in its distress; and in spite of every obstacle he was gradually bringing into being a unity of sympathy and of purpose, which in the early days of the war had seemed an impossible ideal.  Not the least politic of his measures was the edict of emancipation, published after the battle of Sharpsburg.  It was not a measure without flaw.  It contained paragraphs which might fairly be interpreted, and were so interpreted by the Confederates, as inciting the negroes to rise against their masters, thus exposing to all the horrors of a servile insurrection, with its accompaniments of murder and outrage, the farms and plantations where the women and children of the South lived lonely and unprotected.  But if the edict served only to embitter the Southerners, to bind the whole country together in a still closer league of resistance, and to make peace except by conquest impossible, it was worth the price.  The party in the North which fought for the re-establishment of the Union had carried on the war with but small success.  The tale of reverses had told at last upon recruiting.  Men were unwilling to come forward; and those who were bribed by large bounties to join the armies were of a different character to the original volunteer.  Enthusiasm in the cause was fast diminishing when Lincoln, purely on his own initiative, proclaimed emancipation, and, investing the war with the dignity of a crusade, inspired the soldier with a new incentive, and appealed to a feeling which had not yet been stirred.  Many Northerners had not thought it worth while to fight for the re-establishment of the Union on the basis of the Constitution.  If slavery was to be permitted to continue they preferred separation; and these men were farmers and agriculturists, the class which furnished the best soldiers, men of American birth, for the most part abolitionists, and ready to fight for the principle they had so much at heart.  It is true that the effect of the edict was not at once apparent.  It was not received everywhere with acclamation.  The army had small sympathy with the coloured race, and the political opponents of the President accused him vehemently of unconstitutional action.  Their denunciations, however, missed the mark.  The letter of the Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln clearly saw, had ceased to be regarded, at least by the great bulk of the people, with superstitious reverence.

They had learned to think more of great principles than of political expedients; and if the defence of their hereditary rights had welded the South into a nation, the assertion of a still nobler principle, the liberty of man, placed the North on a higher plane, enlisted the sympathy of Europe, and completed the isolation of the Confederacy.