weighty reasons, two influences decided the
course of the government against retaliation. One was that General Grant
was about to begin his memorable campaign against Richmond, and that it
would be most impolitic to preface a great battle by the tragic
spectacle of a military punishment, however justifiable. The second was
the tender-hearted humanity of the ever merciful President. Frederick
Douglass has related the answer Mr. Lincoln made to him in a
conversation nearly a year earlier:

"I shall never forget the benignant expression of his face, the tearful
look of his eye, and the quiver in his voice when he deprecated a resort
to retaliatory measures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I do not know where
such a measure would stop.' He said he could not take men out and kill
them in cold blood for what was done by others. 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."

Amid the sanguinary reports and crowding events that held public
attention for a year, from the Wilderness to Appomattox, the Fort Pillow
affair was forgotten, not only by the cabinet, but by the country.

The related subjects of emancipation and negro soldiers would doubtless
have been discussed with much more passion and friction, had not public
thought been largely occupied during the year 1863 by the enactment of
the conscription law and the enforcement of the draft. In the hard
stress of politics and war during the years 1861 and 1862, the popular
enthusiasm with which the free States responded to the President's call
to put down the rebellion by force of arms had become measurably
exhausted. The heavy military reverses which attended the failure of
McClellan's campaign against Richmond, Pope's defeat at the second Bull
Run, McClellan's neglect to follow up the drawn battle of Antietam with
energetic operations, the gradual change of early Western victories to a
cessation of all effort to open the Mississippi, and the scattering of
the Western forces to the spiritless routine of repairing and guarding
long railroad lines, all operated together practically to stop
volunteering and enlistment by the end of 1862.

Thus far, the patriotic record was a glorious one. Almost one hundred
thousand three months' militia had shouldered muskets to redress the
fall of Fort Sumter; over half a million three years' volunteers
promptly e