Lincoln's pertinacity, holding fast the program he had accepted, came to its reward. On the seventeenth occurred that furious carnage along the Antietam known as the bloodiest single day of the whole war. Military men have disagreed, calling it sometimes a victory, sometimes a drawn battle. In Lincoln's political strategy the dispute is immaterial. Psychologically, it was a Northern victory. The retreat of Lee was regarded by the North as the turn of the tide. Lincoln's opportunity had arrived.
Again, a unique event occurred in a Cabinet meeting. On the twenty-second of September, with the cannon of Antietam still ringing in their imagination, the Ministers were asked by the President whether they had seen the new volume just published by Artemus Ward. As they had not, he produced it and read aloud with evident relish one of those bits of nonsense which, in the age of Dickens, seemed funny enough. Most of the Cabinet joined in the merriment—Stanton, of course, as always, excepted. Lincoln closed the book, pulled himself together, and became serious.
"Gentlemen," said he, according to the diary of Secretary Chase, "I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to slavery; and you all remember that several weeks ago I read you an order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the Rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland; and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. 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. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This, I say without intending anything but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and as carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say. . . . I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take."(15) The next day the Proclamation was published.
This famous document (16) is as remarkable for the parts of it that are now forgotten as for the rest. The remembered portion is a warning that on the first of January, one hundred days subsequent to the date of the Proclamation—"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." The forgotten portions include four other declarations of executive policy. Lincoln promised that "the Executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who have remained loyal thereto shall be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves." He announced that he would again urge upon Congress "the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid" to all the loyal Slave States that would "voluntarily adopt immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their limits." He would continue to advise the colonization of free Africans abroad. There is still to be mentioned a detail of the Proclamation which, except for its historical setting in the general perspective of Lincoln's political strategy, would appear inexplicable. One might expect in the opening statement, where the author of the Proclamation boldly assumes dictatorial power, an immediate linking of that assumption with the matter in hand. But this does not happen. The Proclamation begins with the following paragraph:
"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States and each of the States and the people thereof in which States that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed."
XXV. A WAR BEHIND THE SCENES
By the autumn of 1862, Lincoln had acquired the same political method that Seward had displayed in the spring of 1861. What a chasm separates the two Lincolns! The cautious, contradictory, almost timid statesman of the Sumter episode; the confident, unified, quietly masterful statesman of the Emancipation Proclamation. Now, in action, he was capable of staking his whole future on the soundness of his own thinking, on his own ability to forecast the inevitable. Without waiting for the results of the Proclamation to appear, but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists, he threw down the gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship. Two days after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator. He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The occasion was the effort of State governments to establish conscription of their militia. The Proclamation delivered any one impeding that attempt into the hands of the military authorities without trial.
Here was Lincoln's final answer to Stevens; here, his audacious challenge to the Jacobins. And now appeared the wisdom of his political strategy, holding back emancipation until Congress was out of the way. Had Congress been in session what a hubbub would have ensued! Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, Sumner, Stevens, all hurrying to join issue on the dictatorship; to get it before the country ahead of emancipation. Rather, one can not imagine Lincoln daring to play this second card, so soon after the first, except with abundant time for the two issues to disentangle themselves in the public mind ere Congress met. And that was what happened. When the Houses met in December, the Jacobins found their position revolutionized. The men who, in July at the head of the Vindictive coalition, dominated Congress, were now a minority faction biting their nails at the President amid the ruins of their coalition.
There were three reasons for this collapse. First of all, the Abolitionists, for the moment, were a faction by themselves. Six weeks had sufficed to intoxicate them with their opportunity. The significance of the Proclamation had had time to arise towering on their spiritual vision, one of the gates of the New Jerusalem.