Mr. Boutwell had said to him that the North would not succeed until the slaves were emancipated, and Mr. Lincoln had replied:  “You would not have it done now, would you?  Had we not better wait for something like a victory?” This point being accordingly settled to the satisfaction of all, the meeting then dissolved, with the understanding that the secret was to be closely kept for the present; and Mr. Lincoln again put away his paper to await the coming of leaden-footed victory.

For the moment the prospects of this event were certainly sufficiently gloomy.  Less than three weeks, however, brought the battle of Antietam.  As a real “military success” this was, fairly speaking, unsatisfactory; but it had to serve the turn; the events of the war did not permit the North to be fastidious in using the word victory; if the President had imprudently been more exacting, the Abolitionists would have had to wait for Gettysburg.  News of the battle reached Mr. Lincoln at the Soldiers’ Home.  “Here,” he says, “I finished writing the second draft.  I came to Washington on Saturday, called the cabinet together to hear it, and it was published on the following Monday, the 22d of September, 1862.”

The proclamation was preliminary or monitory only, and it did not promise universal emancipation.  It stated that, on January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;” also, that “the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States.”

The measure was entirely Mr. Lincoln’s own.  Secretary Chase reports that at the cabinet meeting on September 22 he said:  “I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”  It has been said that he acted under a severe specific pressure, emanating from the calling of the famous conference of governors at Altoona.  This, however, is not true.  On September 14 Governor Curtin invited the governors of loyal States to meet on September 24 to discuss the situation and especially the emergency created by the northward advance of General Lee.  But that this meeting was more than a coincidence, or that the summons to it had any influence in the matter of the proclamation, is disproved by all that is known concerning it.[37] The connection with the battle is direct, avowed, and reasonable; that with the gubernatorial congress is supposititious and improbable.  Governor Curtin says distinctly that the President, being informed by himself and two others that such a conference was in preparation, “did not attempt to conceal the fact that we were upon the eve of an emancipation policy,” in response to which statement he received from his auditors the “assurance