Its political results were
far more marked and important. If it did not fully restore cordiality
between the President and the Abolition leaders, it prevented an open
rupture. It served as a bridge between them. Although they never took
Mr. Lincoln fully into their confidence again, the Abolitionists
interpreted his proclamation as a concession and an abandonment of his
previous policy, which it was much more in appearance than actually.
At all events, it was splendid politics. The somewhat theatrical
manner in which it was worked up and promulgated in installments, thus
arousing in advance a widespread interest and curiosity, showed no
little strategic ability. No more skillful move is recorded in the
history of our parties and partisans than this act of Mr. Lincoln, by
which he disarmed his Anti-Slavery critics without giving them any
material advantage or changing the actual situation. I am not now
speaking of the motive underlying the proclamation of the President,
but of its effect. Without it he could not have been renominated and
re-elected.

Another observation, in order to be entirely just to Mr. Lincoln,
after what has been stated, would at this point seem to be called for.
There is no doubt that from the first he was at heart an Anti-Slavery
man, which is saying a good deal for one born in Kentucky, raised in
southern Indiana and southern Illinois, and who was naturally of a
conservative turn of mind. Nevertheless, he was never an Abolitionist.
He was opposed to immediate--what he called "sudden"--emancipation. He
recognized the "right"--his own word--of the slave-owner to his pound
of flesh, either in the person of his bondman or a cash equivalent. He
was strongly prejudiced against the negro. Of that fact we have the
evidence in his colonization ideas. He favored the banishment of our
American-born black people from their native land. It was a cruel
proposition. True, the President did move from his first position,
which, as we have seen, was far from that occupied by the
Abolitionists, but from first to last he was more of a follower than
leader in the procession.

And here the author wishes to add, in justice to himself, that if, by
reason of anything he has said in this chapter, or elsewhere in this
work, in criticism of Mr. Lincoln's dealings with the slavery issue,
he should be accused of unfriendliness toward the great martyr
President, he enters a full and strong denial. He holds that, in view
of