Mason and Slidell."" Stanton cheered and applauded the act. The Secretary of State was at first opposed to any concession or the surrender of the prisoners. The. people were ready to rush "pell mell" into a war with England. The Confederates were rejoicing at the capture, as the means of bringing the English navy and armies to their aid. But Lincoln, cool, sagacious, and far-seeing, uninfluenced by resentment, with courage and a confidence in the deliberate judgment of the country never exceeded, stepped in front of an exasperated people, told them to pause and "to forbear." "We fought Great Britain," said he, "for doing just what Captain Wilkes has done. If Great Britain protests against this act and demands their release, we must adhere to our principles of 1812. We must give up these prisoners. Besides," said he significantly, "one war at a time." It is scarcely too much to say that his firmness and courage saved the republic from a war with England. Had the President, yielding to popular clamor, accepted the challenge of Great Britain and gone to war, he would have done exactly what the rebels desired, and would have thus made Mason and Slidell incomparably more useful to the Confederates than they were after their surrender, and while hanging around the back doors of the Courts to which they were sent, but at which they were never received. No one can calculate the results which would have followed upon a refusal to surrender these men. sober second thought of the people recognized the wise statesmanship of the President. The Secretary of State, with his facile pen, made an able argument sustaining the views of the President. No instance in which Lincoln ever 1. Benson J. Lossing, in Lincoln Album, p. 328. 2. See Lincoln and Seward, by Gideon Welles, p. 188. Secretary Welles distinctly says: The "Mr. Seward was at the beginning opposed to any idea of concession, which involved giving up the emissaries, but yielded at once, and with dexterity, to the peremptory demand of Great Britain." "The President expressed his doubts of the legality of the capture and from the first was willing to make the concession." Lincoln and Seward, by Gideon Welles, pp. 186-188. acted from private resentment towards any individual, or nation, can be found. Towards individuals who had injured him, he was ever magnanimous, and often more than just ; and towards nations, no more striking illustration of his dignified disregard of personal insult and injustice could be found than that furnished by his conduct towards England at this time. He was not insensible of the personal insults and injuries heaped upon him in England, but he was too great to be to any extent influenced by them. It required nerve and moral courage to stem the tide of popular feeling, but he did not for a moment hesitate. And when the excitement of the hour had passed, his conduct was universally approved. Lovejoy's speech in Congress illustrates the hatred and excitement which the conduct of Great Britain produced.1 * 1. Congressional Globe, Second Session Thirty-seventh Congress, p. 333. Lovejoy said: "Every time this Trent affair comes up; every time that an allusion is made to it. * I am made to renew the horrible grief which I suffered when the news of the surrender of Mason and Slidell came. I acknowledge it, I literally wept tears of vexation. I hate it; and I hate the British government. I have never shared in the traditionary hostility of many of my countrymen against England. But I now here publicly avow and record my inextinguishable hatred of that government. I mean to cherish it while I live, and to bequeath it as a legacy to my children when I die. And if I am alive when war with England comes, as sooner or later it must, for we shall never forget this humiliation, and if I can carry a musket in that war, I will carry it. I have three sons, and I mean to charge them, and I do now publicly and solemnly charge them, that if they shall have, at that time, reached the years of manhood and strength, they shall enter into that war." Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, went so far as to threaten the administration of Mr. Lincoln. "If," said he, "this administration will not listen to the voice of the people, they will find themselves engulphed in a fire that will consume them like stubble: they will be helpless before a power that will hurl them from their places." See Congressional Globe, 2d Session 37th Congress, January 7, 1862, p. 177. CHAPTER XIV. EFFORTS FOR PEACEFUL EMANCIPATION. PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE. · CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. DEATH OF BAKER.-EULOGIES UPON HIM.-STANTON, SECRETARY OF WAR.ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.-PROHIBITION IN THE TERRITORIES.-EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS SOLDIERS EMANCIPATION IN THE BORDER States. WHEN Congress met, December 2, 1861, no decisive military events had occurred, but the great drama of civil war was at hand. Thus far the work had been one of preparation. Nearly two hundred thousand Union troops, under General George B. McClellan, on the banks of the Potomac, confronted a rebel army, then supposed to number about the same, but now known to have been much smaller. The President in his message, congratulated Congress that the patriotism of the people had proved more than equal to the demands made upon it, and that the number of troops tendered to the government greatly exceeded the force called for. He had not only been successful in holding Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in the Union, but those three states, neither of which had in the beginning given, or promised through state organization, a single soldier, had now forty thousand men in the field under the Union flag. In West Virginia, after a severe struggle, the Union had triumphed, and there was no armed rebel force north of the Potomac or east of the Chesapeake, while the cause of the Union was steadily advancing southward. On the slavery question, he said: "I have adhered to the act of Congress freeing persons held to service, used for insurrectionary purposes." In relation to the emancipation, and arming the negroes, he said : "The maintenance of the integrity of the Union is the primary object of the contest." "The Union must be preserved, and all indispensable means must be employed. We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal, as well as the disloyal, are indispensable." Before proceeding to view in detail the action, during this session, of Congress and the President on the slavery question, let us pause a moment to notice the honors paid in the Senate to the memory of Senator Baker. It will be remembered that he was killed at Ball's Bluff, on the 21st of October, while leading his troops against the enemy. When Congress assembled in regular session, the 11th of December was fixed as the day on which the funeral orations in his honor should be pronounced in the Senate. The chamber of the Senate was draped in black; the brilliant colors of the national flag, which the war made all worship, were now mingled with the dark, in honor of the dead soldier and senator. The floor was crowded with senators, members of the House, governors of states, and distinguished civil and military officers, among whom Seward and Chase, and the Blairs and Stanton were conspicuous. The galleries were filled by members of the diplomatic corps, ladies, and prominent citizens from all parts of the republic. As soon as Vice-President Hamlin had called the Senate to order, President Lincoln, in deep mourning, slowly entered from the marble room, supported by the senators from Illinois: Trumbull and Browning. Not very long before he had been present among the chief mourners at the funeral in the White House of his protégé, young Ellsworth, shot down in the bloom of youth, and now it was Baker, his old comrade at the bar of Sangamon County; his successor in Congress; he for whom the President's second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, had been named, and to whom he was very warmly attached. Senator Nesmith, of Oregon, sorrowfully announced the death of Baker, and was followed by McDougall of California, in one of the most touching and beautiful speeches ever heard in the Senate. Turning towards Lincoln, aud alluding to the dead senator's enthusiastic love of poetry, he said: "Many years since, on the wild plains of the West, in the midst of a starlight night, as we journeyed together, I heard from him the chant of that noble song, 'The Battle of Ivry.' "He loved freedom, if you please, Anglo-Saxon freedom, for he was of that grand old race." As descriptive of the warlike scenes of every-day occurrence when Baker left the senatorial forum for the field, McDougall repeated in a voice which created a sensation. throughout the Senate: "Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din " And then comparing Baker at Ball's Bluffs with Henry of Navarre, McDougall quoted the words: "And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet, of such a bloody fray Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, It was a most eloquent speech, and as McDougall recalled the old comradeship of Lincoln and Baker, and Browning, and kimself in early days as circuit riders in Central Illinois, every heart was touched, and few eyes were dry. Sumner's speech was among the best he ever made. It was perhaps the only occasion upon which he ever cut loose from his manuscript, and gave free scope to the inspiration of the scene and the moment. Senator Browning, the successor of Douglas, followed, |