ion. In this, as always, he was true to his own inner
promptings. He would not be hurried or worried or badgered into
premature and impracticable measures. He bided his time; and when that
time came the deed was done, unalterably and irrevocably: approved by
the logic of events, and by the enlightened conscience of the world.

The final Emancipation Proclamation was issued on the first day of
January, 1863. The various official measures that preceded it may be
briefly sketched, together with closely related incidents. As early as
the autumn of 1861 the problem of the relation of the war to slavery was
brought forcibly to the President's attention by the action of General
J.C. Fremont, the Union commander in Missouri, who issued an order
declaring the slaves of rebels in his department free. The order was
premature and unauthorized, and the President promptly annulled it.
General Fremont was thus, in a sense, the pioneer in military
emancipation; and he lived to see the policy proposed by him carried
into practical operation by all our armies. Lincoln afterwards said: "I
have great respect for General Fremont and his abilities, but the fact
is that the pioneer in any movement is not generally the best man to
carry that movement to a successful issue. It was so in old times; Moses
began the emancipation of the Jews, but didn't take Israel to the
Promised Land after all. He had to make way for Joshua to complete the
work. It looks as if the first reformer of a thing has to meet such a
hard opposition and gets so battered and bespattered that afterward when
people find they have to accept his reform they will accept it more
easily from another man."

Lincoln at first favored a policy of gradual emancipation. In a special
message to Congress, on the 6th of March, 1862, he proposed such a plan
for the abolition of slavery. "In my judgment," he remarked, "gradual,
and not sudden, emancipation is better for all." He suggested to
Congress the adoption of a joint resolution declaring "that the United
States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt a gradual
abolition of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid to compensate
for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of
system." In conclusion he urged: "In full view of my great
responsibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the
attention of Congress and the people to this subject."

On the 16th of April of this year, Congress pas