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of Congress entitled, “An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes,” approved August 6, 1861, and a copy of which act I herewith send you.
This letter is written in a spirit of caution, and not of censure.
I send it by a special messenger, in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you.
But the headstrong general was too blind and selfish to accept this mild redress of a fault that would have justified instant displacement from command.
He preferred that the
President should openly direct him to make the correction.
Admitting that he decided in one night upon the measure, he added: “If I were to retract it of my own accord, it would imply that I myself thought it wrong, and that I had acted without the reflection which the gravity of the point demanded.”
The inference is plain that
Fremont was unwilling to lose the influence of his hasty step upon public opinion.
But by this course he deliberately placed himself in an attitude of political hostility to the administration.
The incident produced something of the agitation which the general had evidently counted upon.
Radical antislavery men throughout the free States applauded his act and condemned the
President, and military emancipation at once became a subject of excited discussion.
Even strong conservatives were carried away by the feeling that rebels would be but properly punished by the loss of their slaves.
To
Senator Browning, the
President's intimate personal friend, who entertained this feeling,
Mr. Lincoln wrote a searching analysis of
Fremont's proclamation and its dangers:
Yours of the seventeenth is just received; and, coming from you, I confess it astonishes me. That you should object to my adhering to a law which you had assisted in making and presenting to me, less than a month before, is odd enough.
But this is a very small
