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 73
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER
 
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 PEESIDENT LINCOLN 
 
 SELF-POURTRAYED.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 RICHARD BARRETT, PRINTER, 
 MARK LANE.
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 
 
 SELF-POUETEA" 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW. 
 
 JJablisjjeb for % benefit of % $)riiis|j anb 
 
 LONDON: 
 ALFEED W. BENNETT, 5, BISHOPSGATE WITHOUT; 
 
 ALEXANDER STRAHAN, 148, STRAND; 
 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS & Co., 33, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1866.
 
 The proceeds of this volume are intended to be 
 devoted for the relief of the Freedmen of the United 
 States exclusively.
 
 P 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 To THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR, APRIL 14-15, 
 
 1861 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FROM THE OPENING OF THE CIVIL WAR TO 
 THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION OF 
 JANUARY 1, 1863 44 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FROM THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, JAN. 
 1, 1863, TO MR. LINCOLN'S DEATH, 
 APRIL 15, 1865 123 
 
 THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT 231
 
 NOTE. 
 
 THIS volume represents (with a few trifling 
 alterations and some additions) the uncurtailed 
 text of three papers written for " Good Words," 
 under the title of " President Lincoln Judged 
 by his own Words/' but which, through the 
 exigencies of periodical publication, had to be 
 compressed into two (August and December, 
 1865.) 
 
 The main source from which the original 
 papers were derived, was Mr. Raymond's earlier 
 work, the " History of the Administration of 
 President Lincoln" (New York, 1864), now 
 superseded by his " Life and Public Services of 
 Abraham Lincoln." From this latter volume I 
 have borrowed, with but few exceptions, the 
 additions now introduced. An earlier article 
 by myself, also published in " Good Words," 
 has also been appended. 
 
 I need hardly say that the work in no sense 
 pretends to be a biography of the late Presi- 
 dent, the greater part of whose life is known as 
 yet only in outline to the public. 
 
 J. M. L.
 
 PRESIDENT LINCOLN 
 
 SELF-POUBTRAYED. 
 
 " By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy 
 words thou shalt be condemned." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 To THE BEGINNING OP THE WAR, APRIL 14-15, 1861. 
 
 THE year of our Lord 1865 will leave its 
 mark upon the record of the ages. It has 
 witnessed the close of the most gigantic, the 
 most unparalleled among civil wars. And, 
 as almost the last scene in that great Trans- 
 atlantic tragedy, it has witnessed an event 
 which, of itself, would have sufficed to stamp 
 such a mark for all time ; the murder, in the 
 midst of his own people, of the twice-chosen 
 
 B
 
 ruler of the greatest of earth's republics. Be- 
 fore the purely human emotions excited by that 
 event have entirely died away from our me- 
 mories from our hearts it is well, I think, 
 to consider whether the sudden halo of uni- 
 versal regret which flashed into being round 
 the memory of the late President of the United 
 States, on the news of his assassination, sprang 
 only from those emotions, and is to pass away 
 like them, or whether it is really the abiding 
 glory of a noble and righteous life. With this 
 view I should like to judge Abraham Lincoln 
 out of his own mouth, by his own recorded 
 words ; selecting, moreover, for the purpose, 
 almost exclusively those belonging to the period 
 of his presidency, words which, in fact, under 
 the fires of that terrific crisis which seems only 
 now coming to an end, must have had all the 
 weight and metal of very deeds, if they were 
 not to burn up the utterer himself. Even of 
 these I shall have space but to notice a few; 
 referring my readers for an ampler collection 
 of them to Mr. H. J. Raymond's " Life and
 
 EARLY DAYS. 3 
 
 Public Services of Abraham Lincoln" (New 
 York, 1865). 
 
 Of Mr. Lincoln's life itself, prior to his elec- 
 tion as President, the briefest sketch must here 
 suffice.* Born 12th of February, 1809, of a 
 poor white family in the slave State of Ken- 
 tucky and Mr. Beecher has said that he knows 
 "nothing lower than that" he had at least the 
 blessing of a Christian mother, and of a father 
 who, though uneducated himself, sent his child 
 to school, and migrated from slave into free 
 soil, literally hewing his way for the last few 
 miles to his future home. After earning his 
 
 * Not so brief, however, as Ms own, sent, in 1858, to 
 the compiler of the " Dictionary of Congress : " 
 
 " Born February 12th, 1809, in Harden County, Ken- 
 tucky. 
 
 Education defective. 
 
 Profession, a lawyer. 
 
 Have been a Captain of Volunteers in Black Hawk 
 war. 
 
 Postmaster of a very small office. 
 
 Four times a Member of the Illinois Legislature, and 
 was a Member of the Lower House of Congress." 
 
 B 2
 
 4 SOLDIERING. 
 
 livelihood first by manual labour, then (after a 
 bit of soldiering in 1832,* and an unsuccessful 
 venture as a store-keeper), like George Wash- 
 ington before him, by surveying, Abraham Lin- 
 coln entered the legislature of his adoptive State, 
 Illinois, in 1834, began thereupon the study of 
 law, received his "license" in 1836, and prac- 
 
 * Thus humorously described by himself, in after life, 
 while in Congress : 
 
 " By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I was a 
 military hero ? Yes, sir, in the days of the Black Hawk 
 war I fought, bled, and came away. Speaking of General 
 Cass's career reminds me of my own. I was not at 
 Sullivan's defeat, but I was about as near to it as Cass 
 was to Hull's surrender, and, like him, I saw the place 
 soon after. It is quite certain that I did not break my 
 sword, for I had none to break ; but I bent my musket 
 pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, 
 the idea is, he broke it in desperation. I bent the 
 musket by accident. If General Cass went in advance 
 of me in picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed 
 him in charges upon the wild onions. If he saw any 
 live fighting Indians, it was more than I did ; but I had 
 a great many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes ; and, 
 although I never fainted from loss of blood, I certainly 
 can say I was often very hungry."
 
 CONGBESS. 5 
 
 tised the law as a profession from 1837 to the 
 time of his election to the Presidency. During 
 this period of twenty-four years, besides sitting 
 occasionally in the State Legislature, he was 
 elected in 1847 to the House of Representatives 
 of the United States, where he signalised him- 
 self by a motion, by way of amendment, for 
 declaring free, after January 1, 1850 (but with 
 compensation to the owners), all slaves born 
 within the district of Columbia (that small space 
 of fifty square miles, carved out of slave-soil, 
 which, by a peculiar provision of the United 
 States Constitution, is under the immediate 
 government of Congress) ; was twice a candidate 
 for the United States' Senate ; and stood, in 
 1856, second on the list of Republican candi- 
 dates for the Vice-Presidency of the United 
 States. Roughly speaking, his life thus divides 
 itself into two nearly equal portions, the latter 
 of which was spent in the practice of the law. 
 The fact is only worth pointing out by way of 
 rebuke to the puppyism of such would-be gen- 
 tlemen as, in the barrister-attorney of nearly 
 twenty-five years' standing, who, on the 4th of
 
 6 KULE OF THE SLAYE POWER. 
 
 March, 1861, ascended the steps of the Capitol 
 of Washington as first magistrate of the United 
 States, long refused to see anything else but a 
 " rail-splitter" or a " bargee." 
 
 It was the lot of Abraham Lincoln to embody 
 in his own person the first signal triumph of 
 the principles which he professed. Up to the 
 time of his election, the United States were 
 ruled by the slave-owners of the South, allied 
 to the so-called " Democrats " of the North. 
 He was, moreover, citizen of a State (Illinois) 
 which, although free, bordered to the south and 
 partly to the west on two slave States, Ken- 
 tucky and Missouri, and was as hostile to the 
 slave himself as to his chains (since her " Black 
 Laws," forbidding the sojourn of coloured people 
 upon her soil, &c., have only been repealed 
 within the last few months), and various of 
 whose most prominent citizens were themselves 
 slave-owners beyond her borders. It was under 
 these circumstances that Abraham Lincoln fought 
 his way into public notice as an anti-slavery 
 politician. 
 
 The most insidious form in which the slavery
 
 " SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY." ' 
 
 question was at this time presented to the 
 people, was that of the doctrine of " squatter 
 sovereignty/ 7 as it was termed, viz., that of 
 the absolute right of emigrants (white emigrants, 
 be it understood) into United States territory 
 not yet organised into States, to introduce or 
 forbid slavery at pleasure ; thus contravening 
 not only the known purpose of the chief founders 
 of the Republic, that slavery, whilst suffered to 
 exist where it was already, should not be allowed 
 to extend its limits,* but the later compromise 
 with the slave-holding interest, known as the 
 " Missouri Compromise," which expressly pro- 
 hibited slavery beyond a given parallel of 
 ktitude. Of this doctrine of " squatter sove- 
 reignty," Mr: Douglas, the "little giant" of 
 Illinois, was the most prominent expounder, 
 and it was generally favoured by the Demo- 
 cratic party at the North. Mr. Lincoln, in the 
 
 * It should never be forgotten that a proposal to this 
 effect, put forward in 1784 by the Virginian slave-owner, 
 Jefferson, only failed to "become law by the accidental 
 absence of a New Jersey delegate.
 
 8 THE LINCOLN AND 
 
 course of his first popular contest with Mr. 
 Douglas, in 1854, when the question was that 
 of its applicability to the territories of Kansas 
 and Nebraska, situate in great measure north of 
 the Missouri Compromise line, and from which, 
 according to the terms of that compromise, 
 slavery should so far have been distinctly ex- 
 cluded, met the doctrine with sturdy good 
 sense. " I admit," he said, " that the emigrant 
 to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to govern 
 himself; but I deny his right to govern any 
 other person without that person's consent." 
 But the same question was again at issue in 
 Mr. Lincoln's second contest for the senator- 
 ship with Mr. Douglas, in 1858 ; and again the 
 former took up the broad ground of opposition 
 to slavery in principle. " Slavery is wrong," 
 he said, in a speech at Cincinnati, in the free 
 State of Ohio, but in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the slave State of Kentucky, and to a 
 mixed audience from both States. He was 
 hissed for the words, and continued : 
 
 " I acknowledge that you must maintain your
 
 DOUGLAS CONTEST. 9 
 
 opposition just there, if at all. But I find that 
 every man conies into the world with a mouth 
 to be fed and a back to be clothed ; that each 
 has also two hands ; and I infer that those hands 
 were meant to. feed that mouth and to clothe 
 that back. And I warn you, Kentuckians, that 
 whatever institution would fetter those hands 
 from so doing, violates that justice which is 
 the only political wisdom, and is sure to tumble 
 around those who seek to uphold it. ... 
 Your hisses will not blow down the walls of 
 justice. Slavery is wrong ; the denial of that 
 truth has brought on the angry conflict of 
 brother with brother ; it has kindled the fires 
 of civil war in houses ; it has raised the portents 
 that overhang the future of our nation. And 
 be you sure that no compromise, no political 
 arrangement with slavery, will ever last, which 
 does not deal with it as a great wrong." 
 
 The above prophetic passage, which the 
 timidity of Mr. Lincoln's party suppressed in 
 the printed records of his speech, was noted 
 down at the time by one who was latterly a
 
 10 INFLUENCE OF 
 
 political opponent of Mr. Lincoln (Mr. M. D. 
 Conway, who has since reproduced it in the 
 "Fortnightly Review 7 '). But it is not more 
 prophetic than were the opening words of Mr. 
 Lincoln's previous speech to the convention 
 which had nominated him : 
 
 " A house divided against itself cannot stand. 
 I believe this government cannot endure per- 
 manently half-slave and half-free. I do not 
 expect the Union to be dissolved I do not 
 expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will 
 cease to be divided. It will become all one 
 thing or all the other." 
 
 Side by side, however, with passages like the 
 above, which fully prefigure the grander aspects 
 of Mr. Lincoln's career, we must not overlook 
 the indications of an influence which gave to it 
 also occasionally an aspect of hesitancy, and of 
 at least momentary littleness. In the latter 
 half of the history of the United States, prior 
 to the Secession outbreak, one of the most pro- 
 minent names is that of Henry Clay. A name 
 not to be looked for in the list of American
 
 HENRY CLAY. 11 
 
 Presidents ; for it is a singularity of that his- 
 tory that, after the passing through office of 
 Washington and his great contemporaries, the 
 foremost men Jackson excepted do not fill 
 the foremost place, but, standing a little behind 
 in official rank, quite overshadow the actual 
 Presidents. During this period, three such 
 men typify three different modes of feeling: 
 Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, the hard 
 Northern feeling, opposed to slavery, caring 
 little for the slave, but devotedly attached to 
 the Union, and scarcely less so to the com- 
 mercial interests of the North ; John C. Cal- 
 houn, of South Carolina, the hard and haughty 
 Southern feeling, caring little for the Union, 
 but devoted to Southern supremacy and to 
 slavery, not in itself, but as the main pivot of 
 that supremacy; Henry Clay, of Kentucky, 
 finally, the temper of the Border Slave States, 
 capable from its position of sympathising with 
 both parties, anxious to unite both, convinced 
 of the wrong and mischief of slavery, and yet 
 crushed beneath a sense of the difficulty of med-
 
 12 CLAY, LINCOLN'S IDEAL. 
 
 dling with it, and thereby driven into perpetual 
 contradictions between principles and practice, 
 and to the scheming of endless compromises 
 between the fierce opposing interests on both 
 sides. To the distant observer, this last type of 
 character will generally be the least attractive 
 of the three. Each of the others seems to have 
 a unity of purpose which it wants ; it seems un- 
 stable, shifty, always occupied with small details. 
 But Clay's unswerving faithfulness to the Union, 
 and his never retracted, never qualified con- 
 demnation of slavery, together with the purity 
 of his personal character, and his unquestioned 
 abilities as a statesman and an orator, gave him 
 a singularly high place in the estimation of his 
 countrymen. His "Life" had been one of the 
 first books placed in the hands of his young 
 brother-Kentuckian, and in the course of the 
 contest with Douglas we find him speaking of 
 Henry Clay as " my beau-ideal of a statesman 
 the man for whom I fought all my humble life." 
 In this choice of a political hero in one who, 
 though opposed utterly to slavery in principle,
 
 THE NOMINATION OF 1860. 13 
 
 yet spent his life in the vain effort to effect com- 
 promises between it and freedom, will be found, 
 I think, the explanation of much in Abraham 
 Lincoln's Presidential conduct which has been 
 harshly judged by the out-and-out Abolitionist. 
 Till 1860, however, as we have seen, Abraham 
 Lincoln is mainly known by his defeats. Yet 
 the man knows his worth. He has sat in the 
 great council of his nation, though only in its 
 really lower house. But he has deemed himself 
 fit for the higher, for that Senate which has 
 always been the goal of honourable ambition in 
 the United States, nay, for the Speakership 
 of that Senate itself, which belongs to the Vice- 
 President, the second officer in the State. The 
 day comes when he is put forward for the very 
 highest office, and he does not shrink from the 
 contest. If the people prefer him to the greatest 
 orator of the day, to the very leader of the Re- 
 publican party hitherto, Mr. Seward, the Illinois 
 lawyer will accept their confidence. But he 
 remains in his own town of Springfield, whilst 
 the Republican Convention of 465 delegates is
 
 14 THE 
 
 meeting at Chicago. As he sits in a news- 
 paper office (May 18, I860), speaking with some 
 friends, a message comes from the Superinten- 
 dent of the Telegraph Company : " Mr. Lin- 
 coln, you are nominated on the third ballot." 
 His first words are the simplest, homeliest, that 
 could have fallen from human lips : " There's a 
 little woman down at our house would like to hear 
 this I'll go down and tell her." With those 
 sweet words of a husband's holy love, Abraham 
 Lincoln entered upon that career, which in less 
 than five years was to end in a martyr's death. 
 Was ever the highest power received in a gentler 
 spirit ? 
 
 On the next day his nomination was formally 
 announced to him, together with the resolutions 
 adopted by the Convention, forming what was 
 termed the " Chicago Platform," the main 
 feature of which was a pledge against the exten- 
 sion of slavery to the Territories. After four 
 days' consideration, he accepted both (23rd 
 May) by letter, concluding in words chiefly re- 
 markable for the entire freedom from partizan
 
 THE ELECTION. 15 
 
 spirit which they show in this candidate of a 
 party : 
 
 " Imploring the assistance of Divine Provi- 
 dence, and with due regard to the views and 
 feelings of all who were represented in the 
 Convention, to the rights of all the States, and 
 Territories, and people of the nation, to the 
 inviolability of the Constitution, and the per- 
 petual union, harmony, and prosperity of all, I 
 am most happy to co-operate for the practical 
 success of the principles declared by the Con- 
 vention." 
 
 The nomination was a successful one. On the 
 6th November, 1860, Mr. Lincoln was elected 
 President of the United States by the unanimous 
 vote of all the free States, except New Jersey, 
 which gave him four votes out of her seven, 
 making 180 votes in the " Electoral College," 
 which names the Presidents ; the votes cast for 
 all three opposing candidates summing up only 
 123. Of the popular vote, however, which 
 names the Electoral College, Mr. Lincoln had 
 not obtained an absolute majority, but 1,857,610,
 
 16 LINCOLN AS 
 
 against 2,804,560 given to his opponents ; yet 
 out of this latter number all but 847,953 were 
 cast in favour of candidates professedly support- 
 ing the Union. In other words, out of 4,662,170 
 voters, 3,814,217, or more than three-fourths, 
 were in favour of the Union as a paramount 
 principle; 1,857,610, or nearly two-fifths, were 
 in favour of the Union, and of rigidly restrict- 
 ing slavery from further extension ; and 547,953, 
 or not a fifth, for slavery as a paramount princi- 
 ple ; but these few wielded the whole mass of 
 the slave country, except the border States of 
 Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, and Tennessee, the 
 eastern part of which last has long been practi- 
 cally almost free soil. In these figures lies 
 indeed the whole history of the Secession war. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was now President of the 
 United States. By a curious provision of their 
 Constitution, he was not yet to enter upon the 
 functions of his office. His predecessor, Mr. 
 Buchanan, who had not even been nominated as 
 a candidate, had for four months yet to retain 
 the Presidency in his imbecile hands. During
 
 PRESIDENT ELECT. 17 
 
 that period, ordinances of secession were passed 
 by Conventions in no less than seven States 
 (South Carolina, 20th December, 1860; Missis- 
 sippi, January 9, 1861 ; Florida, January 10; 
 Alabama, January 11; Georgia, January 19; 
 Louisiana, January 26 ; Texas, February 5). 
 Delegates from the seceding States had met in 
 another convention at Montgomery in Alabama 
 (February 4), had adopted a provisional con- 
 stitution, appointed and inaugurated (February 
 18) a President and a Vice-President ; and the 
 former, Mr. Jefferson Davis, in an address 
 delivered on his arrival at Montgomery, had 
 declared that "the time for compromise has 
 now passed, and the South is determined to 
 maintain her position, and make all who oppose 
 her smell Southern powder and feel Southern 
 steel, if coercion is persisted in." Meanwhile, 
 Mr. Buchanan was advised by his Attorney- 
 General that Congress had no right to carry on 
 war against any State, and remained quiescent 
 accordingly, even while forts, arsenals, and other 
 Government property were being seized on all 
 
 c
 
 18 ME. LINCOLN 
 
 sides by the 'seceding States: although by the 
 8th January he had got so far as to declare that 
 it was his right and his duty " to use military 
 force defensively against those who resist the 
 Federal officers in the execution of their legal 
 functions, and against those who assail the pro- 
 perty of the Federal Government." Congress, 
 on its side, notwithstanding the withdrawal of 
 most of the senators and representatives from 
 the seceding States, had made almost every con- 
 ceivable concession to the South, adopting in 
 principle an amendment to the Constitution 
 which should forbid for ever any intermeddling 
 by Federal action with slavery in any State ; 
 conceding " squatter sovereignty " so far as to 
 create governments for three new territories 
 without forbiddance of slavery ; severely censur- 
 ing those free States which had passed laws to 
 hinder the recovery of fugitive slaves. 
 
 During all this time, till the llth February, 
 1861, the new President remained absolutely 
 silent. Not a word fell from him which could hin- 
 der Mr. Buchanan from saving the Union in his
 
 LEAVES FOR WASHINGTON. 19 
 
 own way. On the llth February Mr. Lincoln 
 opened his lips anew as he left his home ; and dur- 
 ing his slow progress to Washington, which he 
 reached on the 23rd, not a day passed but what 
 his voice was heard in replies to the addresses 
 of his countrymen. His first words on this 
 triumphal progress to his eventual martyrdom, 
 being his farewelj. to his fellow-townsmen at 
 Springfield, must be quoted at length : 
 
 "My friends, No one not in my position 
 can appreciate the sadness I feel at this parting. 
 To this people I owe all that I am. Here I 
 have lived more than a quarter of a century ; 
 here my children were born, and here one of 
 them lies buried. I know not how soon I shall 
 see you again. A duty devolves upon me which 
 is perhaps greater than that which has devolved 
 upon any other man since the days of Washing- 
 ton. He never would have succeeded except 
 for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he 
 at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed 
 without the same Divine aid which sustained 
 him, and on the same Almighty Being I place 
 
 c 2
 
 20 SPEECHES ON THE WAY 
 
 my reliance for support ; and I hope you, my 
 friends, will all pray that I may receive that 
 Divine assistance without which I cannot suc- 
 ceed, but with which success is certain. Again 
 I bid you all an affectionate farewell." 
 
 Weighty and touching words, surely. The 
 momentary pleasure which he had felt on find- 
 ing himself chosen as candidate for the highest 
 office in the State by a large body of his fellow- 
 countrymen, and which he could not enjoy 
 without sharing it with the " little woman " afc 
 home, has quite vanished away into the sorrow 
 of parting with the quiet memories of so many 
 years of private life, into the awe of the dark 
 future. Not a shot has yet been fired ; but he 
 knows that a duty has devolved upon him, 
 greater perhaps than has devolved upon any 
 since Washington. Yet he sinks not crushed 
 beneath that duty, but strengthens himself 
 against it like a man, looking up through the 
 darkness to that Hand which sustained Washing- 
 ton, and which he trusts to sustain himself. 
 And as he thus departs to rule over the many
 
 TO WASHINGTON. 21 
 
 millions of his people, he asks his friends and 
 his neighbours for their prayers. (And clever 
 people in Europe, meanwhile, were saying and 
 writing that God is an idea, and that Christ 
 was an impostor, and that the Christian faith is 
 a delusion ; and Mr. Carlyle was trying to puff 
 into a hero, for the special admiration of the 
 nineteenth century, that cross between fox and 
 wolf, Frederic II. of Prussia.) Surely, from 
 that hour, the day of shams had for America 
 passed away ; the true, honest man had gone 
 forth in the fear of God, conquering and to 
 conquer. 
 
 It were idle to attempt recording here all Mr. 
 Lincoln's speeches on this journey to Washing- 
 ton. Without entering into any controversy, 
 into any single detail of policy which could 
 hamper the government, you see him appealing 
 earnestly to the broad principles of patriotism, 
 stirring up, yet without any bitterness, the 
 energies of his countrymen on behalf of the 
 Union. He warns them that it is for them, not 
 for him, to save the country:
 
 22 SHALL THE UNION 
 
 " In all trying positions in which I shall be 
 placed, and doubtless I shall be placed in many 
 such, my reliance will be placed upon you and 
 the people of the United States. I wish you to 
 remember, now and for ever, that it is your 
 business, and not mine; that if the union of 
 these States, and the liberties of this people 
 shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of 
 fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the 
 thirty millions of people who inhabit these 
 United States, and to their posterity in all 
 coming time. It is your business to rise up 
 and preserve the Union and liberty for your- 
 selves, and not for me. I, as already intimated, 
 am but an accidental instrument, temporary, 
 and to serve but for a limited time ; and I appeal 
 to you again to constantly bear in mind that 
 with you, and not with politicians, not with 
 Presidents, not with office-seekers, but with you, 
 is the question : ' Shall the Union, and shall 
 the liberties of this country be preserved to the 
 latest generations?'" Speech at Indianopolis, 
 Feb. 11.
 
 BE PRESERVED? 23 
 
 He insists on his own insignificance : 
 
 " I cannot but know what you all know, that 
 without a name, perhaps without a reason why 
 I should have a name, there has fallen upon me 
 a task such as did not rest even upon the Father 
 of his Country ; and so feeling, I cannot but turn 
 and look for the support without which it will 
 be impossible for me to perform that great task. 
 I turn, then, and look to the great American 
 people, and to that God who has never forsaken 
 them." Speech at Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 13. 
 
 He appeals to his political opponents for sup- 
 port : 
 
 " I understand myself to be received here by 
 the representatives of the people of New Jersey, 
 a majority of whom differ in opinion from those 
 with whom I have acted. This manifestation is 
 therefore to be regarded by me as expressing 
 their devotion to the Union, the Constitution, 
 and the liberties of the people. I shall do all 
 that may be in my power to promote a peaceful 
 settlement of all our difficulties. The man does 
 not live who is more devoted to peace than I am.
 
 24 THE DECLARATION 
 
 None who would do more to preserve it : but it 
 may be necessary to put the foot down firmly. 
 And if I do my duty, and do right, you will 
 sustain me, will you not ? Received as I am by 
 the members of a legislature, the majority of 
 whom do not agree with me in political senti- 
 ments, I trust that I may have their assistance 
 in piloting the ship of State through this voyage, 
 surrounded by perils as it is ; for if it should 
 suffer wreck now, there will be no pilot ever 
 needed for another voyage." Speech at Trenton, 
 New Jersey, Feb. 21. 
 
 He asserts his unchangeable faith in the prin- 
 ciples of that famous Declaration of American 
 Independence, which declared all men to be 
 " created equal/' and endowed by their Creator 
 with the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, 
 and the pursuit of happiness " : 
 
 " I have never had a feeling, politically, that 
 did not spring from the sentiments embodied in 
 the Declaration of Independence. I have often 
 pondered over the dangers which were incurred 
 by the men who assembled here, and framed and
 
 OF INDEPENDENCE. 25 
 
 adopted that Declaration of Independence. I 
 have pondered over the toils that were endured 
 by the officers and soldiers of the army who 
 achieved that Independence. I have often in- 
 quired of myself what great principle or idea it 
 was that kept this Confederacy so long together. 
 It was not the mere matter of the separation of 
 the colonies from the mother land, but that 
 sentiment in the Declaration of Independence 
 which gave liberty, not alone to the people of 
 this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all 
 future time. It was that which gave promise 
 that in due time the weight should be lifted 
 from the shoulders of all men. . . . Now, my 
 friends, can this country be saved upon that 
 basis ? If it can, I will consider myself one of 
 the happiest men in the world if I can help to 
 save it. ... But if this country cannot be 
 saved without giving up that principle, I was 
 about to say I would rather be assassinated on this 
 spot than surrender it." Speech at Philadelphia in 
 ' Independence Hall,' Feb. 21. 
 The effort successfully made by Mr. Lincoln,
 
 26 
 
 during all this series of speeches, to preserve 
 silence as to all questions of detail, must have 
 been a violent one ; for no stag at bay amidst 
 the unleashed hounds could be more beset than 
 he was by throngs of anxious questioners, whilst 
 he himself must have been often sorely tempted 
 to speak out. 
 
 He said at New York (February 19) : 
 " I have been in the habit of thinking and 
 speaking sometimes upon political questions 
 that have for some years past agitated the coun- 
 try ; and if I were disposed to do so, and we 
 could take up some one of the issues, as the 
 lawyers call them, and I were called upon to 
 make an argument about it to the best of my 
 ability, I could do it without much preparation. 
 .... I have not kept silence since the Presi- 
 dential election from any party wantonness, or 
 from any indifference to the anxiety that per- 
 vades the minds of men about the aspect of the 
 
 political affairs of their country I do 
 
 suppose that, while the political drama being 
 enacted in this country at this time is rapidly
 
 ON PARTY QUESTIONS. 27 
 
 shifting its scenes .... it was peculiarly fitting 
 that I should see it all, up to the last minute, 
 before I should take ground, that I might be 
 disposed, by the shifting of the scenes after- 
 wards, also to shift. Ihaye said several times 
 upon this journey, and I now repeat it to you, 
 that when the time does come, I shall then take 
 the ground that I think is right right for the 
 North, for the South, for the East, for the West, 
 for the whole country." 
 
 But while thus acting in obedience to the 
 promptings of his own sense of duty, we now 
 see that Mr. Lincoln was in fact doing precisely 
 that which was best for his country, displaying 
 the most practical and consummate wisdom. 
 By his every speech, at every stage of his jour- 
 ney, he was lifting men above the sphere of 
 party politics and personal preferences into that 
 of political duty, and of the broadest statesman- 
 ship ; compelling them to forget himself, his 
 predecessor yet in office, his late competitors, in 
 the one great question, " How shall our country 
 be saved ? " And thus tearing away as it were
 
 28 MR. LINCOLN'S SPEECH 
 
 by armfuls at every step the thick undergrowth 
 of selfishness and mutual prejudice, which was 
 at once choking the good qualities of the 
 American people, and obscuring the massive 
 foundations of the American polity, its pledges 
 of equal right, and freedom, and justice, through 
 mutual help, to all, he hewed his way, so to 
 speak, like a true backwoodsman, to the national 
 capital at Washington, and to that "White 
 House " or Presidential mansion, from which 
 his murdered body was one day to issue forth 
 amidst the sorrow of the civilized world.* Here 
 indeed the series of his unofficial speeches closes 
 (Feb. 28), with expressions of the friendliest 
 nature towards the South : 
 
 " I have reached this city of Washington under 
 circumstances considerably differing from those 
 under which any other man has ever reached it. 
 I am here for the purpose of taking an official 
 
 * It should not be forgotten that there was a plot to 
 murder him on his way through Baltimore to Washing- 
 ton, to take up his Presidential duties, which he baffled 
 by taking an earlier train than the one fixed on.
 
