neral
Emancipation, upon which the other two at once attacked them.

"You know also that the last Session of Congress had a decided majority
of Anti-Slavery men, yet they could not unite on this policy. And the
same is true of the religious people; why the Rebel soldiers are praying
with a great deal more earnestness, I fear, than our own troops, and
expecting God to favor their side; for one of our soldiers, who had been
taken prisoner, told Senator Wilson, a few days since, that he met
nothing so discouraging as the evident sincerity of those he was among,
in their prayers. But we will talk over the merits of the case.

"What good would a Proclamation of Emancipation from me do, especially
as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the
whole World will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's
Bull against the Comet! Would my word free the Slaves, when I cannot
even enforce the Constitution in the Rebel States? Is there a single
Court or Magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there?
And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon
the Slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved and which
offers protection and Freedom to the Slaves of Rebel masters who came
within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single
Slave to come over to us.

"And suppose they could be induced by a Proclamation of Freedom from me
to throw themselves upon us, what 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 t