One or two trifling verbal alterations were made. The only important suggestion came from Mr. Seward, who said that, in the "depression of the public mind consequent upon our repeated adverses," he feared that so important a step might "be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government." He dreaded that "it would be considered our last shriek on the retreat." Therefore he thought it would be well to postpone issuing the proclamation till it could come before the country with the support of some military success. Mr. Lincoln, who had not committed himself upon the precise point of time, approved this idea. In fact, he had already had in mind this same notion, that a victory would be an excellent companion for the
proclamation. In July Mr. Boutwell had said to him that the North would not succeed until the slaves were emancipated, and Mr. Lincoln had replied: "You would not have it done now, would you? Had we not better wait for something like a victory?" This point being accordingly settled to the satisfaction of all, the meeting then dissolved, with the understanding that the secret was to be closely kept for the present; and Mr. Lincoln again put away his paper to await the coming of leaden-footed victory.
For the moment the prospects of this event were certainly sufficiently gloomy. Less than three weeks, however, brought the battle of Antietam. As a real "military success" this was, fairly speaking, unsatisfactory; but it had to serve the turn; the events of the war did not permit the North to be fastidious in using the word victory; if the President had imprudently been more exacting, the Abolitionists would have had to wait for Gettysburg. News of the battle reached Mr. Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home. "Here," he says, "I finished writing the second draft. I came to Washington on Saturday, called the cabinet together to hear it, and it was published on the following Monday, the 22d of September, 1862."
The proclamation was preliminary or monitory only, and it did not promise universal emancipation. It stated that, on January 1, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then
be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;" also, that "the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States."
The measure was entirely Mr. Lincoln's own. Secretary Chase reports that at the cabinet meeting on September 22 he said: "I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take." It has been said that he acted under a severe specific pressure, emanating from the calling of the famous conference of governors at Altoona. This, however, is not true. On September 14 Governor Curtin invited the governors of loyal States to meet on September 24 to discuss the situation and especially the emergency created by the northward advance of General Lee. But that this meeting was more than a coincidence, or that the summons to it had any influence in the matter of the proclamation, is disproved by all that is known concerning it.[[37]] The connection with the battle is direct, avowed, and reasonable; that with the gubernatorial congress is supposititious and improbable. Governor Curtin says distinctly that the President, being informed by himself and two others that such a conference was in preparation, "did not attempt to conceal
the fact that we were upon the eve of an emancipation policy," in response to which statement he received from his auditors the "assurance that the Altoona conference would cordially indorse such a policy." As matter of fact, at the meeting, most of the governors, in a sort of supplementary way, declared their approval of the proclamation; but the governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri would not unite in this action. If further evidence were needed upon this point, it is furnished by the simple statement of President Lincoln himself. He said: "The truth is, I never thought of the meeting of the governors at all. When Lee came over the Potomac I made a resolve that, if McClellan drove him back, I would send the proclamation after him. The battle of Antietam was fought Wednesday, but I could not find out until Saturday whether we had won a victory or lost a battle. It was then too late to issue it on that day, and on Sunday I fixed it up a little, and on Monday I let them have it." Secretary Chase, in his Diary, under date of September 22, 1862, gives an account in keeping with the foregoing sketch, but casts about the proclamation a sort of superstitious complexion, as if it were the fulfillment of a religious vow. He says that at the cabinet meeting the President said: "When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any
one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little) to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise." About an event so important and so picturesque small legends will cluster and cling like little barnacles on the solid rock; but the rock remains the same beneath these deposits, and in this case the fact that the proclamation was determined upon and issued at the sole will and discretion of the President is not shaken by any testimony that is given about it. He regarded it as a most grave measure, as plainly it was; to a Southerner, who had begged him not to have recourse to it, he replied: "You must not expect me to give up this government without playing my last card."[[38]] So now, on this momentous twenty-second day of September, the President, using his own judgment in playing the great game, cast what he conceived to be his ace of trumps upon the table.
The measure took the country by surprise. The President's secret had been well kept, and for once rumor had not forerun execution. Doubtless the reader expects now to hear that one immediate effect was the conciliation of all those who had been so long reproaching Mr. Lincoln for his delay in taking this step. It would seem right and natural that the emancipationists should have rallied with generous ardor to sustain him. They did not. They remained just as dissatisfied and distrustful towards him as ever. Some said that he had been
forced into this policy, some that he had drifted with the tide of events, some that he had waited for popular opinion at the North to give him the cue, instead of himself guiding that opinion. To show that he was false to the responsibility of a ruler, there were those who cited against him his own modest words: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." Others, however, put upon this language the more kindly and more honest interpretation, that Mr. Lincoln appreciated that both President and people were moved by the drift of events, which in turn received their own impulse from an agency higher than human and to which they must obediently yield. But whatever ingenious excuses were devised by extremists for condemning the man who had done the act, the Republican party faithfully supported the act itself. In the middle of December the House passed a resolution ratifying the President's policy as "well adapted to hasten the restoration of peace," and "well chosen as a war measure."