It was a business-like and humane thought, and Congress assented to it. But it was based upon the mistaken notion that the Confederates were fighting primarily for their property rights in slaves. It ignored the supremely important fact that the war was costing the Southern people incalculably more than double the value of all the slaves owned in those states. It failed to recognize the equally important fact that, rightly or wrongly, the Southern people sincerely believed themselves to be contending for liberty, for the constitutional rights of the states, for the principle of local self-government; that they were contending against that basilar principle of imperialistic oppression – the government of communities by a power outside of themselves. To Mr. Lincoln's own dictum that "no man is good enough to govern any other man without that other man's consent" they had added the corollary that no community and no nation is good enough to govern any other community without that other's consent. They were fighting, as they confidently believed, for the fundamental principle of self-government among men, and to that cause they were ready to make sacrifice of slavery as cheerfully and as heroically as they were already making sacrifice of all else that they held dear.

Mr. Lincoln misunderstood them and misinterpreted their attitude and their condition of mind. If they had been offered ten thousand dollars apiece for all their slaves – worth on the average only a few hundreds at most – they would have rejected the offer angrily as a tendered bribe to induce them to give up and betray that cause of human liberty, states' rights, and the right of local self-government, in behalf of which they had taken up arms.

To such men, inspired by such beliefs and engaged in such a cause, no price could offer the smallest temptation. Mr. Lincoln had misunderstood the Southern people, as they had misunderstood him. Their warfare had no element of commercialism or of greed in it, precisely as his was directed not, as they supposed, to the destruction of State autonomy, but to the sole object of restoring and perpetuating the American Union. As fanaticism in antagonism to slavery could not swerve him, so considerations of merely pecuniary advantage did not and could not influence them. His proposal, which was in effect, to buy all the negroes in the South, made no more impression upon the Southern mind than would a proposal to purchase their wives and children, or their right to sign their own names.

It was under this misapprehension of Southern sentiment that Mr. Lincoln for a space rejected every suggestion of negro emancipation and sought to hold his generals in the field to a policy of complete non-interference with slavery in the Southern States.

We have seen in what fashion he dealt with General Fremont's proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. On the twelfth of April, 1862, General David Hunter, in command of the forces on the South Carolina coast, issued a general order to the effect that all slaves within his immediate jurisdiction should be confiscated as contraband of war, and instantly set free. On the ninth of May he issued another general order in which he declared all negroes resident in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida to be free men.

Ten days later Mr. Lincoln annulled these orders absolutely by executive command, declaring that the question of the emancipation of slaves was one which he reserved to himself, and forbidding all generals in the field to deal with it in any way, direct or indirect.

Congress had legislated on the subject in a very cautious and hesitating fashion. In August, 1861, it had passed an act authorizing military commanders to seize and hold all negro slaves found actually employed in the military service of the Confederacy with the knowledge and consent of their owners. But the act stipulated that slaves so confiscated, should not be set free but should be held subject to the future disposal of the Federal courts.

The proceedings of military officers in the field with respect to this matter varied according to the views and temper of each. Mr. Lincoln's revocation of Fremont's orders led to that General's resignation. General Hunter's act in enlisting a regiment of fugitive slaves who had fled into his lines, gave great alarm in Congress and in the country, lest the war should be diverted from its Union-saving purpose and converted into a crusade for the forcible abolition of slavery, involving all the horrors of a servile insurrection on the part of slaves who, in many parts of the South, were scarcely better than half savages.

General Williams, commanding the Department of the Gulf, sought to solve the difficulty by the simple process of turning all fugitive slaves out of his camps, thus avoiding the necessity of deciding whether or not he would permit masters to come within his lines for the purpose of recapturing their slaves. Two colonels refused to obey this order, and were promptly removed from their commands in consequence.

Thus the "irrepressible conflict" of sentiment on the subject of property in slaves divided the Federal army and sorely vexed the country as it had done for nearly half a century before.

To Mr. Lincoln it brought perplexities of the gravest sort. It embarrassed him very greatly in his effort to hold the war steadily to the purpose he had marked out for it. It defeated all his hopes of persuading the South to believe that the Government was trying to save or restore the Union, and that the administration was sincere in its declaration of a fixed purpose not to interfere with the institution of slavery in states where it constitutionally existed or to impair in any way the autonomy of those states. Such pledges could make no appeal to the minds of Southern men in face of the actual interferences attempted, often successfully, by commanders in the field.

Worse still, this irreconcilable division of opinion and diversity of action, threatened to deprive the administration of that strong support at the North which Mr. Lincoln deemed necessary to a successful prosecution of the war. It threatened to alienate that great body of men at the North who were implacably opposed to abolitionism and who held firmly to the belief that the autonomy of the States was necessary to the maintenance of liberty, but who were ready enough to make sacrifice of blood and treasure in aid of a war waged solely for the preservation of the Union.

