As the United States went into the second year of civil strife in 1862, Abraham Lincoln was under strong pressure to find some acceptable solution to the problem of the Negro. Though the Republican Party had made no emancipation pledges, and both President and Congress had denied any intention to interfere with established state institutions, conditions changed swiftly in the months that followed these disclaimers. It became increasingly awkward to allow each regional commander to handle the Negro refugees as he saw fit—returning the men and their families to their erstwhile owners, chasing them out of the camps, or holding them in labor battalions as “contraband of war.” Still more important was the dilemma caused by the Radicals both in and out of Congress who saw only a clear-cut case of right versus wrong, and who felt that victory would surely be forthcoming once the shackles of servitude had been cut off. Neither the unwillingness of Union Democrats to enter upon an abolitionist crusade, nor the administration's need to retain the support of border state slaveholders served to quiet their clamor. Accordingly, Lincoln was forced against his will into piecemeal and sometimes contradictory measures ending with his proclamation of January 1, 1863, when what he actually preferred was a long-range program of compensated emancipation that would include voluntary colonization of a large portion of the Negroes thus set free.