had brought back the last of them, but with a bullet in his own loyal breast. Then he was ready to close his account with earth. bill in full, and with his dying breath he blessed the mercy of Lincoln for trusting him and permitting him to give his life for the Union. LINCOLN THE EMANCIPATOR His life-long hatred of slavery. — Why he was not an Abolitionist. His courage and wisdom in resisting rash counsels. - Could not free the slaves as President, but only as Commander-inchief and as a military, not as a moral measure. General Butler's declaration that slaves were contraband of war, May, 1861. Lincoln's effort to promote gradual, compensated emancipation in the border states. - The slaves in the District of Columbia emancipated by Congress, April 16, 1862. — Lincoln first announced to his cabinet, July 22, 1862, his purpose to proclaim emancipation in warring states. - Writing the Proclamation in secret. - His vow to God. - A strange scene in the cabinet room, Lincoln first reading from Artemus Ward, and then reading his Proclamation, September 22, 1862. - Emancipation of more than three million slaves proclaimed, January 1, 1863. - The Confederacy staggered. One hundred and fifty thousand black troops for the Union in 1864. — The South driven to arming the negroes. - Lincoln's ideals for the freedmen. — His dread of a race_problem. - The thirteenth amendment adopted by Congress, February 1, 1865, and ratified by the states, December 18, 1865. - LINCOLN always hated slavery. Yet he never was an Abolitionist, for the Abolitionists who were ridiculed as long-haired men and short-haired women, or cranks, hated the Constitution and the Union as well as slavery. Because the Constitution recognized the existence of slavery and protected it within the states where it existed, they denounced it as a league with death and a covenant with hell. Despairing of the abolition of slavery within the Union, they loudly advocated disunion and the separa tion of the North from the South. Lincoln, on the other hand, felt a deep passion for the Union, and it was his faith that the principles of liberty and equality, on which it was founded, would surely lead in the end to the gradual eman cipation of the slaves. He believed the nation would not permanently remain half free and half slave; that it would become either one thing or the other, and that under the inspiration of the Declaration of Independence and the democratic institutions of the republic, freedom would triumph. The Abolitionists did not support him when he was a candidate for President, and after he became President their eloquent orator, Wendell Phillips, described him as "the slave hound of Illinois." Lincoln was still for the Union above all else, for he felt if that were lost, the surest guarantee of freedom for white men as well as black would be lost. If he had permitted the Civil War to become at once a fight against slavery rather than a fight for the life of the Union, he would have driven from his side the slave states on the border and a majority of the people of the free states of the North as well. Moreover, he believed that he had no right under his oath of office to destroy slavery except to save the Union. A President in time of peace could not free the slaves any more than he could enter a man's house and take away something that lawfully belonged to him. Not as President, but only as Commanderin-chief of the army engaged in open war, could Lincoln emancipate the negroes, just as he could kill, burn, or confiscate whenever and wherever he thought he could thereby hurt the enemy and help the Union. In resisting the rash counsels of the radicals, Lincoln showed a courage equal to his wisdom. He must seem to ignore the moral sentiment of the civilized world which was outraged by the institution of slavery in a free country, and appear indifferent to a cause which he had espoused in his youth. He could not fail to see, however, that freedom was on the way. No man could stop it, and it needed no encouragement. The South had made war in order to perpetuate slavery. As surely as the South lost, slavery would be lost. From the outset the army commanders were confronted with the question of what to do with the negroes who came within the Union lines. Some generals restored the slaves to their owners, while others went so far as to issue emancipation proclamations on their own responsibility. Both methods brought embarrassment to Lincoln. To return the runaways to slavery aroused indignation in the North and even in Europe, while to proclaim them free, alarmed the border states and the conservatives of the North. General Benjamin F. Butler found the happiest solution of all. He declared the negroes who came under his military jurisdiction "contraband of war," and held them just as any contraband article is held or treated in time of war. That fortunate phrase surmounted many difficulties, and "contrabands," as the fugitives came to be known in the speech of the day, flocked to the standard of freedom in increasing numbers. They dug trenches, threw up earthworks, and did all manner of labor for the Union armies. They were not free, however, in the cold eye of the law. As events continued to hasten the institution of bondage to its downfall, Lincoln did his utmost to prepare the Union slaveholders and their sympathizers for the inevitable end. He strove to put in operation a plan for paying the owners of slaves in the border states, and to gain their consent to a slow process of compensated emancipation. He |