Thirty-four years afterwards General Longstreet, one of the most distinguished soldiers of the Confederacy, stood before thousands of Union veterans in Atlanta, white-haired and shaking with emotion, and said:
“Your loss would have been our loss and your gain has been our gain.”
The President had held out as long as possible against what he afterwards considered “the central act of his administration and the greatest event of the nineteenth century.” To members of Congress who urged him to free the negroes and muster them into the army he made a military argument:
“Gentlemen, I have put thousands of muskets into the hands of loyal citizens of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina. They have said that they could defend themselves if they had guns. I have given them the guns. Now, these men do not believe in mustering in the negro. If I do it, these thousands of muskets will be turned against us. We should lose more than we should gain.”
Autograph copy of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln called his Cabinet together and read to them a draft of a proposed proclamation freeing all the slaves in the United States.
Secretary Seward, however, advised delay, pointing out the fact that the Union arms had sustained repeated defeats, and that a proclamation of emancipation, issued at such a time, might be “viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government.” He advised the President to wait until a victory was won and then “give it to the country supported by military success.” Lincoln consented to wait.
How the anti-slavery forces bellowed and threatened! How Wendell Phillips lashed the President! How Greeley scored him in the Tribune! How the abolitionist committees poured into the White House and raged against delay!
Poor Lincoln! He who had scoffed and blasphemed in his rough, hard youth in New Salem, turned to God for guidance. There is nothing in history more touching than the spectacle of this strong man, struggling between his sense of duty and the pitiless clamor of his country, raising his soul like a child to its father.