support from the
People without which even Presidential Proclamations are waste paper.

But now, May 9, 1862, was suddenly issued by General Hunter, commanding
the "Department of the South," comprising Georgia, Florida and South
Carolina, his celebrated Order announcing Martial Law, in those States,
as a Military Necessity, and--as "Slavery and Martial Law in a Free
Country are altogether incompatible"--declaring all Slaves therein,
"forever Free."

This second edition, as it were, of Fremont's performance, at once threw
the loyal Border-State men into a terrible ferment. Again, they, and
their Copperhead and other Democratic friends of the North, meanly
professed belief that this was but a part of Mr. Lincoln's programme,
and that his apparent backwardness was the cloak to hide his
Anti-Slavery aggressiveness and insincerity.

How hurtful the insinuations, and even direct charges, of the day, made
by these men against President Lincoln, must have been to his honest,
sincere, and sensitive nature, can scarcely be conceived by those who
did not know him; while, on the other hand, the reckless impatience of
some of his friends for "immediate and universal Emancipation," and
their complaints at his slow progress toward that goal of their hopes,
must have been equally trying.

True to himself, however, and to the wise conservative course which he
had marked out, and, thus far, followed, President Lincoln hastened to
disavow Hunter's action in the premises, by a Proclamation, heretofore
given, declaring that no person had been authorized by the United States
Government to declare the Slaves of any State, Free; that Hunter's
action in this respect was void; that, as Commander-in-chief he reserved
solely to himself, the questions, first, as to whether he had the power
to declare the Slaves of any State or States, Free, and, second, whether
the time and necessity for the exercise of such supposed power had
arrived. And then, as we may remember, he proceeded to cite the
adoption, by overwhelming majorities in Congress, of the Joint
Resolution offering pecuniary aid from the National Government to "any
State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of Slavery;" and to make a
most earnest appeal, for support, to the Border-States and to their
people, as being "the most interested in the subject matter."

In his Special Message to Congress,--[Of March 6, 1862.]--recommending
the passage of that Joint Resolution, he had plainly