come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter!

"In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely confident. More than a year's trial now shows no loss by it, in our foreign relations; none in our home popular sentiment; none in our white military force-no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men, and we could not have had them. without the measure.

"And now, let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the Rebellion by force of arms, and in the next that he is for taking this one hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be, but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his cause so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.

"I add a word, which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the Nation's condition is not what either party or any man devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Where it is tending, seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.

"Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN."

!

So it happened that Mr. Lincoln, who at the outset had said in reference to interfering with slavery in the States, "I believe I have no lawful right, and I have no intention to do so," had gradually come to believe his interference with slavery necessary to preserve the Union, and had come to avow openly and defend the steps by which he had reached this position, and all the consequences of his acts.

The record is far above suspicion. If Mr. Lincoln had departed from his original intentions, he had done so honestly. It was no fault of his. He had vainly tried to control events. They had led him, and in the religious fervor which had, to some extent, displaced his former tendencies, he now held that Deity was at the back of it all, and must have

the honor.

Would

The country was, for a time, greatly divided as to the good and evil which might spring from the Emancipation Proclamation. The Democrats said it fall harmlessly to the dust. But it greatly irritated them at any rate, especially those who believed their political ascendency could only be reCovered and maintained somehow by the South. Many good and wise Union men were uncertain and uneasy about it. Darkness was before them.

was a

This

bold, fearful leap the President had taken. The rebels pretended to hold the Proclamation in contempt; still it alarmed them, and called out the spirit of the direst vengeance. The effect of the Proclamation in Europe was favorable to the cause of the Government, and long before the Presidential

election in the fall of 1864, the loyal North had come to view it with the President's eyes, to a great extent. Its virtue had already been well attested. The bitter opposition long apparent in the army to the employment of colored soldiers had passed away, and the strong selfish feeling of having the negro bear any possible amount of the brunt and hardship of the war, which never would have been but for him, took the place, even there, of the former drivel about negro "equality" with the white man by placing a musket in his hand. And although various motives, not always creditable, led the loyal people of the North to give a hearty support finally to the emancipation policy and all that followed from it, in the main they were actuated by the one grand, noble sentiment of elevating a downtrodden race, of bettering the condition of a large part of their own, of saving the Government which they believed to be the best ever achieved by enlightened man, and of removing from it, while they had an opportunity and a ground for so doing, the only apparent or probable or possible instrument of its downfall. So the deed was accomplished, and long ago from all civilized nations but one voice has arisen concerning it. Even in America to-day it can hardly be maintained that there is a divided sentiment about the emancipation of the four millions of slaves. It was the great achievement of Mr. Lincoln's Administration. By it, but certainly not wholly so, does he take his place in history, as he believed he should. After the establishment of the Republic it was the greatest event which ever took

place on the continent, if it was not the first in its grandeur and importance; and among the grand achievements of human justice, progress, and government, it must ever be conspicuous.

CHAPTER XI.

1862-WAR OF THE REBELLION-CONGRESS IN THE WINTER OF 1862-SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE-WEST VIR

gress"), and on the same day the President sent to that body his

SECOND ANNUAL MESSAGE.

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:Since your last annual assembling, another year of health and bountiful harvests has passed. And while it has not pleased the Almighty to bless us with a return of peace, we can but press on, guided by the best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise way, all will yet be well.

The correspondence touching foreign affairs which has taken place during the last year is herewith submitted, in virtual compliance with a request to that effect made by the House of Representatives near the close of the last session of Congress.

If the condition of our relations with other nations is less gratifying than it has usually been at former periods, it is certainly more satisfactory than a Nation so unhappily distracted as we are, might reasonably have apprehended. In the month of June last there were some grounds to expect that the maritime powers which, at the beginning of our domestic difficulties, so unwisely and unnecessarily, as we think, recognized the insurgents as a belligerent, would soon recede from that position, which has proved only less injurious to themselves than to our own country. But the temporary reverses which afterwards befell the national arms, and which were exaggerated by our