sistent that I was placed in a most embarrassing position. Forced to say something, I contented myself with a brief expression of my high regard for McClellan as a soldier, and a statement of my intention to vote for him. I made no reference of Mr. Lincoln, and soon left the hall.

No

Next day an order came from Secretary Stanton directing me to be mustered out of the service. reason was assigned, nor opportunity given for defense. As I was and had always been an unwavering Union man, as I had a brother and three sons in the military service of the Union, and as I had learned that my action at the meeting when reported to Secretary Stanton had made him very angry and caused him to utter severe threats against me, I determined to go, and did go, to Washington to know the reason of this attempt to disgrace me. As no other pretext could be given for such action, I resolved to appeal to the President.

I gave my papers setting forth these facts into the hands of a personal friend, a Republican member of Congress, with the request that he would ask Mr. Lincoln whether the revocation of my commission was by his order, knowledge or consent.

did so.

He

The President immediately replied: "I know nothing about it. Of course Stanton does a thousand things in his official character which I can know

nothing about, and which it is not necessary that I should know anything about."

Having heard the case, he then added: " Well, that's no reason. Andrews has as good a right to hold on to his Democracy, if he chooses, as Stanton had to throw his overboard. If I should muster out all my generals who avow themselves Democrats there would be a sad thinning out of commanding officers in the army. No!" he continued, "when the military duties of a soldier are fully and faithfully performed, he can manage his politics in his own way; we've no more to do with them than with his religion. Tell this officer he can return to his post, and if there is no other or better reason for the order of Stanton than the one he suspects, it shall do him no harm; the commission he holds will remain as good as new. Supporting General McClellan for the Presidency is no violation of army regulations, and as a question of taste of choosing between him and me, well, I'm the longest, but he's better looking."

And so I resumed my service, and was never afterward molested by the Secretary of War.

E. W. ANDREWS.

TH

XXX.

JAMES C. WELLING.

HE Emancipation Proclamation is the most signal fact in the administration of President Lincoln. It marks, indeed, the sharp and abrupt beginning of "the Great Divide," which, since the upheaval produced by the late civil war, has separated the polity and politics of the ante-bellum period from the polity and politics of the post-bellum era. No other act of Mr. Lincoln's has been so warmly praised on the one hand, or so warmly denounced on the other; and perhaps it has sometimes been equally misunderstood, in its real nature and bearing, by those who have praised it and those who have denounced it. The domestic institution against which it was leveled having now passed as finally into the domain of history as the slavery of Greece and Rome, it would seem that the time has come when we can review this act of Mr. Lincoln's in the calm light of reason, without serious disturbance from the illusions of fancy or the distortions of prejudice.

In order to give precision and definiteness to the

inquiry here taken, it seems necessary, at the threshold, to distinguish the true purport and operation of the Emancipation Proclamation from some things with which it is often confounded in popular speech. In the first place, it is proper to say that the procla mation, in its inception and in its motive, had nothing to do with the employment of slaves as laborers in the army. Fugitive slaves were so employed long before the utterance of such a manifesto had been contemplated, or the thought of it tolerated by the President. Just as little was the proclamation a necessary condition precedent to the enlistment of fugitive slaves as soldiers in the army. Mr. Lincoln was averse to the employment of negroes as soldiers at the time he issued the preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862, and he remained in this state of mind until the final edict was issued on the first of January following. It was not until the 20th of January, 1863, that Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, received permission to make an experiment in this direction.

We learn from the diary of Mr. Secretary Chase, that at a meeting of the Cabinet held on the 21st of July, 1862, the President "determined to take some definite steps in respect to military action and slavery." A letter from General Hunter having been submitted, in which he asked for authority to enlist "all loyal persons, without reference to com

plexion," it appears that Messrs. Stanton, Seward and Chase advocated the proposition, and no one in the Cabinet spoke against it; but, adds Mr. Chase, "the President expressed himself as averse to arming negroes." On the next day the question of arming slaves was again brought up, and Mr. Chase "advocated it warmly;" but the President was still unwilling to adopt this measure, and proposed simply to issue a proclamation based on the Confiscation act of July 17, 1862, "calling on the States to return to their allegiance, and warning the rebels that the provisions of that act would have full force at the expiration of sixty days; adding, on his own part, a declaration of his intention to renew at the next session of Congress his recommendation of compensation to States adopting the gradual abolishment of slavery, and proclaiming the emancipation of all slaves within States remaining in insurrection on the 1st of January. 1863."* So the first intimation made to the Cabinet of a purpose to proclaim the liberation of slaves in the insurgent States, was made in connection with the President's avowed opposition to the arming of negroes.

Writing from memory, Mr. Secretary Welles states, in his History of Emancipation, that the President," early in August "-he thinks it was the 2d of August-submitted to the Cabinet "the rough.

* Warden's Life of Chase, p. 440.