"
While Butler's happy designation had a more convincing influence on
public thought than a volume of discussion, it did not immediately solve
the whole question. Within a few days he reported that he had slave
property to the value of $60,000 in his hands, and by the end of July
nine hundred "contrabands," men, women, and children, of all ages. What
was their legal status, and how should they be disposed of? It was a
knotty problem, for upon its solution might depend the sensitive public
opinion and balancing, undecided loyalty and political action of the
border slave States of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.
In solving the problem, President Lincoln kept in mind the philosophic
maxim of one of his favorite stories, that when the Western Methodist
presiding elder, riding about the circuit during the spring freshets,
was importuned by his young companion how they should ever be able to
get across the swollen waters of Fox River, which they were approaching,
the elder quieted him by saying he had made it the rule of his life
never to cross Fox River till he came to it.
The President did not immediately decide, but left it to be treated as a
question of camp and local police, in the discretion of each commander.
Under this theory, later in the war, some commanders excluded, others
admitted such fugitives to their camps; and the curt formula of General
Orders, "We have nothing to do with slaves.
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