Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/684

 660 LINCOLN [PRESIDENT. Hunter, commanding in the limited areas gained along the southern coast, issued a short order declaring his depart ment under martial law, and adding &quot;Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons in these three States Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina heretofore held as slaves are, therefore, declared for ever free.&quot; As soon as this order, by the slow method of communication by sea, reached the newspapers, Lincoln (May 19) published a proclamation declaring it void; adding further, &quot;Whether it be competent for me as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time or in any case it shall have become a necessity indis pensable to the maintenance of the Government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which under my responsibility I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies or camps.&quot; But in the same proclamation Lincoln recalled to the public his own proposal and the assent of Congress to compensate States which would adopt voluntary and gradual abolishment. &quot; To the people of these States now,&quot; he added, &quot; I most earnestly appeal. I do not argue. I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times.&quot; Meanwhile the anti- slavery sentiment of the North constantly increased. During June Congress by express Act prohibited the existence of slavery in all territories outside of States. On July 12th the president called the representatives of the border slave States to the executive mansion, and once more urged upon them his proposal of compensated emancipation. &quot; If the war continues long,&quot; he said, &quot; as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.&quot; While Lincoln s appeal brought the border States to no practical decision, it served to prepare public opinion for his final act. During the month of July his own mind reached the virtual determination to give slavery its coup de grace, and he wrote and submitted to his cabinet the draft of an emancipation proclamation substantially as afterward issued. Serious military reverses constrained him for the present to withhold it, while on the other hand they served to increase the pressure upon him from anti- slavery men. Horace Greeley having addressed a public letter to him complaining of &quot; the policy you seem to be pursuing with regard to the slaves of the rebels,&quot; the president replied August 22, saying, &quot; My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it ; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it ; and, if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.&quot; Thus still holding back violent reformers with one hand, and leading up halting conservatives with the other, he on September 13 replied among other things to an address from a delegation : &quot; I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inopera tive like the pope s bull against the comet. ... I view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion. ... I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement.&quot; The year 1862 had opened with important Union victories. Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson, and won the battle of Shiloh. Burnside took possession of Roauoke island on the North Carolina coast. The famous contest between the new ironclads &quot;Monitor&quot; and &quot;Merrimac&quot; ended in the Confederate vessel being beaten back, crippled, and ultimately destroyed. Farragut with a wooden fleet ran past the twin forts St Philip and Jackson, compelled the surrender of New Orleans, and gained control of the lower Mississippi. These successes extended from. January to April. The succeeding three months brought disaster and discouragment to the Union army. M Clellan s campaign against Richmond was made abortive by his bad generalship, and compelled the with drawal of his army. Pope s army, advancing against the same city by another line, was beaten back upon Washing ton in defeat. The tide of war, however, once more turned in the defeat of Lee s invading army at South Mountain and Antietam in Maryland on the 14th and 17th of September, compelling him to retreat. With public opinion thus ripened by alternate defeat and victory, President Lincoln on September 22. 1862, issued his preliminary proclamation of emancipation, giving notice that on the 1st of January 1863, &quot;all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and for ever free.&quot; In his message to Congress on the 1st of December following, he again urged his plan of gradual, compensated emancipation &quot;as a means, not in exclusion of, but additional to, all others for restoring and preserving the national authority throughout the Union.&quot; On the 1st day of January 1863 the final proclamation of emancipation was duly issued, designating the States of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and certain portions of Louisiana and Virginia, as &quot; this day in rebellion against the United States,&quot; and proclaiming that, in virtue of his authority as commander-in-chief, and as a necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion, &quot; I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free,&quot; and pledging the executive and military power of the Govern ment to maintain such freedom. The legal validity of these proclamations was never pronounced upon by the national courts ; but their decrees gradually enforced by the march of armies were soon recognized by public opinion to be practically irreversible. Such dissatisfaction as they caused in the border slave States died out in the stress of war. The systematic enlistment of negroes and their incorporation into the army by regiments, hitherto only tried as exceptional experiments, were now pushed with vigour, and, being followed by several conspicuous instances of their gallantry on the battlefield, added another strong impulse to the sweeping change of popular sentiment. To put the finality of emancipation beyond all question, Lincoln in the winter session of 1863-64 strongly supported a movement in Congress to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment, but the necessary two-thirds vote of the House could not then be obtained. In his annual message of December 6, 1864, he urged the immediate passage of the measure. Congress now acted promptly: on January 31, 1865, that body by joint resolution proposed to the States the 13th amendment of the federal constitution, providing that &quot; neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.&quot; Before the end of that year twenty-seven out of the thirty-six States of the Union (being the required three-fourths) had ratified the amendment, and official proclamation made December 18, 1865, declared it duly adopted. The foreign policy of President Lincoln, while subordinate in importance to the great questions of the civil war,