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stingy to feed his horses half as much as they should have had. One night one of his poor old bony horses got out of the miserable barn that afforded it but little shelter. The next morning all of Portsmouth saw a strange sight. It was Shepherd Ham's old horse away up by the steeple of the church, to which lofty elevation he had been lifted by some mischievous persons by means of the elevator used for hoisting building material.

The bell in the tower of St. John's Church has an interesting history. It was captured from the French at Louisburg in 1745, and brought to Portsmouth by the officers of the New Hampshire regiment assisting in the capture. The bell hung for many years in Queen Caroline's Chapel. When it fell during the burning of the chapel it was so badly damaged that it had to be recast, and this work was done by Paul Revere. One may read this rhyme on one side of the old bell.

"From St. John's steeple

I call the people

On Holy Days

To prayer and praise."

pencil mark around some words in the first verse of the Second Epistle of John. These words were: "Unto the elect lady." The fifth verse of the same chapter was marked, and it is as follows: "And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another." Miss Catherine blushed as she read these words; then she reflected for a few moments and presently the Bible went back to young Nicholas with these words in the book of Ruth marked: "Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord so do to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

Naturally enough a wedding soon followed this unusual proposal.

An interesting thing in connection with the St. John's church of to-day is the fact that it still continues its "dole" of bread to the poor.

It is now more than a century since a member of the church died and left the church a legacy the income of which was to be forever

On another side of the bell are these words: used for giving to the poor of the parish a

"I am the voice of life;

I call you; come! Pray!"

There are plenty of tales of romance associated with this century-old church, a delightful description of which, by the way, you may read in Miss Sarah Orne Jewett's charming story of "The Country Doctor." Mr. Charles Brewster, who has written much about old Portsmouth, tells the story of a Mr. Nicholas Rousselet who proposed to a Miss Moffatt in a unique way during a service in the church. Mr. Rousselet had become very much enamored of the pretty Miss Catherine Moffatt, but, like many another love-lorn youth, found it difficult to offer her his heart and hand by a spoken word. On Sunday morning he went to old St. John's Church and sat in the Moffatt pew with Miss Catherine.

One fears that his mind was not fixed on the sermon, for while it was in progress young Nicholas handed Miss Catherine a Bible with

"dole" of twelve loaves of bread each Sunday morning, and for more than one hundred years this "dole" has been provided. The twelve tempting-looking loaves are placed on the baptismal font and covered with a snowy napkin. At the close of the service the bread is given away by the rector, and although there may not always be applicants to apply in person for the bread it finds its way to the homes of the poor. About seven thousand loaves of bread have been given away since this "dole " was first established.

The history of this ancient church is well worth studying. In the churchyard and within the walls of the building rests all that is mortal of many of the men and women who worshipped in the church before any of its present members were born, and no church in our country, with the exception of the Old South in Boston, has a more interesting history than has this ancient church in one of New Hampshire's ancient and most charming towns.

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THE BOYS' LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

IX.

FREEDOM FOR THE SLAVES.

BY HELEN NICOLAY.

By no means the least of the evils of slavery was a dread which had haunted every southern household from the beginning of the government that the slaves might one day rise in revolt and take sudden vengeance upon their masters. This vague terror was greatly increased by the outbreak of the Civil War. It stands to the lasting credit of the negro race that the wrongs of their long bondage provoked them to no such crime, and that the war seems not to have suggested, much less started any such attempt. Indeed, even when urged to violence by white leaders, as the slaves of Maryland had been in 1859 during John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, they had refused to respond. Nevertheless it was plain from the first that slavery was to play an important part in the Civil War. Not only were the people of the South battling for the principle of slavery; but their slaves were a great source of military strength. They were used by the Confederates in building forts, hauling supplies, and in a hundred ways that added to the effectiveness of their armies in the field. On the other hand the very first result of the war was to give adventurous or discontented slaves a chance to escape into Union camps, where, even against orders to the contrary, they found protection for the sake of the help they could give as cooks, servants, or teamsters, the information they brought about the movements of the enemy, or the great service they were able to render as guides. Practically therefore, at the very start, the war created a bond of mutual sympathy between the south ern negro and the Union volunteer; and as fast as Union troops advanced and secession masters fled, a certain number found freedom in Union camps.

At some points this became a positive emVOL. XXXIII-104

barrassment to Union commanders. A few days after General Butler took command of the Union troops at Fortress Monroe, in May, 1861, the agent of a former master came to insist on the return of three slaves, demanding them under the fugitive-slave law. Butler replied that since their master claimed Virginia to be a foreign country and no longer a part of the United States, he could not at the same time claim that the fugitive-slave law was in force, and that his slaves would not be given up unless he returned and took the oath of allegiance to the United States. In reporting this, a newspaper pointed out that as the breastworks and batteries which had risen so rapidly for Confederate defense were built by slave labor, negroes were undoubtedly "contraband of war," like powder and shot, and other military supplies, and should no more be given back to the South than so many cannon or guns. The idea was so pertinent and the justice of it so plain that the name "contraband" sprang at once into use. But while this happy explanation had more convincing effect on popular thought than a volume of discussion, it did not solve the whole question. By the end of July General Butler had on his hands 900 "contrabands," men, women and children of all ages, and he wrote to inquire what was their real condition. Were they slaves or free? Could they be considered fugitive slaves when their masters had run away and left them? How should they be disposed of? It was a knotty problem, and upon its solution might depend the loyalty or secession of the border slave States of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, which, up to that time, had not decided whether to remain in the Union or to cast their fortunes with the South.

