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Title: The Great Conspiracy, Part 6

Author: John Alexander Logan

Release Date: June 13, 2004 [EBook #7138]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT CONSPIRACY, PART 6 ***

Produced by David Widger

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

Its Origin and History

Part 6

BY

JOHN LOGAN

CHAPTER XXII.

FREEDOM'S SUN STILL RISING.

After President Lincoln had issued his Proclamation of Emancipation, the
friends of Freedom clearly perceived--and none of them more clearly than
himself that until the incorporation of that great Act into the
Constitution of the United States itself, there could be no real
assurance of safety to the liberties of the emancipated; that unless
this were done there would be left, even after the suppression of the
Rebellion, a living spark of dissension which might at any time again be
fanned into the flames of Civil War.

Hence, at all proper times, Mr. Lincoln favored and even
urged Congressional action upon the subject. It was not, however, until
the following year that definite action may be said to have commenced in
Congress toward that end; and, as Congress was slow, he found it
necessary to say in his third Annual Message: "while I remain in my
present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the
Emancipation Proclamation; nor shall I return to Slavery any person who
is Free by the terms of that Proclamation, or by any of the Acts of
Congress,"

Meantime, however, occurred the series of glorious
Union victories in the West, ending with the surrender to Grant's
triumphant Forces on the 4th of July, 1863, of Vicksburg--"the Gibraltar
of the West"--with its Garrison, Army, and enormous quantities of arms
and munitions of war; thus closing a brilliant and successful Campaign
with a blow which literally "broke the back" of the Rebellion; while,
almost simultaneously, July 1-3, the Un