Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

To Lieber, June 23:—

I have no dread of Congress. The session will be very brief,—a week or ten days; both houses in secret session; everything prepared in advance: (1) An army bill; (2) Navy bill; (3) Loan bill and war taxes on the free list, with perhaps an income tax; (4) Bill for treason, and to arrest supplies for traitors; and (5) Bill of embargo and non-intercourse for the whole Southern coast in lieu of the blockade, which is a great mistake. Such at least is my programme which I have submitted to the President and his Cabinet; and I hope it will be carried out without a single speech, or one word of buncombe, so that our short session may be a mighty act. Our foreign relations especially concern me. The statement in the message will be “all's well.”

Prince Napoleon, who had come in his yacht to the United States, visited Washington in the last days of the extra session. His sympathies were with the cause of the Union and of the abolition of slavery; and he was greatly attracted to Sumner, both on account of common sentiments and the senator's interest in the public life and literature of France.¹ Sumner was one of the guests at a banquet given to the prince in Boston in September, and late in the same day, as he was setting sail, bade him good-by on board his yacht.

The government abstained scrupulously during the early months of the Civil War from acts and declarations which implied an antislavery purpose, and even expressly disavowed such a purpose. This policy was thought necessary, not only to hold the border slave States, where what was called loyalty was largely lukewarm and uncertain, but also to retain in the free States the support of the masses hitherto opposed to the Republican party. There was a division, too, among the Republicans,—many of whom in the Middle States and the more southern of the Western States, sufficient in number to reduce the party by their defection to a minority, had no sympathy with antislavery opinions, and desired the war to be strictly one for the Union without interference with slavery. The army also, private soldiers as well as officers, was at the time far from being inspired by antislavery sentiments; and it was the common talk of the camp that the war was for the Union only, and that slavery would remain untouched.

During this period officers of the army in formal orders declared it to be their duty and purpose to suppress and crush out servile insurrections. Some were reported to have offered to