coming into our lines as rapidly and numerously as I had hoped.’  I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation.  ‘Well,’ he said, ’I want you to set about devising some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them into our lines.’  What he said showed a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had ever seen before in anything spoken or written by him.  I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be, somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel States beyond the lines of our armies, carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries.”

Frederick Douglass once remarked that Lincoln was one of the few white men he ever passed an hour with who failed to remind him in some way, before the interview terminated, that he was a negro.  “He always impressed me as a strong, earnest man, having no time or disposition to trifle; grappling with all his might the work he had in hand.  The expression of his face was a blending of suffering with patience and fortitude.  Men called him homely, and homely he was; but it was manifestly a human homeliness.  His eyes had in them the tenderness of motherhood, and his mouth and other features the highest perfection of a genuine manhood.”

As though the political difficulties that beset President Lincoln in the first half of 1863 were not discouragement enough, they were attended by disheartening reverses to our arms.  It will be remembered that on the removal of General McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac, in November, 1862, General Burnside succeeded him.  The change proved an unfortunate one.  General Burnside was an earnest and gallant soldier, but was not equal to the vast responsibilities of his new position.  It is said, to his credit, that he was three times offered the command of the Army of the Potomac, and three times he declined.  Finally it was pressed upon him by positive orders, and he could no longer, without insubordination, refuse it.  In addressing General Halleck, after his appointment, he said:  “Had I been asked to take it, I should have declined; but being ordered, I cheerfully obey.”  After his fearful defeat at Fredericksburg (December 13, 1862), he said:  “The fault was mine.  The entire responsibility of failure must rest on my shoulders.”  By his manly and courageous bearing, and the strong sincerity of his character, he retained the respect and sympathy of the President and of the country.  He immediately retired from command of the Army of the Potomac, which, under his brief leadership, had fought the most bloody and disastrous battle in its history.