Some of his reasons for waiting were very plain.  He was not going to take action on the alleged ground of military necessity till he was sure that the necessity existed.  Nor was he going to take it till it would actually lead to the emancipation of a great number of slaves.  Above all, he would not act till he felt that the North generally would sustain his action, for he knew, better than Congressmen who judged from their own friends in their own constituencies, how doubtful a large part of Northern opinion really was.  We have seen how in the summer of 1861 he felt bound to disappoint the advanced opinion which supported Fremont.  He continued for more than a year after in a course which alienated from himself the confidence of the men with whom he had most sympathy.  He did this deliberately rather than imperil the unanimity with which the North supported the war.  There was indeed grave danger of splitting the North in two if he appeared unnecessarily to change the issue from Union to Liberation.  We have to remember that in all the Northern States the right of the Southern States to choose for themselves about slavery had been fully admitted, and that four of the Northern States were themselves slave States all this while.

But this is not the whole explanation of his delay.  It is certain that apart from this danger he would at first rather not have played the historic part which he did play as the liberator of the slaves, if he could have succeeded in the more modest part of encouraging a process of gradual emancipation.  In his Annual Message to Congress in December, 1861, he laid down the general principles of his policy in this matter.  He gave warning in advance to the Democrats of the North, who were against all interference with Southern institutions, that “radical and extreme measures” might become indispensable to military success, and if indispensable would be taken; but he declared his anxiety that if possible the conflict with the South should not “degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle,” for he looked forward with fear to a complete overturning of the social system of the South.  He feared it not only for the white people but also for the black.  “Gradual and not sudden emancipation,” he said, in a later Message, “is better for all.”  It is now probable that he was right, and yet it is difficult not to sympathise with the earnest Republicans who were impatient at his delay, who were puzzled and pained by the free and easy way in which in grave conversation he would allude to “the nigger question,” and who concluded that “the President is not with us; has no sound Anti-slavery sentiment.”  Indeed, his sentiment did differ from theirs.  Certainly, he hated slavery, for he had contended more stubbornly than any other man against any concession which seemed to him to perpetuate slavery by stamping it with approval; but his hatred of it left him quite without the passion of moral indignation against the slave owners, in