 AT WASHINGTON. 29 
 
 position among the people, almost all of whom 
 were politically opposed to me, and are yet 
 
 opposed, as I suppose Much of the ill 
 
 feeling that has existed between you and the 
 people of your surroundings, and that people 
 from among whom I came, has depended, and 
 now depends, upon a misunderstanding. I hope 
 that I may have it in my power to remove some- 
 thing of this misunderstanding, that I may be 
 enabled to convince you, and the people of your 
 section of the country, that we regard you as in 
 all things our equals, and in all things entitled to 
 the same respect and the same treatment that 
 we claim for ourselves ; that we are in nowise 
 disposed, if it were in our power, to oppress 
 you, to deprive you of any of your rights under 
 the Constitution of the United States, or even 
 narrowly to split hairs with 'you in regard to 
 those rights, but are determined to give you, as 
 far as lies in our hands, all your rights under 
 the Constitution not grudgingly, but fully and 
 fairly. I hope that, by thus dealing with you, 
 we will become better acquainted and better 
 friends."
 
 30 MR. LINCOLN'S 
 
 In the first of his state papers, his " Inau- 
 gural Address " (March 4, 18B1), Mr. Lincoln 
 begins by disclaiming the purpose and the right 
 "to interfere with slavery in the States where 
 it exists." He admits the constitutional obli- 
 gation of rendering up fugitive slaves ; but he 
 asks whether, in any law upon the giving up of 
 slaves, " all the safeguards of liberty known in 
 civilized and humane jurisprudence" ought not 
 to be introduced, " so that a free man be not in 
 any case surrendered as a slaye ? " And with 
 an implied censure of that absolute denial of 
 United States' citizenship to the coloured man, 
 which had been shamefully practised of late 
 years, he asks equally, whether it might not be 
 well " to provide by law for the enforcement of 
 that clause in the Constitution which guarantees 
 that the citizens of each state shall be entitled 
 to all privileges and immunities of citizens in 
 the several States?" The slave-power, in other 
 words, shall have its pound of flesh, but not a 
 drop of blood besides. Whatever legal privi- 
 leges stand written to its credit, let it enjoy ; 
 but the spirit of slavery shall not penetrate into
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 31 
 
 the law itself. The fugitive shall be presumed 
 free until proved a slave ; . the coloured citizen 
 of free Massachusetts or free New York, shall 
 stand on the same legal footing as the white 
 citizen in slave Georgia or slave Mississippi. 
 But it is the preservation of the Union, of the 
 national life, which above all engrosses him, 
 since disruption is now " formidably attempted :" 
 " I hold that in contemplation of universal 
 law, and of the Constitution, the union of these 
 States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if 
 not expressed, in the fundamental law of all 
 national governments. It is safe to assert that 
 no government proper ever had a provision in 
 its organic law for its own termination. . . . 
 No State, upon its own mere motion, can law- 
 fully get out of the Union,, ... I there- 
 fore consider that, in view of the Constitution 
 and the laws, the Union is unbroken ; and to 
 the extent of my ability I shall take care, as 
 the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon 
 me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully 
 executed in all the States. Doing this I deem
 
 32 THE UNION TO BE DEFENDED. 
 
 to be only a simple duty on my part, and I 
 shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my 
 rightful masters, the American people, shall 
 withhold the requisite means, or in some au- 
 thoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust 
 this will not be regarded as a menace, but only 
 as the declared purpose of the Union, that it 
 will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. 
 In doing this there need be no bloodshed or 
 violence ; and there shall be none, unless it be 
 forced upon the national authority. The power 
 confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, 
 and possess the property and places belonging 
 to the Government, and to collect the duties 
 and imposts ; but beyond what may be but 
 necessary for these objects, there will be no 
 invasion, no using of force against or among 
 the people anywhere. Where hostility to the 
 United States in any interior locality shall be 
 so great and universal as to prevent competent 
 resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, 
 there will be no attempt to force obnoxious 
 strangers among the people for that object. . .
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S PRUDENCE. 33 
 
 So far as possible, the people everywhere shall 
 have that sense of perfect security which is 
 most favourable to calm thought and reflection. 
 The course here indicated will be followed, 
 unless current events and experience shall show 
 a modification or change to be proper ; and in 
 every case and exigency my best discretion will 
 be exercised, according to circumstances actu- 
 ally existing, and with a view and a hope of a 
 peaceful solution of the national troubles, and 
 the restoration of fraternal sympathies and 
 affections." 
 
 Let us pause for an instant over this passage ; 
 for it indicates, at the outset, a remarkable fea- 
 ture of Abraham Lincoln's mind, a very falli- 
 ble appreciation of the immediate consequences 
 of events, coupled with an abiding sense that 
 the future must always be larger than what he 
 sees of it, and that therefore he must not pledge 
 himself irrevocably to any future course of action, 
 even that which seems to him for the time the 
 wisest and fairest. We all know how utterly his 
 hope of "a peaceful solution of the national 
 
 D
 
 34 THE INAUGUKAL CONTINUED: 
 
 troubles" went to wreck. We all know how un- 
 profitable to the South was the season afforded to 
 it of "calm thought and reflection." We all 
 know how soon the Government had to use force 
 for other purposes than that of holding, occupy- 
 ing, and possessing the property and places 
 belonging to it had to invade State after State, 
 and to force " obnoxious strangers " among the 
 people of each. But an unerring instinct had 
 guarded Abraham Lincoln from mistaking on any 
 of these points his own notions for the realities 
 of things. He had from the first taken into 
 account the possibility of those modifications 
 and changes which " current events and ex- 
 perience " might show to be proper. He had 
 reserved his " best discretion " for every case and 
 exigency. And thus he went forth to his work 
 free-handed, unfettered by those pledges of self- 
 conceit which can manacle down a giant to a 
 dwarfs weakness. 
 
 He now proceeds to plead with those who 
 really love the Union. Has " any right plainly 
 written in the Constitution " been denied ? He
 
 MAJORITIES AND MINORITIES. 35 
 
 thinks not. "All our Constitutional contro- 
 versies" have sprung from the absence of ex- 
 press provisions in the Constitution. " Shall 
 fugitives from labour be surrendered by na- 
 tional or by State authority ? The Constitution 
 does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit 
 slavery in the Territories? The Constitution 
 does not expressly say. Must Congress protect 
 slavery in the Territories? The Constitution 
 does not expressly say." 
 
 " Upon such questions we divide into ma- 
 jorities and minorities. If the minority does 
 not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Go- 
 vernment must cease. . . . If a minority, 
 in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, 
 they make a precedent which, in time, will 
 divide and ruin them ; for a minority of their 
 own will secede from them whenever a majority 
 refuses to be controlled by such minority. For 
 instance, why may not any portion of a new 
 Confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily 
 secede again, precisely as portions of the present 
 Union now claim to secede from it? . . . 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE INAUGURAL CONTINUED : 
 
 Plainly, the central idea of secession is the 
 essence of anarchy. A majority held in re- 
 straint by constitutional checks and limitations, 
 and always changing easily with deliberate 
 changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is 
 the only true sovereign of a free people. Who- 
 ever rejects it, does of necessity fly to anarchy 
 or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible ; the 
 rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, 
 is wholly inadmissible. . . . One section of 
 our country believes that slavery is right, and 
 ought to be extended ; while the other believes 
 it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. 
 This is the only substantial dispute. The fugi- 
 tive slave clause of the Constitution, and the 
 law for the suppression of the foreign slave- 
 trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as 
 any law can ever be in a community where the 
 moral sense of the people imperfectly supports 
 the law itself. The great body of the people 
 abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, 
 and a few break over in each. This, I think, 
 cannot be perfectly cured ; and it would be
 
 SEPARATION IMPOSSIBLE. 37 
 
 worse in both cases after the separation of the 
 sections than before. The foreign slave-trade, 
 now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately 
 revived without restrictions in one section ; 
 while fugitive slaves, now only partially sur- 
 rendered, would not be surrendered at ah 1 by 
 the other. Physically speaking, we cannot 
 separate. We cannot remove our respective 
 sections from each other, nor build an impass- 
 able wall between them. A husband and wife 
 may be divorced, and go out of the presence 
 and beyond the reach of each other ; but the 
 different parts of our country cannot do this. 
 They cannot but remain face to face ; and in- 
 tercourse, either amicable or hostile, must con- 
 tinue between them. It is impossible, then, to 
 make that intercourse more advantageous, or 
 more satisfactory, after separation than before. 
 Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can 
 make laws ? Can treaties be more faithfully 
 enforced between aliens than laws can among 
 friends ? . . . The chief magistrate derives 
 all his authority from the people, and they have 
 conferred none upon him to fix terms for the
 
 38 THE INAUGURAL CONTINUED: 
 
 separation of the States. . . . His duty is 
 to administer the present government as it came 
 to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by 
 him, to his successor. Why should there not 
 be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice 
 of the people ? Is there any better or equal 
 hope in the world ? In our present differences is 
 either party without faith of being in the right ? 
 If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with His 
 eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the 
 North, or on yours of the South, that truth and 
 that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment 
 of this great tribunal of the American people. 
 By the frame of the government under which we 
 live, the same people have wisely given their 
 public servants but little power for mischief, 
 and have with equal wisdom provided for the 
 return of that little to their own hands at very 
 short intervals. While the people retain their 
 virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any 
 extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously 
 injure the Government in the short space of 
 four years. My countrymen, one and all, 
 think calmly and well upon this whole subject.
 
 39 
 
 Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If 
 there be an object to hurry any of you in hot 
 haste to a step which you would never take 
 deliberately, that object will be frustrated by 
 taking time ; but no good object can be frustrated 
 by it. ... In your hands, my dissatisfied 
 fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the mo- 
 mentous issue of civil war. The Government 
 will not assail you. You can have no conflict 
 without being yourselves the aggressors. You 
 have no oath registered in heaven to destroy 
 the Government ; while I have the most solemn 
 one to ' preserve, protect, and defend it.' I am 
 loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
 We must not be enemies. Though passion may 
 have strained, it must not break our bonds of 
 affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretch- 
 ing from every battle-field and patriot grave to 
 every living heart and hearth-stone all over this 
 broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the 
 Union, when again touched, as surely they will 
 be, by the better angels of our nature. " 
 
 To the President's appeals in favour of con-
 
 40 SUMTER BOMBARDED. 
 
 cord, or at least calm deliberation, the South 
 replied (April 12) by the bombardment of Fort 
 Sumter in Charleston Harbour, which was eva- 
 cuated on the 14th (others say the 15th). The 
 President now issued (April 15) a proclamation, 
 by which, after stating that " the laws of United 
 States " had been for some time past and were 
 then "opposed and the execution thereof ob- 
 structed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, 
 Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas, by 
 combinations too powerful to be suppressed by 
 the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or 
 by the powers vested in the marshals by law,'' 
 in virtue of the power vested in him by the 
 Constitution and the laws, he called forth "the 
 militia of the several States of the Union, to 
 the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to 
 suppress said combinations, and to cause the 
 laws to be duly executed." Appealing "to all 
 loyal citizens to favour, facilitate, and aid this 
 effort to maintain the honour, the integrity, 
 and existence of our national Union, and the 
 perpetuity of popular government, and to
 
 THE MILITIA CALLED OUT. 41 
 
 redress wrongs already long enough endured," 
 he stated " that the first service assigned to the 
 forces hereby called forth, will probably be to 
 repossess the forts, places, and property which 
 have been seized from the Union ; and in every 
 event the utmost care will be observed, con- 
 sistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid 
 any devastation, any destruction of or inter- 
 ference with property, or any disturbance of 
 peaceful citizens of any part of the country ; " 
 commanded the persons composing the com- 
 binations aforesaid to disperse and retire peace- 
 ably to their respective abodes within twenty 
 days; and, finally, convened both Houses of 
 Congress for the 4th of July. 
 
 Not a day, it will be seen, had been lost. No 
 lengthened deliberations had been required. 
 Abraham Lincoln had fulfilled the pledge that 
 he had repeatedly given on his journey to Wash- 
 ington, that, when the time did come, he 
 would take the ground which he thought was 
 right. He had taken it at once, now that the 
 time was come. And that ground was law,
 
 42 MODERATION AND CAUTION 
 
 and the need of enforcing it. It is this which 
 gives so grandly conservative a character to the 
 late war on the Federal side. It has been 
 simply an effort to suppress combinations against 
 the law. The tipstaff, or at best the policeman, 
 ought to have been sufficient for the purpose ; it 
 is only because they are not that the President 
 now calls out 75,000 militiamen, and will call 
 into the field army after army, until at last 
 enough has been done " to suppress said com- 
 binations, and to cause the laws to be duly 
 executed." From this deep abiding sense of 
 the lawfulness of his position, flows that studi- 
 ous moderation, that seemingly impassive dry- 
 ness of tone, which marks all Mr. Lincoln's state 
 papers, as compared with the subtle yet tumid 
 rhetoric, the heated appeals to the feelings and 
 passions of the South, which characterise those 
 of Mr. Davis. Mr. Lincoln is simply fulfilling 
 a duty himself, in calling upon others to fulfil 
 theirs. That bears no rhetoric ; that appeals 
 to no passion. 
 
 Observe again for the second time the pre-
 
 OP THE PRESIDENT. 43 
 
 scient caution which qualifies the pledge to 
 avoid devastation, destruction, or interference 
 with property. The day is not very far off 
 when it may become impossible, consistently with 
 the object of suppressing " said combinations, " 
 and causing " the laws to be duly executed/' 
 not to interfere with, not to impair, not, finally, 
 to destroy the most precious property in the 
 South, that in human flesh. But in doing this, 
 as well as in sanctioning (how reluctantly always 
 is well known) other acts of devastation and 
 destruction which military expediency may seem 
 to command, the President will violate no pledge, 
 he will but yield to what he deems a necessity. 
 If thus only and not otherwise can illegal com- 
 binations be put down, and the execution of the 
 laws be restored, he will be but carrying out by 
 different means the object of this his first pro- 
 clamation. 
 
 The great American civil war, then, has 
 begun. The South has flung down the gauntlet ; 
 the North, by its chosen President, has taken 
 it up.
 
 44 MORE SECESSIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 FROM THE OPENING OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE 
 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION OF JANUARY 1, 1863. 
 
 WHEN Congress met in Extraordinary Ses- 
 sion on July 4, 1861, four more States had 
 seceded Virginia (April 25), Arkansas (May 6), 
 North Carolina (May 20), and Tennessee (June 
 8) ; the secession being, however, if I am not 
 mistaken, in no single instance submitted to the 
 vote of the people, whilst the Governors of the 
 Border States of Kentucky and Missouri were 
 attempting to take up a position of neutrality, 
 and Secession movements in Maryland had had 
 to be suppressed, chiefly through the somewhat 
 high-handed energy of General Butler. The 
 Confederate capital had been established at 
 Richmond, as if to bid defiance by its proxi- 
 mity to Washington. General Lee the
 
 FIGHTING IN VIRGINIA. 45 
 
 favourite Aide-de-Camp of the old Federal 
 Commander-in-Chief, General Scott had been 
 appointed to the chief command of the military 
 and naval forces of Virginia. The National 
 Armoury at Harper's Ferry and the Navy 
 Yard at Gosport had been burned to prevent 
 their falling into Secessionist hands. The 
 seizure of national property in the South and 
 South-West had gone on. Various Federal 
 garrisons had been compelled to surrender. 
 Internal war had broken out in Missouri, in 
 Tennessee, from which latter State the only loyal 
 Southern senator, Andrew Johnson, had made 
 his way through difficulties and dangers of all 
 sorts to Washington. In Virginia the Federals 
 had occupied Arlington Heights, on the Virgi- 
 nian side of the Potomac, and various move- 
 ments and skirmishes had taken place on the 
 border, including a somewhat disastrous one 
 (to the Federals) at Big Bethel (June 10). On 
 the other hand, the North had responded enthu- 
 siastically to the call for men, and forty Western 
 counties of Virginia had refused to follow the
 
 46 
 
 remainder of the State into secession, and had 
 organised themselves into a new loyal State, 
 under the name of " Western Virginia." 
 
 The President in his Message, after a brief 
 summary of the proceedings of the Secessionists 
 to the bombardment of Fort Sumter, pointed 
 out that this act was in no sense a matter of 
 self-defence upon the part of the assailants : 
 
 " They knew they were expressly notified 
 that the giving of bread to the few brave 
 and hungry men of the garrison was all which 
 would on that occasion be attempted, unless 
 themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke 
 more. They knew that their Government de- 
 sired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to 
 assail them, but to maintain visible possession, 
 and thus to preserve the Union from actual and 
 immediate dissolution trusting, as hereinbefore 
 stated, to time, discussion, and the ballot-box 
 for final adjustment ; and they assailed and 
 reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object 
 to drive out the visible authority of the 
 Federal Union, and thus force it to imme-
 
 FIRST MESSAGE. 47 
 
 diate dissolution. ... In this act, discarding 
 all else, they have forced upon the country 
 the distinct issue, ' immediate dissolution or 
 blood/ " 
 
 Rising now at once to the highest political 
 considerations, Mr. Lincoln proceeds : 
 
 " And this issue embraces more than the fate 
 of these United States. It presents to the whole 
 family of man the question, whether a constitu- 
 tional republic or democracy a government of 
 the people by the same people can or cannot 
 maintain its territorial integrity against its own 
 domestic foes. It presents the question, whether 
 discontented individuals, too few in number to 
 control administration, according to organic 
 law, in any case, can always, upon the pretences 
 made in this case, or on any other pretences, 
 or arbitrarily, without any pretence, break up 
 their Government. ... It forces us to ask, 
 ' Is there, in all republics, this inherent and 
 fatal weakness ? Must a Government, of neces- 
 sity, be too strong for the liberties of its people, 
 or too weak to maintain its own existence ?'
 
 48 THE FIRST MESSAGE: 
 
 So viewing the issue, no choice was left but 
 to call out the war-power of the Government, 
 and so to resist force employed for its destruc- 
 tion, by force for its preservation." 
 
 He then proceeded to review the course of 
 events since the fall of Sumter ; dwelt for 
 a while on one of his acts which had been most 
 sharply canvassed, the suspension of the writ of 
 Habeas Corpus ; and, after explaining his own 
 views as to the right interpretation of the Con- 
 stitution on the matter, deferred it entirely to 
 the better judgment of Congress (which, it 
 may be added at once, fully endorsed the course 
 taken by him, and eventually passed a law 
 authorising the President to suspend the writ 
 "at such times and in such places, and with 
 regard to such persons as in his judgment the 
 public safety " might require ) ; and closed with 
 a somewhat lengthened discussion of the alleged 
 " right of secession." 
 
 " It might seem, at first thought, to be of 
 little diiference whether the present movement 
 at the South be called ' secession ' or ' rebellion/
 
 THE ALLEGED RIGHT TO SECEDE. 49 
 
 The movers, however, well understand the dif- 
 ference. At the beginning, they knew they 
 could never raise their treason to any respect- 
 able magnitude by any name which implies 
 violation of law. . . . They invented an in- 
 genious sophism, which, if conceded, was fol- 
 lowed by perfectly logical steps, through all the 
 incidents, to the complete destruction of the 
 Union. The sophism itself is, that any State of 
 the Union may, consistently with the national 
 Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peace- 
 ably, withdraw from the Union, without the 
 consent of the Union, or of any other State. 
 The little disguise, that the supposed right is to 
 be exercised only for just cause, themselves to 
 be the sole judges of its justice, is too thin to 
 merit any notice. With rebellion thus ' sugar- 
 coated/* they have been drugging the public 
 
 * Mr. J. B. Carpenter, in Ms interesting " Anecdotes 
 and Reminiscences of President Lincoln," appended to 
 Mr. Raymond's work, tells us that Mr. Defrees, the 
 Government printer, found fault with this expression, 
 whilst the Message w T as passing through the press, and 
 
 E
 
 50 THE FIRST MESSAGE: 
 
 mind of their section for more than thirty years, 
 and until at length they have brought many 
 good men to a willingness to take up arms against 
 the Government, the day after some assemblage 
 of men have enacted the farcical pretence of 
 taking their State out of the Union, who could 
 have been brought to no such thing the day 
 before. ... It is not contended that there is 
 any express law for it ; and nothing should ever 
 be implied as law which leads to unjust or 
 absurd consequences. The nation purchased 
 with money the countries out of which several 
 of these States were formed ; is it just that they 
 shall go off without leave and without refund- 
 ing? ... If one State may secede, so may 
 another ; and when all shall have seceded, none 
 is left to pay the debts, Is this quite just to 
 
 being on intimate terms with Mr. Lincoln, remon- 
 strated with him on the use of it as being " undignified." 
 " Defrees," said Mr. Lincoln, " that word expresses pre- 
 cisely my idea, and I am not going to change it. The 
 time will never come in this country when the people 
 won't know exactly what sugar-coated means ! "
 
 THE WAR A PEOPLE'S CONTEST. 51 
 
 creditors ? Did we notify them of this sage 
 view of ours when we borrowed their money ? 
 If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing 
 the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see 
 what we can do, if others choose to go, or to 
 extort terms upon which they will promise to 
 remain." 
 
 After asking what better Government the 
 country were likely to get than the present one, 
 and declaring that this was " essentially a 
 people's contest a struggle for maintaining 
 in the world that form and substance of Govern- 
 ment whose leading object is to elevate the 
 condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all 
 shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuits 
 for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a 
 fair chance in the race of life," he con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " Our popular Government has often been 
 called an experiment. Two points in it our 
 people have already settled the successful esta- 
 blishing and the successful administering of it. 
 One still remains, its successful maintenance 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE FIRST MESSAGE. 
 
 against a formidable internal attempt to over- 
 throw it. It is now for them to demonstrate to 
 the world that those who can fairly carry an 
 election can also suppress a rebellion ; that 
 ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors 
 of bullets ; and that when ballots have fairly 
 and constitutionally decided, there can be no 
 successful appeal back to bullets. . . . Such 
 will be a great lesson of peace ; teaching men 
 that what they cannot take by an election, 
 neither can they take by a war ; teaching all 
 the folly of being the beginners of a war. . . 
 It was with the deepest regret that the Executive 
 found the duty of employing the war-power in 
 defence of the Government forced upon him. . . . 
 He felt that he had no moral right to shrink, or 
 even to count the chances of his own life, in what 
 might follow. In full view of his great re- 
 sponsibility, he has so far done what he has 
 deemed his duty. You will now, according to 
 your own judgment, perform yours. . . . And 
 having thus chosen our course, without guile 
 and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust
 
 BULL RUN. 53 
 
 in God, and go forward without fear and with 
 manly hearts/' 
 
 The fall of Sumter had been the answer of 
 the South to the pleadings for concord of the 
 President's " Inaugural." Its triumph at Bull 
 Run (July 21) seemed to many a victorious 
 refutation of the arguments of his first message 
 against the right of Secession. The " Sumter " 
 swept the West Indian seas of Federal merchant- 
 .men. Confederate batteries at Acquia Creek 
 almost blockaded the Potomac, and stopped 
 communication by sea with Washington. The 
 civil war in Missouri continued with varying 
 success. The loyalists of East Tennessee, fled 
 in numbers from a Confederate reign of terror, 
 only "Parson Brownlow" in his journal, the 
 Knoxville Whig, still proclaiming Unionist prin- 
 ciples. Faithful Western Virginia, repeatedly 
 invaded, had to be repeatedly cleared of Con- 
 federate invaders by M'Clellan, by Rosecranz. 
 Kentucky, on the other hand, was inclining more 
 and more to the Union. And a future series of 
 Federal lodgments on the sea coast of the re-
 
 54 BUTLER AND THE CONTRABANDS. 
 
 volted States was inaugurated by the successful 
 occupation of Hatteras Inlet in North Carolina 
 (28th August). 
 
 The war was thus fully engaged ; by the 
 South to destroy the Union, by the North to 
 maintain it. But how was it to be maintained ? 
 By respecting and protecting slavery, on which 
 the Southern Confederacy was founded, or by 
 striking that Confederacy through slavery it- 
 self? General Butler's ingenious application to 
 slaves of the principle of " contraband of war," 
 had, at an early period, (May 27), commenced 
 an attack upon the " patriarchal institution." 
 Absurd it certainly would have been to return 
 fugitive slaves to disloyal owners. Accordingly, 
 General Butler had been authorised (May 30) 
 to retain and employ such fugitives. Subse- 
 quently (August 6), an Act was passed, forfeit- 
 ing the services of all slaves " required or per- 
 mitted to take up arms ... or to work or be 
 employed in any military or naval service what- 
 soever," against the United States. The right 
 of property in slaves as against the nation
 
 LINCOLN AND FKEMONT. 55 
 
 was thus abolished: but not slavery itself; 
 the master's privilege was destroyed, but no 
 right was given to the slave. General Fremont, 
 in command in Missouri, thought he could go 
 further. By proclamation (August 31), he in- 
 stituted martial law throughout his department, 
 and declared that the slaves of persons taking 
 an active part against the Government should 
 be " free men." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln disallowed this step (Sept. 11, 
 1861). The motives of the act seem to have 
 been twofold First : an anxiety not to travel, 
 if possible, one inch beyond the letter of the 
 law in the matter ; Second : an equal anxiety 
 not to outstrip public feeling generally, and 
 especially that of the Border States. Perhaps 
 Mr. Lincoln miscalculated the strength of the 
 Unionist sentiment on the one side, and of the 
 Abolitionist sentiment on the other. But even 
 were it so, who shall dare condemn him ? To 
 every thinking man, the mere confiscation of 
 the slaves of rebels contained a pledge of future 
 emancipation. Was it worth while, for the sake
 
 56 M'CLELLAN COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 
 
 of hastening by a few months the fulfilment of 
 that pledge, to peril the cause of the Union, at 
 a time when no one signal success had given 
 lustre to its banners ? What if the allowance 
 of General Fremont's order had thrown all the 
 Border States at once into secession ? Can we 
 undervalue that peril, when we look back and 
 see that the single one of those Border States 
 which actually seceded, Virginia, has been prac- 
 tically the only resistent element in the Con- 
 federacy? that when, after setting the wholfc 
 Federal power at defiance for four years, she 
 was finally conquered, she carried the whole 
 Secession with her in her fall ? 
 
 A few months later (Nov. 1), the faithful old 
 Virginian, General Scott, gave up the command- 
 in-chief of the United States armies, and it was 
 conferred on General M'Clellan, who seemed to 
 be pointed out by the public voice as the fittest 
 man for that position ; partly, perhaps, through 
 the prominence which he had acquired as United 
 States Commissioner during the Crimean War, 
 and partly through a late successful campaign in
 
 PORT ROYAL; THE TRENT. 57 
 
 Western Virginia. Another successful and mo- 
 mentous lodgment was effected by the Federals 
 on the Southern coast, at Port Royal and Beau- 
 fort, South Carolina (31st Oct. to Nov. 7), and 
 subsequently at other spots in the vicinity, and 
 another one at Ship Island, off the Louisiana 
 coast (3rd Dec.) ; and a couple of Virginian 
 counties on a detached spit of land, (Accomac 
 and Northampton) submitted to Federal rule. 
 Civil war continued to rage in Missouri, Ken- 
 tucky, and Tennessee, with especial fury in 
 the last, where the Unionist " rebels " of East 
 Tennessee but rarely found quarter with their 
 opponents ; and a most serious complication 
 with England arose, through the seizure (Nov. 
 8), by Captain Wilkes, of Messrs. Mason and 
 Slidell, the Confederate Commissioners, from on 
 board the English mail-steamer Trent. In spite 
 of the popular clamour (especially of all covert 
 friends of the South), which endorsed the act, 
 President Lincoln took upon himself to disallow 
 it, and the Confederate Commissioners were 
 given up.
 
 58 FIRST 
 
 It was under these circumstances that Con- 
 gress met for its ordinary session (Dec. 2, 1861). 
 In his first " annual " Message, after referring, 
 in terms of perfect moderation, to the relations 
 of the United States with foreign nations, and 
 to various questions of national defence and in- 
 ternal communication, Mr. Lincoln thus ex- 
 pressed himself on a matter of small practical 
 moment, but of vast importance in principle : 
 
 " If any good reason exists why we should 
 persevere longer in withholding our recognition 
 of the independence and sovereignty of Hayti 
 and Liberia, I am unable to discern it. Un- 
 willing, however, to inaugurate a novel policy 
 in regard to them without the approbation of 
 Congress, I submit for your consideration the 
 expediency of an appropriation for maintaining 
 a charge d'affaires near each of these new States." 
 
 Let us pause for a moment to see what this 
 means. Hayti and Liberia are two self-governed 
 negro republics, the one of revolted, the other 
 of enfranchised slaves. The United States had 
 not as yet recognised either (although the latter
 
 HAYTI AND LIBERIA. 59 
 
 had been founded by their own citizens), as 
 worthy of diplomatic notice. According to the 
 principles of the new Confederacy, they could 
 not be so recognised. " Its foundations are 
 laid," had said Y. P. Stephens, " its corner- 
 stone rests upon the great truth that the negro 
 is not equal to the white man ; that slavery, 
 subordination to the superior race, is his natural 
 and normal condition." Mr. Lincoln, on the 
 contrary, was "unable to discern any good 
 reason " why negro republics should not stand 
 on a footing of equal sovereignty with any 
 polity founded by the white man. In the eyes 
 of the Illinois rail-splitter, bargee, village at- 
 torney, " slavery, subordination to the superior 
 race," was not " the natural and normal condi- 
 tion " of the negro. He was entitled to freedom, 
 if he could win it by arms if need be and in 
 freedom to self-government. Did not the man 
 who had lately disallowed General Fremont's 
 proclamation for enfranchising those slaves whom 
 the law only declared to be confiscated, thus 
 sufficiently vindicate his own consistency ?
 
