"When, early in the War, General Fremont attempted Military Emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an Indispensable Necessity.
"When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the Arming of the Blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an Indispensable Necessity.
"When, still later, General Hunter attempted Military Emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the Indispensable Necessity had come.
"When in March, and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the Border-States to favor compensated Emancipation, I believed the Indispensable Necessity for Military Emancipation and arming the Blacks would come, unless averted by that measure.
"They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the Colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely confident.
"More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our Foreign Relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white Military force, no loss by it anyhow, or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers.
"These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.
"And now let any Union man who complains of this measure, test himself by writing down in one line, that he is for subduing the Rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking one hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be best for the measure he condemns. If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot face the truth.
"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now at the end of three years' struggle, the Nation's condition is not what either Party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can claim it.
"Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the Justice and goodness of God.
"Yours truly,
"A. LINCOLN."