he had the right to exercise it strictly for the purpose of weakening the enemy or strengthening his own generals; he had not the right to exercise it in the cause of humanity, if it would not either weaken the enemy or strengthen his own side.  If by premature exercise he should alienate great numbers of border-state men, while the sheet of paper with his name at its foot would be ineffectual to give actual liberty of action to a single black man in the Confederacy, he would aid the South and injure the North,—­that is to say, he would accomplish precisely the reverse of that which alone could lawfully form the basis of his action.  The question of When, therefore, was a very serious one.  At what stage of the contest would a declaration of emancipation be hurtful to the Southern and beneficial to the Northern cause?

Schuyler Colfax well said that Mr. Lincoln’s judgment, when settled, “was almost as immovable as the eternal hills.”  A good illustration of this was given upon a day about the end of July or beginning of August, 1862, when Mr. Lincoln called a cabinet meeting.  To his assembled secretaries he then said, with his usual simple brevity, that he was going to communicate to them something about which he did not desire them to offer any advice, since his determination was taken; they might make suggestions as to details, but nothing more.  After this imperious statement he read the preliminary proclamation of emancipation.  The ministers listened in silence; not one of them had been consulted; not one of them, until this moment, knew the President’s purpose; not even now did he think it worth while to go through any idle form of asking the opinion of any one of them.[36] He alone had settled the matter, and simply notified them that he was about to do the most momentous thing that had ever been done upon this continent since thirteen British colonies had become a nation.  Such a presentation of “one-man-power” certainly stood out in startling relief upon the background of popular government and the great free republican system of the world!

One or two trifling verbal alterations were made.  The only important suggestion came from Mr. Seward, who said that, in the “depression of the public mind consequent upon our repeated adverses,” he feared that so important a step might “be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government.”  He dreaded that “it would be considered our last shriek on the retreat.”  Therefore he thought it would be well to postpone issuing the proclamation till it could come before the country with the support of some military success.  Mr. Lincoln, who had not committed himself upon the precise point of time, approved this idea.  In fact, he had already had in mind this same notion, that a victory would be an excellent companion for the proclamation.  In July