s calling together of the
Thirty-seventh Congress of the United States in Extra Session--the
Congress whose measures ultimately enabled President Lincoln and the
Union Armies to subdue the Rebellion and save the Union--the Congress
whose wise and patriotic deliberations resulted in the raising of those
gigantic Armies and Navies, and in supplying the unlimited means,
through the Tariff and National Bank Systems and otherwise, by which
those tremendous Forces could be both created and effectively operated
--the Congress which cooperated with President Lincoln and those Forces in
preparing the way for the destruction of the very corner-stone of the
Confederacy, Slavery itself.

CHAPTER XX.

LINCOLN'S TROUBLES AND TEMPTATIONS.

The Rebels themselves, as has already been noted, by the employment of
their Slaves in the construction of earthworks and other fortifications,
and even in battle, at Bull Run and elsewhere, against the Union Forces,
brought the Thirty-seventh Congress, as well as the Military Commanders,
and the President, to an early consideration of the Slavery question.
But it was none the less a question to be treated with the utmost
delicacy.

The Union men, as well as the Secession-sympathizers, of Kentucky and
Tennessee and Missouri and Maryland, largely believed in Slavery, or at
least were averse to any interference with it. These, would not see
that the right to destroy that unholy Institution could pertain to any
authority, or be justified by any exigency; much less that, as held by
some authorities, its existence ceased at the moment when its hands, or
those of the State in which it had existed, were used to assail the
General Government.

They looked with especial suspicion and distrust upon the guarded
utterances of the President upon all questions touching the future of
the Colored Race.

[At Faneuil Hall, Edward Everett is reported to have said, in
October of 1864:

"It is very doubtful whether any act of the Government of the
United States was necessary to liberate the Slaves in a State which
is in Rebellion. There is much reason for the opinion that, by the
simple act of levying War against the United States, the relation
of Slavery was terminated; certainly, so far as concerns the duty
of the United States to recognize it, or to refrain from
interfering with it.

"Not being founded