To Sumner’s disappointment, Lincoln was displeased with the new law, now known as the First Confiscation Act. Believing that border staters and many northerners weren’t ready for the bill, he reluctantly signed it after concluding that a veto would only draw more attention. Discreetly, Sumner helped finance abolitionist petitions and lectures in the capital to shift public opinion in favor of military emancipation. He also sent Lincoln a new book, The Rejected Stone, by a Virginia-born abolitionist who laid out the argument for wartime powers.
