ve to myself, and which I can not feel
justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field."(5)

The revocation of Hunter's order infuriated the Abolitionists. It deeply
disappointed the growing number who, careless about slavery, wanted
emancipation as a war measure, as a blow at the South. Few of either of
these groups noticed the implied hint that emancipation might come by
executive action. Here was the matter of the war powers in a surprising
form. However, it was not unknown to Congress. Attempts had been made to
induce Congress to concede the war powers to the President and to ask,
not command, him to use them for the liberation of slaves in the Seceded
States. Long before, in a strangely different connection, such vehement
Abolitionists as Giddings and J. Q. Adams had pictured the freeing of
slaves as a natural incident of military occupation.

What induced Lincoln to throw out this hint of a possible surrender on
the subject of emancipation? Again, as so often, the silence as to his
motives is unbroken. However, there can be no doubt that his thinking
on the subject passed through several successive stages. But all his
thinking was ruled by one idea. Any policy he might accept, or any
refusal of policy, would be judged in his own mind by the degree to
which it helped, or hindered, the national cause. Nothing was more
absurd than the sneer of the Abolitionists that he was "tender" of
slavery. Browning spoke for him faithfully, "If slavery can survive the
shock of war and secession, be it so. If in the conflict for liberty,
the Constitution and the Union, it must necessarily perish, then let it
perish." Browning refused to predict which alternative would develop.
His point was that slaves must be treated like other property. But, if
need be, he would sacrifice slavery as he would sacrifice anything else,
to save the Union. He had no intention to "protect" slavery.(6)

In the first stage of Lincoln's thinking on this thorny subject, his
chief anxiety was to avoid scaring off from the national cause those
Southern Unionists who were not prepared to abandon slavery. This was
the motive behind his prompt suppression of Fremont. It was this that
inspired the Abolitionist sneer about his relative attitude toward
God and Kentucky. As a compromise, to cut the ground from under the
Vindictives, he had urged the loyal Slave States to endorse a program
of compensated emancipation. But these States were as unabl