As early as 25 May 1861, Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, in command of the Union forces about Fortress Monroe, gave the first indication of a military method of emancipation. He refused to return to their masters slaves coming within his lines, on the ground that they had been used in aid of the rebellion, in the erection of bat teries and other works; that if slaves were prop erty, as the South had always contended, they were, therefore, properly °contraband of war"; that this slave property, useful for military pur poses, might as well be used in aid of the United States as against it; that masters in arms against the Constitution were barred from claiming the enforcement of their constitutional rights by their belligerent opponents, and that only slaves of loyal owners should be returned. Butler put this °contraband to work for his own military purposes. Public senti ment of the North applauded Butler's course although he was not promptly and heartily sus tained by the administration.
The Confiscation Act (6 Aug. 1861), passed within a fortnight of the Crittenden Resolution, indicated the beginning of a change of policy toward slavery on the part of Congress. This is to be regarded as a military measure. It pro nounced forfeiture of all slave property used in aid of insurrection and thus it substantially, under another form, endorsed Butler's contra band order. Mr. Lincoln was not pleased with the Confiscation Act, as he feared it would alienate the border States which he was dili gently trying to conciliate. He wished Con gress not to meddle with the slavery question, but to leave that problem to the military au thorities. On 8 Aug. 1861, two days after the passage of the Confiscation Act, Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of War, Mr. Cameron, wrote to Butler, who was pressing for further instruc tions: "It is the desire of the President that all existing rights in all the States be fully re spected and maintained; in cases of fugitives from the loyal slave States the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial proceedings must be respected by the military authorities; in the disloyal States the Confiscation Act of Congress must be your guide.° The slave rights of loyal masters in disloyal States were to be safeguarded as far as possible. This policy indicates Lincoln's con servatism at the beginning of the war, and his regard for vested rights whenever the slavery question appeared. In pursuance of this line of policy Lincoln tacitly endorsed Halleeje's order returning fugitives and protecting slave property, while he did not hesitate to overrule and set aside General Fremont's order (30 Aug. 1861) in Missouri emancipating the slaves
of all persons who had taken up arms against the United States. On 11 Sept. 1861 Lincoln overruled Fremont and on 19 May 1862 he revoked and repudiated a similar order of Gen eral Hunter for the Department of the South. Lincoln declared that "no commanding officer shall do such a thing upon my responsibility without consulting me.° Chase and other anti slavery supporters of the administration urged Lincoln to let Hunter's order stand, but the President was afraid it might alienate sup port from his policy of compensated emancipa tion which he was then urgently pressing upon the representatives from the border States. In his annual message of December 1861, Lincoln had expressed his purpose still "to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as the primary object of the contest.° By this time Congress, aroused by the sad losses of the war and the formidable power of the rebellion, refused to reaffirm the Crittenden resolution of the previous July. This refusal seemed to indicate that other objects of the war were in view besides the suppression of the insurrection.
By the spring of 1862 Lincoln's policy on slavery may be said to involve gradual emanci pation by the consent and co-operation of slave holding States; national aid for fhe compensa tion to owners, and the colonization of the negroes made free by this policy and by the operation of the Confiscation Act of Congress. Up to the time of the rejection by the border slave States of Lincoln's policy of compensated emancipation and its failure in consequence, anti-clavery sentiment and purpose may be said to have been more radical and outspoken in Con gress and the country than in administration councils. But after he dismissed his plan of compensated emancipation Lincoln determined upon emancipation in another way. This was emancipation as a war measure, by military power. He made known this purpose to his Cabinet as early as 22 July 1862. It was de termined in the Cabinet council not to make public announcement of this policy until a more favorable military situation could be secured. Lincoln's pro-slavery orders, and his policy that seemed so much like timid conservatism, led the radical Republicans and anti-slavery men to continue their pressure and hostile criticism.