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."

XX