ted
and bitterly opposed at every step.

There were serious questions, too, to be decided about negro soldiers,
for the South had raised a mighty outcry against the Emancipation
Proclamation, especially against the use of the freed slaves as
soldiers, vowing that white officers of negro troops would be shown
small mercy, if ever they were taken prisoners. No act of such vengeance
occurred, but in 1864 a fort manned by colored soldiers was captured by
the Confederates, and almost the entire garrison was put to death.
Must the order that the War Department had issued some time earlier, to
offset the Confederate threats, now be put in force? The order said
that for every negro prisoner killed by the Confederates a Confederate
prisoner in the hands of the Union armies would be taken out and shot.
It fell upon Mr. Lincoln to decide. The idea seemed unbearable to him,
yet, on the other hand, could he afford to let the massacre go unavenged
and thus encourage the South in the belief that it could commit such
barbarous acts and escape unharmed? Two reasons finally decided him
against putting the order in force. One was that General Grant was about
to start on his campaign against Richmond, and that it would be most
unwise to begin this by the tragic spectacle of a military punishment,
however merited. The other was his tender-hearted humanity. He could
not, he said, take men out and kill them in cold blood for crimes
committed by other men. If he could get hold of the persons who were
guilty of killing the colored prisoners in cold blood, the case would
be different; but he could not kill the innocent for the guilty.
Fortunately the offense was not repeated, and no one had cause to
criticize his clemency.

Numbers of good and influential men, dismayed at the amount of blood and
treasure that the war had already cost, and disheartened by the calls
for still more soldiers that Grant's campaign made necessary, began
to clamor for peace--were ready to grant almost anything that the
Confederates chose to ask. Rebel agents were in Canada professing to
be able to conclude a peace. Mr. Lincoln, wishing to convince these
northern "Peace men" of the groundlessness of their claim, and of the
injustice of their charges that the government was continuing the war
unnecessarily, sent Horace Greeley, the foremost among them, to Canada,
to talk with the self-styled ambassadors of Jefferson Davis. Nothing
came of it, of course, except abuse of