should
we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a multitude? General
Butler wrote me a few days since that he was issuing more rations to the
slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his
command. They eat, and that is all; though it is true General Butler is
feeding the whites also by the thousand, for it nearly amounts to a
famine there. If now, the pressure of the war should call off our forces
from New Orleans to defend some other point, what is to prevent the
masters from reducing the blacks to slavery again? For I am told that
whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they
immediately auction them off! They did so with those they took from a
boat that was aground in the Tennessee River a few days ago. And then I
am very ungenerously attacked for it. For instance, when, after the late
battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from Washington
under a flag of truce to bury the dead and bring in the wounded, and the
rebels seized the blacks who went along to help, and sent them into
slavery, Horace Greeley said in his paper "that the government would
probably do nothing about it." What could I do?

Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would
follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire? Understand, I
raise no objections against it on legal or constitutional grounds, for,
as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war I suppose I
have a right to take any measures which may best subdue the enemy; nor
do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences
of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view this matter as a
practical war-measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or
disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.

[The committee had said that emancipation would secure us the sympathy
of the world, slavery being the cause of the war. To which the President
replied:]

I admit that slavery is at the root of the rebellion, or at least its
_sine qua non_. The ambition of politicians may have instigated them to
act, but they would have been impotent without slavery as their
instrument. I will also concede that emancipation would help us in
Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than
ambition. I grant further, that it would help somewhat at the North,
though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent, imagine.
Still, some a