The effort to induce Lincoln to take a more decided stand against slavery brought out the celebrated Greeley-Lincoln correspondence. Greeley sent to Lincoln and published in his Tribune (20 Aug. 1862) his "Prayer of Twenty Millions.° This letter created a distinct impres sion upon the country and is a document of his torical importance. °All who supported your election ,° said Greeley, °and desire the suppres sion of the rebellion are sorely disappointed by the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of rebels.° The editor urged Lincoln to execute the laws, especially the Con fiscation Act, and he censured the President as disastrously remiss with regard to the emanci pation provision of that act. "You are unduly influenced by the counsels, the.representations, the menaces of certain fossil politicians hailing from the border slave States; timid counsels in such a crisis are calculated to prove perilous and probably disastrous. We complain that the Union has suffered, and is now suffering, im mensely from your mistaken deference to rebel slavery.° Lincoln's famous reply to Greeley contains in the most succinct form a statement of his war policy and his political attitude toward slavery. "I would save the Union.° This Lincoln an nounced as his constant end and aim.
If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery. I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery. I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could -save it by freeing all the slaves. I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone. I would also do that. What I do about slaves and the colored race. I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear. I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. Such is my purpose as cording to my view of official duty. I intend no modifica tion of my oft-repeated personal wish that all men every where might be free.
In Septtmber 1862 Lincoln publicly an nounced his of emancipation. (See EMANCIPATION). Notwithstanding this forward step, momentous in its ultimate, if not in its immediate, results, dissatisfaction with Lincoln among anti-slavery men continued and a con certed movement arose within the Republican party to supersede Lincoln in the leadership.
The dissatisfied Republicans sought to secure the nomination of Chase or some other more radical anti-slavery man for the Presidency. When this fell through, the more radical spirits secured an independent convention and the nomination of Fremont against Lincoln in 1864, and this indicated a serious division within the Union-Republican party. On the other hand conservative men in the administration, like the Blairs, and others sincerely in favor of the war for the Union, opposed the Emancipation Proc lamation on tie ground that it would lose the fall elections, alienate support from the war and endanger its success; while the Democratic opposition in the North were seizing upon all the anti-slavery measures of Congress and the President as material for a political campaign against the administration, on the ground that the war for the Union was being turned into a war for abolition.
The anti-slavery purposes of the war were making headway. The Democratic opposition to the war policy of Mr. Lincoln arraigned the administration on various indictments. The refusal of Congress to reaffirm the Crittenden Resolution; the abolition of slavery in the Dis trict of Columbia (April 1862) ; the abolition of slavery in the Territories ( June 18/32); the second Confiscation Act of 17 July 1862, provid ing for the emancipation of the slaves of rebels and their abettors, and for the employment of such freedmen in the suppression of the rebel lion as the President might direct; the military annulment of the Fugitive Slave Act by • the contraband policy and by the act (13 March 1862) forbidding military officers from arrest ing and returning fugitive slaves; the scheme for compensated emancipation, because of its enormous expense; the emancipation proclama tion, as tending to incite slave insurrection; the military organization of the blacks (July 1862), as tending to equalize the white soldiery with the negro; the recognition of Liberia and Haiti; the enlargement of legal privileges for the negroes where they were under national jurisdiction all these measures were denounced by the op ponents of the administration and were used to prove the abolition and unconstitutional character of the war.
On account of these anti-slavery measures all those were arrayed in the political opposition whose race prejudices against the negro were pronounced; who hated the New England aboli tionists as much, or more, than they did the secessionists; who believed in slavery, or were indifferent to its evils; who thought that in the conduct of the war the wrongs of the negro should not be taken into account and that the interests of the white race alone should be considered.