lines. He even permitted the poor old Hutchinsons to be sent
away from the army very much as if they had been colored people, when
trying to rouse "the boys" with their freedom songs. In many ways Mr.
Lincoln showed that in the beginning and throughout the earlier part
of his Administration he hoped to re-establish the Union without
disturbing slavery. In effect he so declared in his introduction to
his freedom proclamation. He gave the rebel slaveholders one hundred
days in which to abandon their rebellion and save their institution.
In view of such things it is no wonder that Henry Wilson, so long a
leading Republican Senator from Massachusetts, in his _Rise and Fall
of the Slave Power_, in speaking of emancipation, said "it was a
policy, indeed, which he [the President] did not personally favor
except in connection with his favorite idea of colonization."

It is needless to say that the President's attitude was a great
surprise and a sore disappointment to the more radical Anti-Slavery
people of the country, who had supported him with much enthusiasm and
high hopes. They felt that they had been deceived. They said so very
plainly, for the Abolitionists were not the sort of people to keep
quiet under provocation. Horace Greeley published his signed attack
(see Appendix) entitled, _The Prayer of Twenty Millions_, which is,
without doubt, the most scathing denunciation in the English language.
Henry Ward Beecher "pounded" Mr. Lincoln, as he expressed it. Wendell
Phillips fairly thundered his denunciations. There was a general
under-swell of indignation.

Now, Mr. Lincoln was not a man who was incapable of reading the signs
of the times. He saw that he was drifting towards an irreparable
breach with an element that had previously furnished his staunchest
supporters. As a politician of great native shrewdness, as well as the
head of the Government, he could not afford to let the quarrel go on
and widen. There was need of conciliation. Something had to be done.
We know what he did. He issued his Emancipation Proclamation.

As far as freeing any slaves was concerned, he knew it amounted to
very little, if anything. He said so. Less than two weeks before the
preliminary section of the proclamation appeared, Mr. Lincoln was
waited on by a delegation of over one hundred Chicago clergymen, who
urged him to issue a proclamation of freedom for the slaves. "What
good would a proclamation from me do, especially as we are now
sit