rd to New York with a confidential letter full of courage, to be
shown such of the governors of free States as could be hastily summoned
to meet him there. In it he said: "I expect to maintain this contest
until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires,
or Congress or the country forsake me," and he asked for 100,000 fresh
volunteers with which to carry on the war. His confidence was not
misplaced. The governors of eighteen free States offered him three times
the number, and still other calls for troops followed. Soon a popular
song, "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong,"
showed the faith and trust of the people in the man at the head of
the Government, and how cheerfully they met the great calls upon their
patriotism.

So, week after week and month after month, he faced the future, never
betraying a fear that the Union would not triumph in the end, but
grieving sorely at the long delay. Many who were not so sure came to him
with their troubles. He was beset by night and by day by people who had
advice to give or complaints to make. They besought him to dismiss this
or that General, to order such and such a military movement; to do a
hundred things that he, in his great wisdom, felt were not right, or for
which the time had not yet come. Above all, he was implored to take some
decided and far-reaching action upon slavery.

IX. FREEDOM FOR THE SLAVES

By no means the least of the evils of slavery was a dread which had
haunted every southern household from the beginning of the government
that the slaves might one day rise in revolt and take sudden vengeance
upon their masters. This vague terror was greatly increased by the
outbreak of the Civil War. It stands to the lasting credit of the negro
race that the wrongs of their long bondage provoked them to no such
crime, and that the war seems not to have suggested, much less started
any such attempt. Indeed, even when urged to violence by white leaders,
as the slaves of Maryland had been in 1859 during John Brown's raid at
Harper's Ferry, they had refused to respond. Nevertheless it was plain
from the first that slavery was to play an important part in the Civil
War. Not only were the people of the South battling for the principle
of slavery; their slaves were a great source of military strength. They
were used by the Confederates in building forts, hauling supplies, and
in a hundred ways that added to the effectiveness