The word is out, the deed is done,
The spear is cast, dread no delay;
When such a steed is fairly gone,
Fate never fails to find a way.
Hurrah! hurrah! the track is clear,
We know your policy and plan;
We’ll stand by you through every year;
Now, Father Abraham, you’re our man.
The original draft of the proclamation of Emancipation was purchased by Thos. B. Bryan, of Chicago, for the Sanitary Commission for the Army, held at Chicago in the autumn of 1863. As it occurred to the writer that official duplicates of such an important document should exist, he suggested the idea to Mr. George H. Boker, subsequently United States Minister to Constantinople and to St. Petersburg, at whose request the President signed a number of copies, some of which were sold for the benefit of the Sanitary Fairs held in Philadelphia and Boston in 1864, while others were presented to public institutions. One of these, bearing the signatures of President Lincoln and Mr. Seward, with the attesting signature of John Nicolay, Private Secretary to the President, may be seen hanging in the George the Third Library in the British Museum. This document is termed by Mr. Carpenter, in his history of the proclamation, “the third great State paper which has marked the progress of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. First is the Magna Carta, wrested by the barons of England from King John; second, the Declaration of Independence; and third, worthy to be placed upon the tablets of history by the first two, Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation.”
On the 7th November, Messrs. J. M. Mason and John Slidell, Confederate Commissioners to England and France, were taken from the British mail steamer Trent by Commodore Wilkes, of the American frigate San Jacinto. There was great rejoicing over this capture in America, and as great public irritation in England. War seemed imminent between the countries; but Mr. Lincoln, with characteristic sagacity, determined that so long as there was no recognition of the rebels as a nation, not to bring on a war. “One war at a time,” he said. In a masterly examination of the case, Mr. Seward pointed out the fact that “the detention of the vessel, and the removal from her of the emissaries of the rebel Confederacy, was justifiable by the laws of war, and the practice and precedents of the British Government itself; but that, in assuming to decide upon the liability of these persons to capture, instead of sending them before a legal tribunal, where a regular trial could be had, Captain Wilkes had departed from the rule of international law uniformly asserted by the American Government, and forming part of its most cherished policy.” The Government, therefore, cheerfully complied with the request of the British Government, and liberated the prisoners. No person at all familiar with American law or policy could doubt for an instant that this decision expressed the truth; but the adherents of the Confederacy, with their sympathisers, everywhere united in ridiculing President Lincoln for cowardice. Yet it would be difficult to find an instance of greater moral courage and simple dignity, combined with the exact fulfilment of what he thought was “just right,” than Lincoln displayed on this occasion. The wild spirit of war was by this time set loose in the North, and it was felt that foreign enemies, though they might inflict temporary injury, would soon awake a principle of union and of resistance which would rather benefit than injure the country. In fact, this new difficulty was anything but intimidating, and the position of President Lincoln was for a time most embarrassing. But he could be bold enough, and sail closely enough to the law when justice demanded it. In September, 1861, the rebels in Maryland came near obtaining the passage of an act of secession in the Legislature of that state. General M‘Clellan was promptly ordered to prevent this by the arrest of the treasonable legislators, which was done, and the state was saved from a civil war. Of course there was an outcry at this, as arbitrary and unconstitutional. But Governor Hicks said of it, in the Senate of the United States, “I believe that arrests, and arrests alone, saved the State of Maryland from destruction.”
When Mr. Lincoln had signed the Proclamation of Emancipation, he said, “Now we have got the harpoon fairly into the monster slavery, we must take care that, in his extremity, he does not shipwreck the country.” But the monster only roared. The rebel Congress passed a decree, offering freedom and reward to any slave who would kill a Federal soldier; but it is believed that none availed themselves of this chivalric offer. On the contrary, ere long there were brought into the service of the United States nearly 200,000 black troops, among whom the loss by all causes was fully one-third—a conclusive proof of their bravery and efficiency. Though the Confederates knew that their fathers had fought side by side with black men in the Revolution and at New Orleans, and though they themselves raised negro regiments in Louisiana, and employed them against the Federal Government, they were furious that such soldiers should be used against themselves, and therefore in the most inhuman manner put to death, or sold into slavery, every coloured man captured in Federal uniform.
CHAPTER IX.
Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-two—The Plan of the War, and Strength of the Armies—General M‘Clellan—The General Movement, January 27th, 1862—The brilliant Western Campaign—Removal of M‘Clellan—The Monitor—Battle of Fredericksburg—Vallandigham and Seymour—The Alabama—President Lincoln declines all Foreign Mediation.
The year 1861 had been devoted rather to preparation for war than to war itself; for every day brought home to the North the certainty that the struggle would be tremendous—that large armies must fight over thousands of miles—and that to conquer, men must go forth not by thousands, but by hundreds of thousands, and endure such privations, such extremes of climate, as are little known in European warfare. But by the 1st Dec., 1861, 640,000 had been enrolled. The leading features of the plan of war were an entire blockade of the rebel coast, the military control of the border Slave States, the recovery of the Mississippi river, which is the key of the continent, and, finally, the destruction of the rebel army in Virginia, which continually threatened the North, and the conquest of Richmond, the rebel capital. General M‘Clellan had in the army of the Potomac, which occupied Washington and adjacent places, more than 200,000 men, well armed and disciplined. In Kentucky, General Buell had over 100,000. The rebel force opposed to General M‘Clellan was estimated at 175,000, but is now known to have been much less. General M‘Clellan made little use of the spy-service, and apparently cared very little to know what was going on in the enemy’s camp—an indifference which before long led him into several extraordinary and ridiculous blunders. As Commander-in-Chief, General M‘Clellan had control over Halleck, Commander of the Department of the West, while General Burnside commanded in North Carolina, and Sherman in South Carolina.
But though General M‘Clellan had, as he himself said, a “real army, magnificent in material, admirable in discipline, excellently equipped and armed, and well officered,” and though his forces, were double those of the enemy, he seemed to be possessed by a strange apathy, which, at the time, was at first taken for prudence, but which is perhaps now to be more truthfully explained by the fact that this former friend of Jefferson Davis, and ardent admirer of Southern institutions, was at heart little inclined to inflict great injury on the enemy, and was looking forward to playing the rôle which has led so many American politicians to their ruin—of being the great conciliator between the North and South. Through the autumn and winter of 1861-62, he did literally nothing beyond writing letters to the President, in which he gave suggestions as to the manner in which the country should be governed, and asked for more troops. All the pomp and style of a grand generalissimo were carefully observed by him; his personal camp equipage required twenty-four horses to draw it—a marvellous contrast to the rough and ready General Grant, who started on his vigorous campaign against Vicksburg with only a clean shirt and a tooth-brush. Before long, notwithstanding the very remarkable personal popularity of General M‘Clellan, the country began to murmur at his slowness; and while the President was urging and imploring him to do something, the malcontents through the North began to blame the Administration for these delays. It was said to be doing all in its power to crush M‘Clellan, to keep him from advancing, and to protract the war for its own political purposes.
General Ulysses S. Grant.