day,* Mr. Chase records that, "for the tenth or twentieth time," he urged the adoption of a vigorous policy against slavery in the seceded States by "assuring the blacks of freedom on condition of loyalty, and by organizing the best of them in companies and regiments." He further records that Mr. Seward "expressed himself in favor of any measures which could be carried into effect without proclamation, and the President said that he was pretty well cured of objection to any measure, except want of adaptedness to put down the rebellion, but did not seem satisfied that the time had come for the adoption of such a plan as I had proposed."† On the 22d of August, just one month after Mr. Lincoln had first opened the subject of emancipation to his Cabinet, he proceeded to take the whole country into his confidence on the relations of slavery to the war. On that day he wrote "the Greeley Letter" -a letter written in reply to an earnest and importunate appeal in which, assuming to utter the "Prayer of Twenty Millions," Mr. Greeley had called on the President, with much truculence of speech, to issue a proclamation of freedom to all slaves in the Confederate States. As this letter was the first as well as the most pithy and syllogistic public discussion which the President ever gave to the subject in hand, it seems proper not only to insert it here in its entirety, but, as a matter of literary curiosity, to reproduce it in its original form. The following is a fac-simile of the letter: Executive Mansion. How. Horace Greely: 19th Washington, August. 22%. 1869 - I have just read yours of the addrenser to myself Throughs the NewYork Tribuno_ If thew be in to any statements, or assumptions of face, which I may know to bes I do not, now and here, controvent erroneous * The meeting was held on a Saturday, according to Mr. Welles, and the 3d of August, 1862, was a Sunday. + Warden's "Life of Chase," p. 446. VOL. CXXX.-No. 279. 12 I may them. If then he in it any inferences which believe to be falsely drawn, I do not Brown and how argue against them. If thew he perceptable in it an impatient and dres tatorise tow, I waive it in deferener to an olev frein, whow heart I have always tip. posen to be right. As to the policy I "seem to be parseeing" as you I would save the lesion. I would save it the phostest way ander the Constitution. The sooner the national authors can he pestored, the nearer the Meniow will be "the lemon as it thou If there he thy who wouldnt saves the leniow, unless they could at the I do not agree with them_ If thew be thous who would prot famo the liniow unless they conlor at the game time destroy plavery, I do not agur еди with thems My paramount object in the struggle is to same the finion, snow jo not either to paus or to destroy plavery. If do conla pave the Union without freeing any plans I would do, I conla fave it by feeing all it and if ! the planes. I would do at; and save it if I conlor. by freeing pond and leaving other alow I would also do that. What I do about plavery, and the colorear pace, I sis because I believe it helps to save the know, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believes ito prontar heep to panthe Minion I phall do less whenever I phase bus liems what I doing hasts this causo, ands I shall do more whenever I thall believe doing grow will heefs the cause I phalesting to correct errors when phown's to he essons; anev shall adopt new crews to fast. as they phale appear to his tris crews I have her station my purposes according to my view of official dit, and I intens no modification of my oftiexpressen per sonal wish that all mens everywhew conlas he fed Youn This letter appeared for the first time in the "National Intelligencer" of August 23, 1862.* *The letter came into my hands from the fact that I was one of the editors of the "Intelligencer," to which Mr. Lincoln sent it for publication. The omitted passage— In his interview with the Representatives of the Border States, held on the 10th of March, 1862, Mr. Lincoln had said that, as long as he remained President, the people of Maryland (and therefore of the other Border States) had nothing to fear for their peculiar domestic institution "either by direct action of the Government or by indirect action, as through the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia or the confiscation of Southern property" in slaves. In that same interview, while making a confidential avowal of these friendly sentiments, he had protested against their public announcement at that juncture, on the ground that "it would force him into a quarrel with 'the Greeley faction' before the proper time." He twice intimated that such a quarrel was impending, but added that "he did not wish to encounter it before the proper time, nor at all if it could be avoided."* It was no more than natural, therefore, that these Representatives, on the appearance of "the Greeley Letter," should have read between its lines a supposed indication of the President's purpose to break with "the Greeley faction" at an early day. They believed that the President, at the bottom of his heart, was in sympathy with them, and with their theory of the war. They were not entirely disabused of this impression even after his interview with them on the 12th of July, when he made a last ineffectual appeal to them in behalf of "emancipation with compensation to loyal owners," and when he reënforced his appeal by urging that the acceptance of such a policy would help to relieve him from "the pressure" for military emancipation at the South. The Representatives from the Border States were strengthened in their delusion by a corresponding delusion of the Radical Republicans, who weakly supposed the President at this juncture to be a nose of wax in the hands of what they called "the pro-slavery faction." As late as the 10th of September, ten days before the preliminary Proclamation of emancipation was issued, we find Mr. "Broken eggs can never be mended, and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken "—was erased, with some reluctance, by the President, on the representation, made to him by the editors, that it seemed somewhat exceptionable, on rhetorical grounds, in a paper of such dignity. But it can do no harm, at this late day, to reveal the homely similitude by which Mr. Lincoln had originally purposed to reënforce his political warnings. * McPherson, "Political History," p. 211. + The word "Radical" throughout this paper is used historically, and not in any invidious sense. It is the term by which Mr. Lincoln called the "Stalwarts" of that day, and by which they called themselves. Chase lamenting in his diary that the President "has yielded so much to Border State and negrophobic counsels that he now finds it difficult to arrest his own descent to the most fatal concessions."* And this impatient insistence of his Radical friends was repaid by the President with gibes and sneers, as when, for instance, on this same 10th of September, he taunted Mr. Chase with "the illtimed jest " that some one had proposed, in view of the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania, which was then believed to be impending, that he (the President) should issue a proclamation "freeing all apprentices in that State"-on the ground of military necessity! It was with a like festive humor that, on the 13th of September, he parried the arguments of the Chicago clergymen who had come to Washington in order to press for a proclamation of freedom. To their representation that the recent military disasters "were tokens of divine displeasure, calling for new and advanced action on the part of the President," he shrewdly replied that, if it was probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so intimately connected with the President's duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to the President himself. To the argument that a proclamation of freedom would summon additional laborers to help the army, he replied by asking what reason there was to suppose that such a proclamation would have more effect than the late law enacted by Congress to this end; and, if they should come in multitudes, how, he asked, could they all be fed ? To the suggestion that the able-bodied among them might be armed to fight for the Union, he ironically replied, "If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels." To the plea that emancipation would give a holy motive and a sacred object to the war, he replied by saying that "we already had an important principle to rally and unite the people, in the fact that constitutional government was at stake-a fundamental idea going down about as deep as anything." It is true that at the close of his interview the President assured the Chicago committee that he had not "decided against a proclamation of liberty to slaves," and that "the subject was on his mind by day and night more than any other;" but this statement only served to bring into bold relief the little faith he then seemed to * Warden's "Life of Chase," p. 471. 1 |