 60 FIRST 
 
 Nor was this all. Referring to the Confisca- 
 tion Act itself, to the numbers of confiscated 
 slaves, who by its operation were " already de- 
 pendent on the United States," and who " must 
 be provided for in some way," and to the pos- 
 sibility " that some of the States will pass 
 similar enactments for their own benefit re- 
 spectively, and by operation of which persons 
 of the same class will be thrown upon them for 
 disposal," he proceeded to indicate the first out- 
 lines of the policy which he afterwards earnestly, 
 but only in part successfully, urged upon Con- 
 gress ; recommending that confiscated slaves 
 should be deemed free, but that steps should 
 be taken to colonize them " in some place or 
 places in a climate congenial to them," the free 
 coloured people already in the United States 
 being encouraged to join in such colonization. 
 Hints of yet broader measures were indeed 
 already thrown out. " 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
 
 HINTS ON EMANCIPATION. 61 
 
 which may reach the loyal as well as the dis- 
 loyal, are indispensable." What was this, but 
 a guarded warning that universal emancipation 
 might become in time " indispensable? " 
 
 Next follows a vivid sketch of the progress of 
 the war since the assault on Fort Surnter a 
 model, in my judgment, of vivid political narra- 
 tive : 
 
 "The last ray of hope for preserving the 
 Union peaceably, expired at the assault upon 
 For u Sumter, and a general review of what has 
 occurred since may not be unprofitable. What 
 was painfully uncertain then is much better 
 defined and more distinct now ; and the progress 
 of events is plainly in the right direction. The 
 insurgents confidently claimed a strong support 
 from North of Mason and Dixon's line ; and the 
 friends of the Union were not free from appre- 
 hension on the point. This, however, was soon 
 settled definitely, and on the right side. South 
 of the line, noble little Delaware led off right 
 from the first. Maryland was made to seem 
 against the Union. Our soldiers were assaulted,
 
 62 FIRST 
 
 bridges were burned, and railroads torn up 
 within her limits ; and we were many days, at 
 one time, without the ability to bring a single 
 regiment over her soil to the capital. Now her 
 bridges and railroads are repaired and open to 
 the Government ; she already gives seven regi- 
 ments to the cause of the Union, and none to 
 the enemy ; and her people, at a regular elec- 
 tion, have sustained the Union by a larger 
 majority and a larger aggregate vote than they 
 ever before gave to any candidate or any ques- 
 tion. Kentucky, too, for some time in doubt, 
 is now decidedly, and I think unchangeably, 
 ranged on the side of the Union. Missouri is 
 comparatively quiet, and I believe cannot again 
 be overrun by the insurrectionists. These three 
 States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, 
 neither of which would promise a single soldier 
 at first, have now an aggregate of not less than 
 40,000 in the field for the Union ; while of their 
 citizens, certainly not more than a third of that 
 number, and they of doubtful whereabouts and 
 doubtful existence, are in arms against it. After
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 63 
 
 a somewhat bloody struggle of months, winter 
 closes on the Union people of Western Virginia, 
 leaving them masters of their own country." 
 
 The President concluded by insisting, as in 
 his former message, on the Secession being 
 " largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first 
 principle of popular Government the rights of 
 the people.' 7 And here follows a most interesting 
 development of his views conceived; indeed, 
 from the stand-point of a Western American 
 on the relation between capital and labour : 
 
 "There is one point, with its connections, 
 not so hackneyed as most others, to which I 
 ask a brief attention. It is the effort to 
 place capital on an equal footing with, if 
 not above labour, in the structure of Govern- 
 ment. It is assumed that labour is available 
 only in connection with capital; that nobody 
 labours unless somebody else, owning capital, 
 somehow by the use of it induces him to 
 labour. This assumed, it is next considered 
 whether it is best that capital shall hire labourers, 
 and thus induce them to work by their own con-
 
 64 FIRST "ANNUAL" MESSAGE: 
 
 sent, or buy them, and drive them to it without 
 their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is 
 naturally concluded that all labourers are either 
 hired labourers, or what we call slaves. And 
 further, it is assumed that whoever is once a 
 hired labourer, is fixed in that condition for life. 
 . . . Both these assumptions are false, and all 
 inferences from them are groundless. 
 
 "Labour is prior to and independent of capital. 
 Capital is only the fruit of labour, and could 
 never have existed if labour had not first existed. 
 Labour is the superior of capital, and deserves 
 much the higher consideration. Capital has its 
 rights, which are as worthy of protection as any 
 other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, 
 and probably always will be, a relation between 
 labour and capital, producing mutual benefits. 
 The error is in assuming that the whole labour 
 of the community exists within that relation. A 
 few men own capital, and those few avoid 
 labour themselves, and, with their capital, hire 
 or buy another few to labour for them. A large 
 majority belong to neither class neither work
 
 HOW THE FREE LABOURER RISES. 65 
 
 for others, nor have others working for them. 
 In most of the Southern States, a majority of 
 the whole people, of all colours, are neither 
 slaves nor masters ; while in the Northern a 
 large majority are neither hirers nor hired. . . . 
 Again, as has already been said, there is not of 
 necessity any such thing as the free hired 
 labourer being fixed to that condition for life. 
 Many independent men everywhere in those 
 States, a few years back in their lives, were 
 hired labourers. The prudent, penniless be- 
 ginner in the world labours for wages for a 
 while, saves a surplus with which to buy tools 
 or land for himself, then labours for himself 
 another while, and at length hires another new 
 beginner to help him. This is the just, and 
 generous, and prosperous system, which opens 
 the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent 
 energy, and progress, and improvement of 
 condition to all. No men living are more 
 worthy to be trusted than those who toil up 
 from poverty none less inclined to take or 
 touch aught which they have not honestly 
 
 F
 
 66 MR. LINCOLN'S FIRST DOLLAR. 
 
 earned. Let them beware of surrendering a 
 political power which they already possess, and 
 which, if surrendered, will surely be used to 
 close the door of advancement against such as 
 they, and to fix new disabilities and burdens 
 upon them, till all of liberty be lost." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln does not seem to have asked 
 himself whether the God-given thews and 
 sinews, with which the white man labours 
 and the black, are not in fact a "capital" 
 which must precede all labour. But if we read 
 his reasoning on the subject by his experience, 
 it really means this : ' I, Abraham Lincoln, 
 who stand here as President of these United 
 States, began life as a hired labourer. What 
 capital I have, I made by my labour.* If I 
 
 * One morning, in the Executive Chamber, there 
 were present a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. 
 Seward. A point in the conversation suggesting the 
 thought, Mr. Lincoln said : 
 
 " Seward, you never heard, did you, how I earned my 
 first dollar?" 
 
 " No," said Mr. Seward. 
 
 " Well," replied he, " I was about eighteen years of
 
 LINCOLN V. COBB. 6? 
 
 have risen, why should any be hindered from 
 rising? Why should even the poorest black 
 man remain fixed for life in the condition of a 
 hired labourer ? still less remain a slave, unable 
 even to own his own body ? ' The Confederate 
 General T. R. R. Cobb, of Georgia, had written 
 that there was " perhaps no solution of the great 
 
 age. I belonged, you know, to what they call down 
 South the Scrubs ; people who do not own slaves are 
 nobody there. But we had succeeded in raising, chiefly 
 by my labour, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify 
 me in taking it down the river to sell. After much 
 persuasion I got the consent of mother to go, and con- 
 structed a little flat-boat, large enough to take a barrel 
 or two of things that we had gathered, with myself and 
 little bundle, down to New Orleans. A steamer was 
 coming down the river. We have, you know, no 
 wharves on the Western streams ; and the custom was, 
 if passengers were at any of the landings, for them to 
 go out in a boat, the steamer stopping and taking them 
 on board. 
 
 " I was contemplating my new flat-boat, and wonder- 
 ing whether I could make it stronger or improve it in 
 any particular, when two men came down to the shore 
 in carriages with trunks, and looking at the different 
 boats, singled out mine, and asked, * Who owns this ?' 
 I "answered, somewhat modestly, ' I do.' ' Will you,' said
 
 68 PROGRESS OP THE FEDERAL ARMS. 
 
 problem of reconciling the interests of labour 
 and capital ... so simple and effective as 
 negro slavery. By making the labourer himself 
 capital, the conflict ceases, and the interests 
 become identical." What a gulf between the 
 two doctrines ! 
 
 The early part of the year 1862 saw con- 
 siderable progress on the part of the Federals, 
 
 one of them, ' take us and our trunks to the steamer ? 
 * Certainly/ said I. I was very glad to have the chance 
 of earning something. I supposed that each of them 
 would give me two or three bits. The trunks were put 
 on my flat-boat, the passengers seated themselves on the 
 trunks, and I sculled them out to the steamboat. They 
 got on board, and I lifted up their heavy trunks, and 
 put them on deck. The steamer was about to put on 
 steam again, when I called out that they had forgotten 
 to pay me. Each of them took from his pocket a silver 
 half dollar, and threw it on the floor of my boat. I 
 could scarcely believe my eyes as I picked up the money. 
 Gentlemen, you may think it a very little tiling, and in 
 these days it seems to me a trifle ; but it was a most 
 important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit 
 that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day, 
 that by honest work I had earned a dollar. The 
 world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was a more 
 hopeful and confident being from that time."
 
 THE FEDERALS IN TENNESSEE. 69 
 
 everywhere except in Virginia, where " Stone- 
 wall " Jackson was beginning to win for himself 
 a brilliant reputation by the rapidity and bold- 
 ness of his operations, generally upon the 
 Federal lines of communication. Kentucky was 
 cleared from all organised military resistance, 
 except at the South- West corner. The Federal 
 gunboats, pushing through Kentucky up the 
 Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, into the State 
 of Tennessee, took Fort Henry (February 6), 
 and with the aid of the land forces under 
 General Grant, Fort Donelson (February 16), 
 the latter giving no fewer than 13,300 prisoners 
 (making, with killed and wounded, a total Con- 
 federate loss of 15,067), 3,000 horses, 48 field- 
 pieces, 17 heavy guns, and 20,000 stand of 
 arms, a check to the Confederates, in a mate- 
 rial point of view, far worse than that of Bull 
 Run to the Federals, whose total loss on that 
 occasion was 2,708 (of whom some 1,200 pri- 
 soners), and 28 cannon, with some thousand 
 muskets. Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, 
 was occupied (February 23), never again to be
 
 70 
 
 lost hold of. Senator Andrew Johnson was 
 named military governor of the State. Three 
 Union gunboats ascended the Tennessee as far 
 as Florence, Alabama, and were well received. 
 A further portion of the coast of North Caro- 
 lina was occupied by an expedition under 
 General Burnside, and a lodgment effected on 
 the coast of Georgia, at Brunswick (March 2) ; 
 lastly, the Federal troops, having nearly cleared 
 Missouri, advanced into Arkansas. 
 
 In the midst of these successes, Mr. Lincoln 
 addressed a remarkable message to Congress 
 (March 6, 1862), recommending "the adoption 
 of a joint resolution, which should pledge the 
 United States to co-operate with any State 
 adopting gradual abolition of Slavery, by giving 
 to it pecuniary aid." Every State initiating 
 emancipation, he urged, would be lost for ever 
 to the proposed Southern Confederacy. Gradual 
 and not sudden emancipation was better for all. 
 The current expenditure of the war would soon 
 purchase, at a fair valuation, all the slaves in 
 any named State. The proposal set up "no
 
 FOR AIDING STATE EMANCIPATION. 71 
 
 claim of a right by the Federal authority to 
 interfere with slavery within State limits." But, 
 as he had said in December, the Union must be 
 preserved, and hence all indispensable means 
 must be employed, all which may obviously 
 promise great efficiency towards ending the 
 struggle. The pecuniary compensation ten- 
 dered would be of more value to the States and 
 private persons concerned, than would the insti- 
 tution and property in it, in the present aspect 
 of affairs. He concluded with the solemn words : 
 " In full view of my great responsibility to my 
 God and my country, I earnestly beg the atten- 
 tion of Congress and the people to the subject." 
 It was only on the 10th of April that a joint 
 resolution of Congress on the subject was finally 
 approved by the President. But the feeling of 
 the country against slavery was now rising on 
 all sides, and this was but one of several 
 measures directed against it. On March 13, 
 an additional article of war expressly prohibited, 
 under pain of dismissal, " all officers or persons 
 in the military or naval service of the United
 
 72 LEGISLATION AGAINST . SLAVERY. 
 
 States . . . from employing any of the 
 forces under their respective commands for the 
 purpose of returning fugitives from service or 
 labour/' making thus no difference between 
 fugitives from loyal and from disloyal owners. 
 On the 16th April was passed an act for the 
 emancipation of all slaves within the district 
 of Columbia, the President accompanying his 
 signature with a message expressive of his satis- 
 faction, and the act being followed by another 
 (May 21) "providing for the education of 
 coloured children in the cities of Washington 
 and Georgetown, district of Columbia," out of 
 the proceeds of the taxes received from the 
 coloured population of these cities, and estab- 
 lishing perfect equality before the civil and 
 criminal law within the district between the 
 coloured man and the white. Nor can we over- 
 look the significant fact that, for the first time 
 within forty years, a convicted slaver was hung 
 in New York (February 21). 
 
 Still, the President retained his old anxiety 
 not to travel faster than the public feeling. On
 
 GENERAL HUNTER DISALLOWED. 73 
 
 the 9th May, General Hunter, in command at 
 Hilton Head, South Carolina, issued a proclama- 
 tioii declaring all slaves free within the States 
 of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. The 
 President, by another proclamation (May 19), 
 disallowed that of General Hunter, making 
 known " that, whether it be competent for me, 
 as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, 
 to declare the slaves of any State or States free ; 
 and whether at any time, or in any case, it shall 
 have become a necessity indispensable to the 
 maintenance of the Government to exercise such 
 supposed power, are questions which, under my 
 responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I 
 cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of 
 commanders in the field." Recalling, moreover, 
 the late resolution of Congress for aiding States 
 which should gradually abolish slavery, he ap- 
 pealed in the most touching terms to the 
 people of the States concerned to act on a 
 proposal which made " common cause for a 
 common object, casting no reproaches upon 
 any." "So much good," he declared, "has
 
 74 EMANCIPATION AS A WAR MEASURE 
 
 not been done by one effort in all past time, as, 
 in the providence of God, it is now your high 
 privilege to do. May the vast future not have 
 to lament that you have neglected it ! " 
 
 Whether he judged rightly or 'wrongly in the 
 matter, in the disavowal of General Hunter, as in 
 that of General Fremont before, we cannot but 
 see the truly brave man, who will shirk no re- 
 sponsibility by casting it on third parties, who 
 will not be the slave of outward events, will not 
 let any subordinate officer dictate a policy to 
 the country. Mr. Lincoln now avowedly con- 
 templates the possibility of emancipation as a 
 military necessity, through an exercise of the 
 war-power. But such a question he can leave 
 to the decision of no mere soldier ; it belongs 
 to himself only, the chosen servant of the 
 people, its chief military as well as civil officer. 
 Should the act become necessary, therefore, it 
 can never come as the stepping-stone to a mili- 
 tary despotism, since it will be that of the only 
 soldier who is directly responsible to the people, 
 to the civil laws of his country. But whilst
 
 ALREADY CONTEMPLATED. 75 
 
 thus decisively vindicating his constitutional 
 authority, he uses the very act which he is dis- 
 allowing as a warning to the slave States of the 
 " signs of the times." Will they neglect their 
 opportunity for gradual, assisted emancipation ? 
 The pleading, as we all know, was in vain. 
 " Sinners against their own souls/' the seceding 
 Slave States, which had spurned such emancipa- 
 tion, had to endure it sudden, uncompensated 
 ay, and too often in the light of their burning 
 stacks and homesteads, at the point of their 
 former slaves' bayonets. 
 
 But the check to General Hunter was no 
 check, and was meant to be no check, to the 
 progress of public feeling against slavery. 
 Amongst a whole group of measures in this 
 direction which immediately followed the Pre- 
 sident's proclamation, I can but notice two or 
 three : 
 
 On June 18, a most important act, embodying 
 the cardinal resolution of the Chicago platform, 
 abolished and forbade slavery throughout all 
 the territories of the United States, present or
 
 76 FURTHER LEGISLATION 
 
 future. A treaty between the United States 
 and Great Britain for the suppression of the 
 slave-trade, conceded a mutual right of search, 
 such as America had always withheld (July 11). 
 An act of July 17 enacted the perpetual free- 
 dom of " all slaves of persons who shall here- 
 after be engaged in rebellion, or shall in any way 
 give aid and comfort thereto, escaping and 
 taking refuge within the lines of the army/' 
 " all slaves captured from such persons or de- 
 serted by them, and coming under the control 
 of the Government of the United States, and 
 all slaves of such persons found in any place 
 occupied by rebel forces, and afterwards occu- 
 pied by the forces of the United States." The 
 restoration or molestation of fugitive slaves, 
 except upon oath of the loyalty of their owners, 
 was expressly forbidden. " No person engaged 
 in the military or naval service of the United 
 States," was, " under any pretence whatever," 
 to "assume to decide on the validity of the 
 claim of any person to the service or labour of 
 any other person, under pain of dismissal from
 
 AGAINST SLAYERY. 77 
 
 the service." Lastly, imder the terms of this 
 act and of a somewhat more explicit one of the 
 same date, the President was authorised to 
 " receive into the service of the United States/ 7 
 for any " labour or military or naval service for 
 which they may be found competent," and enrol 
 and organise, " persons of African descent ;" 
 " any slave of a person in rebellion rendering 
 any such service " to be " for ever thereafter 
 free, together with his mother, wife, and 
 children, if they also belong to persons in 
 rebellion ;" but with power also to provide for 
 "the transportation, colonisation, and settle- 
 ment, to some tropical country beyond the 
 limits of the United States, of such persons of 
 African descent, made free by the act, as may 
 be willing to emigrate." 
 
 Before Congress separated, Mr. Lincoln 
 called the representatives of the Border States 
 together at the White House, and addressed 
 them (July 12), in an earnest speech, on the 
 expediency of adopting his gradual emancipa- 
 tion plan. On the same day he sent a Message
 
 78 PROGRESS IN THE WEST. 
 
 to Congress, transmitting the draft of a bill to 
 compensate any State which might abolish 
 slavery within its limits. But, on the one 
 hand, none of the Border States responded to 
 his invitation, only a minority of their repre- 
 sentatives expressing their concurrence in it ; 
 and on the other, though the President's bill 
 was referred to a committee, no action was 
 taken upon it in Congress. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Federal arms had been again 
 progressing everywhere, except in Virginia. 
 Whilst the President's Message of March 6 was 
 being delivered, the great Western battle of Pea 
 Ridge, Arkansas, was beginning, which, after 
 being renewed for two successive days, ended 
 (March 8) with the rout of the Confederates. 
 Successes were obtained in distant New Mexico 
 and Arizona, till now occupied by the Confede- 
 rates from Texas, both of which were recovered, 
 the latter (June) by a volunteer force from Cali- 
 fornia. The great advance down the Mississippi 
 and its valley had been steadily carried on, the 
 Confederates successively evacuating or surren-
 
 NEW ORLEANS SURRENDERED. 79 
 
 dering their works at New Madrid, Island No. 
 10, Fort Wright, and the city of Memphis 
 (June 6j, and the Union forces advancing as far 
 as Vicksburg, whilst Arkansas was crossed from 
 its North- West corner to Helena on the Missis- 
 sippi (July 11), its capital, Little Rock, being 
 temporarily occupied. By a still more gallant 
 exploit, the forts of the Lower Mississippi (Jack- 
 son and St. Philip), after six days' bombardment, 
 were run past by (now) Admiral Farragut, and 
 the surrender of New Orleans and the forts was 
 obtained (April 28). The fleet pressing upwards 
 received the surrender of Natchez, and a portion 
 of it actually ran past Vicksburg, which, with 
 some outworks at Grand Gulf and Port Hudson, 
 lower down (the latter not yet fully fortified), 
 was the only stronghold yet remaining to the 
 Confederates on the great river of the West. 
 The land operations in this quarter had been 
 equally vigorous. The fiercely contested battle 
 of Shiloh or Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee 
 (April 6-7), ended on the second day by the 
 retreat of the Confederates, leaving 3,000 dead
 
 80 THE EASTERN COAST FURTHER OCCUPIED. 
 
 upon the field ; but the loss of the Federals was 
 no less than 13,298, besides many pieces of 
 cannon. They pushed on into Mississippi, occu- 
 pying Corinth (May 30), whilst a lodgment was 
 also effected in Northern Alabama, through the 
 capture of Huntsville (April 11). Some suc- 
 cesses were however obtained by the Confede- 
 rates in Tennessee, and their dashing general, 
 John Morgan, invaded Kentucky. On the 
 Southern coast the town of Pensacola was occu- 
 pied from Fort Pickens, which had been retained 
 by the Federals (May 12). The occupation of 
 the Eastern coast was extended, the Federals 
 taking possession in Florida (March 7), of St. 
 Mary's, Fernandina, St. Augustine in Georgia, 
 of Fort Pulaski, at the entrance of the Savannah 
 River (April 11) in North Carolina, of New- 
 bern (March 14), Beaufort (March 20), &c. 
 in South-Eastern Virginia, of Norfolk and Suf- 
 folk (May 10, 18) ; but a severe repulse was 
 suffered on James Island, South Carolina, about 
 five miles from Charleston (June 14). 
 
 But in Virginia the resistance of the Con-
 
 M'CLELLAN'S ADVANCE. 81 
 
 federates was persevering and successful. In 
 the most important naval conflict of the war, the 
 fight of the Confederate ram " Merrimac" with 
 the Union fleet in Hampton Roads, Virginia, 
 the sloop " Cumberland " was sunk, the frigate 
 " Congress " compelled to surrender and burnt ? 
 and several other vessels disabled; and the ram was 
 only beat off by the little steam-battery " Monitor" 
 (March 8-9) ; but the " Merrimac " was after- 
 wards destroyed by the Confederates themselves 
 (May 11), to prevent her falling into the hands 
 of the Federals. After four months' tenure of 
 command on the Potomac, General M'Clellan 
 at last moved on towards Richmond ; but only 
 to find the Confederate works round Manassas 
 Junction evacuated (March 10), their army tak- 
 ing up the line of the Rappahannock. He now 
 changed his base, and commenced what is known 
 as the campaign of the Peninsula; the final 
 result of which was, that after a series of most 
 bloody battles in a most unhealthy country, the 
 earlier ones favourable to the Union cause, the 
 latter the reverse, during which a portion of the 
 
 G
 
 82 THE PRESIDENT AND 
 
 Federal army was once within five miles of 
 Richmond, and the Virginia Legislature voted 
 200,000 dols. for the removal of women and 
 children, M'Clellan finally fell back to the James 
 River (July 1), up which the Union gun-boats 
 had vainly sought to force their way past For t 
 Darling (May 17). During this time Jackson 
 had forced Banks in North- Western Virginia to 
 retreat from Winchester across the Potomac, 
 and Fremont to fall back down the Shenandoah 
 Valley. 
 
 The dealings between the President and 
 General M'Clellan, during the course of the 
 events just noticed, and up to his final super- 
 session in the chief command, fill up the greater 
 part of one of the most painful chapters (IX.) 
 in Mr. Raymond's book. General M'Clellan, 
 as events have shown, was a good second-rate 
 general, whom injudicious friends had puffed 
 into the belief that he was a first-rate one. In 
 organising the Federal army after the early 
 disasters of the war, he undoubtedly showed 
 himself most capable, and did a work which
 
 GENERAL M'CLELLAN. 83 
 
 perhaps no one else could have done in his 
 place. But as Commander-in-Chief in the 
 field he showed himself slow, irresolute, queru- 
 lous, exacting, always apt to miss the possible 
 whilst claiming the impossible from others. A 
 few samples will suffice. On the 25th June, his 
 army being then outside of the Chickahominy 
 river, General M'Clellan had written, declaring 
 that the Confederate force was some 200,000 
 strong (a gross and ridiculous exaggeration), 
 and that if he were attacked, and the result of 
 the action were a disaster, the " responsibility 
 could not be thrown on his shoulders, but must 
 rest where it belongs." The President wrote 
 back, June 26 : 
 
 " Your three despatches of yesterday in re- 
 lation, ending with the statement that you 
 completely succeeded in making your point, are 
 very satisfactory. The latter one suggesting 
 the probability of your being overwhelmed by 
 200,000 men, and talking of to whom the re- 
 sponsibility will belong, pains me very much. 
 I give you all I can, and act on the presumption 
 
 G 2
 
 84 FAILURE OF THE 
 
 that you will do the best you can with what you 
 have ; while you continue, ungenerously, I think, 
 to assume that I could give you more if I would. 
 I have omitted, I shall omit, no opportunity 
 to send you reinforcements whenever I can." 
 
 On the 27th, General JVTClellan was defeated 
 at Gaines's Mill, and began his retreat by a 
 flank march to the James River, writing the next 
 day to the Secretary of War that he was not re- 
 sponsible for the result, and concluding with the 
 incredible words : " If I save this army, I tell 
 you plainly, that I owe no thanks to you or to 
 any persons in Washington ; you have done your 
 best to sacrifice this army." The President re- 
 plied (June 28) : 
 
 " Save your army at all events. Will send re- 
 inforcements as fast as we can. Of course they 
 cannot reach you to-day, to-morrow, or next 
 day. I have not said that you were ungene- 
 rous for saying you needed reinforcements ; I 
 thought you were ungenerous in assuming that 
 I did not send them as fast as I could. I feel 
 any misfortune to you and your army quite as
 
 PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 85 
 
 keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had 
 a drawn battle or a repulse, it is the price we 
 pay for the enemy not being in Washington. 
 ... It is the nature of the case, and neither 
 you nor the Government is to blame." 
 
 The retreat continued amid fierce fighting, 
 not personally shared in by the general, who 
 headed his retreating forces, telegraphing mean- 
 while for reinforcements. Mr. Lincoln wrote 
 (Julyl):- 
 
 "It is impossible to reinforce you for your 
 present emergency. If we had half-a-million 
 of men we could not get them to you in time. 
 We have not the men to send. If you are 
 not strong enough to face the enemy, you must 
 find a place of security, and wait, rest and 
 repair. Maintain your ground if you can ; but 
 save your army at all events, even if you fall 
 back to Fort Monroe. We still have strength 
 enough in the country, and will bring it out." 
 
 The General's reply was to ask for 50,000 
 more troops ! Nothing can exceed the patient
 
 86 
 
 gentleness of the sore-tried President's answer 
 (July 2) : 
 
 11 Your despatch of yesterday induces me to 
 hope that your army is having some rest. In 
 this hope, allow me to reason with you for a 
 moment. When you ask for 50,000 men to be 
 promptly sent you, you surely labour under 
 some gross mistake of fact. Recently you sent 
 papers showing your disposal of forces made last 
 spring for the defence of Washington, and ad- 
 vising a return to that plan. I find it included 
 in and about Washington 75,000 men. Now, 
 please be assured that I have not men enough 
 to fill that very plan by 50,000. . . . Thus, 
 the idea of sending you 50,000, or any other 
 considerable force promptly, is simply absurd. 
 If, in your frequent mention of responsibility, 
 you have the impression that I blame you for 
 not doing more than you can, please be re- 
 lieved of such impression. I only beg that, in 
 like manner, you will not ask impossibilities 
 of me. If you think you are not strong enough
 
 FEDERAL REVERSES. 87 
 
 to take Richmond just now, I do not ask you 
 to try just now. Save the army, material and 
 personnel, and I will strengthen it for the offen- 
 sive again as fast as I can. The governors of 
 eighteen States offer me a new levy of 300,000, 
 which I accept." 
 
 It is characteristic of Mr. Lincoln, that at a 
 meeting on the 6th August, when M'Clellan's 
 admirers were seeking to uphold the military 
 reputation of their hero by throwing the whole 
 responsibility of his failures on the Government, 
 Mr. Lincoln simply tried to clear at once both 
 the General and the War-Minister : 
 
 " General M'Clellan has sometimes asked for 
 things that the Secretary of War did not give 
 him. General M'Clellan is not to blame for 
 asking what he wanted and needed, and the 
 Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving 
 when he had none to give." 
 
 The failure of M'Clellan's attempt to take 
 Richmond from the York River was followed by 
 a course of events, except in the West, almost 
 uniformly adverse to the Federals. By command
 
 88 BATTLE OF ANTIETAM. 
 
 of General Halleck, then General-in-Chief 
 (August 3), General M'Clellan, though under 
 protest, had to withdraw his army from the 
 banks of the James, the Federals retaining only 
 Yorktown, Williamsburg, and a strip of coast, as 
 the results of their Peninsular campaign. 
 General Pope, placed in command of the army, 
 was outmanoeuvred and finally defeated in a 
 second battle of Bull Run by General Lee 
 (August 31), and threw up his command. Push- 
 ing on beyond the Potomac into Maryland and 
 Pennsylvania, whilst Harper's Ferry, with 11,000 
 men, 73 guns, and a large quantity of ammuni- 
 tion, was surrendered to one of Jackson's sub- 
 ordinates, the Confederates were only checked 
 by M'Clellan (who had been replaced in com- 
 mand on Pope's resignation), at South Mountain 
 (September 14), and at Antietam (September 
 17), losing at the latter about 14,000 killed and 
 wounded, and 13 guns (the Federal loss being 
 12,469) ; but they were allowed to retreat un- 
 molested into Virginia. Eventually (November 
 5), General M'Clellan, having since October 6
 
 CONFEDERATE ADVANCES CHECKED. 89 
 
 delayed to comply with an express order to 
 cross the Potomac, was superseded in favour of 
 his friend, General Burnside. Various reverses 
 were suffered in Tennessee and Kentucky ; Cin- 
 cinnati, the great business city of Ohio, was 
 threatened ; and the important position of Cum- 
 berland Gap was evacuated (September 17). 
 Still, the successive advances into Kentucky of 
 Morgan and Bragg were checked ; and each 
 invasion of Kentucky, as of Maryland, only 
 proved that the majority of the population in 
 the Border slave States, Virginia excepted, were 
 by this time staunch to the Union. In Arkansas 
 much fighting took place, almost invariably 
 favourable to the Federals, as also some in 
 South- Western Missouri and Kansas ; whilst 
 General Rosecranz won the battle of luka (Sep- 
 tember 19-20) and Corinth (October 1-3), in the 
 latter of which, after a first day's success, the 
 Confederates were defeated, with a loss of nearly 
 10,000 men out of 38,000. On the coast, Gal- 
 veston, Texas, was occupied (October 4), though, 
 as it turned out, only for a time ; and an un-
 
 90 THE PRESIDENT AND 
 
 successful attempt was made in South Carolina 
 to occupy the Charleston and Savannah Railroad 
 at Pocotaligo (October 22). 
 
