BRARY

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 fights 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 violating the right, but by encouraging the proposition, and offering inducements to give it up. The representatives assured 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.

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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

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 iricompatible; 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

tion of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partizan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it.

The President's treatment of Hunter's order dissatisfied many who had been temporarily quieted by the message of March 6. Again they besought the President to emancipate and arm the slaves. The authority and magnitude of the demand became such that Mr. Lincoln fairly staggered under it. Still he would not yield. He could not give up yet his hope of a more peaceful and just system of emancipation. But while he could not do what was asked of him, he seems to have felt that it was possible that he was wrong, and that another man in his place would be able to see the way. In a remarkable interview held early in the summer with several Republican senators, among whom was the Honorable James Harlan, of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, the President actually offered to resign and let Mr. Hamlin, the Vice-President, initiate the policy.*

The senators went to Mr. Lincoln to urge upon him the paramount importance of mustering slaves into the Union army. They argued that as the war was really to free the negro, it was only fair that he should take his part in working out his own salvation. Mr. Lincoln listened thoughtfully to every argument, and then replied:

Gentlemen, I have put thousands of muskets into the hands of loyal citizens of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Western

The account of this interview was given to me by the late Hon. James Harlan of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and was corrected by him before his death.

North Carolina. They have said they could defend themselves, if they had guns. I have given them the guns. Now, these men do not believe in mustering in the negro. If I do it, these thousands of muskets will be turned against us. We should lose more than we should gain.

The gentlemen urged other considerations, among them that it was not improbable that Europe, which was antislavery in sentiment, but yet sympathized with the notion of a Southern Confederacy, preferring two nations to one in this country, would persuade the South to free her slaves. in consideration of recognition. After they had exhausted every argument, Mr. Lincoln answered them.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I can't do it. I can't see it as you do. You may be right, and I may be wrong; but I'll tell you what I can do; I can resign in favor of Mr. Hamlin. Perhaps Mr. Hamlin could do it."

The senators, amazed at this proposition, "which," says Senator Harlan, I was made with the greatest seriousness, and of which not one of us doubted the sincerity," hastened to assure the President that they could not consider such a step on his part; that he stood where he could see all around the horizon; that he must do what he thought right; that, in any event, he must not resign.

If at this juncture McClellan had given the President a successful campaign it is probable that the radicals would have been more patient with the measure for compensated emancipation. The Border States seeing an overthrow of the Confederacy imminent might have hastened to avail themselves of it. But McClellan was giving the President little but anxiety. He had undertaken the long deferred campaign against Richmond at the beginning of April, but had begun by disobeying the clause of the President's order which instructed him to leave enough troops around Wash

ington to insure its safety. When he arrived in the Peninsula he began to fortify his position as if he were entering on a defensive instead of offensive campaign, and it was only after repeated probing by the administration that he advanced. Every mile of his route towards Richmond was made only after urgent pleas and orders from the President and the Secretary of War and bitter complaints and forebodings on his part.

Mr. Lincoln's attitude towards his general-in-chief in this trying spring of 1862 is a most interesting study. He evidently had determined to exercise fully his power as commander-in-chief, to force McClellan into battle and to compel him to carry out the orders which he as chief executive gave. Conscious of his ignorance of military matters, and anxious to avoid errors, he exhausted every source of information on the army and its movements. Secretary Stanton himself did not watch the Army of the Potomac more closely in this campaign than did President Lincoln. Indeed, of the three rooms occupied by the military telegraph office at the War Department, one came to be called the “President's room," so much time did he spend there. During a part of the war, this room was occupied by Mr. A. B. Chandler, now the President of the Postal Telegraph Union.

"I was alone in this room," says Mr. Chandler, "and as few people came there to see me, Mr. Lincoln could be alone. He used to say, 'I come here to escape my persecutors. Many people call and say they want to see me for only a minute. That means, if I can hear their story and grant their request in a minute, it will be enough.' My desk was a large one with a flat top, and intended to be occupied on both sides. Mr. Lincoln ordinarily took the chair' opposite mine at this desk. Here he would read over the telegrams received for the several heads of departments, all of which came to this office. It was the practice to make three