction of national affairs; and it was his strong logical sense and strict adherence to legal and constitutional methods, as well as his sagacity in keeping "close to the people," that made the entire removal of slavery possible in harmony with the preservation of the Union, in spite of the impatient criticism of political friends and the armed hostility of open and avowed enemies.

Some of the more conspicuous acts in Lincoln's public career, which may be referred to as constituting eras in the development of his policy with regard to the institution of slavery, include the following: (1) His protest (in conjunction with one other member of the Illinois House of Representatives) against a series of pro-slavery resolutions which had passed both branches of the General Assembly at the session of 1837, in which he declared his belief "that the institution of slavery is founded in both injustice and bad policy," and that "the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia;" (2) his demonstration before the Supreme Court of Illinois, in 1841, of the right of a slave girl to freedom under the Ordinance of 1787-thus determining the application of that second charter of American freedom to Illinois territory; (3) his introduction in the Congressional House of Representatives, in January, 1847, of a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, with the consent of the voters of the District and with compensation to the owners, together with his forty-two votes during the same session in favor of the Wilmot Proviso; (4) his speeches, beginning with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854-and in opposition to that measure-extending to 1860, including the debates with Senator Douglas in 1858.

During this period of over twenty years, there are fre

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quent utterances of opinion on the subject of slavery in his private correspondence-as in his letter to his friend, Joshua F. Speed, in 1855-but always in harmony with the views he had expressed in public in uncompromising hostility to the "institution." His speeches on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and especially the debates of 1858, furnish a most complete and comprehensive discussion of the slavery issue in all its aspects, as that question then stood between the advocates and the opponents of extension into new Territories, and made him the natural leader of the newly organized party then consolidating its forces for the successful campaign of 1860. His conservative position during the early part of this period is shown by the fact that he did not participate in the first Anti-Nebraska State Convention, held at Springfield, October 4 and 5, 1854, and, as indicated by his letter to Ichabod Codding of that year, declined to accept a place in the Republican State Central Committee to which he had been chosen by that convention. He clung to the hope, at that time, that the Whig party would be revivified by ranging itself in opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Yet no one questioned the consistency of his opinions and attitude on the slavery question, and, in 1856, he was in full sympathy with the Republican party, which came into fullfledged existence at Bloomington in that year. In taking this position he only followed out the injunction which he had given to his friends-the old line Whigs—at Peoria, in October, 1854, when he advised them to "stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." In the same speech, referring to a professed indifference whether slavery should be "voted down or up," which he construed to mean a "covert real zeal for the spread" of that institution, he said: "I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; en