The negroes very soon heard this wonderful news and many thousands of them eagerly awaited the coming of the day when "Massa Linkum would set 'em free." They looked upon the good President as the savior of their race.
On that famous morning, January 1, 1863, the prophecy was fulfilled. That New Year's Day will be forever memorable as the date of the great Emancipation Proclamation, an act by which four millions of slaves were brought from the night of bondage to the sunlight of freedom.
This was the monumental event of the war, perhaps the wisest thing President Lincoln ever did or ever could do. In after years it will perhaps be regarded as the greatest event of the century. Few men in all history have had an opportunity of doing a deed of so vast and far-reaching importance.
Emancipation was quickly followed by the enlistment of negroes, or "freedmen" as they were now called, as soldiers in the armies of the Union. During the year 1863 more than fifty thousand of them, and before the end of the war nearly two hundred thousand, had enlisted under the banner of freedom. They were good soldiers, and on many a battlefield they fought with an unflinching courage.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MORE ABOUT THE WAR FOR THE UNION.
312. Union Defeat at Chancellorsville.—Now let us return to our narrative of a few of the prominent military operations of the war. In May, 1863, the army of the Potomac, under General Hooker, moved southward from Washington. At Chancellorsville it was met by a Confederate force under Generals Lee and Jackson. The battle lasted two days, and was disastrous to the Union arms; in fact, the worst defeat of the war. It marked the zenith of Confederate success. In this battle "Stonewall" Jackson, so called from his splendid firmness, one of the ablest of the Southern generals, was mortally wounded.
"Stonewall" Jackson.