hey can not much longer maintain the contest.
But you can not divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with
them so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution
within your own States. . . . If the war continues long, as it must if
the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will
be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion--by the mere incidents of
war. . . . Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest
views and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved
its form of government is saved to the world, its beloved history and
cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured
and rendered inconceivably grand."(12)

He made no impression. They would commit themselves to nothing. Lincoln
abandoned his earlier policy.

Of what happened next, he said later, "It had got to be. . . . Things
had gone on from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end
of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had
about played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game.
I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy. . . "(13)

The next day he confided his decision and his reasons to Seward and
Welles. Though "this was a new departure for the President," both
these Ministers agreed with him that the change of policy had become
inevitable.(14)

Lincoln was now entirely himself, astute in action as well as bold in
thought. He would not disclose his change of policy while Congress was
in session. Should he do so, there was no telling what attempt the
Cabal would make to pervert his intention, to twist his course into
the semblance of an acceptance of the congressional theory. He laid the
matter aside until Congress should be temporarily out of the way, until
the long recess between July and December should have begun. In this
closing moment of the second session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress,
which is also the opening moment of the great period of Lincoln, the
feeling against him in Congress was extravagantly bitter. It caught at
anything with which to make a point. A disregard of technicalities
of procedure was magnified into a serious breach of constitutional
privilege. Reviving the question of compensated emancipation, Lincoln
had sent a special message to both Houses, submitting the text of a
compensation bill which he urged them to consider. His enemies raised
an uproar. The Pr