Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/332

268 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS wherever the National armies penetrated there was a constant stream of fugitive slaves from the ad joining regions, and the commanders of each de partment treated the complicated questions arising from this body of "contrabands," as they came to be called, in their camps, according to their own judgment of the necessities or the expediencies of each case, a discretion which the president thought best to tolerate. But on May 9, 1862, Gen. David Hunter, an intimate and esteemed friend of Mr. Lincoln s, saw proper, without consultation with him, to issue a military order declaring all persons theretofore held as slaves in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina forever free. The president, as soon as he received this order, issued a proclamation declaring it void, and reserving to himself the de cision of the question whether it was competent for him, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any state or states free, and whether at any time or in any case it should have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, and prohibiting to commanders in the field the decision of such questions. But he added in his proclamation a significant warning and appeal to the slave-holding states, urging once more upon them the policy of emancipation by state action. "I do not argue," he said; "I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. You cannot,