friends of liberal institutions in foreign nations. I have said that General Halleck is reputed to be an able officer; but most perversely he undoes with one hand what he does with the other. He undoes by his orders the good he does as a general. While professing to make war upon the Rebellion, he sustains its chief and most active power, and degrades his gallant army to be the constables of slavery. Slavery is the constant rebel and universal enemy. It is traitor and belligerent together, and is always to be treated accordingly. Tenderness to slavery now is practical disloyalty, and practical alliance with the enemy. Against these officers to whom I have referred to-day I have no personal unkindness. I should much prefer to speak in their praise; but, sir, I am in earnest. While I have the honor of a seat in the Senate, no success, no victory, shall be any apology or any shield to a general who undertakes to insult human nature. From the midst of his triumphs I will drag him forward to receive the condemnation which such conduct, deserves." The border State members, however, though aware that their opposition would be overborne by the force of numbers, met the efforts of the free State members not only with argument and appeal, but with ridicule, captious motions, and the like. Thus Mr. Saulsbury moved to amend the resolution by adding to it," and what further legislation is necessary to prevent the illegal capture and imprisonment of the free white citizens of the United States." In support of the amendment he said: "But, while we are entertained every morning with a narrative of the grievances of the black men of this country, the free negroes and the slaves of this country, thinking equally as much, and although it may be an infirmity and a weakness at the present time to say it-thinking a little more, of the free white citizens of my country, I will, in my place, demand that justice shall be done them, and that free white men, who have done naught to injure their country, to destroy its institutions or its Union, shall be protected, and that inquiry shall be made to see if further legislation is necessary to secure them in their rights." CHAPTER XXIII. AIDING THE BORDER STATES. Difficult and delicate position of the President. His proposition. - Debate in Congress.- Democratic opposition. -Division of sentiment among Republicans. - Stevens, Bingham, Olin. Senate. Opposition by Saulsbury, Latham, McDougall, Davis. — Resolution defended by Morrill. - Passed. Other propositions. Deep feeling. Resolutions of Wilson, White. Committee of Nine. - Bill. - Noell's bill and speech. — Clements, Wickliffe. — Debate. — Henderson, Kennedy, Turpie, Richardson. Questions of time and compensation. Harris, Sherman, Foster. - Amendments. Howard. Speeches of Wilson, Cowan, Sumner. - Bill passed. - Lost in the House. Conferences with border State representatives. - President's letter. Majority and minority replies. -- -- THE difficult and delicate task imposed upon President Lincoln in attempting to adjust his policy in the matter of slavery to the jarring interests and conflicting claims of Northern antislavery and Southern Unionism has been frequently referred to in the preceding pages. Beginning his administration with the simple purpose to save the Union, without regard to slavery except to fulfil with punctilious. exactness all constitutional obligations, but gradually awaking to what soon became incontrovertible, that the nation could no more be saved than it could "endure half slave and half free," he was confronted with the grave problem of so far satisfying and conciliating both extremes as to keep them actively and vigorously engaged in the work of prosecuting the war, with its immense cost and fearful sacrifices. Plainly he could not satisfy both, if either. "Few great public men," it has been said, "have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciations than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast from within and without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slaveholders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an Abolition war; and he was most bitterly assailed for making the war an Abolition war." During the first year he did not relinquish the ruling idea, so firmly and freely expressed at the outset by both himself and party, that the only end for which the war was prosecuted was the vindication of the authority of the Federal government and the maintenance of the Union, with no designs whatever upon the peculiar institutions of the South. Indeed, for that time the policy of his administration had been so sedulously guarded in that direction that it was deemed far more favorable to the Southern than to the Northern side of the great question at issue. So far had this purpose given color and direction to his policy that he felt constrained to take special pains to disavow by words and actions any intention of interfering with the system, not only allowing generals to return. fugitives to their masters, but modifying the proclamation of Fremont, who had declared the slaves of Rebels free, and relieving him of his command. General Hunter in South Carolina had gathered from the slaves, whose masters were fugitives, a regiment of colored soldiers; but Congress adopted a resolu tion calling him to account therefor. Before that, too, Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State, had been still more explicit in his despatch to Mr. Dayton, Minister to France. After saying that "the condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same whether the war succeed or not," he added "to this incontestable statement the further fact that the new President, as well as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, has always repudiated all designs whatever and whenever imputed to him and them, of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the Constitution and the laws." But the progress of events and the purposes of Providence were stronger than the plans and policies of politicians; and the administration, if so disposed, could not longer repress or ignore this growing sentiment of the loyal States that this immunity of slavery should be at least considered, and made the subject of discussion. But the difficulty in the way of either moving or standing still was great and every way serious. "Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Hickman of Pennsylvania, "has found himself between two swords, the sword of the party looking to a particular policy to be pursued towards a Rebellion springing from slavery; and the sword in the hands of the border States, who insist all the time that the war shall be prosecuted in such a way as to save their peculiar, divine, and humanizing institution." But Mr. Lincoln, more cautious and chary, if not wiser, than his censors and assailants, sought the object desired by more gradual approaches. He would persuade and aid the slaveholders of the border States to do voluntarily what he hesitated to attempt by coercion. On the 6th of March, 1862, he sent a special message to Congress recommending the adoption of a resolution pledging the United States government to co-operate, by appropriate legislation and pecuniary, aid, "with any State which would adopt a system of the gradual abolishment of slavery." In this message, after saying that if the proposition did not "meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is the end," he frankly avowed his purpose, and gave his reasons for making such a recommendation. Alluding to the hope of "the leaders of the insurrection" that the Federal government would be obliged to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that, in that case, "the slave States north of that part" would choose to "go with the Southern section," he said he would disappoint that hope if possible by persuading these border States to abolish slavery, which would make it certain to the more Southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in the proposed confederacy. . . . . To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the Rebellion." To guard against the assumption that its ultimate purpose was universal emancipation, he said: "The point is, not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation, but that, while the offer is equally made to all, the more Northern, by such initiation" will show that all hope of their joining the Rebel slaveholders must be vain. Expressing the hope that such initiatory measures might "lead to important practical results," he closed by the solemn asseveration that he did it "in full view of his great responsibility to God and his country"; and he earnestly begged "the attention of Congress and the people to the subject." The proposition thus solemnly brought to the consideration of Congress and the country evoked a varied response, not only on account of the different standpoints from which it was viewed, and of the different convictions and prepossessions entertained, but because it was a subject so confessedly new, difficult, and without precedent, that men of equal ability and equal honesty would very naturally differ concerning it. There were at least four classes of opinion and feeling existing, with many shades of difference between them; those respectively of the thoroughgoing antislavery men, the conservatives, the Democracy, mostly proslavery, and the border State men, who loved both the Union and slavery, and who were determined, if possible, to maintain each. While there was a majority of both houses who were willing to vote for anything that even gave promise of relief, — and this proposition certainly did that, there were many to oppose; some on constitutional grounds, and some because it seemed to be a measure of interference with slavery, if not, as charged, a covert attack upon the system itself. Others regarded it as having no promised vigor of action,—a project that could not effect the object professedly aimed at. A few days after the reception of the message, Mr. Conkling in the House moved the reference of the proposed resolution to the Committee of the Whole. It at once encountered Democratic opposition, Benjamin Wood of New York objecting to its reception. Mr. Richardson of Illinois opposed the resolution. "My people," he said, "are not prepared to enter upon the proposed work of purchasing the slaves of other people, and turning them loose in their midst." "I have taken my |