; his care for his
men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and
effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's
resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and
he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his
failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote a letter to
the President, from Harrison's Landing, July 7, 1862, lecturing him
severely as to the errors he must avoid. Nothing must be done or said
looking to confiscation, forcible abolition, or territorial organization
of the States. "Until the principles governing the future conduct of our
struggle shall be made known and approved, the effort to obtain
requisite forces will be almost hopeless. A declaration of radical
views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our armies."
This letter was given to the public, and on this platform McClellan
began to loom up as an opposition candidate for the Presidency.

So Lincoln was buffeted on the right hand and on the left. In this
summer of 1862, Greeley wrote in the _Tribune_, August 20, an open
letter to the President, upbraiding him for his slackness against
slavery. Lincoln replied, August 22, in a letter which startled many of
his friends, and to this day bewilders those who do not understand the
man himself or the position in which he stood. He wrote: "I would save
the Union, I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution....
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and
leaving others alone, I would also do that." In fact, the last was the
course which he eventually took.

This letter stated with full sincerity Lincoln's basal principle. It was
not necessary to add that the purpose was growing within him to save the
Union by freeing the slaves in the seceded States. The very growth of
that purpose made it necessary for him to freshly bind to himself the
conservatives whose only care was for the Union and not for
emancipation. Nothing could serve this purpose better than the
declaration in this letter to Greeley. In Lincoln, sincerity and
shrewdness were thoroughly blended.

At a later day he told the artist Frank Carpenter, when he was to paint
"The Signin