The next day he confided his decision and his reasons to Seward and Welles.Though "this was a new departure for the President,"both these Ministers agreed with him that the change of policy had become inevitable.[14]
Lincoln was now entirely himself,astute in action as well as bold in thought.He would not disclose his change of policy while Congress was in session.Should he do so,there was no telling what attempt the Cabal would make to pervert his intention,to twist his course into the semblance of an acceptance of the congressional theory.He laid the matter aside until Congress should be temporarily out of the way,until the long recess between July and December should have begun.In this closing moment of the second session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress,which is also the opening moment of the great period of Lincoln,the feeling against him in Congress was extravagantly bitter.It caught at anything with which to make a point.A disregard of technicalities of procedure was magnified into a serious breach of constitutional privilege.Reviving the question of compensated emancipation,Lincoln had sent a special message to both Houses,submitting the text of a compensation bill which he urged them to consider.His enemies raised an uproar.The President had no right to introduce a bill-into Congress!Dictator Lincoln was trying in a new way to put Congress under his thumb.[15]
In the last week of the session,Lincoln's new boldness brought the old relation between himself and Congress to a dramatic close.The Second Confiscation Bill had long been under discussion.Lincoln believed that some of its provisions were inconsistent with the spirit at least of our fundamental law.
Though its passage was certain,he prepared a veto message.He then permitted the congressional leaders to know what he intended to do when the bill should reach him.Gall and wormwood are weak terms for the bitterness that may be tasted in the speeches of the Vindictives.When,in order to save the bill,a resolution was appended purging it of the interpretation which Lincoln condemned,Trumbull passionately declared that Congress was being "coerced"by the President.
"No one at a distance,"is the deliberate conclusion of Julian who was present,"could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of the Republican members toward Lincoln at the final adjournment,while it was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in Washington.Mr.Wade said the country was going to hell,and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here."[16]
Lincoln endured the rage of Congress in unwavering serenity.
On the last day of the session,Congress surrendered and sent to him both the Confiscation Act and the explanatory resolution.Thereupon,he indulged in what must have seemed to those fierce hysterical enemies of his a wanton stroke of irony.He sent them along with his approval of the bill the text of the veto message he would have sent had they refused to do what he wanted.[17]There could be no concealing the fact that the President had matched his will against the will of Congress,and that the President had had his way.
Out of this strange period of intolerable confusion,a gigantic figure had at last emerged.The outer and the inner Lincoln had fused.He was now a coherent personality,masterful in spite of his gentleness,with his own peculiar fashion of self-reliance,having a policy of his own devising,his colors nailed upon the masthead.
