Those antislavery steps gratified some Radicals, including Charles Sumner, who was deeply impressed with Lincoln’s sincere commitment to the cause of freedom. In June, the Massachusetts senator told an abolitionist friend: “Could you have seen the President—as it was my privilege often—while he was considering the great questions on which he has already acted—the invitation to Emancipation in the [Border] States, Emancipation in the District of Columbia, and the acknowledgment of the independence of Hayti and Liberia—even your zeal would have been satisfied, for you would have felt the sincerity of his purpose to do what he could to carry forward the principles of the Declaration of Independence. His whole soul was occupied, especially by the first proposition, which was peculiarly his own. In familiar intercourse with him, I remember nothing more touching than the earnestness and completeness with which he embraced this idea. To his mind, it was just and beneficent, while it promised the sure end of Slavery.” Months earlier, Lincoln confided to Sumner “that he was now convinced that this [war] was a great movement of God to end slavery & that the man wd. be a fool who shd. stand in the way.” Despite their political and temperamental differences, Lincoln and the Massachusetts senator managed to get along fairly well, in part because—as Lincoln put it—“Sumner thinks he runs me.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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