. He early
took the ground that a proclamation everywhere emancipating the slaves
would give to the Northern cause a moral support hitherto denied it in
Europe and would at the same time strike a blow at Southern resistance.
This idea was presented in a public speech at Worcester, Massachusetts,
in October, 1861, but even Sumner's free-soil friends thought him
mistaken and his expressions "unfortunate." By December, however, he
found at Washington a change in governmental temper and from that date
Sumner was constant, through frequent private conversations with
Lincoln, in pressing for action. These ideas and his personal activities
for their realization were well known to English friends, as in his
letters to Cobden and Bright, and to the English public in general
through Sumner's speeches, for Sumner had long been a well-known figure
in the British press[864].

Lincoln, never an "Abolitionist," in spite of his famous utterance in
the 'fifties that the United States could not indefinitely continue to
exist "half-slave and half-free," had, in 1861, disapproved and recalled
the orders of some of the military leaders, like Fremont, who without
authority had sought to extend emancipation to slaves within the lines
of their command. But as early as anyone he had foreseen the gradual
emergence of emancipation as a war problem, at first dangerous to that
wise "border state policy" which had prevented the more northern of the
slave states from seceding. His first duty was to restore the Union and
to that he gave all his energy, yet that emancipation, when the time was
ripe, was also in Lincoln's mind is evident from the gradual approach
through legislation and administrative act. In February, 1862, a Bill
was under discussion in Congress, called the "Confiscation Bill," which,
among other clauses, provided that all slaves of persons engaged in
rebellion against the United States, who should by escape, or capture,
come into the possession of the military forces of the United States,
should be for ever free; but that this provision should not be operative
until the expiration of sixty days, thus giving slave-owners opportunity
to cease their rebellion and retain their slaves[865]. This measure did
not at first have Lincoln's approval for he feared its effect on the
loyalists of the border states. Nevertheless he realized the growing
strength of anti-slavery sentiment in the war and fully sympathized with
it where actual realizat