ved--although he thought he saw them
coming.

[In the course of an article in the New York Tribune, August, 1885,
Hon. George S. Boutwell tells of an interview in "July or early
in August" of 1862, with President Lincoln, at which the latter
read two letters: one from a Louisiana man "who claimed to be a
Union man," but sought to impress the President with "the dangers
and evils of Emancipation;" the other, Mr. Lincoln's reply to him,
in which, says Mr. B., "he used this expression: 'you must not
expect me to give up this Government without playing my last card.'
Emancipation was his last card."]

Things were certainly, at this time, sufficiently unpromising to chill
the sturdiest Patriot's heart. It is true, we had scored some important
victories in the West; but in the East, our arms seemed fated to
disaster after disaster. Belmont, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and
Pittsburg Landing, were names whose mention made the blood of Patriots
to surge in their veins; and Corinth, too, had fallen. But in the East,
McClellan's profitless campaign against Richmond, and especially his
disastrous "change of base" by a "masterly" seven days' retreat,
involving as many bloody battles, had greatly dispirited all Union men,
and encouraged the Rebels and Rebel-sympathizers to renewed hopes and
efforts.

And, as reverses came to the Union Arms, so seemed to grow
proportionately the efforts, on all sides, to force forward, or to stave
off, as the case might be, the great question of the liberation and
arming of the Slaves, as a War Measure, under the War powers of the
Constitution. It was about this time (July 12, 1862) that President
Lincoln determined to make a third, and last, attempt to avert the
necessity for thus emancipating and arming the Slaves. He invited all
the Senators and Representatives in Congress from the Border-States, to
an interview at the White House, and made to them the appeal, heretofore
in these pages given at length.

It was an earnest, eloquent, wise, kindly, patriotic, fatherly appeal in
behalf of his old proposition, for a gradual, compensated Emancipation,
by the Slave States, aided by the resources of the National Government.

At the very time of making it, he probably had, in his drawer, the rough
draft of the Proclamation which was soon to give Liberty to all the
Colored millions of the Land.

[McPherson gives a letter, written from Washington,