 But, meanwhile, the great principles on which 
 the war turned were coming out more and more. 
 For some time the President adhered to his 
 scheme, towards which Congress had placed 
 600,000 dols. at his disposal, for colonising the 
 coloured people abroad. Some of them entered 
 into the scheme, and formed a committee, which 
 was received by the President at the White 
 House, and addressed by him (August 14) in a 
 speech, of which notes were taken by one of 
 those present, and which has been much can- 
 vassed. " You and we," he said, " are different 
 races. We have between us a broader difference 
 than exists between almost any other two races. 
 This physical difference is a great dis- 
 advantage to us both, as I think. ... If this 
 is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we 
 should be separated. . . . Your race are suffer- 
 ing, in my judgment, the greatest wrong in- 
 flicted on any people. But even when you
 
 THE COLOURED COMMITTEE. 91 
 
 cease to be slaves, you are cut off from many of 
 the advantages which the other race enjoys. 
 The aspiration of man is to enjoy equality with 
 the best when free ; but on this broad continent 
 not a single man of your race is made the equal 
 of a single man of ours. Go where you are 
 treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. 
 .... I need not recount to you the effects 
 upon white men, growing out of the institution 
 of slavery. I believe in its general evil effects 
 on the white race. See our present condition 
 the country engaged in war ; our white men 
 cutting one another's throats, none knowing 
 how far it will extend. . . . But for your race 
 among us there could not be war, although 
 many men engaged on either side do not care 
 for you one way or the other. ... It is better 
 
 for us both, therefore, to be separated 
 
 There is an unwillingness on the part of our 
 people, harsh as it may be, for you free coloured 
 people to remain with us. ... If intelligent 
 coloured men, such as are before me, would move 
 in this matter, much might be accomplished. . . 
 For the sake of your race you should sacrifice
 
 92 THE PRESIDENT AND 
 
 something of your present comfort. . . . It is a 
 cheering thought throughout life, that some- 
 thing can be done to ameliorate the condition of 
 those who have been subject to the hard usages 
 of the world. It is difficult to make a man 
 miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself, 
 and claims kindred to the great God who made 
 him." 
 
 He then pointed out Liberia, as one field for 
 colonisation. But " some of you would rather 
 remain within reach of the country of your 
 nativity. / do not know how much attachment 
 you may have toward our race. It does not strike 
 me that you have the greatest reason to love them. 
 
 3 7 
 
 But still you are attached to them, at all events." 
 So he was thinking for them of Central America. 
 There, " all the factions are agreed alike on the 
 subject of colonisation, and want it, and are 
 more generous than we are here. To your 
 coloured race they have no objection. Besides, 
 I would endeavour to have you made equals, and 
 have the best assurance that you should be the 
 equals of the best." So he asked them to consider 
 the thing seriously, " for the good of mankind."
 
 THE COLOURED COMMITTEE. 93 
 
 I have never been able to find the fault with 
 this speech that many have, absolutely mistaken 
 as I believe it to have been, in point of opinion. 
 The President's first duty was to the Union, 
 which he had to preserve so far as it existed, to 
 restore so far as it was broken up. The effort 
 to restore it, he clearly felt, led him day by day 
 towards the destruction of slavery. That, he 
 thought, could be more easily effected by the 
 simultaneous removal of the coloured race. Yet 
 he was determined, this is implied, throughout 
 not only his speech to the coloured committee, 
 but throughout his whole conduct from first to 
 last, to impose no coercion upon them for the 
 purpose. So he urges them to remove them- 
 selves. He addresses them with perfect candour, 
 not as inferiors, but as equals, not extenuating 
 in anywise the wrongs which have been and are 
 inflicted on them, claiming from them no 
 gratitude, no deference, no submission, appeal- 
 ing only to their self-respect, to their wish to 
 benefit their fellows. They are not the equals 
 of the white men here ; why not go where they 
 " should be the equals of the best ?" Evidently,
 
 94 MR. LINCOLN'S LETTER 
 
 he is doing by these coloured men precisely as 
 he would be done by. There is, in fact, the 
 broadest assertion of human equality beneath 
 this effort to dissociate two races, of which the 
 one will not treat the other as its equal. 
 
 But the President's leading point of view, 
 that of saving the Union, must never be over- 
 looked. He set it forth himself with unmis- 
 takeable clearness in a letter of nearly the same 
 date (August 22) to Mr. Horace Greeley, who 
 had somewhat bitterly attacked him in the New 
 York Tribune: 
 
 " Dear Sir, I have just read yours of the 
 19th instant, addressed to myself through the 
 New York Tribune. If there be in it any state- 
 ments or assumptions of fact which I may 'know 
 to be erroneous, I do not now and here con- 
 trovert them. If there be any inferences which 
 I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now 
 and here argue against them. If there be per- 
 ceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, 
 I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose 
 heart I have always supposed to be right. As 
 to the policy I l seem* to be pursuing,' as you
 
 TO MR. H. GEEELET. 95 
 
 say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 
 I would save the Union. I would save it in the 
 shortest way under the constitution. The sooner 
 the national authority can be restored, the 
 nearer the Union will be the Union as it 
 was. 
 
 " If there be those who would not save the 
 Union unless they could at the same time save 
 slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be 
 those who would not save the Union unless they 
 could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not 
 agree with them. My paramount object is to 
 save the Union, and not either to save or destroy 
 slavery. If I could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave, I would do it;* if I could 
 save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; 
 and if I could do it by freeing some and 
 leaving others alone, - 1 would also do that. 
 
 * A Timetf correspondent, referring obviously to this 
 passage, recently spoke of Mr. Lincoln as having 
 "boasted" that if he could save the Union without 
 freeing any slave, he would do it. Can there be a 
 grosser perversion of the truth, as the whole context 
 shows ? Will calumny not spare this man even in his 
 grave ?
 
 96 
 
 What I do about slavery, and the coloured race, 
 I do because I believe it helps to save this Union ; 
 and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not 
 believe it would help to save the Union. I shall 
 do less whenever 1 shall believe what I am doing 
 hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever 
 I believe doing more will help the cause. I 
 shall try to correct errors when shown to be 
 errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as 
 they shall appear to be true views. I have here 
 stated my purpose according to my views of 
 official duty, and I intend no modification of my 
 oft expressed personal wish that all men every- 
 where could be free." 
 
 It is written : " He that doeth truth cometh 
 to the light, that his deeds may be made 
 manifest, that they are wrought in God." Did 
 ever man more resolutely than this man " come 
 to the light, that his deeds might be made 
 manifest ?" Did ever man, instead of, like so 
 many other rulers, darkening counsel by words 
 without understanding, seek and find words 
 which should so clearly, simply set forth the 
 purpose of a strong, pure will, scorning all dis-
 
 MR. LINCOLN A TRUE BACONIAN. 97 
 
 guise? Not to dwell on the sinewy, manly 
 English of the ex-rail-splitter, ex-bargee, beside 
 which the most admired samples of contemporary 
 " style " might well act almost as an emetic on 
 the reader, observe again the truly Baconian 
 philosophy which pervades the President's policy: 
 " I shall try to correct errors when shown to be 
 errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as 
 they appear to be true views. In other words: 
 ' I am no doctrinaire. I have no system to 
 which God's world is to be compelled to con- 
 form. I study the facts of that world, and shall 
 study them from them to form, from them to. 
 correct, my judgment as to means. But I have 
 an end, and to this end I mean to use these facts 
 as best I may. They are given me to govern 
 by studying them, not idly and blindly to follow 
 and obey. My end is the fulfilment of the duty 
 which I have accepted, to save this Union, this 
 people, this commonwealth of which I am the 
 ruler. With the fulfilment of that duty I 
 will allow no wishes of mine, even the dearest 
 and the most righteous, to interfere, not even 
 
 H '
 
 98 CRT FOE IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION. 
 
 the wish that all men everywhere could be 
 free/ 
 
 Did the President really believe that his duty 
 could extend so far as to rivet the shackles of the 
 slave ? He knew that it could not, and did 
 not. He knew that wherever the Union arms 
 extended, slaves were being received as fugitives, 
 confiscated, freed. He, and his Secretary of 
 War had been issuing orders and proclamations 
 to this effect, in accordance with recent legisla- 
 tion. Negro troops were being embodied on 
 various points, from South Carolina to Kansas 
 and New Orleans. The black men whom he 
 had been urging to emigrate, were learning to 
 stand shoulder to shoulder with the white man 
 in defence of a common country. In the free 
 North, Governor Sprague, of Rhode Island (Aug. 
 4), was raising and promising to head a negro 
 regiment. The cry for immediate emancipation 
 was rising higher and higher. On the 13th of 
 September Maryland being already invaded 
 the President received a deputation from all the 
 religious denominations in Chicago upon the
 
 THE CHICAGO DEPUTATION. 99 
 
 subject. As a study in mental philosophy, no 
 speech of Mr. Lincoln's is more interesting to 
 me than his reply to this deputation which, 
 nevertheless, has been singularly misunderstood. 
 You see in it that rare type of excellence, a 
 thoroughly judicial mind. The speech is really 
 that of a man who, to make sure of the correct- 
 ness of his own conclusions, wishes to argue out 
 every possible objection to them. He says he 
 has thought much on the subject for weeks, 
 for months. Good men, religious men, men 
 " equally certain that they represent the divine 
 will," beset him with the most opposite opinions 
 and advice. The one class or the other must be 
 mistaken, " perhaps in some respect both. 7 ' 
 
 " I hope it will not be irreverent for me to 
 say, that if it is probable that God would reveal 
 His will to others, on a point so connected with 
 my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal 
 it directly to me ; for, unless I am more deceived 
 in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire 
 to know the will of Providence in this matter ; 
 and if I can learn what it is, I will do it. ... I 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MR. LINCOLN ON THE WAE-POWEK. 
 
 suppose it will be granted that I am not to 
 sxpect a direct revelation. I must study the 
 plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is 
 possible, and learn what appears to be wise and 
 right. . . . Why, the rebel soldiers are pray- 
 ing with a great deal more earnestness, I fear, 
 than our own troops, and expecting God to 
 favour their side." 
 
 What good would a proclamation of emanci- 
 pation from him do ? He does " not want to 
 issue a document, that the whole world will see 
 necessarily must be inoperative, like the Pope's 
 bull against the comet." But after enumerating 
 all the arguments on this head, he interposes the 
 caution : " Understand, I raise no objections 
 against it on legal or constitutional grounds ; for, 
 as Comrnander-in-Chief of the army and navy in 
 time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any 
 measure which may best subdue the enemy." 
 And after urging various other objections, he 
 concludes by a second caution, which reveals the 
 whole man : 
 
 " Do not misunderstand me because I have 
 mentioned these objections. They indicate the
 
 FIRST EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 101 
 
 difficulties that have thus far prevented my 
 action in some such way as you desire. I have 
 not decided against a proclamation of liberty tc 
 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." 
 
 Nine days more elapsed ; South Mountain was 
 fought, then Antietam (Sept. 17), and on the 
 22nd, the President issued his first Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation, announcing that, "On the 
 1st day of January, 1863, all persons held as 
 slaves within any State, or designated part of a 
 State, the people whereof shall then be in rebel- 
 lian against the United States, shall be then, 
 thenceforward, and for ever, free." 
 
 Mr. F. B. Carpenter has given to the world 
 the history of the Emancipation Proclamation, 
 as related by Mr. Lincoln himself, in familiar 
 conversation, to the writer : 
 
 " It had got to be Midsummer, 1862. Things 
 had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that
 
 102 ME. LINCOLN'S ACCOUNT OF 
 
 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 upon the 
 subject. This was the last of July, or the first 
 part of the month of August, 1862 (the exact 
 date he did not remember). This Cabinet 
 meeting took place, I think, upon a Saturday. 
 All were present, excepting Mr. Blair, the 
 Postmaster-General, who was absent at the 
 opening of the discussion, but came in subse- 
 quently. I said to the Cabinet that I had re- 
 solved upon this step, and had not called them 
 together to ask their advice, but to lay the 
 subject-matter of a proclamation before them ; 
 suggestions as to which would be in order, after 
 they had heard it read. . . . Various sugges- 
 tions were offered. Secretary Chase wished the
 
 THE EMANCIPATION PKOCLAMATION. 103 
 
 language stronger in reference to the arming of 
 the blacks. Mr. Blair, after he came in, depre- 
 cated the policy, on the ground that it would 
 cost the Administration the fall [i.e., autumn] 
 elections. Nothing, however, was offered that 
 I had not already fully anticipated in my own 
 mind, until Secretary Seward spoke. Said he, 
 ' Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, 
 but I question the expediency of its issue at this 
 juncture. The depression of the public mind, 
 consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so 
 great, that I fear the effect of so important a 
 step. It may be viewed as the last measure of 
 an exhausted Government, a cry for help ; 
 the Government stretching forth its hands to 
 Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth 
 her hands to the Government. His idea was, 
 that it would be considered our last shriek on 
 the retreat. Now/ continued Mr. Seward, 
 'while I approve the measure, I suggest, sir, 
 that you postpone its issue until you can give it 
 to the country supported by military success, 
 instead of issuing it, as would be the case now,
 
 104 THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 
 
 upon the greatest disasters of the war/ The 
 wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State 
 struck me with very great force. It was an 
 aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon 
 the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The 
 result was, that I put the draft of the proclama- 
 tion aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, 
 waiting for a victory. From time to time I 
 added or enlarged a line, touching it up here 
 and there, waiting the progress of events. Well, 
 the next news we had was of Pope's disaster at 
 Bull Run. Things looked darker than ever. 
 Finally came the week of the battle of Antietam, 
 and I determined to wait no longer. The news 
 came, I think, on Wednesday, that the advan- 
 tage was on our side. I was then staying at the 
 Soldiers' Home (three miles out of Washing- 
 ton). Here I finished writing the second draft 
 of the preliminary proclamation ; came up on 
 Saturday, called the Cabinet together to hear it, 
 and it was published the following Monday." 
 
 But Mr. Lincoln, always reticent as to his 
 deepest sources of feeling, did not tell the
 
 105 
 
 young artist that which he learnt from a mem- 
 ber of the Cabinet : 
 
 "Mr. Chase told me, that at the Cabinet 
 meeting immediately after the battle of Antietam, 
 and just prior to the issue of the September Pro- 
 clamation, the President entered upon the busi- 
 ness before them, by saying that the time for 
 the annunciation of the Emancipation policy 
 could no longer be delayed. Public sentiment, 
 he thought, would sustain it, many of his warmest 
 friends and supporters demanded it, e and he had 
 promised his God that he would do it.' The last 
 part of this was uttered in a low tone, and ap- 
 peared to be heard by no one but Secretary 
 Chase, who was sitting near him. He asked 
 the President if he correctly understood him ? 
 Mr. Lincoln replied, ' I made a solemn vow 
 before God, that if General Lee were driven 
 back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the 
 result by the declaration of freedom to the 
 slaves.'" 
 
 The governors of fourteen loyal States, and 
 the proxies from three others, in a meeting at
 
 106 SABBATH OBSERVANCE PROCLAMATION. 
 
 Altoona, expressed their hearty assent to the 
 proclamation (Sept. 24). The President was on 
 the same day serenaded at Washington, and ac- 
 knowledged the compliment in a short speech, 
 stating that what he had done he had done 
 " after a very full deliberation, and under a 
 heavy and solemn sense of responsibility/' 
 trusting in God he had " made no mistake/' 
 declining " to sustain" what he had "done or 
 said by any comment/' but, ' according to his 
 wont, turning away all praise from himself to 
 " all good and brave officers and men " who had 
 fought the late successful battles. 
 
 A proclamation for the orderly observance of 
 the Sabbath deserves much to be noticed (Nov. 
 16). " The President, Commander-in-Chief of the 
 army and navy, desires and enjoins the orderly 
 observance of the Sabbath by the officers and 
 men in the military and naval service. The im- 
 portance for man and beast of the prescribed 
 weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian 
 soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the 
 best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due
 
 SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE. 107 
 
 regard for the divine will, demand that Sunday 
 labour in the army and navy be reduced to the 
 measure of strict necessity. The discipline and 
 character of the national forces should not suffer, 
 nor the cause they defend be imperilled, by the 
 profanation of the day or name of the Most 
 High. . . . The first general order issued by 
 the Father of his country [Washington], 
 after the Declaration of Independence, indi- 
 cates the spirit in which our institutions were 
 founded, and should ever be defended : ' The 
 General hopes and trusts that every officer and 
 man will endeavour to live and act as becomes a 
 Christian soldier defending the dearest rights 
 and liberties of his country/ " 
 
 I pass to Mr. Lincoln's second annual Message 
 (Dec. 1), far too long indeed, to be analyzed, 
 still less commented on at length. In proceed- 
 ing to the subject of " compensated emancipa- 
 tion," the President said : 
 
 " A nation may be said to consist of its terri- 
 tory, its people, and its laws. The territory is 
 the only part which is of certain durability.
 
 108 SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 ' One generation passeth away, and another 
 generation cometh, but the earth abideth for 
 ever/ . . . That portion of the earth's surface 
 which is owned and inhabited by the people of 
 the United States, is well adapted for the home 
 of one national family; and it is not well 
 adapted for two or more. Its vast extent, and 
 its variety of climate and productions, are of 
 advantage in this age for one people, whatever 
 they might have been in former ages. Steam, 
 telegraphs, and intelligence have brought these 
 to be an advantageous combination for one 
 united people. . . . There is no line, straight 
 or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon 
 which to divide. Trace through, from East to 
 West, upon the line between the free and slave 
 country, and we shall find a little more than 
 one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be 
 crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, 
 thickly on both sides ; while nearly all its re- 
 maining length are merely surveyors' lines, over 
 which people may walk back and forth without 
 any consciousness of their presence. . . . But
 
 109 
 
 there is another difficulty. The great interior 
 region, bounded East by the Alleghanies, North 
 by the British dominions, West by the Rocky 
 Mountains, and South by the line along which 
 the culture of corn and cotton meets, and which 
 includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee, all 
 of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wiscon- 
 sin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, 
 and the territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and 
 part of Colorado, already have above ten 
 millions of people, and will have fifty millions 
 within fifty years, if not prevented by any 
 political folly or mistake. It contains more than 
 one-third of the country owned by the United 
 States, certainly more than a million of square 
 miles. ... A glance at the map shows that, 
 territorially speaking, it is the great body of the 
 Republic. The other parts are but marginal 
 borders to it. ... In the production of provi- 
 sions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed 
 from them, this great interior region is naturally 
 one of the most important of the world. . . 
 And yet this region has no sea-coast, touches
 
 110 SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its 
 people now find, and may for ever find, their 
 way to Europe by New York, to South America 
 and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San 
 Francisco. But separate our common country 
 into two nations, as designed by the present 
 rebellion, and every man of this great interior 
 region is thereby cut off from some one or more 
 of these outlets, not perhaps by a physical 
 barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade 
 regulations. . . . These outlets, East, West, and 
 South, are indispensable to the well-being of the 
 people inhabiting and to inhabit this vast interior 
 region. . . . They will not ask where a line of 
 separation shall be, but will vow rather that 
 there shall be no such line. Nor are the mar- 
 ginal regions less interested in these commu- 
 nications to and through them to the great 
 outside world. They too, and each of them, 
 must have access to this Egypt of the West, 
 without paying toll at the crossing of any 
 national boundary. Our national strife springs 
 not from our permanent part, not from the land
 
 THE STRUGGLE A PASSING ONE. Ill 
 
 we inhabit ; not from our national homestead. 
 ... In all its adaptations and aptitudes it 
 demands union, and abhors separation. In fact 
 it would ere long force re-union, however much 
 of blood and treasure the separation might have 
 cost. Oar strife pertains to ourselves, to the 
 passing generations of men, and it can, with- 
 out convulsion, be hushed for ever with the 
 passing of one generation."* 
 
 I must say it seems to me that it would be 
 difficult to find more thoughtful and broader 
 statesmanship than is shown by this portion of 
 the message, which the Times, followed by well- 
 nigh the whole of the penny-a-lining crew, 
 chose to make game of. I see before me a man 
 who not only looks straight at things, a very 
 
 * Surely Dr. Storrs, in his noble " Oration comme- 
 morative of Abraham Lincoln," (Brooklyn, 1865), must 
 have forgotten this message, when he said that Mr. Lincoln 
 seems hardly to have thought of the vast expanse of the 
 country, "with its prodigal progress in wealth, population, 
 and all resources . . . and was scarcely sustained or moved 
 in his work by any condition derived from them." (See 
 pp. 27-8.)
 
 112 SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 rare gift already, but tries to look them through 
 and through, and to form his own conclusions 
 upon them. He is not in this respect unlike 
 our own Prince Albert, only with rougher 
 powers, which have to be exerted, under terrible 
 emergencies, upon mightier subjects. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln then proceeded to develope his 
 plan for compensated emancipation, by payments 
 from the Federal Government to every State 
 which should abolish slavery before the 1st 
 January, 1900, " all slaves who should have en- 
 joyed actual freedom by the chances of the war, 
 at any time before the end of the rebellion, " to 
 be nevertheless " for ever free," but with com- 
 pensation to their (loyal) owners. On this plan 
 I need not dwell. None, perhaps, but Mr. 
 Lincoln believed in the possibility of its being 
 adopted. Nay, from what he says on the subject 
 of the colonization of the coloured race, it is 
 evident that he was himself beginning to lose 
 faith in his pet notion of their voluntary expatria- 
 tion, facing resolutely the possibility of their 
 remaining :
 
 THE .FREE COLOURED LABOURER. 113 
 
 " There is an objection urged against free 
 coloured persons remaining in the country, 
 which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes 
 malicious. It is insisted that their presence 
 would injure and displace white labour and 
 white labourers. If there ever could be a proper 
 time for mere catch arguments, that time surely 
 is not now. In times like the present men should 
 utter nothing for ivhich they would not willingly be 
 responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, 
 then, that coloured people can displace any more 
 white labour by being free than by remaining 
 slaves ? If they stay in their old places they 
 jostle no white labourers ; if they leave their old 
 places they leave them open to white labourers. 
 . . . Emancipation, even without deportation, 
 would probably enhance the wages of white 
 labour, and very surely would not reduce them. 
 . . . But it is dreaded that the freed people 
 will swarm forth and cover the whole land. Are 
 they not already in the land ? Will liberation 
 make them any more numerous ? Equally dis- 
 tributed among the whites of the whole country 
 
 i
 
 114 SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 there would be but one coloured to seven whites. 
 . . . There are many communities now having 
 more than one free coloured person to seven 
 whites ; and this without any apparent consci- 
 ousness of evil from it. The district of Columbia 
 and the States of Maryland and Delaware are all 
 in this condition. . . . But why should eman- 
 cipation south send the freed people north? 
 People of any colour seldom run unless there be 
 something to run from/' 
 
 After carefully pointing out that neither " the 
 war nor proceedings under the emancipation 
 proclamation" would be stayed because of the 
 recommendation of his plan, and after apologiz- 
 ing for his own insistence, Mr. Lincoln con- 
 cluded with the following weighty words : 
 
 " Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. 
 We of this congress and this administration will 
 be remembered in spite of ourselves. . . . The 
 fiery trial through which we pass will light us 
 down, in honour or dishonour, to the latest 
 generation. We say that we are for the Union. 
 The world will not forget that we say this. We
 
 THE GRADUAL EMANCIPATION PLAN. 115 
 
 know how to save the Union. The world 
 knows we do know how to save it. We even 
 we here hold the power and bear the responsi- 
 bility. In giving freedom to the slave we 
 assure freedom to the free honourable alike in 
 what we give and what we preserve. We shall 
 nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of 
 earth. Other means may succeed; this could 
 not, cannot fail. The way is plain, peaceful, 
 generous, just, a way which, if followed, the 
 world will for ever applaud, and God must for 
 ever bless." 
 
 " Plain" and " peaceful" the plan might be 
 called; " generous" to the slaveholders, it 
 certainly was. Was it altogether "just " to the 
 slave ? Was it right that the loyalty of certain 
 slave States should be paid for,- in the first 
 instance, at their slaves' expense? compensated 
 by the bondage of a whole generation of the 
 coloured race in those States ? I am persuaded 
 that such an extension of the duration of slavery 
 in the loyal States formed part neither of Mr. 
 Lincoln's purpose nor of his expectations. With 
 
 i 2
 
 116 BATTLE OF FREDERICKSBURG 
 
 slavery abolished under the proclamation in any 
 States remaining in revolt with the strength 
 given to the abolitionist feeling in the North 
 by the war, with the raising of the status of 
 the coloured man by various measures of recent 
 legislation, but above all, through his enrolment 
 in the ranks of the army, it was utterly im- 
 possible that slavery should long hold its ground 
 in any State remaining loyal, or returning to its 
 allegiance. Yet, in proposing such a plan, I 
 believe Mr. Lincoln did to some extent sacrifice 
 principle to expediency. His old reverence for 
 Henry Clay perhaps betrayed him into urging 
 compromise, when the times called for high 
 assertion of the right. At any rate the attempt 
 failed. The Border States still would not eman- 
 cipate. The Free States would not bribe them 
 to do so. And so the war rolled on towards 
 the fated 1st January, 1863. 
 
 Not by any means with credit to the Federal 
 arms. Few single months of the struggle saw 
 more disasters than December, 1862. The 
 terrible failure of Burnside before the Confederate 
 works of Fredericksburg, (December 13) with a
 
 AND OTHER FEDERAL DISASTERS. 117 
 
 Unionist loss of 1,512 killed and 6,000 wounded,* 
 followed by a fresh withdrawal of the Federal 
 army beyond the Rappahannock, and a new 
 dash of Confederate cavalry into Maryland 
 (which however proved a mere raid) ; the 
 scarcely less terrible repulse of Sherman before 
 Vicksburg (26-29) followed by the temporary 
 withdrawal of the army from its neighbourhood, 
 and Sherman's own supersession by M'Clernand, 
 a few days previously (December 19) the 
 surrender of Holly Springs, Mississippi, to the 
 Confederates, with 2,000,000 dollars' worth of 
 stores (an event which compelled General Grant 
 to fall back, and thereby prevented him from 
 co-operating with Sherman, whilst enabling 
 the Confederates to throw reinforcements into 
 Vicksburg) the capture of three- whole regi- 
 ments and a party of cavalry, by Morgan's 
 guerrillas at Hartsville, Tennessee (December 7), 
 and other smaller mishaps, were not suffi- 
 
 * The President is reported to have said on this occa- 
 sion : " If there is a man out of perdition that suffers 
 more than I do, I pity him."
 
 118 THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 
 
 ciently set off by successes in Arkansas, an 
 advance of General Foster in North Carolina, 
 which led to nothing, and the hardly contested 
 battle of Murfreesborough in Tennessee, which 
 began on the 3 1 st by the defeat of General M'Cook, 
 and only terminated on January 4 by the retreat 
 of the Confederates. At sea, while the Alabama 
 was continuing her depredations on the coast of 
 Cuba, the Monitor, the single Federal vessel 
 which had won a distinct name hitherto, 
 foundered a little before the last midnight of the 
 year. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that the 
 President had to fulfil his pledge given in Sep- 
 tember, 1862, and to issue, on the 1st of 
 January, 1863, his famous proclamation, whereby, 
 in virtue of the power vested in him as " Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the 
 United States in time of actual armed rebellion 
 against the authority and Government of the 
 United States, and' as a fit and necessary war 
 measure for suppressing the said rebellion," he 
 designates as being in rebellion the States of
 
 OF 1ST JANUARY, 1863. 119 
 
 Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (thirteen counties ex- 
 cepted), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, 
 South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia 
 (the forty-eight counties of Western Virginia, 
 and seven others, excepted), and ordered and 
 declared : 
 
 " That all persons held as slaves within said 
 designated States, and parts of States, are and 
 henceforward shall be free ; and that the Execu- 
 tive Government of the United States, including 
 the military and naval authorities thereof, will 
 recognize and maintain* the freedom of said 
 persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people 
 so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, 
 unless in necessary self-defence ; and I recom- 
 mend to them that, in all cases where allowed, 
 they labour faithfully for reasonable wages. 
 And I further declare and make known that 
 such persons, of suitable condition, will be re- 
 ceived into the armed service of the United 
 States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and 
 
 * The words " and maintain," are due to Mr. Seward.
 
 120 EFFECT OF THE 
 
 other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in 
 said service. And upon this act, sincerely be- 
 lieved to be an act of justice, warranted by the 
 Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke 
 the considerate judgment of mankind, and the 
 gracious favour of Almighty God/' * 
 
 The exact bearing of this step should not be 
 exaggerated. Mr. Lincoln proclaimed the slaves 
 within the rebellious States free : he did not 
 abolish slavery therein. To do this would have 
 altogether transcended even his war powers as 
 Commander-in-Chief, which might, however, 
 authorise the enfranchisement of all slaves exist- 
 ing at a given period within certain limits, such 
 enfranchisement being practically only a peculiar 
 form of confiscation of a peculiar kind of pro- 
 perty. Yet this would no more hinder the 
 inhabitants of the States in question from pur- 
 chasing other slaves, and exercising over them, 
 the waj once ended, all powers given by the local 
 
 * This last sentence is due to Mr. Chase, with the ex- 
 ception of the words " upon military necessity," inserted 
 by Mr. Lincoln.
 
 EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 121 
 
 or general law over slaves generally, than a 
 confiscation of all horses and mules within the 
 same limits would have hindered them from 
 buying other animals of the same description, 
 and saddling or harnessing them at pleasure. 
 The proclamation could thus be no more than a 
 beginning of the good work, to be completed in 
 every case by State action. Nor indeed did it 
 or could it apply to the loyal Slave States 
 Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, with 
 the excepted portions of Virginia and Louisiana, 
 besides Tennessee. Slavery wa thus left sub- 
 sisting over an area which, at the Census of 1860, 
 had contained between seven and eight hundred 
 thousand human chattels ; although that figure 
 had been enormously reduced by the various 
 events of the war emigration South of planters 
 with their slaves, escapes, confiscations. 
 
 Still, the great word had been spoken. Up- 
 wards of 3,000,000 of slaves were declared 
 entitled to immediate freedom. The chief magis- 
 trate of the United States proclaimed to his 
 countrymen, to the world, that the freedom of
 
 122 THE UNION CAUSE THAT OF FREEDOM. 
 
 these 3,000,000 was not merely involved in the 
 maintenance of the American Union, but was 
 essential to it. Henceforth, none but the help- 
 lessly or wilfully blind could fail to see that the 
 cause of freedom, in the great conflict which 
 was raging on the American Continent, was the 
 cause of the North.
 
