and
wailing went up from many firesides for husbands and sons who had laid
down on Southern battlefields to rest. The great North, looking up for
succor, saw the "national banner drooping from the flagstaff, heavy with
blood," and typical of the stripes of the slave. For 200 years the
incense of his prayers and tears had ascended. Now from every booming
gun there seemed the voice of God, "Let my people go"--

"They see Him in watch fires
Of a hundred circling camps;
They read His righteous sentence
By the dim and flaring lamps."

The nation had come slowly but firmly up to the duty and necessity of
emancipation. Mr. Lincoln, who was now in accord with Garrison,
Phillips, Douglass, and their adherents, had counseled them to continue
urging the people to this demand, now pressing as a military necessity.
The 1st of January, 1863, being the maturity of the proclamation, lifted
4,000,000 of human beings from chattels to freemen, a grateful, praying
people. Throughout the North and wherever possible in the South the
colored people, on the night of December 31, assembled in their churches
for thanksgiving. On their knees in silence--a silence intense with
suppressed emotion--they awaited the stroke of the clock. It came, the
thrice-welcomed harbinger of freedom, and as it tolled on, and on, the
knell of slavery, pent-up joy could no longer be restrained. "Praise
God, from whom all blessings flow," from a million voices, floated
upward on midnight air. While some shouted "Hallelujah," others, with
folded arms, stood mute and fixed as statuary, while "Tears of joy like
summer raindrops pierced by sunbeams" fell.

When Robespierre and Danton disenthralled France, we learn that the
guillotine bathed in blood was the emblem of their transition state,
from serfs to freemen. With the Negro were the antithesis of anger,
revenge, or despair, that of joy, gratitude, and hope, has been memory's
most choice trio.

This master stroke of policy and justice came with telling effect upon
the consciousness of the people. It was now in deed and in truth a war
for the Union coeval with freedom; every patriot heart beat a responsive
echo, and was stirred by a new inspiration to deeds of heroism. Now
success followed success; Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Chattanooga,
Gettysburg, and the Mississippi bowed in submission to the national
power. The record of history affirms subsequent events that during the
ensuing twelve months