which excited so much ill-feeling at the time and led many to believe that the distinguished General had not met with generous treatment at the hands of the President. Succeeding events proved that the policy of the President was not a selfish or vindictive one.

a measure.

In March, 1862, Mr. Lincoln transmitted a special message to Congress in which he recommended the adoption of a system of general emancipation. He proposed that the Government should take measures to co-operate with any State, which should adopt gradual abolition of slavery and to reimburse it in part for any public or private loss accruing from such He earnestly recommended that Congress take the matter into immediate consideration. April 16 a bill passed both Houses of Congress abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. This measure had been first proposed in Congress by Mr. Lincoln himself in 1849. It was then passed over as unworthy of consideration, but now, as President, he had the satisfaction of enrolling it among the laws of the land.

That a great revolution was taking place in public opinion was shown by the constantly increasing boldness of Congress and its progress towards the final step. June 19 slavery was prohibited forever in all present and future Territories of the United States. Thus the question, which had so often divided Congress and formed political issues, which had been ably debated upon every platform in the land and which had figured as the animus of the LincolnDouglas debates, was finally and forever settled. Had Douglas used his great ability and commanding eloquence to prevent rather than to favor the repeal

of the Missouri Compromise, the appeal to arms might never have occurred and the vexed question might have been settled by natural rather than by violent agencies.

July 17 a bill was passed authorizing the employment of negroes as soldiers and conferring freedom upon all who should regularly enlist in the army. Since the beginning of the war the camps of the Union forces had been beset by hordes of fugitive slaves, who believed that their only hope of freedom and safety consisted in getting under the shadow of the "Stars and Stripes" as soon as possible. They frequently came in such numbers as to seriously embarrass the movements of the army, and the question of their disposition became a grave problem. The bare suggestion that they would be enrolled in the Federal Armies, threw the Southern States into the most violent rage. Scathing were the denunciations hurled against the Government that should dare to take such a step. Rumors of slave insurrections and the horrible scenes attendant upon them spread far and wide. The rebel leaders proclaimed that no white officer connected with colored troops would be treated as a prisoner of war, if captured, but would be shot upon the spot. These threats and denunciations did not deter the Government from inaugurating the measure nor skillful officers from taking command of colored regiments. The negroes afterwards proved themselves good and faithful soldiers and the equal of their white brethren in bravery and daring. And so greatly did the Southern sentiment change that long before the close of the war many negroes were regularly enlisted into the Confederate armies.

Meantime, in the North, public sentiment was becoming more firmly fixed in favor of emancipation. And the pressure brought to bear upon the President became increasingly strong. Many delegations visited him and frequently with ill-timed arguments sought to induce him to proclaim freedom to all slaves. Among them was a Quaker delegation, the spokesman of which seemed to Mr. Lincoln to unfairly criticise him, and he replied somewhat sharply and was just on the point of dismissing the visitors, when one of the women requested permission to detain him with a few words. Her remarks contained a plea for the emancipation of the slave, urging that he was the appointed minister of the Lord to do this work, and she enforced her argument with many Scriptural quotations. At the close he asked:

"Has the Friend finished?" And, receiving an affirmative answer, he said: “I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if the Lord has appointed me to do this work, it is not probable he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her."

It is certain that he had long been earnestly and prayerfully considering the question. To him it was the most momentous step of his life and the one fraught with the greatest personal consequences. After the proclamation was issued, he said to a friend: "As affairs have turned, it is the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century."

Moses had led out from bondage two millions of

Hebrews, guided by the hand of God. Lincoln's task was no less God-given, and he waited anxiously for the pillar of cloud to lead the way. And as Moses never entered into the promised land, so he seems to have had a presentiment that he should not live to see the results of emancipation. He still clung to the idea of gradual and compensated emancipation. In speaking to a number of Congressmen from the border States in July, he said: “I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you had all voted for the resolution in my gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended. . . . I do not speak of an emancipation at once but of a decision to emancipate gradually."

To Mr. Channing, who visited him in this trying time and spoke warmly in favor of the measure, he said: "When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I shall be willing to do my duty, though it costs my life. And, gentlemen, lives will be lost."

It is evident that Mr. Lincoln, early in the summer of 1862, had made up his mind to take the decisive step, and that he was only waiting for the right time to come. Not long before he had said to a Southern Unionist, who had warned him against meddling with slavery: "You must not expect me to give up this Government without playing the last card." And there can be no doubt that his last card was emancipation. In September a number of Chicago clergymen visited him to urge upon him the immediate issuance of an emancipation proclamation. In the course of his reply to their address, he said: "I do not wish to issue a document that the whole world will see must

necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. . . . Do not misunderstand me, because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties which have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do."

The following interesting account of the circumstances attending the preparation and issue of the proclamation was given by Mr. Lincoln himself to Mr. Carpenter, who was engaged upon a painting of Lincoln and his Cabinet discussing the proclamation, as representing the new epoch in the national history. Said Mr. Lincoln:

"It had got to be mid-summer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting on the subject. This was the last of July or the first part of the month of August, 1862. I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject matter of the proclamation before them; suggestions as to which would be in order after they had