the Administration. Mr. Lincoln was ignorant and weak, men said, else he would have found generals who would have won victories. A large part of the North, the anti-slavery element, bitterly denounced him, because he had taken no action as yet in regard to slavery. They would have him employ the slaves in the armies, free those which escaped.

Lincoln understood clearly how strong a weapon against the South the arming and emancipating of the slaves might be, but he did not want to use it. Throughout his entire political life he had disclaimed any desire to meddle with slavery in the States where the Constitution recognized it. He had undertaken the war not to free men but to preserve the Union. Moreover he feared that the least interference with slavery would drive from him those States lying between the North and South, which believed in the institution and yet were for the Union.

Already they had given him much substantial aid. He hoped to win them entirely to the North. Emancipation would surely make that hope vain. It was largely because he wished to keep their support that when as had happened twice already in his year of service, prominent subordinates had attempted to help the Northern cause by measures affecting slavery, he had promptly annulled their orders.

Yet now for many weeks he had been coming to the conclusion that he must do something with this weapon. He must do it to throw confusion into the South, with whom so far the military advantage lay, to win sympathy from Europe, which, exasperated by the suffering which the failure to get cotton caused the people, was threatening to recognize the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation, above all to disarm the enemy in his rear-the dissatisfied faction of his own supporters who were beginning to threaten that if he did not free and arm the slaves he could

get his hands on, they would stop the arms and money they were sending him to carry on the war.

All through the fall of 1861 he was examining this weapon of emancipation, much as a man in a desperate situation might a dagger which he did not want to unsheath, but feared he might be forced to. He was seeking a way to use it, if the time came when he must, that would accomplish all the ends he had in view and still would not drive the Border States from the Union. The plan upon which he finally settled was a simple and just, though impracticable one-he would ask Congress to set aside money gradually to buy and free the negroes in those States that could be persuaded to give up the institution of slavery. Having freed the slaves, he proposed that Congress should colonize them in territory bought for the purpose.

According to Charles Sumner, Mr. Lincoln had this plan of compensated emancipation well developed by December 1, 1861. The Senator reached Washington on that day, and went in the evening to call on the President. Together they talked over the annual message, which was to be sent to Congress on the 3d. Mr. Sumner was disappointed that it said nothing about emancipation. He had been speaking in Massachusetts on "Emancipation our Best Weapon," and he ardently desired that the President use the weapon. The President explained the plan he had developed, and Mr. Sumner urged that it be presented at once. Mr. Lincoln declined to agree to this, but as he rose to say good-by to his visitor, he remarked:

"Well, Mr. Sumner, the only difference between you and me on this subject is a difference of a month or six weeks in time."

"Mr. President," said Mr. Sumner, "if that is the only difference between us, I will not say another word to you about it till the long-set time you name has passed by."

"Nor should I have done so," continues Sumner in telling

the story," but about a fortnight after, when I was with him, he introduced the subject himself, asked my opinion on some details of his plan, and told me where it labored his mind. At that time he had the hope that some one of the Border States, Delaware, perhaps, if nothing better could be got, might be brought to make a proposition which could be made use of as the initiation to hitch the whole thing to. * He was in correspondence with some persons at a distance with this view, but he did not consult a person in Washington, excepting Mr. Chase and Mr. Blair, and myself. Seward knew nothing about it."

Sumner could not keep still, after this, about the plan. Almost every time he saw Lincoln he put in a word. Thus, when the Trent affair was up, he took occasion to read the President a little lecture:

"Now, Mr. President," he said, "if you had done your duty earlier in the slavery matter, you would not have this trouble on you. Now you have no friends, or the country has none, because it has no policy upon slavery. The country has no friends in Europe, excepting isolated persons. England is not a friend. France is not. But if you had commenced your policy about slavery, this thing could and would have come and gone and would have given you no anxiety.

"Every time I saw him I spoke to him about it, and I saw him every two or three days. One day I said to him, I remember, I want you to make Congress a New Year's present of your plan. But he had some reason still for delay. He was in correspondence with Kentucky, there was a Mr. Speed in Kentucky to whom he was writing; he read me one of his letters once, and he thought he should hear from there how people would be affected by such a plan.' At one

*The conversation between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Sumner here reported is taken from an unpublished manuscript courteously put at my disposal by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Mr. Hale visited Washington in April, 1862, and called on Mr. Sumner, who entertained him with the history of the President's Message on Compensated Emancipation. He made the full notes of the story, which are here published.

time I thought he would send in the message on New Year's Day; and I said something about what a glorious thing it would be. But he stopped me in a moment; 'Don't say a word about that,' he said; I know very well that the name which is connected with this act will never be forgotten.' Well, there was one delay and another, but I always spoke to him till one day in January he said sadly that he had been up all night with his sick child. I was very much touched, and I resolved that I would say nothing to the President about this or any other business if I could help it till that child was well or dead. And I did not. I had never said a word to him again about it—one morning here, before I had breakfast, before I was up indeed, both his secretaries came over to say that he wanted to see me as soon as I could see him. I dressed at once, and went over. 'I want to read you my message,' he said; ' I want to know how you like it. I am going to send it in to-day." "

It was on the morning of March 6, 1862, that Mr. Lincoln sent for Mr. Sumner to read his message. A few hours later, when the Senator reached the Capitol, he went to the Senate desk to see if the President had carried out his intention. Yes, the document was there.

As Mr. Sumner's history of the message given to Dr. Hale shows, Mr. Lincoln for months quietly prepared the way for his plan. One of his most adroit preparatory manoeuvers, and one of which Mr. Sumner evidently knew nothing, was performed in New York City, through the Hon. Carl Schurz, who at that time was the American Minister to Spain.*

Mr. Schurz, who had gone to Madrid in 1861, had not been long there before he concluded that there would be great danger of the Southern Confederacy being recognized by France and England unless the aspect of the situation was

*The following accounts of Mr. Schurz's interviews with Mr. Lincoln and the plan the two gentlemen arranged for introducing the subject of compensated emancipation to the public was given me by Mr. Schurz himself. The manuscript has been corrected by him, and is published with his permission.

speedily changed, either by a decisive military success, or by some evidence on the part of the Administration that the war was to end in the destruction of slavery. If the conflict were put on this high moral plane, Mr. Schurz believed the sympathy of the people in Europe would be so strong with the North that interference in favor of the South would be impossible. All of this he wrote to Mr. Seward in September of 1861, but he received no reply to his letter other than a formal acknowledgment.

After a little time, Mr. Schurz wrote to Mr. Lincoln, saying that he wanted to come to Washington and personally represent to the Administration what he conceived to be the true nature of public opinion in Europe. Mr. Lincoln wrote to him to come, and he arrived in Washington in the last week of January, 1862. He went at once to the White House, where he was received by the President, who listened attentively to his arguments, the same he had made by letter to Mr. Seward. When he had finished his presentation of the case, Mr. Lincoln said that he was inclined to accept that view, but that he was not sure that the public sentiment of the country was ripe for such a policy. It had to be educated up to it. Would not Mr. Schurz go to New York and talk the matter over with their friends, some of whom he named?

Mr. Schurz assented, and a few days afterwards reported to Mr. Lincoln that the organization of an "Emancipation Society," for the purpose of agitating the idea, had been started in New York, and that a public meeting would be held at the Cooper Union on March 6.

"That's it; that is the very thing," Mr. Lincoln replied. "You must make a speech at this meeting. Go home and prepare it. When you have got it outlined, bring it to me, and I will see what you are going to say."

Mr. Schurz did so, and in a few days submitted to Mr.

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