would rend the Union by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. But let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these offenses, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

CHAPTER XXII

LIBERTY AND UNION

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THE Proclamation of Emancipation was a war measure. cording to the president's interpretation of his own constitutional prerogative, he had no authority to issue such a proclamation on other grounds than those of military necessity. The proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, and it became immediately effective in states that were then in rebellion against the government wherever the armies of the United States controlled the situation. The area within which the proclamation cperated widened with each success of the Federal Army. Great numbers of slaves in territory still held by the Confederates escaped through the lines and sought shelter and protection from the Union Army. What to do with them was a question, nor had it been certain in the early days of the war by what legal right they could be held. General Butler had proclaimed them "contraband of war." This ingenious definition availed, and was employed with great freedom and elasticity until the Proclamation of Emancipation was issued. After that negroes escaping from bondage in the states in rebellion were free whenever they could get to where their freedom could be made effective. A hundred thousand negro soldiers were soon bearing arms and fighting for their own freedom; and that number before the end of the war was practically doubled.

As the end of the war grew visibly near, the question became a pressing one whether the Emancipation Proclamation, distinctly issued as a war measure, would hold after the war was over. Lincoln himself believed that, with the return of peace, the voters

of each state would have to settle whether that state was to be free or slave.

Furthermore, the Proclamation of Emancipation was limited in its operation to those states actually in rebellion. The president had no authority to extend its operation into the border states where slavery existed but rebellion did not. Lincoln had from the very first dealt very tenderly with the border states. He had understood them better than any one else in Washington. He realized their value to the Union cause. It was hard enough for them to remain within the Union, even with the slavery question eliminated from their immediate consideration. Lincoln therefore was very desirous of relieving the border states from every needless divisive question.

But it became evident as the war drew near the close that slavery must by some means be prevented from reasserting itself in the territory that had belonged to the Confederacy; and it also became a question whether the government was to have two great free areas, one north and the other south, with slavery existing and protected within a thin buffer area between these two. Such a consideration was preposterous. Lincoln again took ground upon his declaration preceding his debates with Douglas that this nation could not permanently exist partly slave and partly free. The divided house must no longer remain divided.

Lincoln was a firm believer in the Constitution. He believed that in the time of war the Constitution gave to the president power which would be dangerous for a chief executive to possess in time of peace. He gave earnest thought to the question of the status of the freed slaves, when the president's war powers should cease. Three questions he propounded for himself as

follows:

Firstly-Had the president of the United States, in the exercise of his war powers, a right, under the Constitution and by public law, to decree, on grounds of military necessity, the emancipa

tion and perpetual enfranchisement of slaves in the insurgent states and parts of states?

Secondly-Did such proclamation work, by its own vigor, the immediate, the unconditional and the perpetual emancipation of all slaves in the districts affected by it?

Thirdly-Did such proclamation, working proprio vigore, not only effect the emancipation of all existing slaves in the insurgent territory, but, with regard to slaves so liberated, did it extinguish the status of slavery created by municipal law, insomuch that they would have remained forever free, in fact and law, provided the Constitution and the legal rights and relations of the states under it had remained, on the return of peace, what they were before the war?

Lincoln knew well the degree of legal uncertainty in the answer to each of these questions.

The Emancipation Proclamation was extra-constitutional. Not even on the plea of military necessity could the president amend the Constitution. Furthermore, it fell outside the jural relations of slavery under international law. The slaves were property when the war began, and that relation was implied in the proclamation itself. Under what terms and for what purposes might enemy property, confiscated in time of war, and as property, be changed in character from property to persons, and retain that character after the close of war? Were they confiscated as "enemy property" and for the purpose of weakening the encmy, or was the confiscation penal in character, as a punishment for treason? In either event, the confiscation should legally have been by legal process; and there had been no such process. Was the Emancipation Proclamation ever legal? Many of the ablest lawyers denied its legality even as a war measure; few doubted its illegality after peace was restored. Moreover, it was only slaves of enemies, escaping to the Union lines, and slaves in certain designated states in rebellion that were freed. No one knew better than Lincoln that his proclamation stood by virtue of bayonets of the army, not by affirmative decision of the courts.

At the opening of Congress on December 14, 1863, Honorable James M. Ashley, of Ohio, introduced a joint resolution submitting to the states a proposition to amend the Constitution by abolishing and prohibiting slavery. Other members of the House and Senate introduced resolutions slightly differing in form, but to the same purport. The real author of the amendment, as it was ultimately adopted, was Lyman Trumbull, Senator from Illinois. He was now chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, and was a legislator of great practical ability, a ready speaker and an able debater.

In support of his resolution Senator Trumbull said:

No superficial observer even of our history, North or South, or of any party, can doubt that slavery lies at the bottom of our present troubles. Our fathers who made the Constitution regarded it as an evil, and looked forward to its early extinction. They felt the inconsistency of their position, while proclaiming the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and happiness, they denied liberty, happiness, and life itself to a whole race, except in subordination to them. It was impossible in the nature of things, that a government based on such antagonistic principles could permanently and peacefully endure, nor did its founders expect it would. They looked forward to the not distant nor, as they supposed, uncertain period, when slavery should be abolished, and the government become in fact what they made it in name, one securing the blessings of liberty to all. The history of the last seventy years has proven that the founders of the republic were mistaken in their expectations; and slavery, so far from gradually disappearing as they had anticipated, had so strengthened itself, that in 1860, its advocates demanded the control of the nation in its interests, failing in which, they attempted its overthrow. . .

I think, then, it is reasonable to suppose, that if this proposed amendment passes Congress, it will within a year receive the ratification of the requisite number of states to make it a part of the Constitution. That accomplished, and we are forever freed of this troublesome question. We accomplish then what the statesmen of this country have been struggling to accomplish for years. We take this question entirely away from the politics of the country. We relieve Congress of sectional strife, and what