d any right to indulge his private feeling in
violation of the Constitutional limitations of his civil power, unless,
as he said, "measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by
becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through
the preservation of the nation."

Thus when in 1861 Fremont in Missouri proclaimed emancipation to the
slaves of persistent rebels, although this was hailed with delight by
vast numbers at the North, the President countermanded it as not yet an
indispensable necessity. In March, 1862, he approved Acts of Congress
legalizing General B.F. Butler's shrewd device of declaring all slaves
of rebels in arms as "contraband of war," and thus, when they came
within the army lines, to be freed and used by the Northern armies. In
March, May, and July, 1862, he made earnest appeals to the Border States
to favor compensated emancipation, because he foresaw that military
emancipation would become necessary before long. When Lee was in
Maryland and Pennsylvania, he felt that the time had arrived, and
awaited only some marked military success, so that the measure should
seem a mightier blow to the rebels and not a cry for help. And this was
a necessary condition, for, while hundreds of thousands of Democrats had
joined the armies and had become Republicans for the war,--in fact, all
the best generals and a large proportion of the soldiers of the North
had been Democrats before the flag was fired on,--yet the Democratic
politicians of the proslavery type were still alive and active
throughout the North, doing all they could to discredit the national
cause, and hinder the government; and Lincoln intuitively knew that this
act must commend itself to the great mass of the Northern people, or it
would be a colossal blunder.

Therefore, when Lee had been driven back, on September 22, 1862, the
President issued a preliminary proclamation, stating that he should
again recommend Congress to favor an Act tendering pecuniary aid to
slaveholders in States not in rebellion, who would adopt immediate or
gradual abolishment of slavery within their limits; but that on the
first day of January, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any
State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in
rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and forever
free." And accordingly,--in spite of Burnside's dreadful disaster before
Fredericksburg on December 13, unfavorable resul