 123 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FROM THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION JANUARY 1, 
 1863, TO MR. LINCOLN'S DEATH, APRIL 15, 1865. 
 
 THE Emancipation Proclamation was warmly 
 received by all in Europe whose sympathy with 
 human freedom was genuine, and who had not 
 suffered themselves to be misled by sophisms 
 and mis-statements. The working men of Man- 
 chester, amongst others, in the very midst of 
 the cotton famine, had met on the 31st De- 
 cember, and forwarded to the President a con- 
 gratulatory address. His reply (January 19th, 
 1863), might well deserve to be quoted at full 
 length. He indicated, as " the key " to all the 
 past and future measures of his administration, 
 the duty " to maintain and preserve at once the 
 constitution and the integrity of the Federal 
 republic." He had well understood, " that the
 
 124 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY TO 
 
 duty of self-preservation rests solely with the 
 American people." But he knew that " favour 
 or disfavour of foreign nations might have a 
 material influence in enlarging or prolonging 
 the struggle." He had especially expected that 
 " if justice and good faith should be practised 
 by the United States, they would encounter no 
 hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. 
 
 "It is now a pleasant duty to acknowledge 
 the demonstration you have given of your desire 
 that a spirit of amity and peace toward this 
 country may prevail in the councils of your 
 Queen, who is respected and esteemed in your own 
 country only more than she is by the kindred nation 
 which has its home on this side of the A tlantic. I 
 know, and deeply deplore, the sufferings which 
 the working men at Manchester, and in all 
 Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It 
 has been often and studiously represented that 
 the attempt to overthrow this Government, 
 which was built upon the foundation of human 
 rights, and to substitute for it one which should 
 rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery,
 
 THE MANCHESTEK WOEKING MEN. 
 
 was likely to obtain the favour of Europe. . . . 
 Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard 
 your decisive utterances upon the question as 
 an instance of sublime Christian heroism, which 
 has not been surpassed in any age or in any 
 country. It is indeed an energetic and rein- 
 spiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, 
 and of the ultimate and universal triumph of 
 justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt 
 that the sentiments you have expressed will be 
 sustained by your great nation ; and on the 
 other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you 
 that they will excite admiration, esteem, and 
 the most reciprocal feelings of friendship, among 
 the American people. I hail this interchange 
 of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that what- 
 ever else may happen, whatever misfortune may 
 befall your country or my own, the peace and 
 friendship which now exist between the two 
 nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make 
 them, perpetual." 
 
 Does the above need any comment?* 
 
 * To this period also belongs a letter to a member of
 
 126 HOOKER AND CHANCELLORSVILLE. 
 
 The session of Congress closed on the 4th of 
 March, after having passed various measures for 
 strengthening the hands of the President, and 
 for the vigorous prosecution of the war, including 
 a bill authorising a draft of the militia of the 
 whole country. It was well for Mr. Lincoln 
 that he possessed this support in Congress ; for, 
 with the exception of Grant's movements in the 
 valley of the Mississippi, the first six months 
 of 1863 were among the gloomiest of the war. 
 Burnside having been relieved (24th of January) 
 in the command of the army of the Potomac by 
 Hooker, " Fighting Joe Hooker," a dashing 
 general of division, who had been among the 
 
 the " United States Christian Commission," over a meet- 
 ing of which Mr. Lincoln had been invited to preside (Feb. 
 22), of which the following is an extract : " Whatever 
 shall tend to turn our thoughts from the unreasoning 
 and, uncharitable passions, prejudices, and jealousies 
 incident to a great national trouble such as ours, and to 
 fix them on the vast and long-enduring consequences, 
 for weal or for woe, which are to result from the struggle, 
 and especially to strengthen our reliance on the Supreme 
 Being for the final triumph of the right, cannot but be 
 well for us all."
 
 GRANT BEFORE VICKSBURG. 127 
 
 sharpest critics of M'Clellan's caution and inde- 
 cision, on the 27th of April he too began his 
 advance to Richmond, but only to meet with 
 new disasters, and to fall back again to the North 
 of the Rappahannock after the bloody battles of 
 Chancellorsville (2-5 May), with a loss of not 
 far from 18,000 men. In the West, Vicksburg 
 for several months bade defiance to the Federals. 
 They took various forts on neighbouring rivers ; 
 they tried to divert the course of the Mississippi 
 from under its walls ; but all efforts failed, until, 
 on the 30th of April, Grant commenced a new 
 movement, by landing his forces sixty-five miles 
 lower down the river, and then marching up, 
 which compelled the evacuation by the Confe- 
 derates of some strong fortifications at Grand 
 Gulf, dispersed the forces which, under General 
 Joseph Johnstone, were advancing to relieve 
 the place, threw the city of Jackson, capital of 
 the State of Mississippi, with large stores of 
 supplies, into the temporary occupation of the 
 Federals, deprived the garrison, which had 
 advanced out to meet the Federals, of a large
 
 128 VALLANDIGHAM AND THE DEMOCRATS. 
 
 portion of its artillery, and ended by the close 
 investment of Vicksburg itself, 18th of May; 
 but an attempt to carry the place by storm 
 failed again, and a regular siege had to be 
 opened. 
 
 Internal dissensions in the North added to 
 the gloom of ill-success. To say nothing of a 
 struggle of factions in Missouri, tormenting the 
 President, as he wrote himself, " beyond endur- 
 ance," the Democratic party throughout the 
 country was seriously thwarting the action of 
 the Government. Its most prominent spokes- 
 man at this time was Mr. Vallandigham, of 
 Ohio, an old pro-slavery man, who had rejoiced 
 over John Brown's execution. He declared the 
 war to be waged for the freedom of the blacks 
 and the enslaving of the whites, accused the 
 Government of having deliberately rejected pro- 
 positions which would have brought the South 
 back into the Union, proclaimed his intention to 
 disobey a certain order of General Burnside, in 
 command of the department, and called on the 
 people to resist it. General Burnside had him
 
 THE HABEAS COKPUS RESOLUTIONS. 129 
 
 arrested (4th of May), and ordered for trial by 
 court-martial. Mr. Vallandigham applied for 
 a habeas corpus. The court refused it, on the 
 ground of public safety. He was tried, found 
 guilty, and sentenced to be placed in close con- 
 finement in a fortress. The President directed 
 him instead to be sent within the Confederate 
 lines, not to return during the war. He was at 
 once turned loose accordingly into " Secessia." 
 But he had been already puffed into a martyr 
 by the Democrats. A meeting was held at 
 Albany (May 16), to which Governor Seymour 
 of New York sent a letter, declaring that if the 
 arrest was approved by the Government, it was 
 " revolution," and " military despotism." Reso- 
 lutions denouncing arbitrary arrests and the sus- 
 pension of the writ of habeas corpus were sent to 
 the President. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln at once accepted the challenge. 
 In a letter far too long to quote (13th of June), 
 though it affords a most remarkable example of 
 his powers of argument, he defended the whole 
 course of his Government on the points on which
 
 130 
 
 its conduct had been impugned. I will only 
 extract one passage as to the arrest of Mr. 
 Vallandigham himself. It was made, Mr. Lin- 
 coln wrote " because he was labouring, with 
 some effect, to prevent the raising of troops, to 
 encourage desertions from the army, and to 
 leave the rebellion without an adequate military 
 force to suppress it. . . . Must I shoot a 
 simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I 
 must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who 
 induces him to desert ? This is none the less 
 injurious when effected by getting a father, or 
 brother, or friend, into a public meeting, and 
 there working upon his feelings till he is per- 
 suaded to write the soldier-boy that he is fight- 
 ing in a bad cause, for a wicked Administration 
 of a contemptible Government, too weak to 
 arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I 
 think that in such a case to silence the agitator 
 and save the boy is not only constitutional, but 
 withal a great mercy. . , . I can no more 
 be persuaded that the Government can consti- 
 tutionally take no strong measures in time of
 
 TO THE ALBANY DEMOCRATS. 131 
 
 rebellion, because it can be shown that the same 
 could not be lawfully taken in time of peace, 
 than I can be persuaded that a particular drug 
 is not good medicine for a sick man, because it 
 can be shown not to be good food for a well one 
 (sic). Nor am I able to appreciate the danger 
 apprehended by the meeting, that the American 
 people will, by means of military arrests during 
 the rebellion, lose the right of public discussion, 
 the liberty of speech and the press, the law of 
 evidence, trial by jury, and habeas corpus, 
 throughout the indefinite peaceful future which 
 I trust lies before them, any more than I am 
 able to believe that a man could contract so 
 strong an appetite for emetics during temporary 
 illness as to persist in feeding upon them during 
 the remainder of his healthful life." 
 
 Adverting next to the title of " Democrats " 
 claimed by the holders of the meeting, he 
 said : 
 
 " In this time of national peril, I would have 
 preferred to meet you on a level one step higher 
 than any party platform; because I am sure 
 
 x 2
 
 132 A' REBUKE TO PARTY-SPIRIT. 
 
 that, from such more elevated position, we could 
 do better battle for the country we all love than 
 we possibly can from these lower ones, where, 
 from the force of habit, the prejudices of the 
 past, and selfish hopes of the future, we are sure 
 to expend much of our ingenuity and strength 
 in finding fault with and aiming blows at each 
 other." 
 
 But he reminded them that the General by 
 whose orders Mr. Vallandigham had been ar- 
 rested, the judge who had refused the habeas 
 corpus on his behalf, were both Democrats ; and 
 he recalled a well-known incident in the life of 
 General Jackson, the great hero of the Demo- 
 cratic party, who, not during the war with 
 England, but when peace was known to have 
 been concluded, though not officially announced, 
 not only maintained martial law, but arrested a 
 journalist who denounced it, then a lawyer who 
 sued out, and the judge who issued, a writ of 
 habeas corpus on his behalf, and another person 
 besides, and who, though fined for contempt of 
 Court, was eventually repaid both principal and
 
 NEW CONFEDERATE INVASION. 133 
 
 interest by Congress. With remarkable frank- 
 ness he however added : 
 
 " And yet let me say that, in my own discre- 
 tion, I do not know whether I would have 
 ordered the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham. . . 
 . . It gave me pain when I learned that Mr. 
 Vallandigham had been arrested that is, I was 
 pained that there should have seemed to be a 
 
 necessity for arresting him It will 
 
 afford me great pleasure to discharge him so 
 soon as I can, by any means, believe the public 
 safety will not suffer by it." 
 
 His arguments were, however thrown away 
 on the Democrats, who at their State convention 
 for the nomination of State officers in Ohio 
 (June llth), made Mr. Vallandigham the can- 
 didate for Governor, by an almost unanimous 
 vote. The gravity of the Democratic opposition 
 at this juncture lay in this, that the Federal 
 territory was at this very moment invaded. On 
 the 9th of June it was discovered that Lee was 
 marching North- West through the Shenandoah 
 Valley. On the 13th, Lee's gallant lieutenant,
 
 134 
 
 Ewell, drove Milroy disgracefully from Win- 
 chester. On the next day, the Confederate 
 advance began crossing the Potomac, and the 
 operation continued for a whole fortnight prac- 
 tically unimpeded, till the main body passed 
 over on the 27th.* Meanwhile the Federal 
 army, to which Lee had thus given the slip, was 
 marching up from Fredericksburg, so as to cover 
 Baltimore and Washington, Hooker being re- 
 lieved in favour of the till now little known 
 General Meade, who at once advanced into 
 Pennsylvania, into which the Confederates had 
 already penetrated. The two armies met before 
 
 * Mr. Lincoln's correspondence with General Hooker 
 about this period contains many characteristic expres- 
 sions, and seems to me to evince more military talent 
 than he has usually been given credit for. On the 5th 
 June he warns Hooker not to run any risk of being 
 entangled on the Rappahannock " like an ox jumped 
 half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and 
 rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or to kick the 
 other." On the 10th he warns Hooker not to " go south 
 of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it. I 
 think Lee's army, and not Richmond, is your true
 
 VICKSBURGl AND PORT HUDSON SURRENDERED. 135 
 
 Gettysburg ; and the result of three days' fight- 
 ing (July 1-3) was that the Confederates once 
 more retreated, leaving 14,000 prisoners in the 
 hands of the Federals, the loss of the latter 
 however exceeding 23,000 in all. To crown 
 the glory of the 4th of July, 1863, Vicksburg 
 surrendered on that day unconditionally to 
 General Grant. The prisoners taken, who were 
 at once paroled, were nearly 31,000 in number ; 
 besides 220 cannon, and 70,000 stand of small 
 arms. Four days later, Port Hudson, which 
 some time before had been unsuccessfully as- 
 
 obj ective point. If lie comes towards the Upper Potomac, 
 follow on his flank, and on the inside track, shortening 
 your lines while he lengthens his. Fight him, too, when 
 opportunity offers. If he stay where he is, fret him and 
 fret him." On the 14th again : " So far as we can 
 make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded at 
 Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg. If they could 
 hold out a few days, could you help them ? If the head 
 of Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the 
 flank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, 
 the animal must be very slim somewhere ; could you not 
 break him ?"
 
 136 
 
 saulted by General Banks (the coloured troops 
 fighting heroically in the action), surrendered 
 also, with about 7,000 prisoners and 50 pieces 
 of artillery. The Federals now controlled the 
 whole course of the Mississippi ; the Confederacy 
 was cut in two. Rosecranz likewise had ad- 
 vanced from Murfreesboro', had turned the flank 
 of Bragg's army at Tullahoma, and was driving 
 him to the South-East, so as to force him back 
 into Georgia. Against Charleston alone the 
 Federal operations were but very partially suc- 
 cessful ; only securing Morris Island as a base of 
 operations, and, in the unsuccessful assault of 
 Fort Wagner, bringing out once more the 
 bravery of the coloured troops. 
 
 This succession of triumphs caused general 
 rejoicing in the North. At an early hour 
 (10*30) on July 4, the President put forth a 
 brief announcement of the successes at Gettys- 
 burg, for which " he especially desires that on 
 this day He, whose will, not ours, should ever be 
 done, be everywhere remembered and reverenced 
 with profoundest gratitude." In the evening,
 
 OF JULY SPEECH. 137 
 
 after the news of the surrender of Vieksburg 
 had come in, the President was serenaded, and 
 replied as follows : 
 
 "Fellow-citizens, I am very glad indeed 
 to see you to-night, and yet I will not say I 
 thank you for this call ; but I do most sincerely 
 thank Almighty God for the occasion on which 
 you have called. How long ago is it ? eighty- 
 odd years since, on the 4th of July, for the first 
 time in the history of the world, a nation, by 
 its representatives, assembled and declared as a 
 self-evident truth, that all men are created 
 equal. That was the birthday of the United 
 States of America. Since then the Fourth of 
 July has had several very peculiar recognitions. 
 The two men most distinguished in the framing 
 and support of the Declaration were Thomas 
 Jefferson and John Adams the one having 
 penned it and the other sustained it the most 
 forcibly in debate the only two of the fifty-five 
 who signed it, and were elected Presidents of 
 the United States. Precisely fifty years after
 
 138 FOURTH OF JULY SPEECH. 
 
 they put their hands to the paper, it pleased 
 Almighty God to take both from this stage of 
 action. . . . Another President, five years 
 after, was called from this stage of existence 
 on the same day and month of the year ; and 
 now, on this last Fourth of July just passed, 
 when we have a gigantic rebellion, at the bottom 
 of which is an effort to overthrow the principle 
 that all men were created equal, we have the 
 surrender of a most powerful position and army 
 on that very day. And not only so, but in a 
 succession of battles in Pennsylvania, near to 
 us, so rapidly fought that they might be called 
 one great battle, on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of the 
 month of July, and on the 4th the cohorts of 
 those who opposed the Declaration that all men 
 are created equal < turned tail ' and ran. . . . 
 I would like to speak in terms of praise due to 
 the many brave officers and soldiers who have 
 fought in the cause of the Union and liberties 
 of their country from the beginning of the war. 
 These are trying occasions, not only in success,
 
 LETTER TO GENERAL GRANT. 139 
 
 but for the want of success. I dislike to men- 
 tion the name of one single officer, lest I might 
 do wrong to those I might forget." 
 
 But whilst thus tender to the sensitiveness of 
 the " many brave," there was one brave man 
 to whom the President shortly after (July 13) 
 wrote this beautiful letter : 
 
 " Major-General Grant : 
 
 "My dear General, I do not remember that 
 you and I ever met personally. I write this 
 now as a grateful acknowledgment for the 
 almost inestimable service you have done the 
 country. I write to say one word further. 
 When you first reached the vicinity of Vicks- 
 burg, I thought you should do what you finally 
 did march the troops across the neck, run the 
 batteries with the transports, and thus go below ; 
 and I never had any faith, except a general 
 hope that you knew better than I, that the 
 Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could suc- 
 ceed. When you got below, and took Port 
 Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought 
 you should go down the river and join General
 
 140 
 
 Banks ; and when you turned northward, east 
 of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. 
 I now wish to make the personal acknow- 
 ledgment that you were right and I was 
 wrong/' 
 
 A proclamation for a national thanksgiving 
 (July 15) must also be quoted : 
 
 " It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to 
 the supplications and prayers of an afflicted 
 people, and to vouchsafe to the army and the 
 navy of the United States, on the land and on 
 the sea, victories so signal and so effective as to 
 furnish reasonable grounds for augmented con- 
 fidence that the union of these States will be 
 maintained, their constitution preserved, and 
 their peace and prosperity permanently secured ; 
 but those victories have been attended not with- 
 out sacrifice of life, limb, and liberty, incurred 
 by brave, patriotic, and loyal citizens. Domestic 
 affliction, in every part of the country, follows 
 in the train of these fearful bereavements. It 
 is meet and right to recognise and confess the 
 presence of the Almighty Father, and the
 
 THANKSGIVING PEOCLAMATION. 141 
 
 power of His hand, equally in these triumphs 
 and these sorrows. 
 
 " Now, therefore, be it known that I do set 
 apart Thursday, the 6th day of August next, 
 to be observed as a day for National Thanks- 
 giving, praise, and prayer ; and I invite the 
 people of the United States to assemble on that 
 occasion in their customary places of worship, 
 and, in the form approved by their own con- 
 science, render the homage due to the Divine 
 Majesty for the wonderful things He has done 
 in the nation's behalf, and invoke the influence 
 of His Holy Spirit, to subdue the anger which 
 has produced, and so long sustained, a needless 
 and cruel rebellion ; to change the hearts of the 
 insurgents ; to guide the counsels of the Govern- 
 ment with wisdom adequate to so great a 
 national emergency ; and to visit with tender 
 care and consolation, throughout the length and 
 breadth of our land, all those who, through the 
 vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and 
 sieges, have been brought to suffer in mind, 
 body, or estate; and, finally, to lead the whole
 
 142 THE TUKN1NG-POINT OF THE WAR. 
 
 nation, through paths of repentance and sub- 
 mission to the Divine will, back to the perfect 
 enjoyment of union and fraternal peace/' 
 
 Do not utterances like these make one feel 
 that in their highest earthly, as in their heavenly 
 embodiment, the king and the priest are one ? 
 
 The battle of Gettysburg, the surrender of 
 Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and the driving 
 of Bragg through Tennessee, must be looked 
 upon as forming together the turning-point of 
 the war. It was now seen that, whilst the 
 Federals could successfully invade and occupy 
 the South, the Confederates could not success- 
 fully invade and occupy the North. Antietam 
 had been only a check to them ; but at Gettys- 
 burg, the Federal army of the Potomac, tried by 
 so many disasters, had won its first victory, and 
 that under a commander just installed in the 
 chief command. The fallacious prestige which 
 had surrounded M'Clellan's name was hence- 
 forth dispelled. The country could be saved 
 without him. 
 
 Yet it was in the very flush of victory, both
 
 THE NEW TOEK EIOTS. 143 
 
 East and West, that the most serious internal dis- 
 turbances broke out. On the 13th July, the 
 carrying out of the Conscription Act was resisted 
 in New York, and for four days mob-law ruled 
 supreme in the great city. The officers con- 
 nected with the draft, the administration, the 
 coloured race, were alike objects of the popular 
 fury. Negroes were beaten to death, hung, 
 mutilated ; a coloured orphan asylum was sacked 
 and set on fire. The State authorities, Demo- 
 crats, stood by, almost passive. The Roman 
 Catholic Archbishop Hughes coaxed and blar- 
 neyed the rioters (almost all Irishmen) . Governor 
 Seymour asked the postponement of the draft, 
 i.e. that the mob should be yielded to. The 
 President refused, and on the 19th August it 
 was resumed, and carried out without opposi- 
 tion. The New York riots bore exactly the 
 opposite result to what the plotters of them in- 
 tended. They raised the indignation of the 
 country, heightened the anti-slavery feeling, and 
 crushed the Democrats. In Ohio, Mr. Vallan- 
 digham was defeated for the governorship by a
 
 144 
 
 majority of nearly 100,000 ; New York was won 
 by the Republicans ; in short, every State except 
 New Jersey recorded by its votes its approval of 
 the Government policy. To this electoral 
 campaign belongs a memorable letter of Mr. 
 Lincoln's (August 26), to an invitation from the 
 Republican State Committee of Illinois to attend 
 a State convention at Springfield. " Uncon- 
 ditional Union men/' they were yet dissatisfied 
 with the President " about the negro," and dis- 
 liked his emancipation proclamation. After 
 various arguments in its defence, the President 
 said : 
 
 " You say you will not fight to free negroes. 
 Some of them seem willing to fight for you ; but 
 no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save 
 the Union. . . . Whenever you shall have 
 conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall 
 urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt 
 time then for you to declare you will not fight to 
 free negroes. I thought that in your struggle 
 for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes 
 should cease helping the enemy, to that extent
 
 THE SPRINGFIELD COMMITTEE. 145 
 
 it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. 
 Do you think differently ? I thought that what- 
 ever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves 
 just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving 
 the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? 
 But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. 
 Why should they do anything for us, if we will 
 do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives 
 for us, they must be prompted by the strongest 
 motive, even the promise of freedom. And 
 the promise, being made, must be kept." 
 
 Next comes a rapid sketch of the " bettering 
 of the signs,' 7 in that homely but picturesque 
 language in which Mr. Lincoln excelled, con- 
 taining the odd image of" Uncle Sam's web feet" 
 making their tracks " wherever the ground was 
 a little damp :" 
 
 " The Father of waters " [i. e. the Mississippi], 
 " again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the 
 great North- West for it, and yet not wholly to 
 them. Three hundred miles up they met New 
 England, Empire" [New York], " Keystone" 
 [Pennsylvania], "and" [New] "Jersey, hewing 
 
 L
 
 146 
 
 their way right and left. The sunny South, too, 
 in more colours than one, also lent a helping 
 hand. On the spot, their part of history was 
 jotted down in black and white. The job was a 
 great national one, and let none be slighted who 
 took an honourable part in it. And while 
 those who have cleared the great river may well 
 be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to 
 say that anything has been more bravely and 
 well done than at Antietam, Murfreesborough, 
 Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. 
 Nor must Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. 
 At all the watery margins they have been 
 present, not -only on the deep sea, the broad 
 bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, 
 muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a 
 little damp, they have been and made their 
 tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic 
 for the principle it lives by and keeps alive for 
 man's future thanks to all." 
 
 In graver strain he concluded : " Peace 
 does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it 
 will come soon, and come to stay : and so come
 
 THE SPRINGFIELD COMMITTEE. 147 
 
 as to be worth the keeping in all future time. 
 It will then have been proved that among free 
 men there can be no successful appeal from the 
 ballot to the bullet, and that they who take 
 such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay 
 the cost. And there will be some black men 
 who can remember that, with silent tongue, and 
 clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised 
 bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this 
 great consummation ; while I fear there will be 
 some white ones unable to forget that with 
 malignant heart and deceitful speech they have 
 striven to hinder it. Still, let us not be over 
 sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be 
 quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, 
 never doubting that a just God, in His own good 
 time, will give us the rightful result." 
 
 The careless yet most genuine eloquence of 
 passages such as the last is not easily to be 
 surpassed. 
 
 The Autumn of 1863 saw one serious Federal 
 reverse. General Rosecranz had crowned his 
 already great military reputation by his pursuit 
 
 L 2
 
 148 FEDERAL DEFEAT AT CHICKAMAUGA. 
 
 of General Bragg through South Eastern Ten- 
 nessee, till he had at last compelled him (9th 
 September) to evacuate the Confederate strong- 
 hold of Chattanooga key to all the lines of 
 communication through what has been termed 
 "a great mountain labyrinth." Simultaneously 
 with this movement, General Burnside advanced 
 through Eastern Tennessee, till now unwillingly 
 subject to Confederate rule, and entered, amidst 
 the acclamations of the inhabitants, its chief 
 city, Knoxville, But whether or not rendered 
 overconfident by success, Rosecranz received, 
 ten days later, at Chickamauga(19th September), 
 a terrible defeat from Bragg, reinforced by 
 Longstreet, Lee's best lieutenant, losing upwards 
 of 16,000 men in killed and wounded, and 
 missing. Only one portion of Rosecranz's army, 
 that under Thomas, repelled successfully all 
 attacks, and no doubt saved Chattanooga, where, 
 however, the Federals found themselves shut up 
 with very scant supplies; Longstreet mean- 
 while being sent off against Burnside at Knox- 
 ville. Rosecranz was at once replaced by
 
 149 
 
 Grant in command of the Federal army of the 
 Tennessee; whilst Sherman, with a portion of 
 that of the Mississippi, was hurried on to re- 
 inforce him. 
 
 Under these somewhat gloomy circumstances 
 President Lincoln had to speak (19th Novem- 
 ber, 1863), on the dedication of a national 
 burying-ground on the field of Gettysburg. 
 His speech on this occasion appears to me 
 simply one of the noblest extant specimens of 
 human eloquence :* 
 
 " Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
 conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the pro- 
 position that all men are created equal. Now 
 we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived 
 and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met 
 
 * " Je ne crois pas que Eloquence moderne ait jamais 
 rien produit de plus Sieve" que le discours prononce" par 
 lui" (i. e. by President Lincoln) "sur la tombe des 
 soldats morts a Gettysburg," (M. E. Dufergier de 
 Hauranne/' " Revue des Deux Mondes," for Jan. 15, 
 1866, p. 489).
 
 150 THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH. 
 
 on a great battle-field of that war. We have 
 come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final 
 resting-place for those who here gave their lives 
 that that nation might live. It is altogether 
 fitting and proper that we should do this. But 
 in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
 consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The 
 brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, 
 have consecrated it far above our power to add or 
 detract. The world will little note, nor long re- 
 member, what we say here ; but it can never for- 
 get what they did here. It is for us, the living, 
 rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished 
 work which they who fought here have thus far 
 so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining before us, 
 that from these honoured dead we take in- 
 creased devotion to that cause for which they 
 gave the last full measure of devotion ; that we 
 here highly resolve that these dead shall not 
 have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, 
 shall hav^a new birth of freedom, and that govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people, shall not perish from the earth."
 
 THIRD ANNUAL MESSAGE. 151 
 
 The reverse of Chickamauga might have 
 added solemnity to the President's words. The 
 words themselves were heralds of triumph. Grant 
 had taken in hand the beaten army, adding to 
 it his own veterans. On the 23rd, he moved 
 out to attack Bragg, and on the 25th, in great 
 measure through Sherman's desperate valour, 
 the Confederates were driven from their strong 
 positions, and pursued by Thomas and Hooker 
 into Georgia, whilst Granger and Sherman were 
 sent to relieve Burnside at Knoxville. But 
 already Longstreet had been beaten oif in an 
 assault ; he now raised the siege, but effected a 
 masterly retreat into Virginia. The President 
 called for another thanksgiving (7th of De- 
 cember.) 
 
 I need not dwell upon Mr. Lincoln's third 
 Annual Message (9th of December, 1863). Ap- 
 pended to it is, however, a remarkable procla- 
 mation (8th December,) containing his scheme 
 for reconstruction of the Union. With certain 
 exceptions, a full amnesty was tendered to all 
 who should take an oath of loyalty to the United
 
 152 
 
 States, binding them to " abide by and faithfully 
 support all acts of Congress passed during the 
 existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so 
 long and so far as not repealed, modified, or 
 held void by Congress, or by decision of the 
 Supreme Court ;" also " all proclamations of the 
 President made during the existing rebellion 
 having reference to slaves, so long and so far as 
 not modified or declared void by decision of 
 the Supreme Court." The exceptions comprised 
 amongst others, " all who have engaged in any 
 way in treating coloured persons, or white 
 persons in charge of such," being in the service 
 of the United States, " otherwise than lawfully 
 as prisoners of war," the Confederate autho- 
 rities having proclaimed that all coloured soldiers 
 of the United States, or their officers, were to 
 receive no quarter. Mr. Lincoln then provided 
 that any number of persons, not less than one- 
 tenth in number of the votes cast in the ten 
 States of the original secession in 1860, having 
 taken and kept the oath of loyalty, and being 
 qualified voters under their respective State laws
 
 OF RECONSTRUCTION. 153 
 
 before secession, might re-establish a State 
 Government in conformity with the oath ; adding 
 that any provision to be adopted by such State 
 government in relation to the freed people of 
 such State, which should " recognise and declare 
 their permanent freedom, provide for their edu- 
 cation," and might " yet be consistent, as a 
 temporary arrangement, with their present con- 
 dition as a labouring, landless, and homeless 
 class/' would " not be objected to by the National 
 Executive." 
 
