ess
cautious, but you would be grateful that he is so true to all that
you have at heart. Believe me, therefore, you are wrong, and I
regret it the more because of my desire to see all our friends
stand firmly together.

"If I write strongly it is because I feel strongly; for my constant
and intimate intercourse with the President, beginning with the 4th
of March, not only binds me peculiarly to his Administration, but
gives me a personal as well as a political interest in seeing that
justice is done him.

"Believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard, ever faithfully yours,
"CHARLES SUMNER."

But stones are not more deaf to entreaty than were the ears of the loyal
Border-State men and their allies to President Lincoln's renewed appeal.
"Ephraim" was "wedded to his idols."

McClellan too--immediately after his retreat from the Chickahominy to
the James River--seized the opportunity afforded by the disasters to our
arms, for which he was responsible, to write to President Lincoln a
letter (dated July 7, 1862) in which he admonished him that owing to the
"critical" condition of the Army of the Potomac, and the danger of its
being "overwhelmed" by the Enemy in front, the President must now
substantially assume and exercise the powers of a Dictator, or all would
be lost; that "neither Confiscation of property * * * nor forcible
Abolition of Slavery, should be contemplated for a moment;" and that "A
declaration of Radical views, especially upon Slavery, will rapidly
disintegrate our present Armies."

Harried, and worried, on all sides,--threatened even by the Commander of
the Army of the Potomac,--it is not surprising, in view of the
apparently irreconcilable attitude of the loyal Border-State men to
gradual and compensated Emancipation, that the tension of President
Lincoln's mind began to feel a measure of relief in contemplating
Military Emancipation in the teeth of all such threats.

He had long since made up his mind that the existence of Slavery was not
compatible with the preservation of the Union. The only question now
was, how to get rid of it? If the worst should come to the worst
--despite McClellan's threat--he would have to risk everything on the turn
of the die--would have to "play his last card;" and that "last card" was
Military Emancipation. Yet still he disliked to play it. The time and
necessity for it had not yet arri