and John Slidell, ran the Federal blockade at Charleston, South Carolina, successfully, and embarked at Havana on the steamer Trent for England. On 8th November she was boarded by Captain Wilkes of the American man-of-war, San Jacinto, and the two Commissioners taken from her and carried prisoners to Fort Warren in Boston Harbour. The North went wild with joy, banquets were given to Wilkes, while Lincoln was heard to mutter something about the prisoners "proving white elephants yet."

England immediately demanded reparation and the release of the prisoners, and without waiting for a reply sent troops to Canada and prepared for war.

This "Trent Affair" made a very painful impression on both sides of the Atlantic, and the hostility of feeling once started was slow to wear off. Much against popular approval the Commissioners were released, for Lincoln was too good an executive to heed a popular outcry which had no permanent meaning. One war at a time," he told the North, and with this ambiguous offer to their war spirit he bridged the crisis which undoubtedly would have resulted in the immediate recognition of the South.

But the danger of intervention was never over. Friction between England and the United States arose again the second summer of the war over the escape to the open sea of the Alabama, one of the "commerce destroyers" of the Confederacy, which had been built at Liverpool and permitted to leave against the protests of the American Ambassador.

At home, too, events were driving Lincoln to a change of policy. The moment had come when recruiting

became more and more difficult, and the North wished to fight only on its own terms. Lincoln could not keep revoking the emancipation proclamations of his generals much longer, nor could he continue vetoing the radical measures of the Republican Congress on the subject of slavery. In the first flush of its victory it had passed the long-sought-for Homestead Bill, which offered portions of the public domain to heads of families at a nominal fee, and had given a charter to the Union Pacific Railway with huge grants of land and money from the Federal Government. Bills were brought in as early as 1861 for the repeal or the modification of the Fugitive Slave Law and for the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia. Another Bill asked Congress to abolish slavery in all states which had seceded, for it was argued that they had forfeited the right of statehood by secession and therefore were to be considered territories which the United States had ordained to be free by special ordinance. This Bill was not passed, but the argument of the reduction of the states to territories was very important, for it was destined to come up again in the question of reconstruction. By March 1862 Congress had forbidden the officers of the Army and Navy to return escaped slaves to their masters, and in June slavery was prohibited in all the territories held at that time or which might be acquired in the future. This was the realization of the prime article in the platform of the Republican Party and once and for all overthrew the Dred Scott decision.

Lincoln endorsed all the Bills that Congress passed relative to slavery or land in the territories, but he threw his whole influence against interfering with

slavery in the states, except with compensation to the owner and colonization for the negro. He was disturbed at the Bill for the abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia, though it included both his ideas of compensation and colonization. Compensation was offered to loyal owners at a maximum rate of $300 a slave, and colonization to Haiti or Liberia at a cost not exceeding $100 to any coloured person who wished to go.

His recommendation for compensation had already passed Congress in the spring of 1862. He was troubled over the constitutionality of the process. He did not assume, he said in his message in March, that Congress or he had the power to proceed in this question without the consent of the states involved. He put his recommendation in the form of a resolution which read: "Resolved that the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." He used all the persuasive power at his command to make this resolution acceptable. He called the representatives of the border-states to him and explained the advantages of the Bill to them. They said nothing at the time, but the answers which they gave later were almost all unfavourable. They were unwilling to perform of themselves that which Congress and the President admitted they could not constitutionally force them to do.

In revoking General Hunter's Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln, who had a gift of finding opportunities to lay his case before the people, took occasion

to appeal again to the border-states to accept compensated abolishment. "I do not argue-I beseech you to make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and large consideration of them, ranging if it may be far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it."

In July, with the Emancipation Proclamation already formulated in his mind, Lincoln again asked the representatives of the border-states to a conference on compensated emancipation. He urged them to accept it as an act of patriotism. "It would be the most swift and potent means of ending it (the war). Let the states which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will the states you represent ever join their proposed Confederacy and they cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own states. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces and they can shake you no more forever." He told them plainly that "the incidents of war cannot be

avoided... the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion;" and more, that he could no longer afford to give offence to the elements who were supporting him and who were pressing in the direction of immediate emancipation.

Of his own contemplated step in that direction he told no one. His appeal to the border-states fell on deaf ears, but the appeals to him by the Abolitionists and radicals he also seemingly disregarded.

In the dark summer of 1862, when there was a general hopelessness in the field and a great danger of Republican losses in the elections, he matured his plan for a general military emancipation. He called his Cabinet and read the Proclamation, saying that he had made up his mind about it and only wanted to hear what each member thought. The Cabinet all disapproved, but Lincoln said he was determined. The only question discussed was when to read it. Seward thought it best to wait until the North had won some victory, so as not to have it seem a gesture of despair. "Yes," said Lincoln, "that is a good idea. Otherwise it might sound like our last shriek on the retreat."

On 20th August, when military reverses seemed to sweep this paper yet farther away, Horace Greeley signed an editorial in the Tribune, which he called "The Prayer of Twenty Million," asking for the immediate abolition of negro slavery. Lincoln, glad of the opportunity to speak to the people, answered, reminding them of their duty, and though revealing his purpose in the war, never admitted that he contemplated emancipation.