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was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic-for the principle it lives by and keeps alive-for man's vast future-thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear there will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result. A. LINCOLN.

Yours, very truly,

This honest and manly explanation of his policy was received with the most enthusiastic satisfaction and applause. His reasons for the emancipation proclamation, and all other acts for which he had been criticised, were approved, and when his words of hope and faith in final success were read, beginning: "The signs look better. The Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea, thanks to the great Northwest, nor yet not wholly to them," etc., the people felt that nature itself, the great rivers and prairies of the West, were rejoicing in the triumphs of the Union cause. The people had such faith in his sagacity and honesty that they felt assured of final victory, and were ready to make any sacrifice which he should ask to secure it. And so Illinois sent back her greetings and congratulations to the White House. The people joined with the President in thanks to God that

no longer did any rebel flag float over any part of the Mississippi; that the national capital and all national territories were now free; that the border states were all becoming free states, and that the triumph of the national arms would, under the influence of the proclamation of emancipation, abolish slavery everywhere throughout the republic. The people rejoiced that as slavery had drawn the sword, it was doomed to die by the sword; that having plunged the nation into war, slavery was to perish by the laws of war.

The elections in the autumn of 1863 indicated the confidence of the people in the President, and their unanimity in support of his administration. Every state in which elections were held, except New Jersey, gave great majorities for the administration; and in Ohio, where the democrats had nominated Vallandigham for governor, he was in a minority of nearly one hundred thousand votes.

CHAPTER XX.

THE AMENDMENT PROPOSED.

DEBATE IN THE SENATE.-SPEECHES OF TRUMBULL, WILSON, JOHNSON, HOWARD, AND OTHERS.-A NEW YEAR'S CALL ON THE PRESIDENT.-DEBATE IN THE HOUSE.-TEST VOTE.-SPEECHES OF WILSON, ARNOLD, RANDALL, PENDLETON, AND OTHERS.—The AMENDMENT FAILS.

In the early part of this book we have seen that Lincoln in his younger days dreamed of being an emancipator. In what way this day dream or presentiment entered his mind, whether it was due to the prophecy of the Voudou on his visit to New Orleans, or whether it was one of those mysterious impressions which come from no one knows where, it is impossible to tell. A careful reading of his speeches and writings will indicate that in some way there had been impressed upon his mind a premonition that he was to be an agent in freeing the slaves.

So early as January, 1837, when he was a very obscure man, in his lecture to the young men's association at Springfield, on The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," he spoke of the glory and distinction to be gained by the "emancipation of slaves." "Many great and good men may be found," he said, "whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or presidential chair, but such belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle." In the same year, as a member of the Illinois Legislature, he joined one other member (they being the only members who would sign it) in a protest against pro-slavery resolutions. A Kentuckian by birth, and

representing a district very hostile to abolition, he introduced into Congress, in 1849, a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. In June, 1858, he made the speech in which he said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." In that most thoughtful, sagacious, and philosophic address he anticipated Governor Seward's "irrepressible conflict" speech, which was delivered at Rochester, in New York, October 25th, 1858. In this June speech of the then little known philosophic statesman, he said: "Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new-North as well as South." * * “To meet and overcome the power of the dynasty (slavery)

* * * is what we have to do," and he concludes with these solemn words: "The result is not doubtful. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay, but sooner or later the victory is sure to come." There are few if any words more expressive of the character of Lincoln than those with which he concluded his great speech at Cooper Institute: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end do our duty, as we understand it." 1

It was this faith, and the courage to do his duty as he understood it, that sustained and carried him through the darkest days of his administration. As to slavery, and his action in relation to it, he said in his letter to Hodges, of Kentucky, April 14, 1864:

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"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. * * When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When still later, General Cameron, the Secretary of War, sug

1. Observe the number of words of one syllable in this and all his writings and speeches.

gested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not think it an indispensable necessity. When still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would 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 hands 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 of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our white military force, no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite an 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 them without the measure.

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In tell

"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. ing 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. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills 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 causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God." 1

The history of the emancipation proclamation has already been told. It had been issued by him with the sincere belief that it was "an act of justice warranted by the Constitution, and upon military necessity," and upon it he had invoked "the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." Congress had abolished slavery at the capital, prohibited it in the territories, and had declared all negro soldiers in the Union army, and their families, free; repealed the fugitive slave laws, and indeed all laws which recognized or sanctioned slavery, and it had approved the proclamation. The states not embraced in this proclamation had emancipated their slaves, so that slavery

1. McPherson's History of the Rebellion, p. 336.

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