floods of conflicting counsels as to the matter and manner of the answer poured in upon the President.

There were men among his newly appointed generals who were ready and willing to answer it for him as to the areas under their direction, oblivious of the need of uniformity in the policy to be pursued and of some other important considerations.

Decidedly the best solution of the difficulty was offered by General B. F. Butler, himself a former pro-slavery Democrat. Accepting in its fullness the idea that slaves were not human beings but mere personal property, they were also "property used for military purposes," of many kinds, and so, when captured or found, were "contraband of war," as much as a loaded musket or a quartermaster's wagon. They could not be sent back to strengthen the military hands of the enemy, and few "Contrabands" were returned to their owners after the slightly grotesque idea became well lodged in the minds of the army and its officers. The practice in this respect varied much for a while, but a fair degree of uniformity came at last in the sure course of human events. All Mr. Lincoln could do was to prevent pernicious haste, and this he managed to accomplish. His precise action in the most important case arising, that of Frémont in Missouri, was complicated with other considerations, and must be treated in another place. There is, however, something not a little absurd in the idea entertained and advocated by many: that for a number of months, at and about this time, Mr. Lincoln ceased to be the earnest foe of slavery he so long had becn, and that he was afterwards happily reconverted in time to write and issue the proclamation of emancipation, in 1863. He underwent no such falling away, and he required no such subsequent change of heart and purpose. In order to perceive the entire consistency of his course it is but necessary to form an approximately correct idea of the condition of our national affairs and of his relations to them in the remaining months of the year 1861 and during 1862.

The country was semi-chaotic in all its conditions, foreign relations and domestic affairs alike, political, moral, financial, and industrial. A revolution had arrived and was progressing which affected every citizen in all his relations in life, and the very excitement men were under prevented all but a very few from perceiving, studying, or comprehending the changes they were passing through. There is a sense in which Mr. Lincoln was an embodiment and expression of these changes. He also was developing, learning, advancing, and it is enough for his greatness that he was at all points and continually so much more advanced than other men, and so much better informed, that he was able to lead them wisely and not into ruin.

The national government at Washington, such as it was prior to the outbreak of the Rebellion, had been the object of varied degrees of patriotic devotion, but the average American voter had but a faint and fragmentary understanding of his duties relating to it or of its rights and powers relating to him.

These latter might be exceeded with impunity by Mr. Lincoln, so far as the masses of the people were concerned, so long as his action accorded at all with their conception of what it was best for him to do. It is therefore not very far from the truth to say that the President assumed and freely used, from time to time, all powers required by any emergency as being conferred upon him by the emergency. If these powers were also conferred upon him by the Constitution and the laws, as previously interpreted, so much the better for those instruments and for their previous interpretation. If not, it would answer equally well if Congress afterwards should pass laws covering the matters involved, and if the Constitution should be duly amended at the defective spot so discovered. Such is the fundamental law of all human societies in all revolutionary states and conditions. For Mr. Lincoln to have failed to utilize this would have been idiotically weak and would have involved sure destruction of the interests in his keeping.

From the first, nevertheless, all efforts were made to avoid unnecessary interferences with vested rights or the well-being of individuals. Mr. Lincoln's own personal characteristics came to the front in this connection. A large part of his daily annoyances came to him on account of his kindly inability to turn a deaf ear to a story of suffering or injustice. Any power he at any time assumed or exercised was taken not to himself at all. It was but a means applied to a manifest use, and, so far as he could determine, the best and most righteous means for the best and most righteous use. He toiled patiently and unselfishly. In such a multiplicity of duties his mind knew no rest, turning hourly from one branch of his responsibilities to another. He grappled resolutely with every problem put to him by his needs for action, foreign or domestic. It seems clear to those who knew him best that he himself perceived, as did many of his nearer observers, the swift and steady growth of his own capacities as a ruler of men. His inner life expanded under the intense heat of his trials. The strength of his will, the iron resolution which lay behind his easy-mannered kindliness, had been manifested day by day from his very childhood; but the world contains a multitude of strongwilled, resolute, able, successful men not one of whom contains the rare material whereof a Revolution may construct for its needs a competent Ruler.

The times were testing him in many ways. Weaker men, often more brilliant in many expressions of capacity, began to come frequently into what resembled collisions with him. It was all but amusing, now and then, to witness their surprise at their own helplessness in such trials of their strength as had not called upon him for conscious exertion, just as in the early days he had quietly held out at arm's length the burly wrestler from Clary's Grove.

He was now about to enter upon the most prolonged and perplexing of these collisions, and the only one which at any time seemed to present elements of public peril. His course

in the management of all minor difficulties may be rationally gathered or imagined after obtaining a fair understanding of the first struggle between "military authority" and "civil supremacy."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL.

The Army of the Potomac--Newspaper Acrobats-The President's MailWork of the Private Secretaries-Army Organization-An Advance which was Not Made-Offensive and Defensive War.

THE routine of Mr. Lincoln's office-work, during this first summer and autumn, as afterwards, was varied by occasional visits to the camps and forts, where he was always welcomed with enthusiasm. The personal attachment for him among the rank and file of the army grew faster and became stronger than his critics and enemies were at all willing to believe.

His evenings at home were also varied now not unfrequently by visits at the house of the general in command of the Army of the Potomace, when McClellan happened to be in the city. The President's course and personal relations with him for a time were, as nearly as might be, those of a confiding and familiar friend. The entire mass of the written correspondence between them bears witness to such a state of things. In the eyes of Mr. Lincoln's nearest advisers he seemed even too indifferent to all rules of military etiquette, and also to a very apparent assumption and arrogance in act and manner on the part of his brilliant subordinate. These were as yet of minor consequence, and the main thing, after all, was that the work in hand should be done.

There were great things going on in those days in the West and elsewhere; and of these we shall take due note farther on. But at the present juncture we have to do with matters. which then chiefly engaged Mr. Lincoln's attention, and that