...  But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid.  If it is not valid it needs no retraction.  If it is valid, it cannot be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.  Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favorably for the Union.  Why better after the retraction than before the issue?  There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation was issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance.  The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the proclamation as before.  I know, as fully as one can know the opinion of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most important victories, believe the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops constitute the heaviest blows yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved, when it was, but for the aid of black soldiers.

Among the commanders who hold these views are some who have never had an affinity with what is called “abolitionism,” or with “Republican party politics,” but who hold them purely as military opinions.  I submit their opinions as entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith.

You say that you will not fight to free negroes.  Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter.  Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union.  I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union.  Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting it will be an apt time then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes.  I thought that, in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you.  Do you think differently?

I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union.  Does it appear otherwise to you?  But negroes, like other people, act upon motives.  Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them?  If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom.  And the promise, being made, must be kept.

The signs look better.  The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.  Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to them.  Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left.  The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand.  On the spot their part of the history was jotted down in black and white.