he said:  “Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform to” the Act of August 6.  Fremont replied, in substance, that the President might do this, but that he himself would not!  Thereupon Mr. Lincoln, instead of removing the insubordinate and insolent general, behaved in his usual passionless way, and merely issued an order that Fremont’s proclamation should be so modified and construed as “to conform with and not to transcend” the law.  By this treatment, which should have made Fremont grateful and penitent, he was in fact rendered angry and indignant; for he had a genuine belief in the old proverb about laws being silent in time of war, and he really thought that documents signed in tents by gentlemen wearing shoulder-straps were deserving of more respect, even by the President, than were mere Acts of Congress.  This was a mistaken notion, but Fremont never could see that he had been in error, and from this time forth he became a vengeful thorn in the side of Mr. Lincoln.

Several months later, on May 9, 1862, General Hunter proclaimed martial law in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, and said:  “Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible.  The persons in these States, heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.”  At once, though not without reluctance, Mr. Lincoln revoked this order, as unauthorized.  He further said that, if he had power to “declare the slaves of any State or States free,” the propriety of exercising that power was a question which he reserved exclusively to himself.  These words he fully made good.  The whole country, wild with excitement and teeming with opinions almost co-numerous with its citizens, threatened to bury him beneath an avalanche of advice.  But while all talked and wrote madly and endlessly, he quietly held his peace, did what he chose when he chose, and never delegated any portion of his authority over this most important business to any one.  He took emancipation for his own special and personal affair; it was a matter about which he had been doing much thinking very earnestly for a long while, and he had no notion of forming now any partnership for managing it.

The trend, however, was not all in one direction.  While Butler, Fremont, and Hunter were thus befriending the poor runaways, Buell and Hooker were allowing slave-owners to reclaim fugitives from within their lines; Halleck was ordering that no fugitive slave should be admitted within his lines or camp, and that those already there should be put out; and McClellan was promising to crush “with an iron hand” any attempt at slave insurrection.  Amid such confusion, some rule of universal application was sorely needed.  But what should it be?