before the issue of the
final proclamation, found him walking his room in considerable
agitation. Reference being made to the forthcoming proclamation, Lincoln
said with great earnestness: "I have studied that matter well; my mind
is made up--it _must be done_. I am driven to it. There is to me no
other way out of our troubles. But although my duty is plain, it is in
some respects painful, and I trust the people will understand that I act
not in anger but in expectation of a greater good."

Mr. Ben. Perley Poore makes the interesting statement that "Mr. Lincoln
carefully put away the pen which he had used in signing the document,
for Mr. Sumner, who had promised it to his friend, George Livermore, of
Cambridge, the author of an interesting work on slavery. It was a steel
pen with a wooden handle, the end of which had been gnawed by Mr.
Lincoln--a habit that he had when composing anything that required
thought."

In response to a request of the ladies in charge of the Northwestern
Fair for the Sanitary Commission, which was held in Chicago in the
autumn of 1863, Lincoln conveyed to them the original draft of the
proclamation; saying, in his note of presentation, "I had some desire to
retain the paper; but if it shall contribute to the relief or comfort of
the soldiers, that will be better." The document was purchased at the
Fair by Mr. Thomas B. Bryan, and given by him to the Chicago Historical
Society. It perished in the great fire of October, 1871.

More than a year after the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation,
Lincoln, in writing to a prominent Kentucky Unionist, gave a synopsis of
his views and course regarding slavery, which is so clear in statement,
and so forceful and convincing in logic, that a place must be given it
in this chapter.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is
wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel; and yet
I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an
unrestricted, right to act officially upon this judgment and
feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath.
Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and
break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in
ordinary civil administration this oath even forbad