LETTER TO GENERAL SCOTT

WASHINGTON, D. C., September 16, 1861. My dear Sir: Since conversing with you I have concluded to request you to frame an order for recruiting North Carolinians at Fort Hatteras. I suggest it to be so framed as for us to accept a smaller force-even a company-if we cannot get a regiment or more. What is necessary to now say about officers you will judge. Governor Seward says he has a nephew (Clarence A. Seward, I believe) who would be willing to go and play colonel and assist in raising the force. Still it is to be considered whether the North Carolinians will not prefer officers of their own. I should expect they would. A. LINCOLN.

Yours truly,

*ENDORSEMENT ON PAPER, September 17, 1861

Will Lieutenant General Scott please consider, and inform me what can be, and ought to be done as a recognition of the gallantry of the officers who fought with General Lyon at Wilson's Creek? A. LINCOLN.

ORDER TO SECRETARY CAMERON

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 18, 1861.

My dear Sir: To guard against misunderstanding, I think fit to say that the joint expe

dition of the army and navy agreed upon some time since, and in which General T. W. Sherman was and is to bear a conspicuous part, is in no wise to be abandoned, but must be ready to move by the 1st of, or very early in, October. Let all preparations go forward accordingly. Yours truly, A. LINCOLN.

ORDER TO GENERAL FRÉMONT

WASHINGTON, September 22, 1861. 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.

LETTER TO O. H. BROWNING

(Private and confidential.)

EXECUTIVE MANSION, September 22, 1861.

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 Frémont'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 Frémont proclaimed. I do not say I might not, as a member of Congress, vote for it. What I object to is, that I, as President, shall expressly or impliedly seize and exercise the permanent legislative functions of the government.

So much as to principle. Now as to policy. No doubt the thing was popular in some quarters, and would have been more so if it had been a general declaration of emancipation. The Kentucky legislature would not budge till that proclamation was modified; and General Anderson telegraphed me that on the news of General Frémont having actually issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers threw down their arms and disbanded. I was so assured as to think it probable that the

very arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capital. On the contrary, if you will give up your restlessness for new positions, and back me manfully on the grounds upon which you and other kind friends gave me the election and have approved in my public documents, we shall go through triumphantly. You must not understand I took my course on the proclamation because of Kentucky. I took the same ground in a private letter to General Frémont before I heard from Kentucky.

You think I am inconsistent because I did not also forbid General Frémont to shoot men under the proclamation. I understand that part to be within military law, but I also think, and so privately wrote General Frémont, that it is impolitic in this, that our adversaries have the power, and will certainly exercise it, to shoot as many of our men as we shoot of theirs. I did not say this in the public letter, because it is a subject I prefer not to discuss in the hearing of our enemies.