leaving any available card
unplayed"; to its most zealous opponents he had to speak in an entirely
different strain. While the second battle of Bull Run was impending,
Horace Greeley published in the _New York Tribune_ an "open letter" of
angry complaint about Lincoln's supposed bias for slavery. Lincoln at
once published a reply to his letter. "If there be in it," he said,
"any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be
erroneous, I do not now and here controvert 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. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If
I could save the Union without freeing any slaves 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.
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 adopt new views so fast as they shall appear
to be true views."

It was probably easy to him now to write these masterful generalities,
but a week or two later, after Pope's defeat, he had to engage in a
controversy which tried his feelings much more sorely. It had really
grieved him that clergymen in Illinois had opposed him as unorthodox,
when he was fighting against the extension of slavery. Now, a week or
two after his correspondence with Greeley, a deputation from a number
of Churches in Chicago waited upon him, and some of their members spoke
to him with assumed authority from on high, commanding him in God's
name to emancipate the slaves. He said, "I am approached with the most
opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men who are equally
certain that they represent the divine will. I am sure that either the
one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some
respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that, if
it is probable that God would reveal His will to others, on a point so
connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it
directly to me. What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me
do especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a
document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative
like the Pope's Bull against the comet. Do not m