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HISTORY 1861-1865] and preserving part of it. Just after the battle of Antietam (17 Sept. 1862) he issued his proclamation calling on the revolted

states to return to their allegiance before the next year, otherwise their slaves would be declared free men. No state returned, and the threatened declaration was issued on the 1st of January 1863. As president, Lincoln could issue no such declaration; as commander-in-chief of the armies and navies of the United States he could issue directions only as to the territory within his lines; but the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to territory outside of his lines. It has therefore been debated whether the proclamation was in reality of any force. It may fairly be taken as an announcement of the policy which was to guide the army, and as a declaration of freedom taking effect as the lines advanced. At all events, this was its exact effect. Its international importance was far greater. The locking up of the world's source of cotton supply had been a general calamity, and the Confederate government and people had steadily expected that the English and French governments, or at least one of them, would intervene in the war for the purpose of raising the blockade and releasing the Southern cotton. The conversion of the struggle into a crusade against slavery made intervention impossible for governments whose peoples had now a controlling influence on their policy and intelligence enough to understand the issue.

248. Confederate agents in England were numerous and active. Taking advantage of every loophole in the British

Foreign Enlistment Act, they built and sent to sea the “Alabama” and “Florida,” which for a time almost drove Federal commerce from the ocean. Whenever they were closely pursued by United States vessels they took refuge in neutral ports until a safe opportunity occurred to put to sea again. Another, the “Georgia,” was added in 1863. All three were destroyed in 1864. (See .) Confederate attempts to have ironclads equipped in England and France were unsuccessful.

249. The turning-point of the war was evidently in the early days of July 1863, when the victories of Vicksburg and

Gettysburg came together. The national government had at the beginning cut the Confederate States down to a much smaller area than might well have been expected; its armies had pushed the besieging lines far into the hostile territory, and had held the ground which they had gained; and the war itself had developed a class of generals who cared less for the conquest of territory than for attacking and destroying the opposing armies. The great drafts on the future which the credit of the Federal government enabled the North to make gave it also a startling appearance of prosperity; so far from feeling the war, it was driving production of every kind to a higher pitch than ever before.

250. The war had not merely developed improved weapons and munitions of war; it had also spurred the people on to a more careful attention to the welfare of the soldiers, the fighting men drawn from their own number. The sanitary commission, the Christian commission, and other voluntary associations for the physical and moral care of soldiers, received and disbursed very large sums. The national government was paying an average amount of $2,000,000 per day for the prosecution of the war, and, in spite of the severest taxation, the debt grew to $500,000,000 in June 1862, to twice that amount a year later, to $1,700,000,000 in June 1864, and reached its maximum on the 31st of August 1865—$2,845,907,626. But this lavish expenditure was directed with energy and judgment. The blockading fleets were kept in perfect order and with every condition of success. The railway and telegraph were brought into systematic use for the first time in modern warfare. Late in 1863 Edwin M. Stanton, the secretary of war, moved two corps of 23,000 men from Washington to Chattanooga, 1200 m., in seven days. A year later he moved another corps, 15,000 strong, from Tennessee to Washington in eleven days, and within a month had collected vessels and transferred it to North Carolina.

251. On the other hand, the Federal armies now held almost all the great southern through lines of railroad, except the Georgia

lines and those which supplied Lee from the South. The want of the Southern people was merely growing in degree, not in kind. The conscription, sweeping from the first, had become omnivorous; towards the end of the war every man between seventeen and fifty-five was legally liable to service, and in practice the only limit was physical incapacity. In 1863 the Federal government also was driven to conscription. The first attempts to carry it out resulted in forcible resistance in several places, the worst being the “draft riots” in New York (July), when the city was in the hands of the mob for several days. All the resistance was put down; but exemptions and substitute purchases were so freely permitted that the draft in the North had little effect except as a stimulus to the states in filling their quotas of volunteers by voting bounties.

252. In 1864 Lincoln was re-elected with Andrew Johnson as Vice-president. The Democratic Convention had declared

that, after four years of failure to restore the Union by war, during which the Constitution had been violated in all its parts under the plea of military necessity, a cessation of hostilities ought to be obtained, and had nominated General George B. McClellan and G. H. Pendleton. Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay (Aug. 5), by which he sealed up the last port, except Wilmington, of the blockade-runners, and the evidently staggering condition of the Confederate resistance in

the East and the West, were the sharpest commentaries on the Democratic platform; and its candidates carried only three of the twenty-five states which took part in the election. The thirty-sixth state—Nevada—had been admitted in 1864.

253. The actual fighting of the war may be said to have ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General U.S.

Grant at Appomattox, Va., on the 9th of April 1865. All the terms of surrender named by Grant were generous: no private property was to be surrendered; both officers and men were to be dismissed on parole, not to be disturbed by the United States government so long as they preserved their parole and did not violate the laws; and he instructed the officers appointed to receive the paroles “to let all the men who claim to own a horse or mule take the animals home with them to work their little farms.” It should be stated, also, to Grant's honour that, when the politicians afterwards undertook to repudiate some of the terms of surrender, he personally intervened and used the power of his own name to force an exact fulfilment. General Joseph E. Johnston, with the only other considerable army in the field, surrendered on much the same terms at Durham Station, N.C. (April 26), after an unsuccessful effort

at a broader settlement. All organized resistance had now ceased; Union cavalry were ranging the South, picking up government property or arresting leaders; but it was not until May that the last detached parties of Confederates gave up the contest.

254. Just after Lee's surrender President Lincoln died by assassination (April 15), the crime of a half-crazed enthusiast.

Even this event did not impel the American people to any vindictive use of their success for the punishment of individuals. In the heat of the war, in 1862, Congress had so changed the criminal law that the punishment of treason and rebellion should no longer be death alone, but death or fine and imprisonment. Even this modified punishment was not inflicted. There was no hanging; some of the leaders were imprisoned for a time, but never brought to trial.

255. The armies of the Confederacy are supposed to have

been at their strongest (700,000) at the beginning of 1863; and it is doubtful whether they contained 200,000 men in March 1865. The dissatisfaction of the southern people at the manner in which Davis