In this embarrassing situation Mr. Lincoln made a second attempt to cripple Southern resistance by securing emancipation by purchase in the border states, thus cutting off all hope on the part of the South that those states would ever secede, and at the same time in some degree satisfying the clamor of the abolitionists. He called the border-state Congressmen about him and earnestly, even passionately urged them to vote in Congress for an act pledging the Government to pay to every state that should decree emancipation the full value of all the slaves held in such state at the time the census of 1860 was taken. He especially besought these representatives of border slave states to persuade their constituents to a willing acceptance of these terms.

Nothing of any practical value came of this effort. It resulted only in stimulating on the part of the Abolitionists that aggressive insistence upon universal emancipation by military force which was so sorely embarrassing to the President.

It was soon afterwards (August 19, 1862), that Horace Greeley published his open letter entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" to which Mr. Lincoln replied, setting forth his policy and purpose, in words already quoted in this chapter: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

But all this while Mr. Lincoln contemplated the emancipation of the slaves by executive proclamation as a war measure to be resorted to whenever it should seem to him likely to be effective. In the preceding month of July he had drawn up a proclamation of emancipation, and had read it to his cabinet. But he had laid it aside, believing that the time was not yet ripe. The Confederates seemed at that time at high tide of military success. Their armies, victorious and aggressive, were overthrowing one Federal force after another, and putting Washington itself upon an uncertain defense. It was the conviction both of Mr. Lincoln and of Mr. Seward, that to issue an emancipation proclamation under such circumstances would not only seem ridiculous in the eyes of the world but would be everywhere interpreted as a despairing manifestation of conscious weakness, the futile outcry of failure. He must wait for victories before taking this step.

But when after Antietam, Lee withdrew from Maryland and abandoned his campaign against the national capital, Mr. Lincoln decided to assume the rôle of a victor, dictating terms which he held himself strong enough to enforce.

Accordingly on September 22, 1862, he issued a proclamation declaring that on the first of January, 1863, all slaves held in those states or parts of states which should at that time be still in rebellion should be then and forever afterwards free.

This was at once a threat and a promise.

It is a matter of curious speculation to consider what would have been the situation if the Southern States had submitted themselves before the beginning of 1863. In that event the proclamation of freedom to slaves within their borders would have been of no effect, inasmuch as it applied only to states remaining at war. A second executive proclamation of emancipation would have had no war necessity to justify or even to excuse it. For the Constitution conferred upon the President no power to emancipate slaves. It was only on the plea of war necessity that this power could be remotely and speculatively inferred, and that war necessity would have passed completely away had the war itself come to an end before the date set for the enforcement of the threat.

Perhaps it was in view of this very remote contingency that Mr. Lincoln at that time urged upon Congress the adoption of a constitutional amendment forbidding slavery anywhere within the borders of the Union.

Congress did not act upon the recommendation at that time, and on the first of January, 1863, Mr. Lincoln issued his final proclamation of emancipation, naming the states and parts of states in which rebellion was held then to exist, and declaring free all the slaves within those states and parts of states. It did not apply to those slave states which had not joined the Confederacy, and, except that Maryland voluntarily freed her slaves near the end of the war, the institution remained lawful in such states as had not seceded, and actually continued to exist there until December 18, 1865, when the ratification of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was officially proclaimed by Mr. Lincoln's successor.

So far as securing actual liberty to slaves within the Confederate lines was concerned, the emancipation proclamations had no effect whatever. They were probably not expected to have any. But they had an important bearing upon the conduct of the war and the state of the public mind. They made an end of all doubt about what Federal commanders in the field should do with slaves escaping to their lines. They satisfied the strong and growing abolitionist sentiment at the North, and they had some effect in alienating war Democrats and a considerable number of Republicans from the Federal cause, thus checking enlistments in some quarters, and impairing the administration's support.

This effect was far less marked than it would have been had Mr. Lincoln issued an emancipation proclamation earlier in the war when he was first urged to do so. Nevertheless the political effect was notable.

In the autumn elections there was a heavy falling off in Republican majorities, while in some important states Democrats relentlessly opposed to the administration and all its policies were elected to replace Republicans in office. This was notably the case in New York, where Horatio Seymour succeeded the Republican governor, E. D. Morgan, and a sentiment in hostility to the administration and to the war itself grew up, which was afterwards reflected in bloody riots when the time came for a draft of men for the army.

In Europe and particularly in England, the emancipation proclamation went far to change a former friendship for the Confederacy, which had at times threatened danger, into a strong moral support for the Federal cause.

But whatever moral and political results, for or against the Lincoln administration, this act may have produced, it had no perceptible effect upon the actual conduct of the war. That was still to be fought out at the cost of millions of treasure and multitudes of lives. Many of its greatest battles were still to come and its most important campaigns were yet to be fought out.