Pittsburg Landing, were names whose mention made the blood of Patriots
to surge in their veins; and Corinth, too, had fallen. But in the East,
McClellan's profitless campaign against Richmond, and especially his
disastrous "change of base" by a "masterly" seven days' retreat,
involving as many bloody battles, had greatly dispirited all Union men,
and encouraged the Rebels and Rebel-sympathizers to renewed hopes and
efforts.

And, as reverses came to the Union Arms, so seemed to grow
proportionately the efforts, on all sides, to force forward, or to stave
off, as the case might be, the great question of the liberation and
arming of the Slaves, as a War Measure, under the War powers of the
Constitution. It was about this time (July 12, 1862) that President
Lincoln determined to make a third, and last, attempt to avert the
necessity for thus emancipating and arming the Slaves. He invited all
the Senators and Representatives in Congress from the Border-States, to
an interview at the White House, and made to them the appeal, heretofore
in these pages given at length.

It was an earnest, eloquent, wise, kindly, patriotic, fatherly appeal in
behalf of his old proposition, for a gradual, compensated Emancipation,
by the Slave States, aided by the resources of the National Government.

At the very time of making it, he probably had, in his drawer, the rough
draft of the Proclamation which was soon to give Liberty to all the
Colored millions of the Land.

[McPherson gives a letter, written from Washington, by Owen Lovejoy
(Feb. 22, 1864), to Wm. Lloyd Garrison, in which the following
passage occurs: