In brief both Seward and Russell were regarding emancipation in the light of an incitement to servile insurrection, and both believed such an event would add to the argument for foreign intervention.  The threat Seward had regarded as useful; the event would be highly dangerous to the North.  Not so, however, did emancipation appear in prospect to American diplomats abroad.  Adams was a faithful servant in attempting to carry out the ideas and plans of his chief, but as early as February, 1862, he had urged a Northern declaration in regard to slavery in order to meet in England Southern private representations that, independence won, the South would enter upon a plan of gradual emancipation to be applied “to all persons born after some specific date[911].”  Motley, at Vienna, frequently after February, 1862, in private letters to his friends in America, urged some forward step on slavery[912], but no such advice in despatches found its way into the selected correspondence annually sent to print by Seward.  Far more important was the determination taken by Adams, less than a month after he had presented to Russell the “servile war” threat policy of Seward, to give advice to his chief that the chances of foreign intervention would be best met by the distinct avowal of an anti-slavery object in the war and that the North should be prepared to meet an European offer of mediation by declaring that if made to extinguish slavery such mediation would be welcome.  This Adams thought would probably put an end to the mediation itself, but it would also greatly strengthen the Northern position abroad[913].

This was no prevision of an emancipation proclamation; but it was assertion of the value of a higher “moral issue.”  Meanwhile, on July 24, Seward still fearful of the effects abroad of emancipation, wrote to Motley, asking whether he was “sure” that European powers would not be encouraged in interference, because of material interests, by a Northern attempt to free the slaves[914].  Motley’s answer began, “A thousand times No,” and Adams repeated his plea for a moral issue[915].  September 25, Adams met Seward’s “material interests” argument by declaring that for Great Britain the chief difficulty in the cotton situation was not scarcity, but uncertainty, and that if English manufacturers could but know what to expect there would be little “cotton pressure” on the Government[916].  Thus leading diplomats abroad did not agree with Seward, but the later advices of Adams were not yet received when the day, September 22, arrived on which Lincoln issued the proclamation.  On that day in sending the text to Adams the comment of Seward was brief.  The proclamation, he said, put into effect a policy the approach of which he had “heretofore indicated to our representatives abroad,” and he laid emphasis on the idea that the main purpose of the proclamation was to convince the South that its true interests were in the preservation of the Union—­which