At the time that Lincoln published this letter, he seemingly had already chosen the third of the three options he named: He was waiting for a Union victory to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which would announce that he would free some but not all the slaves on January 1, 1863. Nevertheless, "From mid-October to mid-November 1862, he sent personal envoys to Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. His envoys bore tidings" that citizens desired 'to avoid the unsatisfactory' terms of the Final Emancipation Proclamation 'and to have peace again on the old terms' (i.e., with slavery intact), they should rally ... to vote in an 'election of members of the members of the Congress of the United States'...."Freehling, William W., The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 111. Thus, Lincoln may not have ruled out the first option he expressed to Greeley: saving the Union without freeing any slave.
