STEPS TOWARD EMANCIPATION

713

fugitives back to their master, pronouncing them contraband of war. The next step was an act of Congress in August of the same year, confiscating all property, including slaves, employed in the service of the rebellion. Next came Frémont's confiscation order in Missouri, which, as we have noticed, was overruled by the PresiSteps toward dent. In May of the next year, 1862, General David emancipaHunter, commanding on the coast of South Carolina, tion. issued a proclamation declaring the slaves in his department South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida-free; but the President overruled this, as in the case of Frémont. In spite of these apparent checks the subject continued to develop. On April 16, 1862, Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, with compensation. In June it passed a law prohibiting slavery in all the territories of the United States, including those to be acquired. As early as March 6 Lincoln had urged Congress in a special message to cooperate with any state for the gradual emancipation of its slaves, with compensation from the government. He figured out that the cost of the war for eighty-seven days would purchase all the slaves in the border states at the rate of $400 apiece.1 A resolution to this effect passed the House on March 11 and the Senate on April 2. Lincoln in July called the senators and representatives from the border states to the White House for a heart to heart talk on the subject. He begged them to accept his policy, pointing out to them that the opportunity might never come again, that the signs of the times pointed to the ultimate extinction of slavery; but he pleaded in vain.2

The second and most sweeping Confiscation Act was passed on July 17, 1862. This act in substance pronounced all slaves free who should come within the protection of the government, if their owners were in rebellion against the government, or had given or should give aid or comfort to the rebellion.

On July 22 at a Cabinet meeting Mr. Lincoln declared his purpose to issue an emancipation edict to take effect January 1, 1863, and he read the document he had prepared. Two of the members, Seward and Welles, had been taken into the President's confidence and knew what was coming. The others were astonished at the announcement.

1 The war at that time cost $2,000,000 a day, and the cost of eighty-seven days would be $174,000,000.

2 The next winter a bill came up in Congress to offer Missouri $10,000,000 for her slaves; but it was defeated by the efforts of the border state members, aided by the Democrats of most of the northern states.

But all approved it except Blair, who feared that it would throw the fall elections against the administration. At Seward's advice Lincoln decided to wait for some signal Union victory in the field, and the document was pocketed and the secret kept for two months. Meantime the radical party continued to denounce the President for moving so slowly. Horace Greeley, representing this party, addressed an open letter, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," to the President through the New York Tribune, urging him to take immediate action, to "execute the laws," meaning specially the confiscation laws. To this Mr. Lincoln replied that while his personal wish was that all men should be free, his paramount official duty was to save the Union with or without slavery.1

Then came Antietam and the retreat of Bragg from Kentucky. Now the proclamation could be issued and seem a child of strength. On the 22d of September, therefore, Mr. Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which has been pronounced the most important document ever issued by a civil ruler. In this proclamation he declared that the slaves in all the states or designated parts of states that should be in rebellion against the government on the first of January, 1863, should be forever free. This gave a hundred days' notice to the rebellious states, but none of them heeded the warning, nor were they expected to heed it. Accordingly, on the first day of January the President issued his proclamation, of which the former had been but a warning, declaring the freedom of all slaves in the seceding states, except in certain parts of Louisiana and Virginia, then held by the Union armies.2

This proclamation had no immediate effect in emancipating the slaves, no more than had the Declaration of Independence in bringing independence. This could not have been expected. But the proclamation set forth the policy of the government on this most important question that ever arose in American poliWhat it tics since the Revolution, except that occasioned by secession; it placed the war on a new basis without abandoning the old, namely, that henceforth it should be a war against slavery as well as against disunion; it announced to the world that if the North were successful in the great war, slavery must

meant.

1 This letter to Greeley was written on August 22, precisely a month after the famous Cabinet meeting, and precisely a month before the more famous proclamation was issued to the world.

2 It will be remembered that slavery in the border states was not affected by this proclamation.

LINCOLN'S MOTIVES

715

perish. The proclamation had a salutary effect on Europe, and won the North many friends. Europe cared little about preserving our Union, but as soon as the North proclaimed to the world that it was battling against human slavery, as well as against disunion, the sympathies of mankind were turned in its favor.1

Lincoln had at heart belonged to the radical party all along, in that he desired the overthrow of slavery; but he was too wise to be rash. He waited for the development of public opinion, and he waited none too long. The proclamation made the administration many enemies, as well as friends, and it doubtless had much to do in bringing about an alarming political reaction in the fall elections. A new Congress was elected about six weeks after the preliminary proclamation, and the Democrats showed great gains. The Republicans lost nine members from New York, six from Pennsylvania, eight from Ohio; and but for New England and the border states they would have lost control of the House, while New York and New Jersey chose Democratic governors. But the Emancipation Proclamation was not the sole cause of the reaction. Many voted against the administration because of arbitrary arrests, of the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus, of want of success in the field, of the dismissal of McClellan; and thousands of strong friends of the Union voted the Democratic ticket simply because they had always done so. The result, however, fell heavily on the burdened heart of Lincoln. He feared that it meant a want of confidence in himself, but he bore the burden silently and took no backward step.

