In the meantime the capture of strategic points like Vicksburg and New Orleans had given the control of the lower Mississippi to the Union,[35] General Grant had crippled and driven back the Confederates in the West,[36] and prospects for military success in the East seemed to require some such a measure as military emancipation. After the refusal of compensated emancipation by the border slave States the President decided to emancipate the slaves of rebellious commonwealths by military order.[37] While riding with Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles one day, Mr. Lincoln made mention of emancipating the slaves by proclamation, if the rebels did not lay down their arms. He believed that such action could be guaranteed only as a military necessity. He thought that the slaves must be liberated, or the Union would be exterminated. Lincoln reached a final conclusion and called the cabinet together on July 21, the day preceding the close of that session of Congress.[38] Since he was at the end of his tether, he determined to take a more definite and decisive step. Accordingly, he prepared several orders which, gave authority to commanders in the field to subsist their troops in hostile territory and to employ Negroes as paid laborers, and further provided for the colonization of Negroes in some tropical country.[39] As this discussion led to no definite conclusion, the subject was resumed at a meeting on the following day; but Lincoln decided that the time was inopportune. While he thought that more evil than good would be derived from the wholesale arming of Negroes, yet he was not unwilling that the commanders arm, purely for defensive purposes, those slaves who came within the Union lines. But the President had reached a decision on the correlated policy of emancipation with which it appears that his cabinet was not in accord. They were surprised when he read to them the first draft of a proclamation warning the rebels of the penalties provided by the Confiscation Act, suggesting the renewal of his proposition of compensation to the loyal States, and adding a summary order that, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, he would declare free the slaves of all States that might be in rebellion on January 1, 1863. The Cabinet was somewhat "bewildered by the magnitude and boldness of this proposal."[40]