, caused protracted and deepening
anxiety. But the tide turned soon. Moreover, Lincoln's military
perplexities, which have demanded our detailed attention during these
particular campaigns, were very nearly at an end. We have here to turn
back to the political problem of his Presidency, for the bloody and
inconclusive battle upon the Antietam, more than seven months before,
had led strangely to political consequences which were great and
memorable.

CHAPTER X

EMANCIPATION

When the news of a second battle of Bull Run reached England it seemed
at first to Lord John Russell that the failure of the North was
certain, and he asked Palmerston and his colleagues to consider whether
they must not soon recognise the Confederacy, and whether mediation in
the interest of peace and humanity might not perhaps follow. But
within two months all thoughts of recognising the Confederacy had been
so completely put aside that even Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville
caused no renewal of the suggestion, and an invitation from Louis
Napoleon to joint action of this kind between England and France had
once for all been rejected. The battle of Antietam had been fought in
the meantime. This made men think that the South could no more win a
speedy and decisive success than the North, and that victory must rest
in the end with the side that could last. But that was not all; the
battle of Antietam was followed within five days by an event which made
it impossible for any Government of this country to take action
unfriendly to the North.

On September 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln set his hand to a Proclamation
of which the principal words were these: "That, on the first day of
January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, 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 policy and the true effect of this act cannot be understood without
some examination. Still less so can the course of the man who will
always be remembered as its author. First, in regard to the legal
effect of the Proclamation; in normal times the President would of
course not have had the power, which even the Legislature did not
possess, to set free a single slave; the Proclamation was an act of war
on his part, as Commander-in-Chief of the forces, by which slaves were
to be take