not have been such that the destruction of slavery for which Mr. Lincoln was preparing would have been out of the question.

There is a sense, not hard to find, in which the removal of General McClellan is a part of the Proclamation of Emancipation which followed later. All antislavery men understood it as a telling blow at their political opponents, as well as a thing done for the good of the army and of the Union cause. It sent a shock even through the minds of Southern leaders, for they well understood the divisions of public sentiment at the North. They were by no means as blind as were their followers to the swift changes of opinion concerning them and their cherished institution. They knew what this meant, and it was as if they had lost a battle.

It may almost be said that General McClellan deserved the thanks of his country for giving the President good military reasons for making a removal so eminently desirable politically.

At the North, at the time, multitudes received the news with a storm of angry execrations. As they understood the matter, a great general unjustly put aside had generously come to the rescue at a critical moment. He had rallied and reorganized a ruined army, and with it had won tremendous victories, and had delivered his country from invasion if not from conquest. It is for many to this day impossible to grasp the situation as it was, or to regard such a setting forth as has been made above as other than grossly partisan. They cannot be made to believe that at the battle of the Antietam McClellan had at his disposal at least twice as many men as had Lee, all every inch as good soldiers as his, as well equipped, as full of fight and enthusiasm, and that yet Lee actually fought with about equal numbers, the rest of McClellan's army not fighting at all. They are blind to the simple facts of the drawn battle, and the unhindered escape, and the non-employment of forces in hand.

CHAPTER XLI.

EMANCIPATION.

The War-Power and the Constitution.-A Struggle of Life and DeathThe Hour and the Man-The Proclamation-Waiting for a VictoryAn Unprepared People-Suspension of the Writ of Habeas CorpusVisiting the Army-The Reply of the Opposition.

It is necessary at this point to recall with care the record of Mr. Lincoln as a life-long enemy of human slavery, and to understand fully the position he was forced to occupy regarding it.

In the year 1850 he said to his friend Mr. Stuart: "The time will come when we must all be Democrats or Abolitionists. When that time comes, my mind is made up." In his great speech at Bloomington, Illinois in 1858, he said: "I believe this government cannot endure permanently, 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."

In the private conversation, as in the public utterance, he clearly expressed a conviction which had become a part of his life. That conviction could not have been taken from him by any possible course of events or power of argument. From the date of the Bloomington speech, and from hour to hour, the course of events did but deepen as they justified the sure processes of his reason and their unchanged conclusion.

Before the war began, he saw, as did many other men, that a success of the secession conspiracy and a division of the national territory meant more than the triumph and permanence of human slavery in the Southern Confederacy. It meant also

a perpetual predominance of proslavery influence in the nominally Free North. That influence was already so strong there as to threaten the stability of an openly Abolition Administration. Its power was made to be felt even in strictly military matters from the beginning. Mr. Lincoln found it grappling with him for the mastery and assailing him in every imaginable disguise.

The fact grew plainer to the minds of all men, as the strife went on, that the institution of slavery was the real prize for which the armies were contending. Still, time was required to so fix and confirm the hearts and minds of the great majority that they could endure to have their secret convictions formulated and proclaimed.

protect the

If he were send troops

Mr. Lincoln understood the people very well. He was a sort of revolutionary dictator. He was ready and willing to use all powers given him by his unwritten commission to "See to it that the Commonwealth suffers no harm." He was also a Constitutional President, under an oath to rights of all citizens of every part of the country. not President of the South, he had no right to there, to restore order and enforce his authority. of the seceded States were still his fellow-citizens, or it would have been idle to call them "rebels." Against them he cherished no atom of merely personal animosity, and he was destitute of mere sectional prejudices. His course cannot be at all understood by any man who narrowly imagines him as thinking only of his duties to the populations within the Union army lines.

The people

In his inaugural address, he said: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And, speaking as if to the people of the South: "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors: we are not enemies, but friends."

They insisted on becoming his enemies; but he continued to be their friend to the end, even while resisting to the uttermost the aggressors who demanded and compelled conflict when he pleaded for peace.

No change of any consequence was made, or could be made, constitutionally, in the written law of the land respecting slavery. Mr. Lincoln's mind underwent no change as to his view of his "lawful right" thence derived. Any such right must therefore come to him in another way; but he steadily and thoughtfully prepared himself to exercise it in the hour of its coming.

At the time of Frémont's premature "proclamation" no law or lawful right had as yet been created. The power to set aside written law was inherent in the "dictatorship," but could come even to the dictator only from the hand of necessity and for the safety of the life of the Commonwealth. It was not personal to Mr. Lincoln, or, through or without him, to any of his subordinate officers.

That slavery must die or that the Commonwealth must die became gradually but more and more plainly manifest. It was also plain that the death of the public enemy must be by the hands of the war power and as a military execution, without waiting for the slow and doubtful processes of civil procedure. The remaining questions related only to the time and manner of an act so important. On the 13th of March and on the 16th of July, 1862, Mr. Lincoln had approved and signed Acts of Congress the effect of which was to give due form of law to General B. F. Butler's doctrine that all slaves of rebels in arms were "contraband of war." These Acts, with a little help, would have proved fatal to the institution in due time; but they dealt with individuals and not with geographical areas or entire communities, and were subject to Congressional action in repeal or modification. They did much towards preparing the way for better things, however, and the President wisely embodied them in his first proclamation. He thereby absorbed

in and united with his own action as Dictator and President the previous action of the legislative branch of the government. Members of Congress were enabled to say to each other, "The Commander-in-Chief has issued a general order embodying and enforcing our legislation."

The "general order" contained and enforced such amplifications as rendered the Dictatorial Proclamation forever independent of the Legislative Act.

That the view here taken may not be deemed strained or overwrought, it is best to condense it into Mr. Lincoln's own words. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, written to Mr. George C. Hodges, of Frankfort, Kentucky, he says:

"I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the Nation. When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come."

Through these few sentences the whole course of his mental operations may be unerringly traced.

The hour he waited for came at last, and his action came with it. The deed itself, and all the manner of its doing, bring out in striking illustration the inner life of the man. It sets forth once more his lifelong characteristic of foresight and previous preparation, that so delivered him from ruinous surprises. Even as he had patiently waited for the Rebellion, knowing that it would surely come, so he now waited for the hour of the Emancipation Proclamation, with faith in God that it also would come.

In the summer of 1862 he prepared a draft of the important document. At about the last of July or the first of August he called a full meeting of his Cabinet. The members