repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit if not the blood of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of "moral right" back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of "necessity." Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace. Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South-let all Americanslet all lovers of liberty everywhere-join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it, as to make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free, happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generation.

At the beginning of his administration Lincoln was far from being ready to give immediate freedom to all the slaves. But he hoped to increase the area of freedom by inducing some of the border states to free their slaves. He went further. By the end of 1861, many slaves had been freed by the war itself; as early as May 27, 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler had ingeniously and unanswerably, from the standpoint of a recognition of the slaves as property, declared them to be "contraband of war." Lincoln knew that, by certain processes of law, certain states had acquired title to negroes, and he held it to the lasting honor of Kentucky that that state had never put such negroes on the auction-block. Whose were the negroes whom the war had freed? If not the property, they were morally the wards of the nation. Why not accept them as such, and, under the law of confiscation, take such others as might properly be taken, and colonize them? And why not colonize, also, such free negroes as desired it? This is the portion of his message to Congress, December 3, 1861, which gave rise to the Compensation Bill:

The war continues. In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every case, thought it proper to keep the in

tegrity of the Union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action of the legislature.

In the exercise of my best discretion I have adhered to the blockade of the ports held by the insurgents, instead of putting in force, by proclamation, the law of Congress enacted at the late session for closing those ports. So, also, obeying the dictates of prudence, as well as the obligations of law, instead of transcending, I have adhered to the act of Congress to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes. If a new law upon the same subject shall be proposed, its propriety will be duly considered. The Union must be preserved; and hence, all indispensable means must be employed. We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable.

This was the method which Lincoln favored in liberating the slaves. Senator Browning spent the Sunday afternoon with him before his sending to Congress his message including the Compensation Provision, and wrote:

He is very hopeful of ultimate success. He suggested to me the policy of paying Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri $500 apiece for all the negroes they had according to the census of 1860, provided they would adopt a system of gradual emancipation which should work the extinction of slavery in twenty years, and said it would require only about one-third of what was necessary to support the war for one year; and agreed with me that there should be connected with it a scheme for colonizing the blacks somewhere in the American continent. There was no disagreement in our view upon any subject we discussed.

In April, 1862, Congress passed a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Lincoln signed it, but not with full approval. Senator Browning wrote in his Diary, April 14, 1862, this rather astounding entry:

At night went to the President's to lay before him the bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Had a talk with him. He told me he would sign the bill-but he regretted the

bill had been passed in its present form-that it should have been for gradual emancipation-that now families should at once be deprived of cooks, stable boys, &c., and they of their protectors, without any provision for them. He further told me that he would not sign the bill before Wednesday. That old Governor Wickliff had two family servants with him who were sickly, and who would not be benefited by freedom, and wanted time to remove them but could not get them out of the city until Wednesday, and that the Governor had come frankly to him and asked for time. He added to me that this was told me in the strictest confidence.

For two days Abraham Lincoln pocketed the bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, in order to give Ex-Governor Wickliff time to send two old slaves back to Kentucky before the bill became a law.

When Lincoln became president he cherished and expressed deep concern for the support of the border states. Kentucky, Missouri and Maryland were all slave states. Lincoln feared to alienate them by too pronounced a policy in favor of emancipation. It was said of Lincoln in that day, "Abraham Lincoln hopes that he has God on his side, but thinks he must have Kentucky."

Lincoln was himself a border state man. Not until he had given up hope of winning the border states to a policy of compensated emancipation, did he commit himself in his own mind to the plan of freeing the slaves by executive proclamation. He believed that he had the power to do this as a war measure, but he did not believe that he was justified in doing it, if in so doing he would weaken the cause of the Union by the alienation of the border states, and without material gain for the preservation of the republic.

From the date of his election Lincoln was deluged with advice from both sides. Loyal men from the border states told him that a policy of emancipation would drive those states into the confederacy. On the other hand, the friends of freedom were