 Among the measures of Congress passed this 
 session, I will only mention the establishment of 
 a " Bureau of Freedmen's Affairs/' to determine 
 all questions relating to the coloured people, 
 and regulate their employment and proper treat- 
 ment. A proposed amendment of the constitu- 
 tion abolishing slavery absolutely was adopted 
 by the Senate, and by a majority of the House 
 of Representatives, but did not obtain in the 
 latter the two-thirds vote required by the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 The military operations of the early part of
 
 154 
 
 1864 were unsuccessful or unimportant. An 
 expedition into the heart of Florida, one of the 
 main sources of supply to the Confederates, led 
 to the Federal defeat of Olustee (20th February, 
 1864). Sherman marched Eastward from Vicks- 
 burg (3rd February), and reached Meridian, 
 almost on the border of Alabama ; but a cavalry 
 force from Memphis having failed to join him, 
 he retreated. A dashing cavalry raid by General 
 Kilpatrick, in the rear of Lee's army, led the 
 Federals through the outer line of the fortifica- 
 tions of Richmond, and up to the second line, 
 two and a half miles from the city (1st March, 
 1864) ; but part of the force under Colonel 
 Dahlgren was defeated and captured, himself 
 killed, and the rest withdrew, having thus failed 
 in the attempt to surprise Richmond or deliver 
 the Federal prisoners (whose maltreatment by 
 the Confederate authorities had created deep 
 indignation throughout the North). Lastly, a 
 serious disaster befel the Federals in the West, 
 on an advance up the valley of the Red River, 
 one of the great westerly affluents of the Mis-
 
 THE FORT PILLOW MASSACRE. 155 
 
 sissippi (March) ; General Banks being com- 
 pletely defeated by General Kirby Smith, and 
 having to fall back with a loss of 16,000 men, 
 whilst a flotilla of gunboats was only saved by 
 engineering ingenuity. Banks was speedily re- 
 lieved of his command. Lastly, Fort Pillow on 
 the Mississippi was captured by Forrest's Con- 
 federates, and a frightful massacre of the Federal 
 soldiers (chiefly coloured) perpetrated after their 
 surrender (12th April) ; and a few days later the 
 capture by the Confederates of Plymouth (North 
 Carolina), was followed by a similar massacre on 
 a smaller scale (April 20th). Still, most of these 
 movements had for effect to cut up Confederate 
 railway lines, destroy their supplies, and show the 
 Federal flag and uniform in quarters where they 
 had not been seen since the secession. Kilpatrick's 
 raid in particular (coupled with a wonderful 500 
 miles' ride during the previous year of Colonel 
 Grierson and his men, from Memphis to New 
 Orleans, through a tract of country still almost 
 entirely in Confederate hands), helped to raise 
 the confidence of the Federal cavalry, at first
 
 156 MR. LINCOLN'S REPLY TO 
 
 greatly outshone by the Confederate, under its 
 dashing leader, J. E. B. (familiarly called Jeb) 
 Stuart. 
 
 Among the public utterances of the President 
 at this period, may be noted his reply (21st 
 March, 1864) to an address from the "Working 
 Men's Association of New York," requesting 
 permission to enrol him an honorary member of 
 the association. The association, he said, com- 
 prehended " that the existing rebellion means 
 more and tends to do more than the perpetuation 
 of African slavery that it is, in fact, a war 
 upon the rights of all working people. 
 
 " None are so deeply interested to resist the 
 present rebellion as the working people. Let 
 them beware of prejudices, working division and 
 hostility among themselves. The most notable 
 feature of a disturbance in your city last summer, 
 was the hanging of some working people by 
 some other working people. It should never be 
 so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, 
 outside of the family relation, should be one unit- 
 ing all working people of all nations, and
 
 THE NEW YORK WORKING MEN. 157 
 
 tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to 
 a war upon property, or the owners of property. 
 Property is the fruit of labour ; property is de- 
 sirable ; is a positive good in the world. That 
 some should be rich shows that others may 
 become rich, and hence is just encouragement to 
 industry and enterprise. Let not him who is 
 houseless pull down the house of another ; but 
 let him labour diligently and build one for 
 himself, thus by example assuring that his shall 
 be safe from violence when built." 
 
 It need hardly be pointed out how, in allud- 
 ing to the New York riots of the previous year, 
 and to the outrages then committed against 
 the coloured men, Mr. Lincoln deliberately 
 ignores the distinction of colour, when speaking 
 of " the hanging of some working people by 
 other working people. " 
 
 Nor can I overlook a letter (4th April) written 
 for the purpose of putting on record his previous 
 verbal reply to a deputation from Kentucky on 
 the subject of the draft. After saying, " I am 
 naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong,
 
 158 LETTER TO THE KENTUCKY DEPUTATION. 
 
 nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when 
 I did not so think and feel," he explained the 
 causes which had prevented him as President 
 from acting on this feeling until such time as, 
 through the failure of his appeals for compen- 
 sated emancipation, he felt himself " driven to 
 the alternative of either surrendering the Union, 
 and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong 
 hold upon the coloured element." He chose 
 the latter, not " entirely confident " in so doing 
 of greater gain than loss. But 
 
 " More than a year of trial now shows no 
 loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our 
 home popular sentiment, none in our white 
 military force, no loss by it anyhow or any- 
 where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of 
 quite 130,000 soldiers, sailors and labourers. 
 . . . We have the men, and we could not have 
 had them without the measure. ... In telling 
 this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own 
 sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, 
 but confess plainly that events have controlled 
 me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle,
 
 SPEECH AT BALTIMORE. 159 
 
 the nation's condition is not what either party, 
 or any man, devised or expected. ... If God 
 now wills the removal of a great wrong, and 
 wills also that we of the North, as well as you 
 of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity 
 in that wrong, impartial history will find therein 
 new causes to attest and revere the justice and 
 goodness of God." 
 
 An extract must also be given from a speech 
 of Mr. Lincoln's about this period (18th of 
 April), delivered at Baltimore, Maryland, at the 
 opening of a fair for the benefit of the Sanitary 
 Commission : 
 
 " The world has never had a good definition 
 of the word liberty, and the American people 
 just now are much in want of one. We all 
 declare for liberty ; but in using the same word 
 we do not all mean the same thing. With some 
 the word liberty may mean for each man to do as 
 he pleases with himself, and the product of his 
 labour ; while with others the same word may 
 mean for some men to do as they please with 
 other men, and the product of other men's
 
 160 SPEECH AT BALTIMORE. 
 
 labour. Here are two, not only different, but 
 incompatible things, called by the same name, 
 liberty. And it follows that each of the things 
 is, by the respective parties, called by two 
 different and incompatible names liberty and 
 tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from 
 the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks 
 the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf 
 denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer 
 of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black 
 one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not 
 agreed upon a definition of word liberty. . . . 
 Hence we behold the process by which thou- 
 sands are daily passing from under the yoke of 
 bondage, hailed by some as the advance of 
 liberty, arid bewailed by others as the destruc- 
 tion of all liberty." 
 
 Much of the speech is devoted to an endeavour 
 to allay the public indignation, just now greatly 
 excited by the news of the late massacre in cold 
 blood (not the first by the Confederates during 
 the war), at Fort Pillow, the cry being loud for 
 retaliation against the Confederate prisoners in
 
 SUFFERINGS OF FEDERAL PRISONERS. 161 
 
 Federal hands, under the provisions of a general 
 order to this effect, issued 30th July, 1863 ; but 
 in vain. Yet although the Federal Government 
 still abstained from taking the life of one Con- 
 federate prisoner in retaliation for the slaughter 
 of its coloured soldiers, it was making a far 
 more painful sacrifice to their rights. For many 
 long months, whilst the Federal prisoners were 
 starving and rotting at the South, the Con- 
 federate Government professed its willingness to 
 exchange all the white prisoners in its hands, 
 and latterly even the negroes, natives of the 
 North, who had enlisted ; provided only it was 
 allowed to do its will on those from the Con- 
 federate States taken with arms in their hands. 
 Piteous appeals reached the North from the 
 white prisoners themselves at Charleston. The 
 Democrats made capital of their sufferings to 
 declaim against the inhumanity of the Govern- 
 ment. Nobly inflexible the Federal Cabinet 
 remained, till at last (I anticipate on events to 
 dispose of this matter) an agreement to exchange 
 man for man was accepted by the Confederate 
 
 M
 
 162 SPRING CAMPAIGNS OF 1864. 
 
 authorities; but before it could be entirely carried 
 out, the final success of the Federal arms ren- 
 dered it useless by setting free the prisoners 
 in the South.* 
 
 The spring campaigns of 1864 were now at 
 hand. The chief command of all the United 
 
 * I insert here slightly out of chronological order 
 an extract from a speech made on a similar occasion, 
 at a Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia (June 1864) : 
 
 " War at the best is terrible, and this of ours, in its 
 magnitude and duration, is one of the most terrible the 
 world has ever known. It has deranged business totally 
 in many places, and perhaps in all. It has destroyed 
 property, destroyed life, and ruined homes. It has pro- 
 duced a national debt and a degree of taxation unpre- 
 cedented in the history of the country. It has caused 
 mourning among us until the heavens may almost be said 
 to be hung in black ; and yet it continues. It has had 
 accompaniments not before known in the history of the 
 world ; I mean the Sanitary and Christian Commission, 
 with their labours for the relief of the soldiers, and the 
 Volunteer refreshment saloons, understood better by 
 those who hear me than by myself ; and these fairs, first 
 begun at Chicago, and next held in Boston, Cincinnati, 
 
 and other cities From the fair and tender hand 
 
 of woman is much, very much done for the soldier, 
 continually reminding him of the care and thought for
 
 LETTEK TO GENERAL GRANT. 163 
 
 States armies had been vested in General Grant. 
 The President addressed to him the following 
 letter (April 30) : 
 
 " Lieut. -General Grant : 
 
 " Not expecting to seeing you before the 
 spring campaign opens, I wish to express in 
 this way my entire satisfaction with what you 
 have done up to this time, so far as I under- 
 stand it. 
 
 " The particulars of your plans I neither 
 know nor seek to know. You are vigilant 
 and self-reliant ; and, pleased with this, I 
 wish not to obtrude any restraints and con- 
 straints upon you. While I am very anxious 
 that any great disaster or capture of our men 
 in great numbers shall be avoided, I know that 
 these points are less likely to escape your atten- 
 
 him at home. The knowledge that he is not forgotten 
 is grateful to his heart. Another view of these institu- 
 tions is worthy of thought. They are voluntary contri- 
 butions, giving proof that the national resources are not 
 at all exhausted, and that the national patriotism will 
 sustain us through all." 
 
 M 2
 
 164 LETTER TO GENERAL GRANT. 
 
 tion than they would be mine. If there be 
 anything wanting which is within my power to 
 give, do not fail to let me know it. 
 
 " And now, with a brave army and a just 
 cause, may God sustain you ! " * 
 
 * General Grant's reply (May 1), deserves to be in- 
 serted, were it only by way of contrast to the querulous- 
 ness of a M'Clellan : 
 
 " The President : 
 
 " Your very kind letter of yesterday is just re- 
 ceived. The confidence you express for the future, and 
 satisfaction for the past, in my military administration, 
 is acknowledged with pride. It will be my earnest 
 endeavour that you and the country shall not be dis- 
 appointed. From my first entrance into the volunteer 
 service of the country to the present day, I have never 
 had cause of complaint, have never expressed or 
 implied a complaint against the Administration, or the 
 Secretary of War, for throwing any embarrassment 
 in the way of my vigorously prosecuting what appeared 
 to be my duty. 
 
 " Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in 
 command of all the armies, and in view of the great 
 responsibility and importance of success, I have been 
 astonished at the readiness with which every thing asked 
 for has been yielded, without even an explanation being 
 asked. Should my success be less than I deserve and 
 expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you."
 
 GRANT'S PLANS. 165 
 
 % 
 
 Grant's plan was simply to concentrate almost 
 all the United States' forces into two great 
 armies, which should strike simultaneous blows 
 North and South.* Accordingly, on the 5th 
 May commenced the final campaigns of the 
 war, consisting, the one of a renewed march 
 of the army of the Potomac upon Richmond, 
 under Grant and Meade, the other of Sher- 
 man's successive advances from Chattanooga 
 toward the Atlantic coast, and from thence 
 again Northwards campaigns on the details of 
 which I cannot dwell, although each is of sur- 
 passing interest. In Virginia a veteran and 
 consummate general, Robert Lee, operating, as 
 
 At last the President and his Commander-in-Chief 
 could understand one another. 
 
 * Till now, as General Grant tells us in his report on 
 the operations of the United States' armies since his 
 appointment to the chief command (dated July 25, 1865, 
 but only published in December) a most interesting 
 and remarkable contribution to military literature the 
 armies in the East and West had " acted independently 
 and without concert, like a balky (sic) team, no two 
 ever pulling together."
 
 166 GEANT AND LEE. 
 
 he indeed has almost always done throughout 
 the war, not only within his own territory, 
 but upon carefully studied, carefully fortified 
 ground, every inch of which almost is personally 
 familiar to him, and leading an army, small 
 comparatively in numbers, but used to victory, 
 finds himself confronted by a much younger 
 chief, Ulysses Grant ; new indeed to the coun- 
 try, but who has fought his way through a 
 thousand miles of hostile soil, and has won 
 almost each successive victory on fresh ground ; 
 new to the oft-defeated army he commands, but 
 whose most recent achievement has been to lead 
 beaten troops to victory. Each possesses the 
 full confidence of his men ; Lee's name, never 
 yet but once associated with absolute defeat, is a 
 guarantee that all that military skill can do will 
 be done to secure success ; Grant's tender care 
 for the soldier at any but the hour of battle 
 enables him, when that hour has struck, to 
 demand from his troops the utmost sacrifices ;* 
 
 * General Grant was determined, he tells us in his 
 report, "to hammer continuously against the armed force
 
 GRANT'S ADVANCE. 167 
 
 whilst by his side the modest victor of Gettys- 
 burg, Meade, too diffident to bear the respon- 
 sibility of directing a campaign, is yet ready to 
 carry out with unflinching zeal and unerring 
 intelligence the plans of his younger and bolder 
 chief. Between these foemen, each full worthy 
 of the other's steel, the scales to many seem long 
 to tremble equal. Flinging himself across the 
 Rapidan before his enemy can oppose him, 
 Grant enters that terrible " wilderness," a 
 broken, wooded country, where artillery cannot 
 manoeuvre, where every knoll and clump and 
 patch of scrub may hide a murderous ambuscade, 
 in which Hooker before him lost his head, and 
 those many thousands whose whited skeletons 
 still cumber the ground. He is met here by 
 the enemy, confident of winning new triumphs. 
 But where Hooker had only fought and strug- 
 gled away, Grant fights and struggles through. 
 
 of the enemy and his resources, until by mere attrition, 
 if in no other way, there should no nothing left to him" 
 but submission " to the Constitution and laws of the 
 land."
 
 168 GKANT BEFORE PETERSBURG. 
 
 The slaughter is immense ; but on the third 
 day (5th 7th May), Lee falls back on his 
 second line of defence. Meanwhile, from For- 
 tress Monroe, General Butler has succeeded in 
 occupying Bermuda Hundred, an important 
 point on the James River, thus giving a foothold 
 to the East of Richmond.* By a series of flank 
 marches, Grant forces Lee, though still at the 
 cost of fearful slaughter, step by step, back 
 upon Richmond, yet without being able to 
 reach the oft-approached goal, until at last 
 (June 12th), by a movement less expected than 
 any, he swings round to the South, and takes 
 up that position before Petersburg, which he is 
 to hold during so many months. Washington 
 lies indeed thereby uncovered, and the failure of 
 General Hunter's operations in North- Western 
 
 * Butler's subsequent operations were not successful. 
 "He was forced back or drew back/' General Grant 
 drily says, into his entrenchments, between the forks of 
 two rivers, where his army, " though in a position of 
 great security, was as completely shut off from further 
 operations against Eichmond as if it had been in a bottle 
 strongly corked."
 
 THE CONFEDERATES IN THE NORTH. 169 
 
 Virginia soon calls the Confederates over the 
 Potomac. On the 7th July the President has 
 to issue a proclamation, calling for 12,000 men 
 from each of the two States of Pennsylvania 
 and New York, and stating that a Confederate 
 force of from 15,000 to 20,000 has invaded 
 Maryland, taken Martinsburg and Harper's 
 Ferry, and threatens other points. In Ken- 
 tucky, too, John Morgan has made one of his 
 daring inroads, and has nearly reached the 
 Ohio, so that martial law and the suspension of 
 the habeas corpus have to be proclaimed in Ken- 
 tucky (5th July), whilst a day of humiliation is 
 also appointed (7th July), the President exhort- 
 ing the people to pray for the early suppression 
 of the rebellion, before the Southern people 
 are utterly destroyed. But their invasion of 
 Maryland and Pennsylvania eventually proves 
 a mere raiding expedition to procure supplies, 
 thus both showing the dearth already existing 
 in Confederate Virginia, and provoking further 
 Federal ravages; and none of these various 
 attempts avail to make Grant shift his position,
 
 170 SHERMAN'S MARCH TO ATLANTA. 
 
 or release his gripe on the neck of the Southern 
 capital. 
 
 Sherman, on his part, was performing the 
 first, and only really contested one, of his three 
 great marches, that from Chattanooga to 
 Atlanta. His army was numerous, 100,000 
 men, with 250 pieces of artillery ; but the 
 country was most difficult, and he had in front 
 of him, at the head of forces perhaps not more 
 than half his own, but superior in cavalry, a 
 skilful and wary adversary, Joseph John stone, 
 who on one occasion (Sherman's unsuccessful 
 attack at Kenesaw, June 27), inflicted on him 
 a loss of 2500 men. But by means of that 
 strategy which earned him, from his soldiers, 
 the nickname of " Old Pothook," throwing 
 always a portion of his forces round his adver- 
 sary's position to some point in the rear, Sher- 
 man compelled Johnstone to evacuate one 
 strong position after the other, till at last, 
 when nearly within reach of Atlanta, his success 
 was hastened through Johnstone's supersession 
 (17th July) by the gallant but shallow-headed
 
 MR. LINCOLN RE-NOMINATED. 171 
 
 Hood, who took the offensive, got several times 
 beaten, and soon saw Sherman in Atlanta, and 
 himself out of it (2nd September). 
 
 Meanwhile another momentous campaign 
 was proceeding. The four years' term of 
 office of Mr. Lincoln, as President, would 
 expire in March, 1865. The new Presidential 
 election would take place in November. Who 
 was to be the next President ? The Democrats 
 put forward General M'Clellan ; the ultra- 
 Abolitionists, General Fremont (who, however, 
 resigned his candidateship before the election).* 
 But the " National Union " Convention at 
 Baltimore (June 8th), unanimously adopted 
 Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson as 
 candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presi- 
 dency, on a "platform," recommending an 
 amendment of the constitution, to "terminate 
 and for ever prohibit the existence of slavery 
 within the limits of the jurisdiction of the 
 United States ;" embodying a hearty approval 
 
 * General Grant peremptorily refused to become a 
 candidate.
 
 172 MR. LINCOLN ON 
 
 of the emancipation proclamation, of the military 
 employment of former slaves ; and recognising 
 the duty of affording protection to all persons, 
 of whatever colour, employed in the national 
 armies. Mr. Lincoln accepted the nomination, 
 provisionally at first (June 9), then formally 
 (June 27). But his most characteristic expres- 
 sion of feeling on the occasion was in reply to 
 a congratulatory address, from the "National 
 Union League " (June 9), when his last words 
 were : 
 
 " I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to 
 conclude that I am the best man in the country ; 
 but I am reminded in this connection of a story 
 of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a 
 companion once that l it was not best to swap 
 horses when crossing a stream/ " 
 
 The same evening he said, in answer to a 
 serenade (which he said was " the hardest of 
 all speeches I have to answer ") : 
 
 " What we want still more than Baltimore 
 conventions, or Presidential elections, is success 
 under General Grant. I propose that you con-
 
 AND ON THE NEED OF VICTORY. 173 
 
 stantly bear in mind that the support you owe 
 to the brave officers and soldiers in the field is 
 of. the very first importance, and we should, 
 therefore, bend all our energies to that point."* 
 
 * It is a singular circumstance that Mr. Lincoln learnt 
 the nomination of Mr. Johnson as Yice-President, before 
 learning his own nomination. He was reminded by this 
 incident of one connected with his original nomination 
 at Chicago, which he thus related the same day to Mr. 
 Carpenter and to Mr. John Hay, his assistant private 
 secretary : 
 
 " In the afternoon of the day, returning home from 
 down town, I went up-stairs to Mrs. Lincoln's sitting- 
 room. Feeling somewhat tired, I lay down upon a 
 couch in the room, directly opposite a bureau, upon 
 which was a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell 
 upon the glass, and I saw distinctly two images of my- 
 self, exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than 
 the other. I arose and lay down again with the same 
 result. It made me quite uncomfortable for a few mo- 
 ments ; but some friends coming in, the matter passed 
 out of my mind. The next day, while walking in the 
 street, I was suddenly reminded of the circumstance, and 
 the disagreeable sensation produced by it returned. I 
 had never seen anything of the kind before, and did not 
 know what to make of it. I determined to go home 
 and place myself in the same position ; and, if the same
 
 174 ATTEMPTS AT NEGOTIATION. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's nomination gave great strength 
 to the Republican, or as it may now be called, 
 the National party, and weakened to a corre- 
 sponding extent whatever hopes the Confede- 
 rates might have built on Northern dissensions. 
 It was accordingly followed, not long after, 
 by an attempt at negotiation. Three semi- 
 official Confederate Commissioners applied for 
 a safe-conduct to Washington, there to treat of 
 peace. There was a trap concealed in the 
 offer, which deceived even old Republican 
 Abolitionists. If the President consented to 
 treat, without any stipulation as to the 
 restoration of the Union, he forfeited all 
 title to support as a Union candidate. If he 
 
 effect was produced, I would make up my mind that it 
 was the natural result of some principle of refraction or 
 optics which I did not understand, and dismiss it. I 
 tried the experiment with the same result ; and, as I had 
 said to myself, accounting for it on some principle un- 
 known to me, it ceased to trouble me." 
 
 But the God who works through the laws of nature 
 might surely give a sign to one of His chosen servants, 
 even through the operation of a principle in optics.
 
 175 
 
 did so without any stipulation as to the aboli- 
 tion of slavery, he forfeited all title to support 
 from the Abolitionists and the coloured people. 
 And if the self-proposed Commissioners were 
 not accredited by an authority controlling the 
 war-power, the only result of admitting them 
 might be to introduce into the capital, at a time 
 of political crisis, a set of intriguers who would 
 foment civil discord, and deaden military opera- 
 tions by negotiations which would lead to 
 nothing. Mr. Lincoln saw through the plot, 
 and baffled it by a safe- conduct (July 18th) 
 combining in a marvellous manner the harmless- 
 ness of the dove with the wisdom of the serpent : 
 " To whom it may concern : Any proposi- 
 tion which embraces the restoration of peace, 
 the integrity of the whole Union, and the aban- 
 donment of slavery, and which comes by and 
 with an authority that can control the armies 
 now at war against the United States, will be 
 received and considered by the Executive 
 Government of the United States, and will be 
 met by liberal terms on substantial and collateral
 
 176 FRESH CONFEDERATE RAIDS. 
 
 points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall 
 have safe conduct both ways." 
 
 Utterly discomfited, the plotters went their 
 way, writing indignant letters to the news- 
 papers.* The Democratic party did .not, how- 
 ever, abandon the attempt to carry M'Clellan's 
 election. There was great depression in the 
 public mind. The Confederates were raiding 
 again in Maryland and Pennsylvania, burning 
 in the latter State the town of Chambersburg 
 (30th July), and only recrossing the Potomac 
 on the 7th August. Grant met with a severe 
 repulse in an assault on Petersburg (July 30), 
 and only gained some decided advantage by the 
 occupation of the Weldon Railroad, one of Lee's 
 channels of supply (17th August). A call by 
 Mr. Lincoln for 500,000 men (July 18th) 
 
 * I am expressing here what I believe to be the calm 
 judgment of an on-looker on the substantial result of the 
 proceedings. At the same time, it appears certain that, 
 through the suppression by an unwise friend of certain 
 material facts, to which Mr. Lincoln submitted in silence, 
 his reputation suffered by the intrigue for the time. See 
 Mr. Kaymond's work, pp. 571 590.
 
 177 
 
 showed his sense of the gravity of the crisis. 
 Friends sought to dissuade him from the act, 
 lest he should damage his electioneering pros- 
 pects. " As to my re-election/' he replied, " it 
 matters not. We must have the men. If I go 
 down, I intend to go, like the 'Cumberland,'* 
 with my colours flying."f He looked haggard 
 
 * A wooden frigate sunk by the Confederate iron-clad 
 Merrimac in Hampton Koads. 
 
 t With the same disdain of personal consequences in 
 calling upon a weary people for fresh sacrifices, Mr. 
 Lincoln had concluded his speech at the Philadelphia 
 Sanitary Fair in June (see ante, p. 162, .), by an appeal 
 for men : 
 
 " It is a pertinent question, When is this war to end ? 
 I do not wish to name a day when it will end, lest the end 
 should not come at the given time. We accepted this 
 war, and did not begin it. We accepted it for an object, 
 and when that object is accomplished, the war will end, 
 and I hope to God it mil never end until that object is accom- 
 plished. We are going through with our task, so far as I 
 am concerned, if it takes us three years longer. ... If I 
 discover that General Grant may be greatly facilitated in 
 the capture of Eichmond, by rapidly pouring in to him 
 a large number of armed men at the briefest notice, 
 will you go 1 Will you march on with him ? (Cries 
 of 'Yes, yes.') Then I shall call upon you when it ia 
 necessary." 
 
 N
 
 178 MK. LINCOLN'S CONVERSATION 
 
 and careworn, and was told it was from over- 
 work. " I can't work less," he answered, "but 
 it isn't that work never troubled me. Per- 
 sonally I care nothing about a re-election, but 
 if our divisions defeat us, I fear for the country." 
 He did not indeed despair of the result. " But I 
 may never live to see it. I feel a presentiment 
 that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it 
 is over, my work will be done." 
 
 One main grievance against Mr. Lincoln was 
 the employment of negro soldiers. In a con- 
 versation with Judge Mills, of Wisconsin, the 
 latter reports the President to have thus ex- 
 pressed himself on the subject : 
 
 " There have been men base enough to pro- 
 pose to me to return to slavery the black war- 
 riors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win 
 the respect of the masters they fought. Should 
 I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time 
 and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my 
 faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend 
 I am now carrying on this war for the sole pur- 
 pose of abolition. So long as I am President, 
 it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of
 
 WITH JUDGE MILLS, OF WISCONSIN. 179 
 
 restoring the Union. But no human power 
 can subdue this rebellion without the use of the 
 emancipation policy. Freedom has given us 
 200,000 men, raised on Southern soil. It will 
 give us more yet. . . . Let my enemies prove 
 to the country that the destruction of slavery is 
 not necessary to the restoration of the Union. 
 I will abide the issue." 
 
 But by the autumn the gloom began to pass 
 away. The month of September, besides wit- 
 nessing severe fighting in the neighbourhood of 
 Petersburg, where Grant was establishing his 
 own position, and gradually obtaining control 
 of, or destroying various railway lines by which 
 Richmond communicates with the South, saw 
 the rise into prominence of a young commander 
 hitherto known only as a cavalry leader, by 
 various dashing raids through Virginia. Placed 
 in command of the general Federal forces in 
 North- Western Virginia, the scene of so many 
 of " Stonewall " Jackson's exploits, Sheridan 
 showed that the valley of the Shenandoah was, 
 in turn, to witness Federal successes ; and in a 
 
 N 2
 
 180 
 
 couple of brilliant battles (September 19, 23) 
 defeated and drove before him the Confederate 
 General Early, taking from him almost all his 
 artillery. Undaunted by defeat, Early took 
 advantage of a temporary absence of Sheridan, 
 and of a dense fog, to attack his army before 
 daylight (October 19th), driving it in confu- 
 sion four miles before him. The news reached 
 Sheridan, fortunately not very far distant, 
 hastening to his army. Without bringing with 
 him so much as a company to reinforce it, he 
 yet brought victory with his presence ; attacked 
 Early that afternoon with his routed troops, and 
 routed him, retaking all captured guns, and 
 as many besides, with some 1,600 prisoners. 
 Washington was never henceforth seriously 
 threatened, although the guerrilla chief, Mosby, 
 might still carry on small raids and skirmishes 
 on its neighbouring railway lines. Mr. Lincoln 
 issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation (October 
 20th), and wrote the following letter to General 
 Sheridan (October 22nd) : 
 
 " With great pleasure I tender to you, and to
 
 LETTER TO GENERAL SHERIDAN. 181 
 
 your brave army, the thanks of the nation, and 
 my own personal admiration and gratitude for 
 the month's operations in the Shenandoah Valley, 
 and especially for the splendid work of October 
 19th." 
 
 Another public expression of thanks on the 
 part of the President should also be recorded. 
 With our European notions of warfare, we can 
 hardly conceive without disgust of regiments 
 leaving the front in the midst of a war, because 
 their time is out. The feeling is far otherwise 
 where the great bulk of an army are only 
 citizens engaging themselves for short periods, 
 and trying to apportion their time as well as 
 possible between military and civil necessities. 
 There is no shame then in withdrawing, whilst 
 others take the place of those departing, on 
 similar conditions. Accordingly, we find Mr. 
 Lincoln more than once addressing such home- 
 ward bound regiments, without a tinge of dis- 
 approval, e.g., (October) : 
 
 " Soldiers, I suppose you are going home to 
 see your families and friends. For the services
 
 182 ADDRESS TO HOMEWAED-BOUND SOLDIERS. 
 
 you have done in this great struggle in which 
 we are engaged, I present you sincere thanks for 
 myself and the country. I almost always feel 
 inclined, when I say anything to soldiers, to 
 impress upon them, in a few brief remarks, the 
 importance of success in this contest. It is not 
 merely for the day, but for all time to come, 
 that we should perpetuate for our children's 
 children that great and free government which 
 we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to 
 remember this, not only for my sake, but for 
 yours. I happen, temporarily, to occupy this 
 big White House. I am a living witness that 
 any one of your children may look to come here 
 as my father's child has. It is in order that 
 each of you may have, through this free govern- 
 ment which we have enjoyed, an open field and 
 a fair chance for your industry, enterprize, and 
 intelligence ; that you may all have equal pri- 
 vileges in the race of life, with all its desirable 
 human aspirations it is for this that the strug- 
 gle should be maintained, that we may not lose 
 our birthrights, not only for one, but for two or
 
 THE CONFEDERATES IN MISSOURI. 183 
 
 three years, if necessary. The nation is worth 
 fighting for, to secure such an inestimable 
 jewel." 
 
