To save the Union! Would emancipation drive the border states into revolt? Would it let loose a terror in the night that would destroy and rape and pillage all the land? He had been amply warned. Or were the Abolitionists right? George Thompson, the Englishman, had been very convincing; the President had talked with William Lloyd Garrison, who all these years had never wavered from his stand; and in this very room he had received the Negro, Frederick Douglass.
Douglass had stated his case so well, so completely, so wrapped in logic that the President had found himself defending his position to the ex-slave. He had sat quietly, listened patiently, and then spoken.
“It is the only way, Mr. Lincoln, the only way to save the Union,” Douglass said.
Outside, the day was dark and lowering. The sun hid behind banks of muddy clouds; dirty snow lay heaped against the Capitol. The tall man dropped to his knees and buried his haggard face in his hands. “Thy will be done, oh God, Thy will!” He, Abraham Lincoln, fourteenth president of the United States, would stake his honor, his good name, all that he had to give, to preserve the Union. And down through the ages men would judge him by one day’s deed. He rose from his knees, turned and pulled the cord that summoned his secretary.
In Boston they were waiting. This was the day when the government was to set its face against slavery. Though the conditions on which the President had promised to withhold the proclamation had not been complied with, there was room for doubt and fear. Mr. Lincoln was a man of tender heart and boundless patience; no man could tell to what lengths he might go for peace and reconciliation. An emancipation proclamation would end all compromises with slavery, change the entire conduct of the war, give it a new aim.
They held watch-meetings in all the colored churches on New Year’s Eve and went on to a great mass meeting in Tremont Temple, which extended through the day and evening. A grand jubilee concert in Music Hall was scheduled for the afternoon. They expected the President’s proclamation to reach the city by noon. But the day wore on, and fears arose that it might not, after all, be forthcoming.
The orchestra played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the chorus sang Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, Ralph Waldo Emerson read his “Boston Hymn,” written for the occasion—but still no word. A line of messengers was set up between the telegraph office and the platform of Tremont Temple. William Wells Brown, the Reverend Mr. Grimes, Miss Anna Dickinson, Frederick Douglass—all had said their lines. But speaking or listening to speeches was not the thing for which people had come together today. They were waiting.
Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. Frederick Douglass walked to the edge of the platform. He stood there without saying a word, and before the awful stillness of his helplessness the stirrings of the crowd quieted. His voice was hoarse.
“Ladies and gentlemen—I know the time for argument has passed. Our ears are not attuned to logic or the sound of many words. It is the trumpet of jubilee which we await.”