It was under these conditions that Lincoln dealt with slavery. No man more than he detested the institution, or desired its removal. But he felt that he had no right to touch it, except as empowered by the Constitution and the laws, or as guided by the supreme necessity of saving the nation's life. Beyond that he had no authority. Beyond that, his position toward slavery must be like that of a President toward, for example, a system of religion which he believed to be false and injurious. Be he intensely orthodox, believing infidelity to be the road to hell,--yet he must not as President, put a straw across the path of the free-thinker. Be he as heretical as Thomas Jefferson, he must not as President, any more than did Jefferson, lay a finger on the churches. Just so did Lincoln feel himself restricted as to slavery,--he could not touch it, except as the civil laws brought it within his province, or unless as supreme military commander the laws and necessities of war brought it within his authority. Congress soon proceeded to discuss questions about slavery. Sumner, the foremost leader of the radicals, proposed resolutions, in February, 1862, declaring that the seceded States had by their acts extinguished their State organizations and relapsed into a territorial condition, subject only to Congress; and that slavery within them, existing only by a local authority now defunct, was thus abolished. Congress would take no such ground as that. But, as within its proper sphere, it abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, in April, 1862, giving compensation to owners at a maximum rate of $300 for each slave. And in the following June, it abolished slavery in all the national territories,--thus giving full force to the cardinal doctrine of the Republican party up to the war. But the war had inevitably brought a more radical issue to the front,--the question of slavery in the States. Under the name of a confiscation act, Congress passed a law, July 17, 1862, which declared freedom to all slaves of convicted rebels; to slaves of rebels escaping within the army lines, or captured, or deserted by their masters; and to all slaves of rebels found in places captured and occupied by the Union army. This came near to making the abolition of slavery follow exactly the progress of the Union arms. But, leaving untouched the slave property of loyalists, it spared the institution as a system.