It was shortly after the battle of Antietam that President Lincoln decided to issue his famous proclamation giving freedom to all the slaves in the United States. He decided to do this because it was a war measure and the South had been able to obtain much military aid from the slaves who were in their possession. Also it won the North to a more whole-hearted prosecution of the war, since by far the greater part of the North desired the immediate freedom of the slaves. This proclamation was called the "Proclamation of Emancipation," and under it all men in the United States really became free and equal, for the first time in American History.
At last Lincoln had realized his lifelong desire to right the wrong of slavery, and throughout the world this act added greatly to his fame. By the black race he was looked upon as a second Savior and whenever he was seen by a group of negroes they raised the echoes with their shouts of enthusiasm and jubilee.
Another great deed was done by Lincoln and one that was to have an immediate effect upon the course of the war. This was the appointment of General Ulysses S. Grant to the position of Commander in Chief of the Union forces. General Grant, like Lincoln, came from obscure beginnings. He had volunteered his services at the beginning of the war, and had won his way upward through sheer merit. On the Fourth of July, 1863, he had captured the Southern city of Vicksburg, while General Meade in the same year beat the Confederates decisively on the field of Gettysburg which was the greatest battle of the war and marked its turning point.
It was after Gettysburg that President Lincoln made the memorable address upon the field of victory that has gone down into history as one of the finest speeches ever made and has been placed above the portals of one of England's greatest colleges as an example of the purest example of English speech that has ever been uttered.
"Fourscore and seven years ago," said Lincoln, "our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The turning point of the war had been reached; the victory of the Northern forces was now assured. On the Ninth of April, 1865, General Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House and the war was brought to an end.
In the meantime Lincoln had been reelected President by an overwhelming majority. He now had before him the difficult task of reconstruction, and of bringing together the warring factions that so nearly had torn our nation in two halves forever.
His kindliness, his personal bravery which made him regardless of all risks and repeated threats of assassination, his infinite tact, resourcefulness and good humor, coupled with the weightier abilities as a ruler and a statesman, have made his name most justly the most famous in our history with the possible exception of George Washington's. There is an infinite fund of anecdotes concerning him and what he did in the dark days through which he piloted the country. Lincoln was always gentle when there was the least excuse for gentleness, and he pardoned so many military offenders who had been under sentence of death that the Union Generals complained that he was weakening their discipline. Yet this gentleness on his part was never confounded with weakness. No more terrible contestant could have appeared against the rebellious South than the quiet, gaunt backwoodsman who had placed himself in the President's chair by reason of his character alone.