"To ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
President of the United States:
"DEAR SIR: I do not intrude
to tell you–for you must know already– that a great proportion
of those who triumphed in your election, and of all who desire
the unqualified suppression of the Rebellion now desolating our
country, are sorely disappointed and deeply pained by the policy
you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of the Rebels.
I write only to set succinctly and unmistakably before you what
we require, what we think we have a right to expect, and of what
we complain.
"I. We require of you, as
the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and
preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS...."
"II. We think you are
strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your
official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating
provisions of the new Confiscation Act...."
"III. We think you are
unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the
menaces, of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border
States...."
"IV. We think the timid
counsels of such a crisis calculated to prove perilous and
probably disastrous...."
"V. We complain that the
Union cause has suffered and is now suffering immensely, from
mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery. Had you, Sir, in your
Inaugural Address, unmistakably given notice that, in case the
Rebellion already commenced were persisted in, and your efforts
to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by
armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as
rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor, we believe that
the Rebellion would have received a staggering, if not fatal
blow...."
"VI. We complain that the
Confiscation Act which you approved is habitually disregarded by
your Generals, and that no word of rebuke for them from you has
yet reached the public ear...."
"VII. Let me call your
attention to the recent tragedy in New Orleans, whereof the
facts are obtained entirely through Pro-Slavery channels...."
"VIII. On the face of this
wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested,
determined, intelligent champion of the Union Cause who does not
feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same
time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile–that
the Rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within
a year if Slavery were left in full vigor–that the army of
officers who remain to this day devoted to Slavery can at best
be but half way loyal to the Union–and that every hour of
deference to Slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to
the Union...."
"IX. I close as I began
with the statement that what an immense majority of the Loyal
Millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared,
unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more
especially of the Confiscation Act.... As one of the millions
who would gladly have avoided this struggle at any sacrifice but
that of Principle and Honor, but who now feel that the triumph
of the Union is indispensable not only to the existence of our
country, but to the well-being of mankind, I entreat you to
render a hearty and unequivocal obedience to the law of the
land."
"Yours,"
"HORACE GREELEY."
"NEW YORK, August 19,
1862."
Source:
Henry Ketchum, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, online
through Authorama, Public Domain Books. |