The outlook for the Union cause grew darker and darker in 1862, and Mr. Lincoln began to think, as he expressed it, that he must “change his tactics or lose the game.” Accordingly he decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as soon as the Union army won a substantial victory. The battle of Antietam, on September 17, gave him the opportunity he sought. He told Secretary Chase that he had made a solemn vow before God that if General Lee should be driven back from Pennsylvania he would crown the result by a declaration of freedom to the slaves. On the twenty-second of that month he issued a proclamation stating that at the end of one hundred days he would issue another proclamation declaring all slaves within any State or Territory to be forever free, which was done in the form of the famous Emancipation Proclamation. HARD TO REFUSE PARDONS. In the conduct of the war and in his purpose to maintain the Union, Abraham Lincoln exhibited a will of iron and determination that could not be shaken, but in his daily contact with the mothers, wives and daughters begging for the life of some soldier who had been condemned to death for desertion or sleeping on duty he was as gentle and weak as a woman. It was a difficult matter for him to refuse a pardon if the slightest excuse could be found for granting it. Secretary Stanton and the commanding generals were loud in declaring that Mr. Lincoln would destroy the discipline of the army by his wholesale pardoning of condemned soldiers, but when we come to examine the individual cases we find that Lincoln was nearly always right, and when he erred it was always on the side of humanity. During the four years of the long struggle for the preservation of the Union, Mr. Lincoln kept “open shop,” as he expressed it, where the general public could always see him and make known their wants and complaints. Even the private soldier was not denied admittance to the President’s private office, and no request or complaint was too small or trivial to enlist his sympathy and interest. A FUN-LOVING AND HUMOR-LOVING MAN. It was once said of Shakespeare that the great mind that conceived the tragedies of “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” etc., would have lost its reason if it had not found vent in the sparkling humor of such comedies as “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “The Comedy of Errors.” The great strain on the mind of Abraham Lincoln produced by four years of civil war might likewise have overcome his reason had it not found vent in the yarns and stories he constantly told. No more fun-loving or humor-loving man than Abraham Lincoln ever lived. He enjoyed a joke even when it was on himself, and probably, while he got his greatest enjoyment from telling stories, he had a keen appreciation of the humor in those that were told him.