Yours truly,

A. Lincoln.

TO GENERAL FREMONT,

WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 12, 1861

Major-general Fremont: 

Governor Morton telegraphs as follows:  “Colonel Lane, just arrived by special train, represents Owensborough, forty miles above Evansville, in possession of secessionists.  Green River is navigable.  Owensborough must be seized.  We want a gunboat sent up from Paducah for that purpose.”  Send up the gunboat if, in your discretion, you think it right.  Perhaps you had better order those in charge of the Ohio River to guard it vigilantly at all points.

A. Lincoln.

To O. H. Browning.

(Private and Confidential)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON SEPTEMBER 22, 1861

Hon.  O. H. Browning.

My dear sir:—­Yours of the 17th 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 part.  General Fremont’s proclamation as to confiscation of property and the liberation of slaves is purely political and not within the range of military law or necessity.  If a commanding general finds a necessity to seize the farm of a private owner for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it as long as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because within military necessity.  But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner, or his heirs forever, and this as well when the farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor of military law about it.  And the same is true of slaves.  If the general needs them, he can seize them and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition.  That must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations.  The proclamation in the point in question is simply “dictatorship.”  It assumes that the general may do anything he pleases confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal ones.  And going the whole figure, I have no doubt, would be more popular with some thoughtless people than that which has been done, But I cannot assume this reckless position, nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility.

You speak of it as being the only means of saving the government.  On the contrary, it is itself the surrender of the government.  Can it be pretended that it is any longer the Government of the United States—­any government of constitution and laws wherein a general or a president may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?  I do not say Congress might not with propriety pass a law on the point, just such as General Fremont proclaimed.