“My paramount object is to save the Union, and not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.... I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, _and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish, that all men everywhere could be free_.” He had, meanwhile, his troubles with the army. On May 9th, 1862, General Hunter issued an order, declaring the slaves in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina to be for ever free; which was promptly and properly repudiated by the President, who was at the time urging on Congress and the Border States a policy of gradual emancipation, with compensation to loyal masters. General Hunter’s attempt at such a crisis to take the matter out of the hands of the President, was a piece of presumption which deserved severer rebuke than he received in the firm yet mild proclamation in which Lincoln, uttering no reproof, said to the General--quoting from his Message to Congress-- “I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of the signs of the times, ranging, if it may be, far above partisan and personal politics. “This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it?” General J. C. Fremont, commanding the Western Department, which comprised Missouri and a part of Kentucky, had also issued an unauthorised order (August 31st, 1861), proclaiming martial law in Missouri, and setting the slaves, if rebels, free; which error the President at once corrected. This was taken off by a popular caricature, in which slavery was represented as a blackbird in a cage, and General Fremont as a small boy trying to let him out, while Lincoln, as a larger boy, was saying, “That’s _my_ bird--let him alone.” To which General Fremont replying, “But you said you wanted him to be set free,” the President answers, “I know; but _I’m_ going to let him out--not you.”