Often has the constitutional right of the President to issue this proclamation been questioned. The President ordinarily has no power to interfere with private property. Not even the general government had the constitutional right to touch slavery in any state. How then could Lincoln by his mere fiat set free four million slaves? The answer is that the measure was a war measure. It is the right and duty of the President to suppress rebellion by any means necessary to success. Here was a vast The Presirebellion against the government, and it was the slaves dent's right that raised the crops that fed the armies that fought to issue the proclamation. against the government. Why not then strike at slavery? Here was the legal, technical ground on which Lincoln

1 The governing classes in England, however, still favored the South. See Lecky's Democracy and Liberty," Vol. I, and the second volume of McCarthy's "History of Our Own Times."

could do what he did, and he made use of it. He issued the procla mation ostensibly to weaken the southern armies, knowing, at the same time, that he would not weaken them thereby. This then, could not have been his real object, but it was the only ground on which he had any legal right to act. Must we, then, pronounce his act but a lawyer's trick after all? However that may be, the real object of the proclamation was to compass the downfall of slavery, to prepare the way for a constitutional amendment, to secure to the future immunity from the curse of slavery. The end accomplished was so unselfish and so vast as a factor in modern civilization that the world has long forgotten the technicality in admiration of its author.

BUELL, BRAGG, AND ROSECRANS

We must now change the scene again to the Mississippi Valley. A year has passed since we left the two great armies stunned and bleeding at Pittsburg Landing, and it was a year of great activity in the West. Halleck had taken command after Shiloh. He moved to Corinth, which the Confederates abandoned on his approach. In midsummer he was called to Washington, and left Grant at the head of the Army of the Tennessee. The star of General Grant, which had burst out so brilliantly at Donelson, had waned after Shiloh, and nothing but another victory could again attract to it the public gaze. For a year the army under Grant lay in west Tennessee and did little, while the Army of the Ohio, under Buell, became the chief object of the nation's attention, next to the Army of the Potomac. Early in the summer of 1862 Halleck sent Buell to capture Chattanooga, in southern Tennessee, an important railroad center and the key to east Tennessee. But Buell was delayed in repairing railroads, and the Confederate army, now commanded by General Braxton Bragg, who had succeeded Beauregard, reached the place before him and held it. Bragg was a stern, exacting man of much energy and moderate ability. His name had long been familiar to American readers through the historic expression of Zachary Taylor at Buena Vista, "A little more grape, Captain Bragg."

President Davis determined to retrieve, if possible, the losses of Donelson and Shiloh, and he sent Bragg to invade Tennessee and

1 It is true that as the war neared its end many of the slaves were practically free, but this condition was brought about more by the exigencies of war, the ruin of the South, than by the proclamation.

THE FIGHT FOR KENTUCKY

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Kentucky. A sweeping conscription law had passed the Confederate Congress, and this brought many new recruits to the western armies. Bragg's army moved northward in two divi- Bragg starts sions, one commanded by himself and the other by Kirby north across Smith. Smith moved northward from Knoxville late Kentucky. in August, and captured Lexington. The people of Cincinnati became greatly frightened; but Smith made no attempt on that city. He waited for Bragg, who, with the main army and a wagon train forty miles long, was racing across the state with Buell. Both were headed for Louisville, and Bragg, who had the shorter line of march, might have won, but he hesitated at the magnitude of the undertaking, and Buell entered the city in the last days of September. There his army was swelled by new recruits to sixty thousand, while Bragg had fifty thousand, nearly all seasoned veterans. Bragg now went through the farce of setting up a Confederate state government in Kentucky. Buell moved out from Louisville, determined to drive Bragg out of the state. The latter slowly retreated before the advancing army, but was overtaken at Perryville, where, on the 8th of October, was fought a bloody battle. The Union left wing under General McCook was assailed with great fury by Battle of General Polk. Buell, who had not expected a battle Perryville, till the next day, was a few miles distant, and did October 8, not know of the fighting till late in the afternoon, when too late to make disposition for a general battle. He fully expected a great battle on the morrow, but during the night the enemy decamped and took up his march to the southland,1

1862.

Buell was severely censured for his bad management at Perryville and for his subsequent dilatory pursuit of the retreating enemy. He drove Bragg out of Kentucky, and that was a victory, but his permitting Bragg to escape with all the plunder he had

1 The Union loss at Perryville was nearly four thousand; the Confederate loss was about one thousand less. A curious incident occurred to the Confederate general, Leonidas Polk, near the close of the battle. It was growing dark, and he unwittingly rode into the Union lines, thinking them his own men firing on their friends. He angrily demanded why they were shooting their friends. The colonel, greatly astonished, answered, "I don't think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure they are the enemy.' Enemy!" rejoined Polk, "why, I have just left them myself. Cease firing, sir. What is your name?" "I am Colonel- of the Indiana. Pray, sir, who are you?" Polk now saw his blunder, and saw that his only hope of escape was to brazen it out. "I will show you who I am," he shouted; "cease firing." Then he called to the men to cease firing, and cantering down the line, reached a copse, put spurs to his horse, and was soon back in his own lines. "Battles and Leaders," Vol. III, p. 602,