e to see the
handwriting on the wall as were the Little Men. In the same proclamation
that overruled Hunter, while hinting at what the Administration might
feel driven to do, Lincoln appealed again to the loyal Slave States to
accept compensated emancipation. "I do not argue," said he, "I beseech
you to make the argument for yourselves. You can not, if you would, be
blind to the signs of the times. . . . 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."(7)

Though Lincoln, at this moment, was anxiously watching the movement
in Congress to force his hand, he was not apparently cast down. He was
emerging from his eclipse. June was approaching and with it the final
dawn. Furthermore, when he issued this proclamation on May nineteenth,
he had not lost faith in McClellan. He was still hoping for news of a
crushing victory; of McClellan's triumphal entry into Richmond. The
next two months embraced both those transformations which together
revolutionized his position. He emerged from his last eclipse; and
McClellan failed him.

When Lincoln returned to Washington after his two days at the front, he
knew that the fortunes of his Administration were at a low ebb.
Never had he been derided in Congress with more brazen injustice. The
Committee, waiting only for McClellan's failure, would now unmask their
guns-as Chandler did, seven days later. The line of Vindictive criticism
could easily be foreshadowed: the government had failed; it was
responsible for a colossal military catastrophe; but what could you
expect of an Administration that would not strike its enemies through
emancipation; what a shattering demonstration that the Executive was not
a safe repository of the war powers.

Was there any way to forestall or disarm the Vindictives? His silence
gives us no clue when or how the answer occurred to him--by separating
the two issues; by carrying out the hint in the May proclamation; by
yielding on emancipation while, in the very act, pushing the war powers
of the President to their limit, declaring slaves free by an executive
order.

The importance of preserving the war power of the President had become
a fixed condition of Lincoln's thought. Already, he was looking forward
not only to victory but to the great task that should come after
victory. He was determi