[359]
XIII.
But another, and still more decisive endorsement of the administration policy, was seen in the treatment of General Fremont, who, on the 30th of August, had issued the following telling Proclamation from the West ern Department:The property, real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be proven to have taken an active part with their enemies in the field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use, and their slaves, if any they have, are Hereby declared freemen.A shout of gladness went through the country when Fremont's act became known. But Mr. Lincoln still hung back,—doubtless for reasons which, to his usually sound judgment, were overruling. He said at the time to many of us who held Mr. Sumner's views, that ‘It would do no good to go ahead any faster than the country would follow.’ About this time he said to me, ‘You know the old Latin motto, festina lente. How do the Italians—those bastard Romans—say the same thing now?’ ‘They have improved on it, Mr. President; they say, andate adaggio, percheho primooa— “Go slow, because I am in a hurry.” ’ ‘That's it, exactly. I think Sumner, and the rest of you, would upset our apple-cart altogether, if you had your way. We'll fetch 'em; just give us a little time. We didn't go into the war to put down Slavery, but to put the flag back, and to act differently at this moment, would, I have no doubt, not only weaken our cause, but smack of bad faith; for I never should have had [360] votes enough to send me here, if the people had supposed I should try to use my power to upset Slavery. Why, the first thing you'd see, would be a mutiny in the army. No! We must wait until every other means has been exhausted. This thunderbolt will keep.’ I replied by telling a story, as I didn't consider that the President of the United States could claim any special monopoly in that line— ‘That reminds me, Mr. Lincoln, of a neighbor of ours in Connecticut, to whom, one fall, we gave some apples, with directions how to preserve them. They were to be laid down in a barrel of dry sand, headed up, and not opened till the 4th of July, the next year. On that morning he paid us a visit, and announced that he had opened his apples. “Well, did they keep?” “Yes,” said he, “they kept: but they were all rotten!” ’ Mr. Lincoln, who was kind enough to laugh at other people's jokes as heartily as he expected everybody to laugh at his own, took it in good part, and replied: ‘The powder in this bombshell will keep dry: and when the fuse is lit, I intend to have them touch it off themselves.’ While Mr. Sumner was disposed to render all the aid he could to Mr. Lincoln, he everywhere advocated a widely different policy,—the one which he first announced at Worcester,—repeated and reiterated in speeches in the Senate,—in his daily conversation, and in his broad correspondence with enlightened men all over Christendom. In England, France, and Germany, his views were widely made known, under the advocacy of the foremost of the Liberals, and their organs in England; by such men as Count Gasparin, and Edouard Laboulaye, of Paris; by Joshua R. Giddings, our Consul-General [361] at Montreal; by Carl Schurz, then Minister to Spain; by William S. Thayer, Consul-General to Egypt; while at home, even such men as Orestes A. Brownson, the most vigorous thinker and writer of the Catholic Church—and, in fact, from all orders and classes of men, the Speech at Worcester had been warmly applauded, and the course he was afterwards taking, most earnestly sanctioned.
