for action came.

Accordingly the two months which followed were not only full of anxiety
about the war; they were full for him of a suspense painfully
maintained. It troubled him perhaps comparatively little that he was
driven into a position of greater aloofness from the support and
sympathy of any party or school. He must now expect an opposition from
the Democrats of the North, for they had declared themselves strongly
against the Resolution which he had induced Congress to pass. And the
strong Republicans for their part had acquiesced in it coldly, some of
them contemptuously. In May of this year he had been forced for a
second time publicly to repress a keen Republican general who tried to
take this question of great policy into his own hands. General Hunter,
commanding a small expedition which had seized Port Royal in South
Carolina and some adjacent islands rich in cotton, had in a grand
manner assumed to declare free all the slaves in South Carolina,
Georgia and Florida. This, of course, could not be let pass.
Congress, too, had been occupied in the summer with a new measure for
confiscating rebel property; some Republicans in the West set great
store on such confiscation; other Republicans saw in it the incidental
advantage that more slaves might be liberated under it. It was learnt
that the President might put his veto upon it. It seemed to purport,
contrary to the Constitution, to attaint the property of rebels after
their death, and Lincoln was unwilling that the Constitution should be
stretched in the direction of revengeful harshness. The objectionable
feature in the Bill was removed, and Lincoln accepted it. But the
suspicion with which many Republicans were beginning to regard him was
now reinforced by a certain jealousy of Congressmen against the
Executive power; they grumbled and sneered about having to "ascertain
the Royal pleasure" before they could legislate. This was an able,
energetic, and truly patriotic Congress, and must not be despised for
its reluctance to be guided by Lincoln. But it was reluctant.

Throughout August and September he had to deal in the country with
dread on the one side of any revolutionary action, and belief on the
other side that he was timid and half-hearted. The precise state of
his intentions could not with advantage be made public. To up-holders
of slavery he wrote plainly, "It may as well be understood once for all
that I shall not surrender this game