e
knowledge of what was in the hearts and minds of the millions.

In his own conduct, his guiding principle was fidelity to his official
duty as he read it in the Constitution and the laws. He felt the
specific, supreme task laid upon him to be the restoration and
maintenance of the Union. And to succeed in that, he knew he must
rightly interpret and enforce the general sentiment and desire of the
loyal people. If he let them become so divided as to no longer act
together, the cause was lost. And to follow any personal opinion or
conviction of his own, in disregard of his official duty, or in defiance
of the popular will, was to betray his trust.

It was under these conditions that Lincoln dealt with slavery. No man
more than he detested the institution, or desired its removal. But he
felt that he had no right to touch it, except as empowered by the
Constitution and the laws, or as guided by the supreme necessity of
saving the nation's life. Beyond that he had no authority. Beyond that,
his position toward slavery must be like that of a President toward, for
example, a system of religion which he believed to be false and
injurious. Be he intensely orthodox, believing infidelity to be the road
to hell,--yet he must not as President, put a straw across the path of
the free-thinker. Be he as heretical as Thomas Jefferson, he must not
as President, any more than did Jefferson, lay a finger on the churches.
Just so did Lincoln feel himself restricted as to slavery,--he could not
touch it, except as the civil laws brought it within his province, or
unless as supreme military commander the laws and necessities of war
brought it within his authority.

Congress soon proceeded to discuss questions about slavery. Sumner, the
foremost leader of the radicals, proposed resolutions, in February,
1862, declaring that the seceded States had by their acts extinguished
their State organizations and relapsed into a territorial condition,
subject only to Congress; and that slavery within them, existing only by
a local authority now defunct, was thus abolished. Congress would take
no such ground as that. But, as within its proper sphere, it abolished
slavery in the District of Columbia, in April, 1862, giving
compensation to owners at a maximum rate of $300 for each slave. And in
the following June, it abolished slavery in all the national
territories,--thus giving full force to the cardinal doctrine of the
Republican party up to the war.