 To divert Grant from Richmond, and Sher- 
 man from Atlanta, were now the chief aims of 
 the Confederates. To say nothing of some 
 mischievous and murderous raids from the 
 British border, evidently devised only to embroil 
 England with the United States, Missouri was 
 for the third time invaded by General Price in 
 October; and though the Federal general in 
 command, Rosecranz, whose right hand seemed 
 to have forgot her cunning since Chattanooga, 
 did little to check it, the Confederates ended by 
 being routed, chiefly by Kansas militia, seconded 
 by 5,000 Federal cavalry under Pleasanton, and 
 withdrew, to return no more. Forrest, who 
 had long succeeded in maintaining himself in 
 Western Tennessee, was scouring with his 
 cavalry to eastward, in order to destroy Sher- 
 man's communications. Acting in concert with 
 him, Hood, with about 45,000 men, was ope- 
 rating (since about September 20) in Sherman's
 
 184 THE MARYLAND FREE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 rear, destroying the railway line from Atlanta 
 to Chattanooga, and attacking detached garri- 
 sons. All, no doubt, quite in accordance with 
 the rules of war. But some men are able to 
 make rules as well as to follow them. 
 
 To the same month of October belongs an 
 important event in the civil history of the time 
 the adoption of an anti-slavery constitution 
 by Maryland. Mr. Lincoln (October 10) 
 wrote as follows on the subject before the 
 vote : 
 
 " It needs not to be a secret, and I presume 
 it is no secret, that I wish success to this pro- 
 vision I wish all men to be free. 
 
 I wish the material prosperity of the already 
 free, which I feel sure the extinction of slavery 
 will bring. I wish to see in process of dis- 
 appearing that only thing which ever could 
 bring this nation to civil war." 
 
 Being serenaded by loyal Marylanders after 
 the vote, Mr. Lincoln took the opportunity of 
 replying to a calumnious charge then being 
 made against him, that if he were not re-elected
 
 KEPLY TO LOYAL MARYLANDERS. 185 
 
 he would retain his functions in defiance of the 
 law: 
 
 " I am struggling to maintain the Govern- 
 ment, not to overthrow it: I am struggling 
 especially to prevent others from overthrowing 
 it. I therefore say that, if I live, I shall remain 
 President until the 4th of next March, and that 
 whoever shall be constitutionally elected in 
 November, shall be duly installed as President 
 on the 4th of March, and in the interval I shall 
 do my utmost that whoever is to hold the helm 
 for the next voyage shall start with the best 
 possible chance of saving the ship. This is due 
 to the people, both on principle and under the 
 Constitution. Their will, constitutionally ex- 
 pressed, is the ultimate law for all. If they 
 should deliberately resolve to have immediate 
 peace, even at the loss of their country and 
 their liberties, I know not the power or the 
 right to resist them. It is their own business, 
 and they must do as they please with their own. 
 I believe, however, they are still resolved to 
 preserve their country and their liberties ; and
 
 186 THE TENNESSEE TEST-OATH. 
 
 in this, in office or out of it, I am resolved to 
 stand by them. I may add, that in this purpose 
 to save the country and its liberties, no classes 
 of people seem so nearly unanimous as the sol- 
 diers in the field and the sailors afloat. Do 
 they not have the hardest of it ? Who should 
 quail while they do not? God bless the sol- 
 diers and seamen, with all their brave com- 
 manders ! " 
 
 I cannot stop over a letter written by the 
 President in reply to an address from Tennessee, 
 complaining of a test oath required by Governor 
 Johnson (the present President) as a condition 
 to the exercise of the franchise (October 22). 
 Mr. Lincoln's conclusion was, that he " could 
 have nothing to do with the matter," as, "by 
 the constitution and laws, the President is 
 charged with no duty in the conduct of the 
 Presidential election in any state." A decision 
 much cried out against at the time, but which 
 was justified by the fact that the vote of Ten- 
 nessee in his own favour was eventually dis- 
 allowed by Congress.
 
 ME. LINCOLN KE-ELECTED. 187 
 
 And now came the fated 8th November with 
 its Presidential election, which emphatically 
 stamped the seal of national approval on Mr. 
 Lincoln's policy, his term of office being re- 
 newed, not only by the votes of all the loyal 
 states but three (Delaware, New Jersey, Ken- 
 tucky), forming a majority sufficient to have 
 carried his re-election had all the States in 
 secession taken part in the election and voted 
 against him, but by a larger popular majority 
 (upwards of 365,000) than had ever been given 
 in a contested Presidential election. Mr. Lin- 
 coln was serenaded, and replied as follows (10th 
 November) : 
 
 " It has long been a grave question whether 
 any Government, not too strong for the liberties 
 of its people, can be strong enough to maintain 
 its own existence in great emergencies. On 
 this point the present rebellion has brought our 
 Republic to a severe test ; and the Presidential 
 elections occurring in regular course during the 
 rebellion, added not a little to the strain. If 
 the loyal people united were put to the utmost
 
 188 
 
 of their strength by the rebellion, must they not 
 fall when divided and partially paralysed by a 
 political war among themselves ? But the elec- 
 tion was a necessity. We cannot have a free 
 government without elections ; and if a rebellion 
 could force us to forego or postpone a national 
 election, it might fairly claim to have already 
 
 conquered us But the rebellion 
 
 continues, and now that the election is over, 
 may not all having a common interest reunite 
 in a common effort to save our common country ? 
 For my own part, I have striven and shall 
 strive to avoid placing any obstruction in the 
 way. So long as I have been here I have not 
 willingly planted a thorn for any man's bosom. 
 While I am duly sensible to the high compli- 
 ment of a re-election, and duly grateful to 
 Almighty God for having directed our country- 
 men to right conclusions, as I think, for their 
 good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that 
 any other man may be disappointed by the 
 result. May I ask those who have differed 
 with me to join with me in this same spirit to
 
 A.FTER HIS RE-ELECTION. 189 
 
 those who have not? And now let me close by 
 asking three hearty cheers for our brave sol- 
 diers and seamen, and their gallant and skilful 
 commanders." 
 
 Those who may turn back to Mr. Lincoln's 
 early speeches before and upon entering on the 
 Presidential office, will feel the beautiful con- 
 sistency with himself which the comparison 
 exhibits throughout. Office has indeed now 
 given him confidence in his own powers, yet 
 without imparting the slightest tinge of vanity,* 
 self-seeking, bitterness. His aim is still, as at 
 the first, to lift men above the separating in- 
 
 * "I should be the most presumptuous blockhead 
 upon this footstool," Mr. Lincoln said to Mr. Noah 
 Brooks, one of his most intimate personal friends, just 
 after his re-election, " if I for one day thought that I 
 could discharge the duties which have come upon me 
 since I came to this place, without the aid and enlight- 
 enment of One who is stronger and wiser than all 
 others." 
 
 He said on another occasion : " I am very sure that 
 if I do not go away from here a wiser man I shall go 
 away a better man, from having learned here what a very 
 poor sort of a man am."
 
 190 
 
 fluence of party politics, into that sphere where 
 they may unite their efforts for a common pur- 
 pose. Moving in that higher sphere himself, 
 his own pure spirit literally knows no political 
 adversaries, but only fellow-countrymen, with 
 whom he longs to work in fellowship. But it 
 is now time to return to military operations.* 
 
 * The following private letter (Nov. 21) to a lady of 
 Boston who had lost five sons in the war, and whose 
 sixth was in hospital, seriously wounded, may here be 
 inserted : 
 
 " Dear Madam, I have been shown in the files of the 
 War Department a statement of the Adjutant- General of 
 Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who 
 have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how 
 weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which 
 should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss 
 so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering 
 to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks 
 of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our 
 heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your 
 bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory 
 of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must 
 be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar 
 of freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, 
 
 "ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
 
 SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE COAST. 191 
 
 We left Hood busily engaged in the orthodox 
 task of destroying Sherman's communications 
 with Chattanooga. After a period of seeming 
 inaction, Sherman began following his enemy, 
 not very closely pursuing him, but rather push- 
 ing him before him, and off the railway line to 
 the westward. Then sending on General 
 Thomas with all superfluous baggage and part 
 of his artillery to Nashville, which he foresaw 
 would serve as a bait to the Confederates, he 
 rapidly doubled back, destroyed effectually that 
 railway line which Hood had only destroyed 
 imperfectly, destroyed Atlanta itself so as to 
 prevent its serving any more as a stronghold or 
 a rallying-point, and with 56,000 infantry, 5,000 
 cavalry under Kilpatrick, and about 58 12- 
 pounders, began (November 16) the second of 
 his great marches, this time from Atlanta 
 towards the ocean, plunging into the heart of 
 Georgia with ten days' rations, the troops 
 marching in two bodies, on a line sometimes fifty 
 miles wide, foraging and destroying the railways
 
 192 CONFEDERATE DELUSIONS. 
 
 as they went.* The Confederates had somehow 
 got into their heads that he would kindly waste 
 his time in marching towards Mobile (the forts 
 guarding whose bay had been most gallantly 
 carried by Admiral Farragut, and which was 
 henceforth completely stopped up), and thereby 
 place himself at the greatest possible distance 
 
 * For the details of Sherman's wonderful expedition, 
 until Johnstone's final surrender, April 27th, 1865, see 
 now "The Story of the Great March, by Brevet-Major 
 George Ward Nichols, Aide-de-camp to General Sher- 
 man." (London : Sampson Low.) A controversy has 
 lately arisen in our press as to the destruction exercised 
 by Sherman's army, and in particular as to the burning 
 of Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. Given the 
 fact of war with its terrible necessities, the question, how 
 much ravage and destruction it authorizes under any 
 particular circumstances, is always one of the most diffi- 
 cult ones in ethics. I am bound to say, however, that 
 from Major Nichols's own account, the discipline kept in 
 Sherman's army appears to have fallen far short of what 
 our Great Duke would have allowed : the rope and the 
 lash would have been his mode of dealing with those 
 " bummers," or private plunderers, whose existence as 
 a class seems to have been at least winked at by the 
 Federal General. On the other hand, it is certain that
 
 193 
 
 from the operations in the North. So Beaure- 
 gard, the celebrated Confederate engineer and 
 tactician, lay in wait far to the westward at 
 Corinth, whilst Hood and Forrest went floun- 
 dering through the autumn mud of Tennessee 
 towards Nashville, and nothing remained before 
 Sherman to the eastward but one corps of 
 
 the Confederate ravages in Federal Tennessee, Ken- 
 tucky, Missouri, exceeded and preceded at once those of 
 Sherman. The burning of Chambersburg by express 
 command of General Early, for non-payment of an 
 enormous ransom, .may be well set off against that of 
 Columbia ; nor have the Federals to blush over any 
 Fort Pillow massacre, or over the brutal maltreatment 
 and starvation of the Confederate prisoners of war. But 
 I must add that, at a time when an alleged rebel- 
 lion in Jamaica, in which not half a hundred persons 
 perished on the one side, and all but two or three 
 of those in a single outbreak, has been, we are told, 
 extinguished by the slaughter of 2,000 or more, on the 
 other, and the burning of 4,000 houses by a single body 
 of troops, no resistance being ever offered, nor one 
 single casualty being sustained, after the loss of life in 
 the first conflict, massacre, and riots, it ill becomes 
 Englishmen to be Pharisaically self-righteous over either 
 Federal or Confederate barbarity.
 
 194 
 
 Hood's army under Hardee, some Georgian 
 militia, and some half-guerrilla cavalry under 
 Wheeler. 
 
 For a month no certain news reached the 
 North of his whereabouts, nor was the final 
 development of any of these various movements 
 known* when Mr. Lincoln addressed to Con- 
 gress (6th Dec., 1864) his fourth his last 
 " annual message ;" not of undue length, but 
 too long to abstract. I may notice a kindly 
 reference to the opening of official correspond- 
 ence with Liberia, and a request (which was 
 granted) " for authority to furnish to the 
 Republic a gunboat at a moderate cost," to be 
 reimbursed by instalments, for the protection of 
 the State and the suppression of the slave-trade. 
 Equally kindly was his reference to England 
 and France, in speaking of the efforts of " dis- 
 loyal emissaries " to " embroil our country in 
 
 * " We all know where he went in at," said Mr. 
 Lincoln in reply to a serenade (evening of Dec. 16), 
 speaking of Sherman, " but I can't tell where he will 
 come out at."
 
 ANNUAL MESSAGE. 195 
 
 foreign wars." He said, " The desire and 
 determination of the maritime states to defeat 
 that design are believed to be as sincere as, and 
 cannot be more earnest than, our own." In 
 view of late inroads from Canada, he had been 
 obliged to give notice to England that, after the 
 period of six months stipulated in existing 
 arrangements, the United States must hold 
 themselves at liberty to increase their naval 
 armament on the lakes, while the condition of 
 the border would necessarily come into con- 
 sideration in connection with the Reciprocity 
 Treaty, soon to be renewed or put an end to ; 
 but he desired to be understood that "the 
 colonial authorities are not deemed to be inten- 
 tionally unjust or unfriendly toward the United 
 States." With an implied allusion to the charge 
 of favouring the kidnapping of immigrants for 
 military service, which had been loudly brought 
 against the United States Government by Con- 
 federate sympathisers in Europe, he suggested 
 amendments to a late Act for the encouragement 
 of emigration, so as to secure to immigrants " a 
 
 o2
 
 196 FOURTH ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 free choice of avocations and places of settle- 
 ment," since " the Government must in every 
 way make it manifest that it neither needs nor 
 designs to impose involuntary military service 
 upon those who come from other lands to cast 
 their lot in our country." 
 
 The financial portion of the message is per- 
 vaded by an anxious desire to secure the public 
 faith and credit by distributing the burthen of 
 the debt as widely as possible, and embraces 
 the novel proposal, framed by analogy with the 
 " Homestead " law of a few years previous, of 
 creating a kind of homesteads in the funds, i.e., 
 limited amounts of the public securities to be 
 held free of taxes and exempt from seizure for 
 debt. He briefly noticed the war, the general 
 advance of the army, the reorganisation of 
 Arkansas and Louisiana under free constitu- 
 tions, movements to the same effect in Missouri, 
 Kentucky, Tennessee ; the free constitution 
 adopted in Maryland, "secure to liberty and 
 union for all the future ;" the proposed amend- 
 ment to the Constitution abolishing slavery,
 
 NEGOTIATION OF NO AVAIL. 197 
 
 which he recommended to be reconsidered and 
 passed. He dwelt on the late election, on " the 
 extraordinary calmness and good order " which 
 marked it ; on the fact that no candidate for 
 office, high or low, had " ventured to seek votes 
 on the avowal that he was for giving up the 
 Union ;" on the growth in population shown 
 by the result of the polls ; on the abundance of 
 material resources possessed by the nation. He 
 then passed to the means of re-establishing and 
 maintaining the national authority. It did not 
 seem to him that any attempt at negotiation 
 with the insurgent leader could result in good, 
 " since he would accept nothing short of the 
 severance of the Union." 
 
 But what was true of the leader was not 
 necessarily so of the followers. They could at 
 any time " have peace simply by laying down 
 their arms and submitting to the national 
 authority." A year before, a general amnesty 
 had been offered, subject to certain exceptions. 
 Many had availed themselves of its provisions, 
 and special pardons had been granted to indi-
 
 198 FOTJKTH ANNUAL MESSAGE. 
 
 viduals of excepted classes. But the time 
 might come, and probably would, when public 
 duty should demand that the door thus left open 
 should be closed. And he concluded as follows : 
 
 " In presenting the abandonment of armed 
 resistance to the national authority on the part 
 of the insurgents as the only indispensable con- 
 dition to ending the war on the part of the 
 Government, I retract nothing heretofore said 
 as to slavery. I repeat the declaration made a 
 year ago, that while I remain in my present 
 position I shall not attempt to retract or modify 
 the emancipation proclamation ; nor shall I 
 return to slavery any person who is free by the 
 terms of that proclamation, or by any of the 
 acts of Congress. If the people should, by what- 
 ever means or process, make it an executive duty to 
 re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must 
 be their instrument to perform it. In stating a 
 single condition of peace, I mean simply to say 
 that the war will cease on the part of the 
 Government whenever it shall have ceased on 
 the part of those who began it,"
 
 SHERMAN ON THE COAST. 199 
 
 Now came glorious news from Georgia and 
 Tennessee. Sherman had at last debouched on 
 the coast. His march had been little more 
 than a military promenade, enlivened by a 
 couple of skirmishes. Followed by droves of 
 cattle and by thousands of fugitive slaves, his 
 unthinned troops, " fat and well-liking " with 
 the good cheer of Georgia, had completed that 
 marvellous " retreat " so called by some fool 
 in The Times which was to result in the reduc- 
 tion of well nigh all the Eastern sea-board of 
 the Confederacy. After deceiving the enemy 
 by a cavalry feint against Augusta, Sherman 
 had presented himself before Fort Macalister, 
 the only obstacle between him and Admiral 
 Dahlgren's fleet, which was waiting for him 
 off the coast, stormed it (Dec. 13), and, after a 
 few days' siege, entered Savannah, which 
 Hardee had evacuated (Dec. 21). Meanwhile, 
 Thomas had justified Sherman's confidence, and 
 his title to a chief command ; had lured on 
 Hood to destruction staggered him by a first 
 blow on the road to Nashville then withdrawn
 
 200 WILMINGTON OCCUPIED. 
 
 still further under the very walls of the city, 
 then turned on his enemy and crushed him 
 (Dec. 15). From henceforth the Confederate 
 army of the Tennessee practically ceased to 
 exist. The joy of these successes was indeed 
 partly marred by the failure of an attack by 
 sea and land upon Fort Fisher, one of the 
 defences of Wilmington, now the sole source of 
 foreign supply for Richmond (Dec. 25), from 
 which General Butler took upon himself the 
 responsibility of withdrawing, against the 
 opinion of Admiral Porter. The sequel to the 
 story may be disposed of at once. A new 
 attack was resolved upon ; a less eloquent, but 
 bolder, commander (General Terry) was placed 
 at the head of the troops, and whilst General 
 Butler was explaining to a committee of Con- 
 gress that Fort Fisher could not have been 
 taken, news came that it was (loth Jan., 1865). 
 The other defences of Wilmington were blown 
 up by the Confederates or reduced, and the city 
 was entered (22nd Feb.) Sherman, meanwhile, 
 had commenced the third of his marches to the
 
 FALL OF CHARLESTON. 201 
 
 northward. Penetrating to the very heart of 
 South Carolina, his occupation of its capital, 
 Columbia (17th Feb., 1865), caused Charleston, 
 which had so long baffled the utmost efforts of 
 the Federals, to fall at last without a blow (Feb. 
 18). He now turned eastward, to effect a 
 junction with Terry and Schofield, advancing 
 from Wilmington. 
 
 In the political sphere, the cause of freedom 
 was striding on. It deserves to be recorded as 
 an event in history, that on New Year's-day, 
 1865, the coloured people attended the Presi- 
 dential reception at the White House.* But a 
 
 * Mr. Raymond thus relates the matter : 
 " The Presidential reception on New YearVday was 
 the occasion of a remarkable spectacle for Washington, 
 in the appearance of the coloured people at the White 
 House. They waited around the doors till the crowd of 
 white visitors diminished, when they made bold to enter 
 the hall. Some of them were richly dressed, while 
 others wore the garb of poverty ; but, alike intent on 
 seeing the man who had set their nation free, they 
 pressed forward, though with hesitation, into the pre- 
 sence of the President. Says an eye witness : l For 
 nearly two hours Mr. Lincoln had been shaking the 
 hands of the " sovereigns " and had become excessively
 
 202 THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 
 
 more memorable one was the passage through 
 Congress of the constitutional amendment, 
 abolishing slavery. It had passed the Senate in 
 the previous session, but had failed to obtain in 
 the House of Representatives a majority of 
 two-thirds, required for its validity. It was 
 now carried in the latter body (Jan. 31) by 119 
 to 56, and now awaited only the necessary rati- 
 fication by three-fourths of the States almost 
 all the most important of which, New York, 
 Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Illinois, &c., rati- 
 fied it almost at once.* Mr. Lincoln, serenaded 
 
 weary, and his grasp became languid ; but here his 
 nerves rallied at the unwonted sight, and he welcomed 
 this motley crowd with a heartiness that made them 
 wild, with exceeding joy. They laughed and wept, and 
 wept and laughed exclaiming through their blinding 
 tears " God bless you ! God bless Abraham Lincoln ! 
 God bless Massa Linkiim !'"" 
 
 It is painful to have to add that President Johnson has 
 not had the moral courage to follow in his predecessor's 
 steps. On the llth January, 1866, the coloured people 
 were not admitted to the White House. 
 
 * On December 18th, 1865, the ratification of the 
 amendment by the requisite twenty-seven out of the 
 thirty-six States of the Union was proclaimed.
 
 ABOLISHING SLAVERY ADOPTED. 203 
 
 on the evening of the passing of the measure, 
 spoke of the occasion as " one of congratulation 
 to the country and to the whole world," and of 
 the amendment itself as "a fitting, if not an 
 indispensable, adjunct to the winding up of the 
 great difficulty " " a king's cure for all the 
 evils." 
 
 A fresh negociation had meanwhile been 
 opened with the Confederates, which was even- 
 tually carried on on their part through Mr. A. 
 H. Stephens, their Vice-President, Senator 
 Hunter of Virginia, and Judge Campbell. Mr. 
 Davis had endeavoured to obtain recognition of 
 the South by a side-wind, through a conference 
 " with a view to secure peace to the two coun- 
 tries" (Jan. 12). Mr. Lincoln, on the other 
 side, was willing to treat "with a view of 
 securing peace to the people of our common 
 country" (letter to Mr. Blair, Jan. 18). Sub- 
 stantially, his conditions were accepted, when 
 Messrs. Stephens, Hunter, and Campbell agreed 
 to " an informal conference with any person or 
 persons that President Lincoln may appoint,
 
 204 CONFERENCE IN HAMPTON ROADS. 
 
 on the basis of his letter to Francis P. Blair, of 
 the 18th of January ultimo, or upon any other 
 terms or conditions that he may hereafter pro- 
 pose, not inconsistent with the essential principles 
 of self-government and popular rights upon which 
 our institutions are founded" (Feb. 2). Mr. 
 Lincoln and Mr. Seward met them personally 
 on a steamer in Hampton Roads (Feb. 3). The 
 bait was held out, if only the question of sepa- 
 ration were postponed, and an armistice granted, 
 of an alliance, offensive and defensive, a war of 
 conquest on Canada or Mexico. The Federal 
 statesmen insisted on re-union, with an ac- 
 ceptance of all measures hitherto taken against 
 slavery. The conference broke up, a failure* 
 
 * From an account of the conference, said to have 
 been prepared under the supervision of Mr. Stephens, 
 and published in a Georgian paper (the Augusta 
 Chronicle), it appears that Mr. Davis had made it a 
 sine qua non of regular negotiation that his own position 
 as commander or president should be recognised. This 
 Mr. Lincoln could not consent to. Mr. Hunter here- 
 upon referred to the correspondence between King 
 Charles the First and his Parliament as a precedent for
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S SECOND PRESIDENCY. ^05 
 
 no doubt intended to be such by Mr. Davis 
 and the failure was immediately made use of 
 by himself and his Secretary of State, Mr. Ben- 
 jamin, to provoke a revival of the war-fury in 
 the South, and to carry what both now saw to 
 be their last resource the arming of the 
 negroes. But the time was long past when the 
 South could have outbid the North for the sup- 
 port of the slaves. 
 
 A final defeat by Sheridan of his old an- 
 tagonist, Early, nearly the whole of whose force 
 were taken prisoners, heralded brilliantly Mr. 
 Lincoln's resumption of the presidential office 
 (March 4, 1865). The text of his brief " Second 
 Inaugural " must be given in full : 
 
 " Fellow-countrymen, At this second ap- 
 pearing to take the oath of the Presidential 
 
 a negotiation between a constitutional ruler and rebels. 
 " Mr. Lincoln's face then wore that indescribable ex- 
 pression which generally preceded his hardest hits, and 
 he remarked : ' Upon questions of history I must 
 refer you to Mr. Seward, for he is posted in such things, 
 and I don't profess to be ; but my only distinct recol- 
 lection of the matter is, that Charles lost his head.' "
 
 206 MR. LINCOLN'S 
 
 office, there is less occasion for an extended 
 address than at first. Then a statement, some- 
 what in detail, of the course to be pursued, 
 seemed very fitting and proper ; now, at the 
 expiration of four years, during which public 
 declarations have constantly been called forth 
 concerning every point and place of the great 
 contest which still absorbs attention and en- 
 grosses the energies of the nation, little that 
 is new could be presented. 
 
 " The progress of our arms, upon which all 
 else chiefly depends, is as well known to the 
 public as to myself. It is, I trust, reasonably 
 satisfactory and encouraging to all. With a 
 high hope for the future, no prediction in that 
 regard is ventured. 
 
 " On the occasion corresponding to this four 
 years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed 
 to an impending civil war. All dreaded it. 
 All sought to avoid it. While the inaugural 
 address was being delivered from this place, 
 devoted altogether to saving the Union without 
 war, the insurgent agents were in the city,
 
 SECOND " INAUGUKAL." 207 
 
 seeking to destroy it without war seeking to 
 dissolve the Union and divide the effects by 
 negotiating. Both parties deprecated war, but 
 one of them would make war rather than let 
 the nation survive, and the other would accept 
 war rather than let it perish ; and war came. 
 
 " One-eighth of the whole population were 
 coloured slaves, not distributed generally over 
 the Union, but located in the Southern part. 
 These slaves contributed a peculiar and powerful 
 interest. All knew the interest would somehow 
 cause war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and 
 extend this interest was the object for which 
 the insurgents would rend the Union by war, 
 while the Government claimed no right to do 
 more than restrict the territorial enlargement of 
 it. Neither party expected the magnitude or 
 duration which it has already attained ; neither 
 anticipated that the cause of the conflict might 
 cease even before the conflict itself should cease. 
 Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result 
 less fundamental and astonishing. Both read 
 the same Bible and pray to the same God.
 
 208 THE SECOND 
 
 Each invokes His aid against the other. It may 
 seem strange that any man should dare to ask 
 a just God's assistance in wringing bread from 
 the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge 
 not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both 
 could not be answered ; that of neither has been 
 answered fully ; for the Almighty has His own 
 purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of 
 offences, for it must needs be that offences come ; 
 but woe to that man by whom the offence 
 cometh!' If we shall suppose American 
 slavery one of those offences which in the 
 Providence of God must needs come, but 
 which, having continued through His appointed 
 time, He now wills to remove, and that He 
 gives to both North and South this terrible war, 
 as was due to those by whom the offence came, 
 shall we discern that there is any departure 
 from those divine attributes which believers in 
 the living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly 
 do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this 
 mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away ; 
 yet if it is God's will that it continue until the
 
 SLAVERY AND ITS EXPIATION. 209 
 
 wealth piled by bondsmen by 250 years' unre- 
 quited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop 
 of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by 
 another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 
 years ago, so still it must be said, that the 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
 altogether. 
 
 " With malice towards none, with charity for 
 all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us 
 to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
 work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, 
 to care for who shall have borne the battle, 
 and for his widow and orphans ; to do all which 
 may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting 
 peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 Loftier, weightier words were surely never 
 spoken by any ruler. In this rail-splitter, the 
 exercise of the highest power has only brought 
 out a deeper reverence for that just Being who 
 is the source of all power, a more humble sub- 
 mission to His will, a more profound faith in 
 His righteousness. Oh, for a few more such 
 believers in the living God ! 
 
 p
 
 210 CONFEDERATE ENLISTMENTS OF NEGROES. 
 
 Side by side with this message may be placed, 
 by way of contrast, part of a speech of March 
 17, on the occasion of the presentation of a 
 captured flag, in reference to the attempt then 
 being made by the Confederates to enlist the 
 coloured men : 
 
 " I have in my lifetime heard many argu- 
 ments why the negroes ought to be slaves ; but 
 if they fight for those who would keep them in 
 slavery, it will be a better argument than any I 
 have yet heard. . . . While I have often said 
 that all men ought to be free, yet would I 
 allow those coloured persons to be slaves who 
 want to be, and, next to them, those white 
 people who argue in favour of making other 
 people slaves. ... I will say one thing in 
 regard to the negro being employed to fight 
 for them. I do know he cannot fight and stay 
 at home and make bread too. And as one is 
 about as important as the other to them, I don't 
 care which they do ; I am rather in favour of 
 having them try them as soldiers. . . . We 
 must now see the bottom of the enemy's re-
 
 MR. LINCOLN AT GRANT'S HEAD-QUARTERS. 211 
 
 sources. They will stand out as long as they 
 can ; and if the negro will fight for them they 
 must allow him to fight. I am glad to see the 
 end so near at hand." 
 
