Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/501

Rh of the enemy (the Southern armies) where it was necessarily void.&quot; It proclaimed freedom where it could not operate, and left slavery in States where military power could enforce a decree of emancipation.

The emancipation policy was adopted as a political as well as a military necessity. The humanity of freedom was only an incident of the policy. The pressure of the most active wing of Mr. Lincoln s party had borne upon him with such increasing violence that the President was compelled to explain to the border States, and to his conservative friends, that the proclamation had become &quot; a necessity to prevent the radicals from openly embarrassing the government in the conduct of the war.&quot; Governor Andrews, of Massachusetts, had begun earnestly to demand the privilege &quot; to fire on the enemy’s magazine,&quot; by which he was supposed to mean an explosion throughout the South of negro insurrection. The Massachusetts convention had not voted a resolution of confidence in the administration, and Mr. Chase was writing of Mr. Lincoln s recreancy to the party which had elected him. The &quot; pressure &quot; prevailed and the &quot; war policy &quot; took a new turn.

The general effect at the North of this distinct change of war policy was at first a revolt of the conservatives through which the administration suffered defeats at the fall elections of 1862 in the great States, New York, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Uneasiness pervaded the popular mind and the soldiery were disturbed by this new reason for the sacrifice of their lives. Europe also became &quot; cold and menacing.&quot; Lord Lyons dispatched to his government that the President &quot; had thrown himself into the arms of the radicals.&quot; Yet the measure compacted about the President a body of men who rallied from the temporary disasters which followed the adoption of their policy and gave him a support which at length drew to their line almost the entire population of the Northern States.