XXX.

JAMES C. Welling.

HE Emancipation Proclamation is the most

THE

signal fact in the administration of President Lincoln. It marks, indeed, the sharp and abrupt beginning of "the Great Divide," which, since the upheaval produced by the late civil war, has separated the polity and politics of the ante-bellum period from the polity and politics of the post-bellum era. No other act of Mr. Lincoln's has been so warmly praised on the one hand, or so warmly denounced on the other; and perhaps it has sometimes been equally misunderstood, in its real nature and bearing, by those who have praised it and those who have denounced it. The domestic institution against which it was leveled having now passed as finally into the domain of history as the slavery of Greece and Rome, it would seem that the time has come when we can review this act of Mr. Lincoln's in the calm light of reason, without serious disturbance from the illusions of fancy or the distortions of prejudice.

In order to give precision and definiteness to the

inquiry here taken, it seems necessary, at the threshold, to distinguish the true purport and operation of the Emancipation Proclamation from some things with which it is often confounded in popular speech. In the first place, it is proper to say that the procla mation, in its inception and in its motive, had nothing to do with the employment of slaves as laborers in the army. Fugitive slaves were so employed long before the utterance of such a manifesto had been contemplated, or the thought of it tolerated by the President. Just as little was the proclamation a necessary condition precedent to the enlistment of fugitive slaves as soldiers in the army. Mr. Lincoln was averse to the employment of negroes as soldiers at the time he issued the preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862, and he remained in this state of mind until the final edict was issued on the first of January following. It was not until the 20th of January, 1863, that Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, received permission to make an experiment in this direction.

We learn from the diary of Mr. Secretary Chase, that at a meeting of the Cabinet held on the 21st of July, 1862, the President "determined to take some definite steps in respect to military action and slavery." A letter from General Hunter having been submitted, in which he asked for authority to enlist "all loyal persons, without reference to com

plexion," it appears that Messrs. Stanton, Seward and Chase advocated the proposition, and no one in the Cabinet spoke against it; but, adds Mr. Chase, "the President expressed himself as averse to arming negroes." On the next day the question of arming slaves was again brought up, and Mr. Chase "advocated it warmly;" but the President was still unwilling to adopt this measure, and proposed simply to issue a proclamation based on the Confiscation act of July 17, 1862, "calling on the States to return to their allegiance, and warning the rebels that the provisions of that act would have full force at the expiration of sixty days; adding, on his own part, a declaration of his intention to renew at the next session of Congress his recommendation of compensation to States adopting the gradual abolishment of slavery, and proclaiming the emancipation of all slaves within States remaining in insurrection on the 1st of January. 1863."* So the first intimation made to the Cabinet of a purpose to proclaim the liberation of slaves in the insurgent States, was made in connection with the President's avowed opposition to the arming of negroes.

Writing from memory, Mr. Secretary Welles states, in his History of Emancipation, that the President, "early in August "-he thinks it was the 2d of August-submitted to the Cabinet "the rough

* Warden's Life of Chase, p. 440.

draft" of a proclamation to emancipate, after a certain day, all slaves in States which should then be in rebellion, but that Mr. Seward argued against the promulgation of such a paper at that time, “because it would be received and considered as a despairing cry-a shriek from and for the administration rather than for freedom." * He further records that the President, impressed with this view, closed his portfolio, and did not recur to the subject until after the battle of Antietam, which was fought on the 17th of September.

Writing in his diary under date of August 3d, but referring, doubtless, to the discussions held in the Cabinet on the previous day,† Mr. Chase records that, "for the tenth or twentieth time," he urged the adoption of a vigorous policy against slavery in the seceded States by "assuring the blacks of freedom on condition of loyalty, and by organizing the best of them in companies and regiments." He further records that Mr. Seward "expressed himself in favor of any measures which could be carried into effect without proclamation, and the President said that he was pretty well cured of objection to any measure, except want of adaptedness to put down the rebellion, but did not seem satisfied that the time had

* Galaxy, December, 1872, p. 845.

The meeting was held on a Saturday, according to Mr. Welles, and the 3d of August, 1862, was a Sunday.

come for the adoption of such a plan as I had pro

posed.

66

On the 22d of August, just one month after Mr. Lincoln had first opened the subject of emancipation to his Cabinet, he proceeded to take the whole country into his confidence on the relations of slavery to the war. On that day he wrote "the Greeley Letter"—a letter written in reply to an earnest and importunate appeal in which, assuming to utter the 'Prayer of Twenty Millions," Mr. Greeley had called on the President, with much truculence of speech, to issue a proclamation of freedom to all slaves in the Confederate States. As this letter was the first as well as the most pithy and syllogistic public discussion which the President ever gave to the subject in hand, it seems proper not only to insert it here in its entirety, but, as a matter of literary curiosity, to reproduce it in its original form. The following is a fac-simile of the letter:

How. Horace Greely:
Dear Sir-

19th

Executive Mansion.

Washington, August. Zal. 1809 222.1869

- I have just read yours of the addrenew to myself throughs the NewYork Tribueno_ If thew be in it any statements, or assumptions of face, which I may know to bes I do not, now and here, controvent

спортт

Warden's Life of Chase, p. 446.