The anti-slavery feeling was increasing, but efforts to effect emancipation were not controlling sentiments of the Administration or of a majority of Congress at the commencement or during the first year of Mr. Lincoln's term, although such are the representations of party writers, and to some extent of the historians of the period. Nor did the Administration, as is often asserted and by many believed, commence hostilities and make aggressive war on the slave States or their institutions; but when war began and a national garrison in a national fortress was attacked, it did not fail to put forth its power and energies to suppress the rebellion and maintain the integrity of the Union. Military delays and tardy movements were nevertheless charged to the imbecility of the Government. It is not to be denied that a portion of the most active supporters of the President in and out of Congress and in the armies had in view ulterior purposes than that of suppressing the insurrection. Some were determined to avail themselves of the opportunity to abolish slavery, others to extinguish the claim of reserved sovereignty to the States, and a portion were favorable to both of these extremes and to the consolidation of power in the central Government; but a larger number than either and perhaps more than all combined were for maintaining the Constitution and Union unimpaired. The President, while opposed to all innovating schemes, had the happy faculty of so far harmonizing and reconciling his differing friends as to keep them united in resisting the secession movement.