put before Congress, probably with little hope of result,
a comprehensive policy for dealing with slavery justly
and finally. He proposed that a Constitutional Amend-
ment should be submitted to the people providing: first,
that compensation should be given in United States bonds
to any State, whether now in rebellion or not, which
should abolish slavery before the year 1900; secondly,
that the slaves who had once enjoyed actual freedom
through the chances of the war should be permanently
free and that their owners should be compensated;
thirdly, that Congress should have authority to spend
money on colonisation for negroes. Even if the greater
part of these objects could have been accomplished with-
out a Constitutional Amendment, it is evident that such
a procedure would have been more satisfactory in the
eventual resettlement of the Union. He urged in his
Message how desirable it was, as a part of the effort to
restore the Union, that the whole North should be agreed
in a concerted policy as to slavery, and that parties should
for this purpose reconsider their positions. "The dogmas
of the quiet past," he said, are inadequate to the stormy
present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and
we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so
we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall
ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow
citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress
and this Administration will be remembered in spite of
ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can
spare one or another of us. We say we are for the
Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We
know how to save the Union. The world knows we do
know how to save it. In giving freedom to the slave
we assure freedom to the free. We shall nobly save or
meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means
may succeed, this could not fail." The last four words
expressed too confident a hope as to what Northern
policy apart from Northern arms could do towards end-
ing the war, but it was impossible to exaggerate the value
which a policy, concerted between parties in a spirit of

66

moderation, would have had in the settlement after victory. Every honest Democrat who then refused any action against slavery must have regretted it before three years were out, and many sensible Republicans who saw no use in such moderation may have lived to regret their part too. Nothing was done. It is thought that Lincoln expected this; but the Proclamation of Emancipation would begin to operate within a month; it would produce by the end of the war a situation in which the country would be compelled to decide on the principle of slavery, and Lincoln had at least done his part in preparing men to face the issue.

Before this, the nervous and irritable feeling of many Northern politicians, who found in emancipation a good subject for quarrel among themselves and in the slow progress of the war a good subject of quarrel with the Administration, led to a crisis in Lincoln's Cabinet. Radicals were inclined to think Seward's influence in the Administration the cause of all public evils; some of them had now got hold of a foolish private letter, which he had written to Adams in England a few months before, denouncing the advocates of emancipation. Desiring his downfall, they induced a small "caucus " of Republican Senators to speak in the name of the party and the nation and send the President a resolution demanding such changes in his Cabinet as would produce better results in the war. Discontented men of opposite opinions could unite in demanding success in the war; and Conservative Senators joined in this resolution hoping that it would get rid not only of Seward, but also of Chase and Stanton, the objects of their particular antipathy. Seward, on hearing of this, gave Lincoln his resig nation, which was kept private. Though egotistic, he was a clever man, and evidently a pleasant man to work with; he was a useful Minister under a wise chief, though he later proved a harmful one under a foolish chief. Stanton was most loyal, and invaluable as head of the War Department. Chase, as Lincoln said in private afterwards, was a pretty good fellow and a very able

66

Lühi

man"; Lincoln had complete confidence in him as a Finance Minister, and could not easily have replaced him. But this handsome, dignified, and righteous person was unhappily a sneak. Lincoln found as time went on that, if he ever had to do what was disagreeable to some important man, Chase would pay court to that important man and hint how differently he himself would have done as President. On this occasion he was evidently aware that Chase had encouraged the Senators who attacked Seward. Much as he wished to retain each of the two for his own worth, he was above all determined that one should not gain a victory over the other. Accordingly, l when a deputation of nine important Senators came to Lincoln to present their grievances against Seward, they found themselves, to their great annoyance, confronted with all the Cabinet except Seward, who had resigned, and they were invited by Lincoln to discuss the matter in his presence with these Ministers. Chase, to his still greater annoyance, found himself, as the principal Min ister there, compelled for decency's sake to defend Seward from the very attack which he had helped to instigate. The deputation withdrew, not sure that, after all, it wanted Seward removed. Chase next day tendered, as was natural, his resignation. Lincoln was able, now that he had the resignations of both men, to persuade both of their joint duty to continue in the public service. By this remarkable piece of riding he saved the Union from a great danger. The Democratic opposition, not actually to the prosecution of the war, but to any and every measure essential for it, was now developing, and a serious division, such as at this stage any important resignation would have produced in the ranks of the Republicans, or, as they now called themselves, the "Union men," would have been perilous.