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In dealing with this perplexing subject Mr. Lincoln kept in mind one of his favorite stories: the one about the Methodist Presiding

Elder who was riding about his circuit during the spring freshets. A young and anxious companion asked how they should ever be able to cross the swollen waters of Fox River, which they were approaching, and the elder quieted him by saying that he made it the rule of his life never to cross Fox River until he came to it. The President, following this rule, did not immediately decide the question, but left it to be treated at the discretion of each commander. Under this theory some commanders admitted black people to their camps, while others refused to receive them. The curt formula of General Orders: "We are neither negro stealers nor negro catchers," was easily read to justify either course. Congress greatly advanced the problem, shortly after the battle of Bull Run by passing a law which took away a master's right to his slave, when, with his consent, such slave was employed in service or labor hostile to the United States.

On the general question of slavery, the President's mind was fully made up. He felt that he had no right to interfere with slavery where slavery was lawful, just because he himself did not happen to like it; for he had sworn to do all in his power to "preserve, protect and defend" the government and its laws, and slavery was lawful in the southern States. When freeing the slaves should become necessary in order to preserve the Government, then it would be his duty to free them; until that time came, it was equally his duty to let them alone.

Twice during the early part of the war military commanders issued orders freeing slaves in the districts over which they had control, and twice he refused to allow these orders to stand. "No commanding general should do such a thing upon his responsibility, without consulting me," he said; and he added that whether he, as Commander-in-Chief had the power to free slaves, and whether at any time the use of such power should become necessary, were questions which he reserved to himself. He did not feel justified in leaving such decisions to commanders in the field. He even refused at that time to allow Secretary Cameron to make a public announcement that the government might find it necessary to arm

slaves and employ them as soldiers. He would not cross Fox River until he came to it. He would not take any measure until he felt it to be absolutely necessary.

Only a few months later he issued his first proclamation of emancipation; but he did not do so until convinced that he must do this in order to end the rebellion. Long before, he had considered and in his own mind adopted. a plan of dealing with the slavery question the simple easy plan which, while a member of Congress he had proposed for the District of Columbia · that on condition of the slaveowners voluntarily giving up their slaves, they should be paid a fair price for them by the Federal government. Delaware was a slave

State, and seemed an excellent place in which to try this experiment of "compensated emancipation," as it was called; for there were, all told, only 1798 slaves left in the State. Without any public announcement of his purpose he offered to the citizens of Delaware, through their representative in Congress, four hundred dollars for each of these slaves, the payment to be made, not all at once, but yearly, during a period of thirty-one years. He believed that if Delaware could be induced to accept this offer, Maryland might follow her example, and that afterward other States would allow themselves to be led along the same easy way. The Delaware House of Representatives voted in favor of the proposition, but five of the nine members of the Delaware senate scornfully repelled the "abolition bribe," as they chose to call it, and the project withered in the bud.

Mr. Lincoln did not stop at this failure, but, on March 6, 1862, sent a special message to the Senate and House of Representatives recommending that Congress adopt a joint resolution favoring and practically offering gradual compensated emancipation to any State that saw fit to accept it; pointing out at the same time that the Federal government claimed no right to interfere with slavery within the States, and that if the offer were accepted it must be done as a matter of free choice.

The Republican journals of the North devoted considerable space to discussing the President's plan, which, in the main, was favorably received; but it was thought that it must

fail on the score of expense. The President answered this objection in a private letter to a Senator, proving that less than one-half day's cost of war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars each, and less than eighty-seven days' cost of war would pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Kentucky and Missouri. "Do you doubt," he asked, "that taking such a step on the part of those States and this District would shorten the war more than eightyseven days, and thus be an actual saving of expense ?"

Both houses of Congress favored the resolution, and also passed a bill immediately freeing the slaves in the District of Columbia on the payment to their loyal owners of three hundred dollars for each slave. This last bill was signed by the President and became a law on April 16, 1862. So, although he had been unable to bring it about when a member of Congress thirteen years before, it was he, after all, who finally swept away that scandal of the "negro livery-stable" in the shadow of the dome of the Capitol.

Congress as well as the President was thus pledged to compensated emancipation, and if any of the border slave States had shown a willingness to accept the generosity of the government, their people might have been spared the loss that overtook all slave-owners on the first of January, 1863. The President twice called the representatives and senators of these States to the White House, and urged his plan most eloquently, but nothing came of it. Meantime, the military situation continued most discouraging. The advance of the Army of the Potomac upon Richmond became a retreat; the commanders in the West could not get control of the Mississippi River; and worst of all, in spite of their cheering assurance that "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong," the people of the country were saddened and filled with the most gloomy forebodings because of the President's call for so many new troops.

"It had got to be midsummer, 1862," Mr. Lincoln said, in telling an artist friend the history of his most famous official act. "Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt

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that 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. 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 . . . . I said to the cabinet that I had resolved 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."

....

It was on July 22 that the President read to his cabinet the draft of this first emancipation proclamation, which after announcing that at the next meeting of Congress he would again. offer compensated emancipation to such States as chose to accept it, went on to order as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, that the slaves in all States which should be in rebellion against the government on January 1, 1863, should “then, thenceforward and forever be free."

Mr. Lincoln had given a hint of this intended step to Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles, but to all the other members of the cabinet it came as a complete surprise. One thought it would cost the Republicans the fall elections. Another preferred that emancipation should be proclaimed by military commanders in their several military districts. Secretary Seward, while approving the measure, suggested that it would better be postponed until it could be given to the country after a victory, instead of issuing it, as would be the case then, upon the greatest disasters of the war. "The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with very great force," Mr. Lincoln's recital continues. "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 proclamation aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, waiting for a victory.”

The secrets of the administration were well kept, and no hint came to the public that the President had proposed such a measure to his

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