ion, it doomed slavery everywhere. The condition was a successful
prosecution of the war, the restoration of the Union. Consequently, at
that moment, nothing that made issue with the President, that
threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of
Abolitionist support. The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist
group was a possible change in the President's mood, a possible
recantation on January first. In order to hold him to his word, they
were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster
that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about
strictly constitutional issues, or about questions of party leadership.
Away with all your "gabble" about such small things! The Jacobins saw
the moving hand--at least for this moment--in the crumbling wall of the
palace of their delusion.

Many men who were not Abolitionists perceived, before Congress met,
that Lincoln had made a great stroke internationally. The "Liberal party
throughout the world" gave a cry of delight, and rose instantly to his
support. John Bright declared that the Emancipation Proclamation "made
it impossible for England to intervene for the South" and derided "the
silly proposition of the French Emperor looking toward intervention."(1)
Bright's closest friend in America was Sumner and Sumner was chairman
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He understood the value
of international sentiment, its working importance, as good provincials
like Chandler did not. Furthermore, he was always an Abolitionist first
and a Jacobin second--if at all. From this time forward, the Jacobins
were never able to count on him, not even when they rebuilt the
Vindictive Coalition a year and a half later. In December, 1862, how did
they dare--true blue politicians that they were--how did they dare raise
a constitutional issue involving the right of the President to capture,
in the way he had, international security?

The crowning irony in the new situation of the Jacobins was the
revelation that they had played unwittingly into the hands of the
Democrats. Their short-sighted astuteness in tying up emancipation with
the war powers was matched by an equal astuteness equally short-sighted.
The organization of the Little Men, when it refused to endorse Lincoln's
all-parties program, had found itself in the absurd position of a party
without an issue. It contained, to be sure, a large proportion of the
Nort