Constitution, to attaint the property of rebels after their death, and Lincoln was unwilling that the Constitution should be stretched in the direction of revengeful harshness.  The objectionable feature in the Bill was removed, and Lincoln accepted it.  But the suspicion with which many Republicans were beginning to regard him was now reinforced by a certain jealousy of Congressmen against the Executive power; they grumbled and sneered about having to “ascertain the Royal pleasure” before they could legislate.  This was an able, energetic, and truly patriotic Congress, and must not be despised for its reluctance to be guided by Lincoln.  But it was reluctant.

Throughout August and September he had to deal in the country with dread on the one side of any revolutionary action, and belief on the other side that he was timid and half-hearted.  The precise state of his intentions could not with advantage be made public.  To up-holders of slavery he wrote plainly, “It may as well be understood once for all that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed”; to its most zealous opponents he had to speak in an entirely different strain.  While the second battle of Bull Run was impending, Horace Greeley published in the New York Tribune an “open letter” of angry complaint about Lincoln’s supposed bias for slavery.  Lincoln at once published a reply to his letter.  “If there be in it,” he said, “any statements or assumptions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them.  If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.  My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union.  If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.  I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.  I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”

It was probably easy to him now to write these masterful generalities, but a week or two later, after Pope’s defeat, he had to engage in a controversy which tried his feelings much more sorely.  It had really grieved him that clergymen in Illinois had opposed him as unorthodox, when he was fighting against the extension of slavery.  Now, a week or two after his correspondence with Greeley, a deputation from a number of Churches in Chicago waited upon him, and some of their members spoke to him with assumed authority from on high, commanding him in God’s name to emancipate the slaves.  He said, “I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men who are equally certain that they represent the divine will.  I am sure that either