that they will stand by the Government?  If so, give me the evidence of it, and I will strike the blow.  But, gentlemen, looking over the entire North, and seeing in all your towns and cities papers representing a considerable, if not a formidable portion of the people, menacing and bullying the Government in case it dared to liberate the slaves, even as a matter of self-preservation, I do not feel that the hour has yet come that will render it safe for the Government to take that step.’  I am willing to believe that something of this kind weighs in the mind of the President and the Cabinet, and that there is some ground for hesitancy as a mere matter of political expediency.”  This admirable and discriminating support of the President finds another capital illustration in weighty words of his in answer to animadversions of Prof.  Francis W. Newman, of England, directed against Mr. Lincoln.  Says Garrison:  “In no instance, however, have I censured him (Lincoln) for not acting upon the highest abstract principles of justice and humanity, and disregarding his Constitutional obligations.  His freedom to follow his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing—­as the President of the United States, it is limited by the functions of his office, for the people do not elect a President to play the part of reformer or philanthropist, nor to enforce upon the nation his own peculiar ethical or humanitary ideas without regard to his oath or their will.”

Great indeed was the joy of the pioneer when President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, issued his Emancipation Proclamation.  The same sagacious and statesmanlike handling of men and things distinguished his conduct after the edict of freedom was made as before.  When the question of Reconstruction was broached in an administrative initiative in Louisiana, the President gave great offence to the more radical members of his party, and to many Abolitionists by his proposal to readmit Louisiana to Statehood in the Union with no provision for the extension of the suffrage to the negro.  This exhibition of the habitual caution and conservatism of Mr. Lincoln brought upon him a storm of criticism and remonstrances, but not from Garrison.  There was that in him which appreciated and approved the evident disposition of the President to make haste slowly in departing from the American principle of local self-government even in the interest of liberty.  Then, too, he had his misgivings in relation to the virtue of the fiat method of transforming chattels into citizens.  “Chattels personal may be instantly translated from the auction-block into freemen,” he remarked in defence of the administrative policy in the reconstruction of Louisiana, “but when were they ever taken at the same time to the ballot-box, and invested with all political rights and immunities?  According to the laws of development and progress it is not practicable....  Besides, I doubt whether he has the Constitutional right to decide this matter.  Ever since the Government was organized, the right of suffrage has been determined by each State in the Union for itself, so that there is no uniformity in regard to it.