Though Lincoln, at this moment, was anxiously watching the movement in Congress to force his hand, he was not apparently cast down.  He was emerging from his eclipse.  June was approaching and with it the final dawn.  Furthermore, when he issued this proclamation on May nineteenth, he had not lost faith in McClellan.  He was still hoping for news of a crushing victory; of McClellan’s triumphal entry into Richmond.  The next two months embraced both those transformations which together revolutionized his position.  He emerged from his last eclipse; and McClellan failed him.

When Lincoln returned to Washington after his two days at the front, he knew that the fortunes of his Administration were at a low ebb.  Never had he been derided in Congress with more brazen injustice.  The Committee, waiting only for McClellan’s failure, would now unmask their guns-as Chandler did, seven days later.  The line of Vindictive criticism could easily be foreshadowed:  the government had failed; it was responsible for a colossal military catastrophe; but what could you expect of an Administration that would not strike its enemies through emancipation; what a shattering demonstration that the Executive was not a safe repository of the war powers.

Was there any way to forestall or disarm the Vindictives?  His silence gives us no clue when or how the answer occurred to him—­by separating the two issues; by carrying out the hint in the May proclamation; by yielding on emancipation while, in the very act, pushing the war powers of the President to their limit, declaring slaves free by an executive order.

The importance of preserving the war power of the President had become a fixed condition of Lincoln’s thought.  Already, he was looking forward not only to victory but to the great task that should come after victory.  He was determined, if it were humanly possible, to keep that task in the hands of the President, and out of the hands of Congress.  A first step had already been taken.  In portions of occupied territory, military governors had been appointed.  Simple as this seemed to the careless observer, it focussed the whole issue.  The powerful, legal mind of Sumner at once perceived its significance.  He denied in the Senate the right of the President to make such appointments; he besought the Senate to demand the cancellation of such appointment.  He reasserted the absolute sovereignty of Congress.(8) It would be a far-reaching stroke if Lincoln, in any way, could extort from Congress acquiescence in his use of the war powers on a vast scale.  Freeing the slaves by executive order would be such a use.