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CHAPTER LVI.

HEN President Lincoln issued the great proclamation of freedom, September 22, 1862, to be effective the first day of January following, he had reached, was passing, and finally passed the crisis of the great struggle, the turning event of his distinct career as reformer and President. This was by far the most momentous and far-reaching act of the nineteenth century. By it the strings and chords of slavery and sympathizing evil were cut loose, and the freedom of man as a true and Divine principle spread far and wide over the earth. It cut the bindings that hampered and tied up thousands of our people. It lifted the load of the slave's unpaid labor in competition from all who toiled. It did drive, perhaps, a few more into active sympathy with the Rebellion; but brought few, if any, to them who were brave enough to join their armies because of it.

The business of searching for and apprehending fugitives or "runaway niggers" in military camps, and delivering them to their masters, and the forays of Negro pursuers, hounds and men, in the free States passed like Sennacherib's legions in the breath of the Lord. This warrant of a Nation's freedom spread over mountain, hill, and valley and tented field, from the Potomac to the Suwanee, and Missouri's Meramec to Ponchartrain, swelling in a grand chorus the joy of another people, who had crossed another Red Sea to liberty.

The constitutionalism and conservatism of slavery at the head of our armies got their staggering blow. Later they fell away completely when Grant crossed the Rapidan, and

were sorted and packed in limbo, as relics, with the old flintlocks of the Revolution.

The fall elections of 1862 were the only evidence ever offered, that the proclamation was a mistake. This was more imaginary than real. They proved to be no more than opinions, for the next election, closely following, reversed these, and set aside all our enemies had asserted, as well as the fears of faint-hearted loyalists, proving nothing, as elections frequently do. Several free States gave majorities against the Administration, it is true; but it was no benefit whatever to the slaveholders' Rebellion.

Of these State elections, it should be remembered of the million volunteers or more, soldiers and sailors then in service, few of them voted. Our armies were stronger then in our cause than they had ever been. They were in better condition than ever to express themselves concerning slavery, when with opportunity they would have cheerfully voted for and supported the President as they did generally in 1864, when the laws were changed permitting them to vote. Another distinct result was that as trifling with slavery was over with, our campaigns were more vigorously conducted with more of determined spirit and purpose in all our movements afterwards.

From all that could be seen and gathered at the time, those unfriendly State elections would have been more seriously against us if the proclamation had not been issued by reason of the loss of interest of all anti-slavery people. It came in God's own time, when in his wrath he would tolerate the sin and oppression no longer. The time had come in the progress of the war, that whether we met the dead drag of an unfriendly election or conservative paralysis at the head of our armies, we had come to believe them temporary and passing obstacles, to which we paid no attention and marched on. In the shortest possible time the strongest proof of the President's wisdom and management was the great change

and rise of the Negro people. They were so stoutly active for their freedom, and so earnest about it, that no one could be mistaken. All they asked was the opportunity to get into the ranks, fight for it, die for it, and help to win it. The news that President Lincoln "Had done issued de proclamashun dat freed de brack men" spread over the land, as we have said, to our front and through the lines to the remotest corner of the Confederacy in a few days. It spread in the way that all believed it. It was carried day and night, from man to man in swift and solemn trust, until the toilers caught it in the canebrakes and cottonfields. "In de brilin' sun, 'long on de Gulf ob Mexico an' to de las' point ob de Eberglades ob Floridee, all heard it an' shouted, 'Glory to de good Lawd dat's hearn us!" They got down on their knees in their cabins and in their fields, openly or secretly wherever they could, and as they could but sincerely do everywhere, "thankin' de good Lawd agen fer dis gret blessin' ob freedum an' prayin' him to bress an' tek keer ob, de very bes' you kin, de great Mas'r Linkum.”

They believed in the President, and followed him as faithfully as, or better than, Israel followed Moses. They had faith, and lived for freedom. By thousands they served, fought, and died for it, in the strength that neither sophistry, deception, persecution, nor death could shake. Soon they were turned, rising up a new and invigorated people. They were seeking labor for wages, as the means of bettered life and living, like their fellow-men of so many colors and different kinds of hair.

Very soon some of them began picking up a gun here and there, and were helping in the scouting, the skirmish, and battle wherever they were let do it. Some companies were organized, and the recruiting of colored American soldiers began. These served and fought well, and the idea of enlisting colored troops grew and strengthened. Our soldiers took it up, and agreed that a black man might as well take a gun VOL. II.-44.

and fight for his freedom on our side, as to build forts, move army trains, or toil for an army in camp, or dig in the field for its subsistence, only to be a slave on the other side.

The companies grew into regiments, brigades, and divisions. These stood in the front ranks where every skirmish and battle took them. They fulfilled their promise, and fought side by side with us, as they are doing to this day, like men who have earned and are worthy the freedom that came in the low tide of 1862. This direct and straightforward striking the scourge, as the plain and unmistakable cause of the war and all its spreading evils, gave us the unchecked sympathy and prayerful help of the friends of freedom everywhere.

Our friends of liberty in Britain, much to their credit, took up our cause by the hundreds of thousands, that too, where the shortage of cotton because of our war was shutting down hundreds of mills, thereby throwing thousands of our best friends out of employment; often into distress. Still the sturdy yeomanry loved freedom more, and in the practice of more economical living with increased energy in other directions, they stood with us to the end, in word and deed, that should be remembered by the friends of liberty for all time. Many of these mill people of Britain and Ireland came over, where they enlisted with us in the thickest of the strife, as the Germans did in great numbers. In a few weeks afterwards these were transformed into American soldiers, and they and theirs, who left all they had to come over and help us, are with us to-day. These English, Irish, and Scotch common people were so much minded like ourselves, that when they had opportunity they took to Mr. Beecher's great campaign through Britain as our brethren, and in unnumbered thousands day and night for months, with Beecher, John Bright, and human liberty, made one of the greatest and most effective campaigns for the rights of men ever made in any cause or country.

While these better and more noble-minded were truly and honestly on our side, steadfast and faithful in the darkest swing of the storm, the Administrations of Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone and their associated tyrants of the sea, with the consort of every intriguing court of Europe, from London, Paris, and Vienna, to Mount Carlo, Russia alone excepted, were our clandestine and fast-responding enemies. In England, in the face of its free and friendly people, and as much against its more honorable Queen and her noblehearted husband, these freedom-hating ministries kept their shipyards open, working day and night to build Confederate vessels for privateering enterprises.

When our Covenant of Freedom was openly proclaimed, it did not enlarge the area or give more strength to the insurrection and its slave-spreading conspiracy; but it did bring those in it face to face with collapse and surrender, or the most stubborn defense of their uncaptured territory. Their armies being brave and trained Americans, there remained no doubt of the desperate conflict ahead. Their conspiring leaders, more unhesitatingly than ever, plunged them deeper in the dreadful progress of carnage that was furrowing the earth with trenches for miles, to bury the heaps of heroes slain.

Little, if anything, was added to the roster of the Confederate armies; but the men in them, first of all, realized that the clogs were all off on the Union side, and that "the chute to the mill-race was wide open," against them henceforward. It was to be a conflict to the death. Before this direful foreboding the seven hundred thousand brave Southern American soldiers buckled their armor more firmly on, and held their guns with stronger grip, knowing well it pointed to the only hope of victory, or to a line of Confederate graves. These brave Southern men fought four long years for their Southern empire, where no nation of Europe could have maintained such a conflict half so long, without