that the Altoona conference would cordially indorse such a policy.”  As matter of fact, at the meeting, most of the governors, in a sort of supplementary way, declared their approval of the proclamation; but the governors of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri would not unite in this action.  If further evidence were needed upon this point, it is furnished by the simple statement of President Lincoln himself.  He said:  “The truth is, I never thought of the meeting of the governors at all.  When Lee came over the Potomac I made a resolve that, if McClellan drove him back, I would send the proclamation after him.  The battle of Antietam was fought Wednesday, but I could not find out until Saturday whether we had won a victory or lost a battle.  It was then too late to issue it on that day, and on Sunday I fixed it up a little, and on Monday I let them have it.”  Secretary Chase, in his Diary, under date of September 22, 1862, gives an account in keeping with the foregoing sketch, but casts about the proclamation a sort of superstitious complexion, as if it were the fulfillment of a religious vow.  He says that at the cabinet meeting the President said:  “When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful.  I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little) to my Maker.  The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.”  About an event so important and so picturesque small legends will cluster and cling like little barnacles on the solid rock; but the rock remains the same beneath these deposits, and in this case the fact that the proclamation was determined upon and issued at the sole will and discretion of the President is not shaken by any testimony that is given about it.  He regarded it as a most grave measure, as plainly it was; to a Southerner, who had begged him not to have recourse to it, he replied:  “You must not expect me to give up this government without playing my last card."[38] So now, on this momentous twenty-second day of September, the President, using his own judgment in playing the great game, cast what he conceived to be his ace of trumps upon the table.

The measure took the country by surprise.  The President’s secret had been well kept, and for once rumor had not forerun execution.  Doubtless the reader expects now to hear that one immediate effect was the conciliation of all those who had been so long reproaching Mr. Lincoln for his delay in taking this step.  It would seem right and natural that the emancipationists should have rallied with generous ardor to sustain him.  They did not.  They remained just as dissatisfied and distrustful towards him as ever.  Some said that he had been forced into this policy, some that he had drifted with the tide of events, some that he had waited for popular opinion at the North to give him the cue, instead