made, by act of the Confederate Congress, for the enrolment of black troops under the Stars and Bars of a republic which had placed the slavery of the African race in its very corner-stone. Thus was Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation doubly justified as a military measure. Morally, Lincoln would have preferred to see the negroes freed, not at one stroke, but gradually. This was the ideal he expressed time and again, for he was always a very practical man. He dreaded sudden revolutions and their equally violent reactions. He feared the racial strife and the social problem which would follow any kind of emancipation, and he even favored the experiment of sending the freedmen out of the South and colonizing them in Central America, or elsewhere. When he saw that this would not be done, he turned to the education of the liberated blacks as the best hope of fitting them to hold their own in a land where they had so long been in slavery. He favored no sweeping and radical plans. His purpose was to seek some slow but wise process, whereby "the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new." Universal negro suffrage did not strongly appeal to him. He preferred that the ballot should be placed only in the hands of the colored men who had fought for the Union, and the "very intelligent." Black voters of those classes, he thought, would "probably help in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom.' He continued to beg the people of the border states to complete the work of freeing the slaves by compensated emancipation. Millions of dollars were offered them in payment for their negroes, but the owners would not accept. The only course remaining was the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution, forbidding slavery everywhere within the United States. After all the evil which the institution had wrought, it must be destroyed, root and branch, before the restoration of the Union. It would be a criminal folly to permit a vestige of it to linger and disturb the new Union. Lincoln therefore strove earnestly in the closing months of the war for the passage of the thirteenth amendment, which he looked upon as the completion of his labors for freedom. In the evening following his second inauguration he held a reception. Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave, presented himself to be received by the President. No negro ever before had been seen on a social occasion at the White House, and the police started at once to put Douglass out. A protest being raised by some onlooker, however, he was permitted to take his place in the line of guests, where in due time he was cordially greeted by the President. For Lincoln, although he knew the prejudices of others, had a respect for the feelings as well as for the rights of the members of this enslaved race. "Mr. Lincoln," said Douglass, "is the only white man with whom I have ever talked, or in whose presence I have ever been, who did not consciously or unconsciously betray to me that he recognized my color." He invited Douglass to tea in his cottage at the Soldiers' Home, and many negroes attended the President's New Year's reception in the closing days of the war, laughing and crying with joy as they stood in their new manhood before their emancipator. LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET A group of naturally discordant advisers moulded and harmonized by Lincoln's unsuspected mastery of men. Seward or Chase expected to be the real power behind the chair of the unknown and untried President. Seward's amazing proposal to Lincoln, April 1, 1861, and the kindly firmness with which the latter rejected it. Chase's pathetic failure to understand his chief. Attempt of the Senate to reconstruct the cabinet, December 19, 1862, and Lincoln's successful method of meeting the crisis. Lincoln and Stanton a strangely matched team. - "I have very little influence with this administration.” How Lincoln slowly and gently gained the lead over all. Chase's resignation, June 28, 1864, and Lincoln's generous appointment of him to the Chief-justiceship, December 6, 1864.- Estimates of Lincoln's leadership by Seward and Stanton. LINCOLN hated to dictate. He shrank from assuming to control the members of his cabinet until forced by circumstances to take upon himself the responsibility. His natural preference was to work with, rather than to lead men. He could not bear to humble any fellow-being, however low his rank. He found, however, as emergencies arose, that some one must rule, and that as President he alone was responsible to the people. His courage never permitted him to shirk a duty, and thus little by little |