 The end is indeed near at hand. Sherman 
 has reached Fayetteville (llth March), only 
 within 200 miles from Grant, Hardee evacuating 
 it on his approach, and is marching upon Golds- 
 borough. His old antagonist, Johnstone, has 
 been restored to command, and fronts him once 
 more ; he strikes one somewhat vigorous blow on 
 Sherman's left wing at Bentonville (18th March), 
 but his strength is well nigh spent. Golds- 
 borough is occupied after a little more fighting 
 (21st 22nd March). Sherman is within 140 
 miles of Grant. All now turns upon Lee. The 
 very day after President Lincoln, worn to death 
 by the obsession of office-seekers, has sought a 
 refuge under the enemy's cannon, in a visit to 
 the army of the Potomac (which he was not to 
 leave henceforth till after the taking of Rich- 
 mond, and of which the final achievements were 
 to be communicated to the people by telegrams 
 
 p2
 
 212 KICHMOND EVACUATED. 
 
 under their President's own hand), a night attack 
 on Grant's right is momentarily successful (25th 
 March) ; but the Confederates have to withdraw 
 at daybreak, leaving 1200 men behind. Mean- 
 while, the Confederate forces in the Shenandoah 
 Valley being annihilated, Sheridan has come 
 round to City Point on the James with his 
 troops, victors in so many fights (28th March). 
 Sent to the extreme right of Lee's line, to cut 
 off the last line of communication between 
 Richmond and the South, he wins his wonderful 
 victory of Five Forks, chiefly with dismounted 
 cavalry (1st April), thus severing Lee from John- 
 stone. The main body of Grant's army now 
 attacks the Confederate lines, and forces them ; 
 Petersburg is evacuated, then Richmond (3rd 
 April).* Lee tries to escape by the South- West, 
 
 * The day after the evacuation of Eichmond, Mr. 
 Lincoln entered the city in what fashion, I shall borrow 
 Dr. Storr's eloquent pen to describe : 
 
 "After four years of incessant, bloody, desperate 
 struggle, he entered Richmond, with characteristic un- 
 ostentation not at the head of marshalled armies, with 
 banners advanced and trumpets sounding, but as a
 
 LEE SURRENDERS. 213 
 
 but is pursued by Sheridan, who, on the 6th 
 April, strikes one of his retreating columns, and 
 takes 6,000 prisoners, including six generals. 
 Grant immediately opens negociations for sur- 
 render with his worthy, but unsuccessful 
 antagonist ; and, after a correspondence equally 
 honourable to both parties, the Confederate 
 army of Northern Virginia is surrendered by 
 its veteran commander (9th April).* Two days 
 
 private gentleman, on foot, with, an officer on one side, 
 holding the hand of his boy on the other. An aged 
 negro met him in the street, and said, with the tears 
 streaming down his face, as he bowed low his uncovered 
 head, ' God bress you, Massa Lincoln !' The President 
 paused, raised his hat on the instant, and with a hearty 
 ' I thank you, sir,' acknowledged with a bow the greet- 
 ing. Instinctively, he recognised the poorest as his 
 peer, and the black man as his brother." (Oration, pp. 
 19-20). 
 
 An eye-witness of the scene, who, however, says that 
 the President " bowed in silence," adds : " A woman in 
 an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the 
 scene in unspeakable disgust." (Kaymond, pp. 682-3). 
 
 * " On the day of the receipt of the capitulation of 
 Lee, the cabinet meeting was held an hour earlier than 
 usual. Neither the President nor any member was able,
 
 214 
 
 later, whilst Sherman's army, " in the grandest 
 of spirits/' was marching upon Raleigh, the 
 capital of North Carolina Abraham Lincoln 
 made his last speech (April llth, 1865) : 
 
 ".We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but 
 in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Peters- 
 burgh and Richmond, and surrender of the 
 principal insurgent army, gives hopes of a right- 
 eous peace, whose joyous expression cannot be 
 restrained. In the midst of this, however, He 
 from whom all blessings flow must not be for- 
 gotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is 
 being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. 
 Nor must those whose harder part gives us 
 the cause of rejoicing be overlooked ; their 
 honours must not be parcelled out with others. 
 I myself was near the front, and had the high 
 pleasure of transmitting much of the good news 
 
 or a time, to give utterance to his feelings. At the 
 suggestion of Mr. Lincoln, all dropped on their knees, 
 and offered, in silence and in tears, their humble and 
 heartfelt acknowledgments to the Almighty for the 
 triumph He had granted to the national cause." (Ray- 
 mond, p. 735). Can history afford a nobler picture ?
 
 LAST SPEECH. 215 
 
 to you ; but no part of the honour for the plan 
 or execution is mine. To General Grant, his 
 skilful officers, and brave men, it all belongs. 
 The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in 
 reach to take active part. By these recent 
 successes, the re-inauguration of the national 
 authority, the reconstruction of which has had 
 a large share of thought from the first, is pressed 
 most strongly upon our attention. It is fraught 
 with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war be- 
 tween independent nations, there is no authorized 
 organ for us to treat with, no one man has autho- 
 rity to give up the rebellion for any other man. 
 We simply must begin with and mould from 
 disorganised and discordant elements. Nor is 
 it a small additional embarrassment that we, 
 the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the 
 mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction." 
 And now, to the astonishment of many no 
 doubt, and probably to the disgust of some of 
 his hearers, he goes into the question of the 
 Louisiana State Government, and never gets out 
 of it during the rest of the speech. As a
 
 216 MR. LINCOLN'S LAST SPEECH. 
 
 general rule, he abstains from reading the reports 
 of attacks upon himself. But he knows that he 
 has been much censured for some supposed 
 agency in getting up and seeking to sustain 
 the new State Government of Louisiana, con- 
 structed in accordance with the plan annexed to 
 his annual message of 1863. Others regret 
 that his mind has not seemed " definitely fixed 
 on the question whether the Seceded States, so 
 called, are in the Union or not." That question 
 he believes to be " bad as a basis of controversy, 
 and good for nothing at all." If all will only 
 " join in doing the acts necessary to restore the 
 proper practical relations " between these States 
 and the Union, each " may then for ever after 
 innocently indulge his own opinion, whether in 
 doing the acts he brought the States from with- 
 out into the Union, or only gave them proper 
 assistance, they never having been out of it." 
 
 It would no doubt be more satisfactory if the 
 constituency on which the Louisiana Government 
 rests were 50,000, 30,000, 20,000, rather than 
 12,000. " It is also unsatisfactory to some that
 
 THE LOUISIANA STATE GOVERNMENT. 217 
 
 the elective franchise is not given to the coloured 
 race. I would myself prefer that it were now 
 conferred on the very intelligent, and on those 
 who serve our cause as soldiers." Still the fact 
 remains, that some 12,000 voters in the here- 
 tofore slave State of Louisiana have " adopted 
 a free state constitution, giving the benefit 
 of the public schools equally to white and 
 black, and empowering the Legislature to 
 confer the elective franchise upon the coloured 
 man " ; and this same Legislature " has already 
 voted to ratify the constitutional amendment 
 recently passed by Congress abolishing slavery 
 throughout the nation." 
 
 " Concede that the new Government of Loui- 
 siana is only to what it should be as the egg is 
 to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by 
 hatching the egg than by smashing it, ... 
 No exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be 
 prescribed as to details and collaterals. . . . 
 Important principles may, and must be, inflexi- 
 ble. In the present situation, as the phrase 
 goes, it may be my duty to make some new
 
 218 MR. LINCOLN'S SENSE OF DUTY. 
 
 announcement to the people of the South. I 
 am considering, and shall not fail to act when 
 satisfied that action will be proper." 
 
 When we consider that only three days later 
 (April 14th) the speaker met his tragic death- 
 stroke, we may be tempted to wish that some 
 grander, larger words had fallen from his lips 
 on such an occasion. And yet the speech has a 
 quiet majesty of its own. Surely no man ever ( 
 more perfectly realized those words of St. Paul, 
 "Forgetting those things which are behind, 
 and reaching forth unto those things which are 
 before." Behind is a four years' struggle for 
 the very life of the nation, gigantic, world- 
 famous; behind are Sherman's strides of 
 triumph, and Grant's patient strategy, and 
 Sheridan's meteor-like successes, and the fall of 
 the rival capital, and the surrender of a great 
 general and of a long-victorious army ; yet all 
 is forgotten in a moment by him who more than 
 any other has the right to rest upon present 
 blessings, since he has borne the whole burthen 
 of past anxieties and sorrows, whilst he reaches
 
 THE 14TH APRIL, 1865. 219 
 
 forth to the things before, to the reconstitu- 
 tion of the South on its new basis of freedom, 
 and in particular to this Louisiana State Con- 
 stitution. There lies his present duty, and how 
 to fulfil that duty is now all his care. That he 
 judged rightly as to the importance of the ques- 
 tion of negro suffrage it is impossible to deny. 
 I am not indeed prepared to say that he saw his 
 way to the right solution of it. But what I 
 do say is, that no one could have uttered such 
 a speech at such a moment, but one in whose 
 soul duty was a fixed, dominant, nay, all-absorb- 
 ing principle; one who, simply and without 
 effort, was fulfilling the wise man's precept : 
 " Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it 
 with thy might."* 
 
 The 14th of April came. But for what was 
 
 * The perfect self-consistency of Mr. Lincoln's moral 
 character may be illustrated by a comparison of this 
 speech with the closing passage of one delivered by him 
 before his first nomination, at the Cooper Institute, New 
 York, on Feb. 27, 1860 : " Let us have faith that right 
 makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to 
 do our duty as we understand it." Words which might 
 have served as a motto for his whole life.
 
 220 LAST CONVERSATION WITH SPEAKER COLFAX. 
 
 to follow at Washington, it might have been 
 marked in the country's history only by Sher- 
 man's occupation of a third conquered State 
 capital, Raleigh, North Carolina ; and by the 
 raising of the United States flag once more upon 
 Fort Sumter, on the anniversary of its surrender 
 in 1862 by the same officer who had then de- 
 fended it. After breakfasting with his son, 
 Captain Robert Lincoln, who had witnessed 
 Lee's surrender, the President received several 
 public men, amongst others, Speaker Colfax, who 
 was about to proceed overland to thePacific coast. 
 His words to Mr. Colfax have been recorded : 
 " Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message 
 from me to the miners whom you visit. I have 
 very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our 
 nation. I believe it practically inexhaustible, 
 .... and its development has scarcely com- 
 menced. During the war, when we were 
 adding a couple of millions of dollars every day 
 to our national debt, I did not care about 
 encouraging the increase in the volume of our 
 precious metals. We had the country to save 
 first. But now that the rebellion is overthrown,
 
 LAST CABINET COUNCIL. 221 
 
 and we know pretty nearly the amount of our 
 national debt, the more gold and silver we 
 receive, we make the payment of that debt so 
 much the easier. Now I am going to encourage 
 that in every possible way. We shall have hun- 
 dreds of thousands of disbanded soldiers, and 
 many have feared that their return home in 
 such numbers might paralyse industry, by 
 furnishing suddenly a greater supply of labour 
 than there will be demand for. I am going to 
 try to attract them to the hidden wealth of our 
 mountain ranges, where there is room enough 
 for all. Immigration, which even the war has 
 not stopped, will land upon our shores hundreds 
 of thousands more per year from over-crowded 
 Europe. I intend to point them to the gold 
 and silver that wait for them in the West. Tell 
 the miners from me that I shall promote their 
 interests to the utmost of my ability ; because 
 their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation ; 
 and we shall prove, in a very few years, that we 
 are indeed the treasury of the world." 
 
 Full of these golden hopes, thus already
 
 222 LAST DRIVE WITH MRS. LINCOLN. 
 
 intent on the promotion of those arts of peace, 
 through which he hoped to lessen the burthen 
 of the nation's obligations, he went forth to 
 that last Cabinet Council, of which the touching 
 record remains, that " he spoke very kindly of 
 Lee and others of the Confederacy." His 
 mood, Mrs. Lincoln has lately stated, had 
 become far more cheerful; even when going 
 down the Potomac to the army he had been 
 " almost boyish in his mirth." But on that 
 terrible Friday 
 
 " His manner was even playful. At three 
 o'clock he drove out with me in the open car- 
 riage. In starting, I asked him if any one 
 should accompany us ? He immediately replied, 
 ' No, I prefer to ride by ourselves to-day.' 
 During the drive he was . so gay, that I said to 
 him laughingly, 'Dear husband, you almost 
 startle me by your great cheerfulness.' He 
 replied, 'And well I may feel so, Mary, for I 
 consider this day the war has come to a close' . 
 and then added, ' We must both be more cheer- 
 ful in the future. Between the war and the
 
 LAST STATE-PAPEK. 223 
 
 loss of our darling Willie,* we have been very 
 miserable.' ' 
 
 He still found time that afternoon to pen one 
 public document, of special value to us English- 
 men, the draft of a reply to Sir F. Bruce, on 
 his forthcoming first presentation as British 
 Minister, outlined indeed by Mr. Seward, but 
 which was only to be read by his successor 
 (20th April). No notice of his state papers and 
 speeches can be sufficient which does not include 
 this voice from the grave this last solemn 
 token of Abraham Lincoln's friendly feeling 
 towards our country and our sovereign : 
 
 " Sir Frederick Bruce Sir : the cordial and 
 
 * The loss of this favourite son was reckoned \)y Mr. 
 Lincoln himself as a turning-point in his spiritual 
 history. " That "blow," he said on one occasion, " over- 
 whelmed me. It showed me my weakness, as I had 
 never felt it before." 
 
 In the spring of 1862, being at Fortress Monroe, he 
 once called to his aide-de-camp, Colonel Cannon, who 
 was in the adjoining room, " You have been writing 
 long enough, Colonel, come in here ; I want to read you 
 a passage in 'Hamlet.'" He read the discussion on 
 ambition between Hamlet and his courtiers, and the 
 soliloquy in which conscience debates of a future state.
 
 224 DRAFT OF THE REPLY. 
 
 friendly sentiments which you have expressed 
 on the part of Her Britannic Majesty gave me 
 great pleasure. Great Britain and the United 
 States, by the extended and varied forms of 
 commerce between them, the contiguity of posi- 
 tions of their possessions, and the similarity of 
 their language and laws, are drawn into contrast 
 and intimate intercourse at the same time. 
 They are from the same causes exposed to 
 frequent occasions of misunderstanding, only to 
 be averted by mutual forbearance. So eagerly 
 are the people of the two countries engaged 
 
 This was followed by passages from " Macbeth." Then 
 opening to " King John," he read from the third act the 
 passage in which Constance bewails her imprisoned lost 
 boy. Then closing the book, and recalling the words : 
 " And, father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven : 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again." 
 Mr. Lincoln said, " Colonel, did you ever dream of a 
 lost friend, and feel that you were holding sweet com- 
 munion with that friend, and yet have a sad conscious- 
 ness that it was not a reality ? Just so I dream of my 
 boy Willie." Overcome with emotion, he dropped his 
 head on the table, and sobbed aloud. (From Mr. Car- 
 penter's " Anecdotes," passim.}
 
 TO SIR FREDERICK BRUCE. 225 
 
 throughout almost the whole world in the pursuit 
 of similar commercial enterprises, accompanied 
 by natural rivalries and jealousies, that at first 
 sight it would almost seem that the two govern- 
 ments must be enemies, or at best cold and 
 calculating friends. So devoted are the two 
 nations throughout all their domain, and even 
 in their most remote territorial and colonial 
 possessions, to the principles of civil rights and 
 constitutional liberty, that on the other hand 
 the superficial observer might erroneously count 
 upon a continued consent of action and sym- 
 pathy, amounting to an alliance between them. 
 Each is charged with the development of the 
 progress and liberty of a considerable portion of 
 the human race. Each in its sphere is subject 
 to difficulties and trials not participated in by 
 the other. The interests of civilization and 
 humanity require that the two should be friends. 
 I have always known, and accepted it as a fact, 
 honourable to both countries, that the Queen of 
 England is a sincere and honest well-wisher of 
 the United States, and have been equally frank 
 and explicit in the opinion that the friendship 
 
 Q
 
 226 EEPLT TO SIR FREDERICK BRUCE. 
 
 of the United States towards Great Britain is 
 enjoined by all the considerations of interest and 
 of sentiment affecting the character of both. 
 You will therefore be accepted as a Minister 
 friendly and well-disposed to the maintenance 
 of peace and the honour of both countries. You 
 will find myself and all my associates acting in 
 accordance with the same enlightened policy 
 and consistent sentiments ; and so I am sure 
 that it will not occur in your case, that either 
 yourself or this Government will ever have 
 cause to regret that such an important relation- 
 ship existed at such a crisis." 
 
 And so, at a little after eight p.m., he went 
 forth to meet his martyr's doom.* 
 
 * The details of the dread tragedy at Ford's Theatre 
 should still be fresh in our minds. The following 
 account, however, of what took place, compressed from 
 Mr. Raymond's (which must be considered as authorita- 
 tive), may not here be superfluous : 
 
 The play was " Our American Cousin." In a double 
 box, with a vestibule behind, and with a front of about 
 ten feet looking upon the stage, from which hung the 
 United States' flag, sate the President in a rocking 
 chair, Mrs. Lincoln on his right ; two other persons,
 
 THE SCENE AT FOED's THEATRE. 227 
 
 In dealing with President Lincoln's speeches 
 and writings, I have avoided all but incidental 
 
 Miss Harris and Major Rathhone, her step-brother, 
 being in the box. The box-door was directly behind 
 him, and remained open during the night ; an attendant 
 sate a few feet from the outer door of the vestibule. At 
 a quarter-past ten, the actor, John Wilkes Booth, pass- 
 ing along the passage behind the spectators, showed a 
 card to the attendant, and after standing for two or 
 three minutes, looking down on the stage, entered the 
 vestibule of the President's box, closed the door behind 
 him, fastened it, and then entering the door of the box 
 itself, as the President was leaning forward, shot him 
 with a small pistol through the back of the head. Mr. 
 Lincoln's head fell slightly forward, and his eyes closed, 
 but his attitude remained unchanged. Hearing the 
 report, Major Rathbone sprang forward and seized 
 Booth, who, however, wrested himself from his grasp, 
 wounding him severely with a long double-edged dagger, 
 which he carried in his left hand, then rushed to the 
 front, shouting " Sic semper tyrannis" and leaped over 
 upon the stage ; but his spur caught in the " Stars and 
 Stripes," and he fell, breaking his leg. He sprang, how- 
 ever, to his feet, brandishing his dagger, and shouting 
 again, " The South js avenged," succeeded in making his 
 escape to the outer door of the theatre, where he mounted 
 a horse, which was waiting for him. Embarrassed at 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 
 
 notice of those " good stories " and "jokes," of 
 which so many have been fathered on him that 
 were not his. All the more authentic of these 
 are no doubt included in Mr. Carpenter's 
 interesting " Anecdotes and Reminiscences " on 
 which I have frequently drawn, and which I 
 heartily commend to my readers. It has been 
 said of Mr. Lincoln, by one of the most eloquent 
 
 once and tracked by his broken leg, he was, as is well 
 known, eventually shot down like a wild beast in its 
 lair (26th April), in a barn, on the south of the Kappa- 
 hannock ; so that, by a mysterious justice, the national 
 flag may be said to have avenged its great standard- 
 bearer. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln never recovered speech or consciousness. 
 The ball had entered three inches behind the left ear, 
 traversing obliquely the brain, and lodging just behind 
 the right eye. At twenty-two minutes past seven a.m. 
 of the 15th he expired. " There was no convulsive 
 action, no rattling in the throat, no appearance of suffer- 
 ing of any kind, none of the symptoms which ordinarily 
 attend dissolution, and add to its terrors." The words 
 of Petrarch might have been applied to him, he 
 " seemed to rest like one a-weary," ,. 
 
 Parea posar come persona stanca. 
 
 "Weary no doubt of earth, but fresh for heaven.
 
 MB. LINCOLN'S COLLOQUIALISMS. 229 
 
 of living men :* " His very colloquialisms were 
 mighty ' for his service. l We must keep still 
 pegging away/ he said, in the gloomiest part of 
 the war ; and every plain man saw his duty, 
 and was nerved to perform it. ' One war at a 
 time/ all the orators could not answer it ; a 
 unanimous press could not have overborne the 
 impression it made. ' The United States Govern- 
 ment must not undertake to run the churches:' 
 the dictum is worth a half-dozen duodecimos on 
 the complex relations of Church and State. 
 1 You needn't cross a bridge until you have got 
 to it :' if men's minds were not relieved of their 
 fears concerning the effect of a general emancipa- 
 tion, they were at least widely persuaded to 
 postpone these, by the fitting advice." As 
 respects his jokes, properly so called, one who 
 had close opportunities of observation, said, in 
 reply to a question how the President endured 
 the cares and labours that were upon him, 
 " Nothing keeps him up but his habit of joking. 
 
 * Dr. Storrs, in Ms before referred to " Oration com- 
 memorative of President Abraham Lincoln."
 
 230 MR. LINCOLN'S JOKES ANI> HIS SADNESS. 
 
 This affords him momentary, but complete 
 relaxation, and is, I believe, the safety valve of 
 his mind." Yet " nothing about Mr. Lincoln," 
 we are told, " has led to more complete mis- 
 conception than this habit of joking. It has 
 been, by those who did not know him, attri- 
 buted to levity. Nothing was further from the 
 truth. His jokes and stories were, in fact, his 
 medium of illustration, and were always wonder- 
 fully to the point."* 
 
 There remains for me only to ask, whether 
 the speeches and papers I have referred to, do 
 not show us one who stands forth, self-pourtrayed 
 in them to all time, among the purest and noblest 
 of rulers whom this earth has ever known ? 
 
 * Mr. Lincoln himself said, on one occasion, during 
 the dark days of 1862, Mr. Carpenter tells us, " Were it 
 not for this occasional vent, I should die." And of this 
 " coarse buffoon," as the hounds of the press were wont 
 to call him, the artist has written, " It has "been the 
 business of my life to study the human face, and I have 
 said repeatedly to friends that Mr. Lincoln had the 
 saddest face I ever attempted to paint."
 
 THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
 
 (From Good Words, June 1, 1865.*) 
 
 WITHIN the last few weeks a common sorrow 
 has spread throughout our land, such as has never 
 befallen it since the day when England's Prince 
 was stricken down in the fulness of his manhood. 
 And yet it is for no prince, noble, statesman, 
 patriot, whom we have been accustomed to see 
 among us, to look up to, or to follow. He 
 never trod the soil of our islands ; not one in 
 many thousands among us ever saw his face. 
 An ocean separated us from him ; he ruled over 
 another State. And yet, at such an hour as 
 this, we feel that ABRAHAM LINCOLN was indeed 
 
 * I have let these pages stand as first published, with 
 the exception of a few words (either restored from the 
 original draft, or inserted to correct a misapprehension), 
 and of the note at the end.
 
 232 ENGLAND'S SYMPATHY. 
 
 bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh that 
 the great race which reads the Bible in the same 
 mother-tongue on both sides of the Atlantic, 
 whatever differences of polity may separate its 
 various fractions, is yet but one people. Strange 
 workings of a Hand mightier than man's ! The 
 pistol of an assassin born, it would seem, of an 
 English father on American soil has done more 
 to bring this country and America together 
 than all the years which have elapsed since a 
 monarch's obstinacy tore them asunder. O ! 
 how blessedly different from those times of 
 bitter fratricidal strife are these, when a widowed 
 English Queen, anticipating the almost uni- 
 versal instinct of her people, could of her own 
 accord address at once, in her own hand, to that 
 other widow across the Atlantic, the expression 
 of her deep sympathy for the murder of the 
 chief magistrate of the United States ! 
 
 It were waste of time here to express horror 
 at a crime which, taking it with all its circum- 
 stances, stands unexampled in political history. 
 The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness
 
 THE REVENGE OF MARTYRDOM. 233 
 
 of God. Let us be content with awe to re- 
 member those words : " Vengeance is mine, 
 saith the Lord; I will repay." Yea, He will 
 repay ! The blood of the innocent was never 
 shed before His eyes in vain. A deed as hideous 
 as any, since that Carpenter who was the Son of 
 God hung between heaven and earth on the slave's 
 cross, has been perpetrated on his lowly follower, 
 whom the Pharisees of this world mocked as a 
 u rail-splitter," a "bargee," a " village attorney." 
 He who is higher than the highest regardeth. 
 The Judge of all the earth shall do right. 
 
 But God's vengeance is not as man's ven- 
 geance. His justice is shown by sparing the 
 many guilty for the sake of the few righteous. 
 His doom for sin was the sending of a Saviour. 
 The revenge of martyrdom is never fulfilled but 
 by the conversion of the world, which slew the 
 martyrs, to the truths for which they bore witness. 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Freedom's last and greatest 
 martyr, can only be avenged by the conversion 
 to freedom of the slave-world. Already we 
 have heard of the grief of Lee, of the tears of
 
 234 THE SOUTHERN WITNESS 
 
 Ewell. Who can tell in how many bosoms horror 
 of the crime will not ripen into abhorrence of 
 the evil root from which it sprang ? Who can 
 tell how many gallant but hitherto misguided 
 Southerners it will not rally to the cause of 
 that Unjon which their fathers loved, worked 
 for, fought for ? By the thrill of sympathy 
 which it has awakened amongst ourselves, may 
 we not judge how much mightier should be that 
 which it will awaken in men not only speaking 
 the same language, but long united as one 
 nation by a thousand ties of neighbourhood, 
 interest, kinship, fellow-help and fellow-work? 
 Take that simple record of ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S 
 last-recorded hour of statesmanship : " He 
 spoke very kindly of Lee." Oh, what a revenge 
 was there already by anticipation for Booth's 
 pistol-shot, over all Secessionists who bore yet 
 a human heart within their bosom ! And let 
 us remember that it is not only an American 
 that has fallen, but a Southerner born, a child 
 of the Slave-State of Kentucky, and one who in 
 youth had largely mingled with the men of the
 
 AGAINST SECESSION AND SLAVERY. 235 
 
 South, and worked for his bread among them ; 
 and that this it is which gave such weight to 
 that testimony of his against slavery, which he 
 has at last sealed with his blood. Let us rest 
 assured, that to many a truly gentle and chival- 
 rous heart at the South that blood will hence- 
 forth appeal in tones no longer to be resisted. 
 Most remarkable is it indeed that the great 
 witnesses for Union alike and for Freedom have 
 in America almost always been Southern men, by 
 birth or domicile. Jefferson the Virginian gives 
 for first utterance to American nationality that 
 Declaration of Independence which proclaims the 
 natural freedom and equality of all mankind ; 
 Washington, and the other great Virginian Pre- 
 sidents who follow him, establish the Union ; 
 Jackson the South Carolinian, with his Secretary 
 of State, Livingstone of Louisiana, arrests for 
 awhile its destruction, when threatened by the 
 hotheaded " Nullificationists " of the South. 
 And now, in the fulness of the times, the Ken- 
 tuckian LINCOLN spends his life in the earnest 
 endeavour to restore the Union on the ground
 
 THE CORNER-STONE OF SLAVERY 
 
 of universal freedom, leaving his high office and 
 the fulfilment of his task to another Southerner, 
 the North Carolinian Andrew Johnson. Will 
 not the South understand at last that Secession 
 is treason against its own purest glories, against 
 the fair fame of its greatest men ? 
 
 We indeed must see that the cause of that 
 Slave-Power, which declared that slavery was to 
 be the corner-stone of its Government, has now 
 melted away for ever in the blood of its latest 
 victims. Acquit, as we most willingly should, 
 the leaders of Secession of all complicity in the 
 foul deed, yet it is the accursed spirit of slavery 
 which spoke in the deed, in the words of the 
 assassin. " Thus be it always with tyrants ! ' 
 cried the frantic ruffian, as he escaped across 
 the stage, after having shot an unarmed man 
 through the back of the head, by his wife's 
 side, and in the midst of his countrymen. An 
 utterance which would be ludicrous, if it were 
 not ghastly, if it did not indicate that utter per- 
 version of man's spirit which the mere tolerance 
 of slavery engenders, making him call evil good
 
 AND ITS SUPERSTRUCTURE. 237 
 
 and good evil, and to mistake for a tyrant the 
 man whose proud privilege throughout all time 
 shall be, that he proclaimed freedom to four 
 millions of his fellow-men. What superstructure 
 the corner-stone of slavery may bear, the whole 
 world should see henceforth. 
 
 The great American people, could we have 
 understood the facts of a struggle, long shame- 
 fully misrepresented by a too large portion of 
 our press, has been from the beginning, is 
 doubly henceforth, entitled to our fullest sym- 
 pathies, whilst engaged in its present gigantic 
 task of self-purification and self-reform. That 
 God's blessing has rested upon it throughout 
 that struggle, in the arts of peace and in the 
 arts of war, in the reverses which it has known 
 how to bear, and in the triumphs which it has 
 known how to wait for, and when achieved, how 
 to use, in the valour of its generals, in the 
 wisdom and gentleness of its rulers, above all, 
 in the steadfast self-devotion of its masses, we 
 cannot doubt. The clash of warfare may be 
 well-nigh over, but a vast work yet remains to
 
 238 THE UNION : LINCOLN'S TRUE MONUMENT. 
 
 be done. Let us hope and pray that it may be 
 worthily fulfilled, and that upon a basis of large 
 forgiveness for the errors of the past, but at the 
 same time of equal rights and equal duties for 
 all classes of citizens of whatever colour, a re- 
 newed Union may be built up, free from many 
 of the political imperfections of the old, more 
 truly worthy of the admiration of the world ; 
 and that the name of LINCOLN may inaugurate 
 a series of rulers, who shall endear themselves 
 even more to their countrymen than Washington 
 and his great contemporaries did to their fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 To the martyred President, such a Union will 
 be the only true earthly monument ; to his 
 bereaved family, it will be the highest earthly 
 consolation. He stands far above all puny pity 
 of ours. That Lord whom he acknowledged in 
 all his acts, and in none more signally than in 
 that second Inaugural Message of his, one of 
 the noblest state-papers, because one of the 
 lowliest, that ever dropped from the pen of an 
 earthly ruler, has called him to Himself. Shall
 
 239 
 
 we rebel, and say that it was too soon ? It is 
 written : " When the fruit is brought forth, 
 IMMEDIATELY He putteth in the sickle, because 
 the harvest is come/' Immediately, whether 
 that sickle take the shape of disease, or old age, 
 or accident, or the assassin's pistol-shot ; imme- 
 diately, for the Lord of the harvest knows 
 without fail when the fruit is brought forth.* 
 Let us rest assured that for that brave and 
 gentle spirit the suddenness of death had no 
 terrors, and that to the voice of Him who is 
 saying for ever, " Surely I come quickly," his only 
 answer would be, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 
 
 * We are now able to see that death sealed more 
 triumphantly the completeness of Abraham Lincoln's 
 work, than any lengthening of his life could have done ; 
 since Booth's crime (perhaps the most futile as respects 
 its purpose that ever was committed), availed not to 
 disarrange for a single day the working of the Federal 
 institutions, did not shake the discipline of a corporal's 
 guard, nor delay the surrender of one Confederate. 
 Abraham Lincoln had indeed fulfilled to the uttermost 
 that " most solemn " oath of his (see ante, p. 39), to 
 " preserve, protect, and defend " the Government of his 
 country.
 
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 The Theory of a Universal Peace Critically 
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