important a step. It may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government. It will be considered our last shriek on the retreat. Now, while I approve the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue until you can give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war." The President had not seen the matter in this light; the wisdom of Seward's objection struck him with force; and he "put the draft of the proclamation aside, waiting for a victory." 1

The secret of this conference was well kept.2 The radical Republicans, ignorant of the President's determination to strike at slavery when the proper time should arrive, continued their criticisms of his policy. His order of August 4 for a draft of 300,000 nine-months militia combined with the general gloom that deepened as the summer went on, to intensify this fault-finding, which culminated in The Prayer of Twenty Millions, written by Greeley and printed in the New York Tribune of August 20. All who supported your election, he said, and desire the suppression of the rebellion, are sorely disappointed by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels. "We require of you, as

1 Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 125 et seq.; Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 20; Chase's Diary, Warden, p. 440.

2 An inkling of it got into the newspapers, but with incorrect details. See Chicago Tribune, Aug. 13; Washington despatch to N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 21. The reports were not credited.

8 Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1862, p. 128. Only 87,588 men were furnished under this call.-Phisterer, p. 5.

4 N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 5; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 7, 8; Independent, Aug. 21. Sumner wrote Bright, Aug. 5: "I wish . . . that the President had less vis inertia. He is hard to move. He is honest but inexperienced. Thus far he has been influenced by the border States. I urged him, on the 4th of July, to put forth an edict of emancipation, telling him he could make the day more sacred and historic than ever. He replied: 'I would do it if I were not afraid that half the officers would fling down their arms and three more States would rise.'" - Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 83.

CH. XVII.] GREELEY AND PRAYER OF TWENTY MILLIONS 73

the first servant of the republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS. We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new Confiscation act; [that] you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the menaces of certain fossil politicians hailing from the border slave States; [that] timid counsels in such a crisis [are] calculated to prove perilous and probably disastrous. We complain that the Union cause has suffered and is now suffering immensely from your mistaken deference to rebel slavery. We complain that the Confiscation act which you approved is habitually disregarded by your generals, and that no word of rebuke for them has yet reached the public ear. Frémont's proclamation and Hunter's order were promptly annulled by you, while Halleck's No. 3,1 with scores of like tendency, have never provoked even your remonstrance. We complain that a large proportion of our regular army officers with many of the volunteers evince far more solicitude to uphold slavery than to put down the rebellion. I close as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation act."

Lincoln did not read this open letter, which was addressed to him only through the columns of the New York Tribune, until August 22. He replied at once in a letter which was printed the next day in the National Intelligencer of Washington, and was also telegraphed to Greeley, appearing in the evening edition of the Tribune.3 The President said: "If there be in it

1 See note 1, p. 60.

2 This letter occupies two and one-half columns of the Tribune. I have cited little but the heads of the discourse, and have not indicated the ellipses by the usual dots. Only the last part of the letter is printed in Greeley, The American Conflict, vol. ii. p. 249.

Greeley, The American Conflict, vol. ii. p. 250; J. C. Welling, N. A Rev. Reminiscences of A. Lincoln, p. 523; Nicolay and Hay, vol. vi. p. 152.

[your letter] any statements or assumptions of facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be the Union as it was.' If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."1

Lincoln and Greeley may be looked upon as representative exponents of the two policies here outlined. There was in

1 Lincoln, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 227.

CH. XVII.]

LINCOLN AND GREELEY

78

their personal relations a lack of sympathy, because they did not see things alike. Lincoln knew men, Greeley did not; Lincoln had a keen sense of humor, Greeley had none; indeed, in all their intercourse of many years, Lincoln never told the serious-minded editor an anecdote or joke,1 for he knew it would be thrown away. Greeley and the Tribune, though not so powerful at this time in forming public opinion as they had been from 1854 to 1860, exerted still a far-reaching influence and gave expression to thoughts rising in the minds of many earnest men.2 No one knew this better than the President, who, in stating his policy in a public despatch to Greeley, flattered the editor and those for whom the Tribune spoke. His words received the widest publication,3 and were undoubtedly read by nearly every man and woman at the North. They were sound indeed. His position could not have been more cogently put. His policy was right and expedient, appealed to the reason of his people and inspired their hopes.

How large a following Greeley had cannot be set down with exactitude. His letter was more than a petition like that of "the three tailors of Tooley Street," which one of his rivals deemed modesty itself compared with Greeley's, yet it was far from being the prayer of twenty millions. Lincoln had the majority with him before his reply, and his reply made many friends. In spite of the misfortune of the Army of the Potomac, he still had only to announce clearly his policy to obtain for it the support of a host of plain people.5 An

1 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 404.

2 A. K. McClure writes: "Notwithstanding the loyal support given to Lincoln throughout the country, Greeley was in closer touch with the active loyal sentiment of the people than even the President himself, and his journal constantly inspired not only those who sincerely believed in early emancipation, but all who were inclined to factious hostility to Lincoln, to most aggressive efforts to embarrass the administration by untimely forcing the emancipation policy." - Lincoln and Men of War Times, p. 295.

* Greeley printed them, Aug. 23, in his telegraphic news, and, Aug. 25, in the editorial columns, following with a feeble rejoinder.

4 N. Y. Herald, Aug. 21.

Ibid.; N. Y. Times, Aug. 25; World, Aug. 21, 25; Eve. Post, Aug. 25; Boston Daily Advertiser, Aug. 25; Chicago Tribune, Aug. 25, 26, 27. The

66

enthusiastic mass-meeting in Chicago listened to the reading of a poem whose theme was the July call for troops. "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more," now became the song of the soldiers and the watchword of the people.1

Until the spring of 1862 the government of Great Britain preserved the neutrality which had been declared by the Queen's proclamation at the beginning of the war.2 As we have now come to the period when this neutrality was violated to the injury of the United States, and as it certainly would not have been violated had the feeling of the dominant classes been friendly to the North, reference must again be made to English sentiment on our Civil War. In classifying English sentiment as it prevailed in the autumn of 1861, and in suggesting certain excuses for the preponderating opinion of those whose political and social position was high,3 I omitted a consideration of weight. The sympathy of the British government and public with Italy during the war of 1859, and the progress made in that war towards Italian liberty, impressed upon the English mind the doctrine that a body of people who should seek to throw off an obnoxious dominion and form an orderly government of their own, deserved the best wishes of the civilized world for their success. Why, it was asked in England, if we were right to sympathize with Italy against Austria, should we not likewise sympathize with the Southern Confederacy, whose people were resisting the subjugation of the North? This argument swayed the judgment of the

editorial in the N. Y. Tribune of Aug. 27 is an indication that the tide of public sentiment had turned against Greeley.

1 Chicago Tribune, Aug. 21; Old War Songs, North and South, S. Brainard's Sons, Cleveland.

2 See vol. iii. p. 417.

8 Ibid., pp. 502, 509.

Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, vol. i. p. 490.

5 The traditional sympathy of the English for the weaker party may have been a contributing cause. See Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 152. R. P. Collier, a friend of the North, said in the House of Commons, Feb. 23, 1864: "Our sympathies are always on the side of the weak against the strong