our proclamation of August 30 give me some
anxiety:

"_First_. Should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the
Confederates would very certainly shoot our best men in their hands, in
retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is, therefore, my
order that you allow no man to be shot under the proclamation, without
first having my approbation or consent.

"_Second_. I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, in
relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating slaves of
traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them
against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow
me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that
paragraph so as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act
of Congress entitled, 'An act to confiscate property used for
insurrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 1861, and a copy of which
act I herewith send you.

"This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure. I
send it by a special messenger, in order that it may certainly and
speedily reach you."

But the headstrong general was too blind and selfish to accept this mild
redress of a fault that would have justified instant displacement from
command. He preferred that the President should openly direct him to
make the correction. Admitting that he decided in one night upon the
measure, he added: "If I were to retract it of my own accord, it would
imply that I myself thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the
reflection which the gravity of the point demanded." The inference is
plain that Fremont was unwilling to lose the influence of his hasty step
upon public opinion. But by this course he deliberately placed himself
in an attitude of political hostility to the administration.

The incident produced something of the agitation which the general had
evidently counted upon. Radical antislavery men throughout the free
States applauded his act and condemned the President, and military
emancipation at once became a subject of excited discussion. Even strong
conservatives were carried away by the feeling that rebels would be but
properly punished by the loss of their slaves. To Senator Browning, the
President's intimate personal friend, who entertained this feeling, Mr.
Lincoln wrote a searching analysis of Fremont's proclamation and its
dangers:

"Yours of the seventeenth is just received; and, coming from y