—and, after expressing his solicitude to have this true of America, as it already was true of the District of Columbia, he proceeded to say:
"The gentleman from Kentucky says he has a niche for Abraham Lincoln. Where is it? He pointed upward! But, Sir, should the President follow the counsels of that gentleman, and become the defender and perpetuator of human Slavery, he should point downward to some dungeon in the Temple of Moloch, who feeds on human blood and is surrounded with fires, where are forged manacles and chains for human limbs—in the crypts and recesses of whose Temple, woman is scourged, and man tortured, and outside whose walls are lying dogs, gorged with human flesh, as Byron describes them stretched around Stamboul. That is a suitable place for the statue of one who would defend and perpetuate human Slavery."
And then—after saying that "the friends of American Slavery need not beslime the President with their praise. He is an Anti-Slavery man. He hates human Bondage "—the orator added these glowing words:
"I, too, have a niche for Abraham Lincoln; but it is in Freedom's Holy Fane, and not in the blood-besmeared Temple of human Bondage; not surrounded by Slaves, fetters and chains, but with the symbols of Freedom; not dark with Bondage, but radiant with the light of Liberty. In that niche he shall stand proudly, nobly, gloriously, with shattered fetters and broken chains and slave-whips beneath his feet. If Abraham Lincoln pursues the path, evidently pointed out for him in the providence of God, as I believe he will, then he will occupy the proud position I have indicated. That is a fame worth living for; ay, more, that is a fame worth dying for, though that death led through the blood of Gethsemane and the agony of the Accursed Tree. That is a fame which has glory and honor and immortality and Eternal Life. Let Abraham Lincoln make himself, as I trust he will, the Emancipator, the Liberator, as he has the opportunity of doing, and his name shall not only be enrolled in this Earthly Temple, but it will be traced on the living stones of that Temple which rears itself amid the Thrones and Hierarchies of Heaven, whose top-stone is to be brought in with shouting of 'Grace, grace unto it!'"
We have seen how the loyal Border-State men, through their chosen Representative—finding that their steady and unfaltering opposition to all Mr. Lincoln's propositions, while quite ineffectual, did not serve by any means to increase his respect for their peculiar kind of loyalty —offered him posthumous honors and worship if he would but do as they desired. Had they possessed the power, no doubt they would have taken him up into an exceeding high mountain and have offered to him all the Kingdoms of the Earth to do their bidding. But their temptations were of no avail.
President Lincoln's duty, and inclination alike—no less than the earnest importunities of the Abolitionists—carried him in the opposite direction; but carried him no farther than he thought it safe, and wise, to go. For, in whatever he might do on this burning question of Emancipation, he was determined to secure that adequate support from the People without which even Presidential Proclamations are waste paper.
But now, May 9, 1862, was suddenly issued by General Hunter, commanding the "Department of the South," comprising Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, his celebrated Order announcing Martial Law, in those States, as a Military Necessity, and—as "Slavery and Martial Law in a Free Country are altogether incompatible"—declaring all Slaves therein, "forever Free."
This second edition, as it were, of Fremont's performance, at once threw the loyal Border-State men into a terrible ferment. Again, they, and their Copperhead and other Democratic friends of the North, meanly professed belief that this was but a part of Mr. Lincoln's programme, and that his apparent backwardness was the cloak to hide his Anti-Slavery aggressiveness and insincerity.
How hurtful the insinuations, and even direct charges, of the day, made by these men against President Lincoln, must have been to his honest, sincere, and sensitive nature, can scarcely be conceived by those who did not know him; while, on the other hand, the reckless impatience of some of his friends for "immediate and universal Emancipation," and their complaints at his slow progress toward that goal of their hopes, must have been equally trying.
True to himself, however, and to the wise conservative course which he had marked out, and, thus far, followed, President Lincoln hastened to disavow Hunter's action in the premises, by a Proclamation, heretofore given, declaring that no person had been authorized by the United States Government to declare the Slaves of any State, Free; that Hunter's action in this respect was void; that, as Commander-in-chief he reserved solely to himself, the questions, first, as to whether he had the power to declare the Slaves of any State or States, Free, and, second, whether the time and necessity for the exercise of such supposed power had arrived. And then, as we may remember, he proceeded to cite the adoption, by overwhelming majorities in Congress, of the Joint Resolution offering pecuniary aid from the National Government to "any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of Slavery;" and to make a most earnest appeal, for support, to the Border-States and to their people, as being "the most interested in the subject matter."