On the afternoon of December 31, the cabinet meeting being over, Mr. Lincoln once more carefully rewrote the proclamation, embodying in it the suggestions which had been made as to mere verbal improvements; but he rigidly adhered to his own draft in retaining the exceptions as to fractional parts of States and the forty-eight counties of West Virginia; and also his announcement of intention to enlist the freedmen in military service. Secretary Chase had submitted the form of a closing paragraph. This the President also adopted, but added to it, after the words "warranted by the Constitution," his own important qualifying correction, "upon military necessity."
The full text of the weighty document will be found in a foot-note.[5]
It recited the announcement of the September proclamation; defined its character and authority as a military decree; designated the States and parts of States that day in rebellion against the government; ordered and declared that all persons held as slaves therein "are and henceforward shall be free"; and that such persons of suitable condition would be received into the military service. "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
The conclusion of the momentous transaction was as deliberate and simple as had been its various stages of preparation. The morning and midday of January 1, 1863, were occupied by the half-social, half-official ceremonial of the usual New Year's day reception at the Executive Mansion, established by long custom. At about three o'clock in the afternoon, after full three hours of greetings and handshakings, Mr. Lincoln and perhaps a dozen persons assembled in the executive office, and, without any prearranged ceremony the President affixed his signature to the great Edict of Freedom. No better commentary will ever be written upon this far-reaching act than that which he himself embodied in a letter written to a friend a little more than a year later:
"I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Frémont 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."
XXV
Negro Soldiers—Fort Pillow—Retaliation—Draft—Northern Democrats—Governor Seymour's Attitude—Draft Riots in New York—Vallandigham—Lincoln on his Authority to Suspend Writ of Habeas Corpus—Knights of the Golden Circle—Jacob Thompson in Canada
On the subject of negro soldiers, as on many other topics, the period of active rebellion and civil war had wrought a profound change in public opinion. From the foundation of the government to the Rebellion, the horrible nightmare of a possible slave insurrection had brooded over the entire South. This feeling naturally had a sympathetic reflection in the North, and at first produced an instinctive shrinking from any thought of placing arms in the hands of the blacks whom the chances of war had given practical or legal freedom. During the year 1862, a few sporadic efforts were made by zealous individuals, under apparently favoring conditions, to begin the formation of colored regiments. The eccentric Senator Lane tried it in Kansas, or, rather, along the Missouri border without success. General Hunter made an experiment in South Carolina, but found the freedmen too unwilling to enlist, and the white officers too prejudiced to instruct them. General Butler, at New Orleans, infused his wonted energy into a similar attempt, with somewhat better results. He found that before the capture of the city, Governor Moore of Louisiana had begun the organization of a regiment of free colored men for local defense. Butler resuscitated this organization for which he thus had the advantage of Confederate example and precedent, and against which the accusation of arming slaves could not be urged. Early in September, Butler reported, with his usual biting sarcasm: