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once to take the step openly and irrevocably.
What occurred then he stated subsequently as follows:—
On the day of the disaster he was with the President twice, but made no suggestion then.
On the second day thereafter, when the tidings from all quarters showed that the country was aroused to intense action, he visited the President expressly to urge emancipation.
The President received him kindly, and when Mr. Sumner said that he had come to make an important recommendation with regard to the conduct of the war, replied promptly that he was occupied with that very question, and had something new upon it. M. Sumner, thinking that he was anticipated, said, You are going against slavery?
“Oh, no, not that,” he replied impatiently.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Sumner; when the President, with increasing impatience, reminded him of the evening drive in his carriage, and then retorted, Did you not then approve my course?
“Certainly,” said Mr. Sumner, “at that time; but I said also that you must be ready to strike at slavery, and now the moment has come.
Of this I have no doubt.”
And he proceeded to urge his reasons, but could not satisfy the President.
The interview, which was late in the evening, did not terminate till midnight.1
Sumner was impatient during the rest of the summer and early autumn with ‘the policy of forbearance’ towards slavery, which, as he thought, gave moral strength to the rebellion; and he determined to arrest it by an appeal to the country.
He chafed under the undue influence of
Kentucky and other border slave States over the Administration; and he was sorely grieved at the
President's revocation of
Fremont's proclamation.
He wrote
Dr. Lieber, September 17, six days after the issue of the order revoking it:—
The London Times is right.
We cannot conquer the rebels as the war is now conducted.
There will be a vain masquerade of battles, a flux of blood and treasure, and nothing done!
Never has there been a moment of history when so much was all compressed into a single line and brought directly under a single mind.
Our President is now dictator, imperator,—which you will; but how vain to have the power of a god and not to use it godlike!
I am sad, for I know that we are to spend energy and resource of all kinds, and accomplish nothing until there is a change of policy.
To
Dr. W. H. Russell, of the London Times, he wrote, September 16:—
Let me add that I have been astonished at the minuteness of criticism directed against your account of the panic [at Bull Run], which I regarded very much as a battle-piece by Wouverman with his perpetual white horse.
