oubt," he
asked, that taking such a step "on the part of those States and this
District would shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and thus be
an actual saving of expense?"

Both houses of Congress favored the resolution, and also passed a
bill immediately freeing the slaves in the District of Columbia on the
payment to their loyal owners of three hundred dollars for each slave.
This last bill was signed by the President and became a law on April 16,
1862. So, although he had been unable to bring it about when a member of
Congress thirteen years before, it was he, after all, who finally swept
away that scandal of the "negro livery-stable" in the shadow of the dome
of the Capitol.

Congress as well as the President was thus pledged to compensated
emancipation, and if any of the border slave States had shown a
willingness to accept the generosity of the government, their people
might have been spared the loss that overtook all slave-owners on the
first of January, 1863. The President twice called the representatives
and senators of these States to the White House, and urged his plan most
eloquently, but nothing came of it. Meantime, the military situation
continued most discouraging. The advance of the Army of the Potomac
upon Richmond became a retreat; the commanders in the West could not get
control of the Mississippi River; and worst of all, in spite of their
cheering assurance that "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand strong," the people of the country were saddened and filled
with the most gloomy forebodings because of the President's call for so
many new troops.

"It had got to be midsummer, 1862," Mr. Lincoln said, in telling an
artist friend the history of his most famous official act. "Things had
gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of
our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had
about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the
game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy, and
without consultation with, or the knowledge of the cabinet, I prepared
the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious thought,
called a cabinet meeting upon the subject.... I said to the cabinet that
I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask
their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before
them, suggestions as to which would be in order after they had h