On the first day of January, 1863, the President signed the further Proclamation needed to give effect to emancipation. The small portions of the South which were not in rebellion were duly excepted; the naval and military authorities were ordered to maintain the freedom

of the slaves seeking their protection; the slaves were enjoined to abstain from violence and to "labour faithfully for reasonable wages "if opportunity were given them; all suitable slaves were to be taken into armed service, especially for garrison duties. Before the end of 1863, a hundred thousand coloured men were already serving, as combatants or as labourers, on military work in about equal number. They were needed, for volunteering was getting slack, and the work of guarding and repairing railway lines was specially repellent to Northern volunteers. The coloured regiments fought well; they behaved well in every way. Atrocious threats of vengeance on them and their white officers were officially uttered by Jefferson Davis, but, except for one hideous massacre wrought in the hottest of hot blood, only a few crimes by individuals were committed in execution of these threats. To Lincoln himself it was a stirring thought that when democratic government was finally vindicated and restored by the victory of the Union, "then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue and clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consummation." There was, however, prejudice at first among many Northern officers against negro enlistment. The greatest of the few great American artists, St. Gaudens, commemorated in sculpture (as the donor of the new playing fields at Harvard commemorated by his gift) the action of a brilliant and popular Massachusetts officer, Robert Gould Shaw, who set the example of leaving his own beloved regiment to take command of a coloured regiment, at the head of which he died, gallantly leading them and gallantly followed by them in a desperate fight.

1

It was easier to raise and train these negro soldiers than to arrange for the control, shelter, and employment of the other refugees who crowded especially to the protection of Grant's army in the West. The efforts made for their benefit cannot be related here, but the recollections of Army Chaplain John Eaton, whom Grant

selected to take charge of them in the West, throw a little more light on Lincoln and on the spirit of his dealing with "the nigger question." When Eaton after some time had to come to Washington, upon the business of his charge and to visit the President, he received that impression, of versatile power and of easy mastery over many details as well as over broad issues, which many who worked under Lincoln have described, but he was above all struck with the fact that from a very slight experience in early life Lincoln had gained a knowledge of negro character such as very few indeed in the North possessed. He was subjected to many seemingly trivial questions, of which he was quick enough to see the grave purpose, about all sorts of persons and things in the West, but he was also examined closely, in a way which commanded his fullest respect as an expert, about the ideas, understanding, and expectations of the ordinary negroes under his care, and more particularly as to the past history and the attainments of the few negroes who had become prominent men, and who therefore best illustrated the real capacities of their race. Later visits to the capital and to Lincoln deepened this impression, and convinced Eaton, though by trifling signs, of the rare quality of Lincoln's sympathy. Once, after Eaton's difficult business had been disposed of, the President turned to relating his own recent worries about a colony of negroes which he was trying to establish on a small island off Hayti. There flourishes in Southern latitudes a minute creature called Dermatophilus penetrans, or the jigger, which can inflict great pain on barefooted people by housing itself under their toe-nails. This Colony had a plague of jiggers, and every expedient for defeating them had failed. Lincoln was not merely giving the practical attention to this difficulty that might perhaps be expected; the Chaplain was amazed to find that at that moment, at the turning point of the war, a few days. only after Vicksburg and Gettysburg, with his enormous pre-occupations, the President's mind had room for real and keen distress about the toes of the blacks in the Cow