“What will be the practical effect of declaring emancipation, not as an act of justice and beneficence, dispensed by the Supreme Power of the State, but as an act of punishment and retaliation inflicted by a belligerent upon a hostile community, it is not difficult to foresee.  Wherever the arms of the United States penetrate, a premium will be given to acts of plunder, of incendiarism, and of revenge.  The military and naval authorities of the United States will be bound by their orders to maintain and protect the perpetrators of such acts.  Wherever the invasion of the Southern States is crowned by victory, society will be disorganized, industry suspended, large and small proprietors of land alike reduced to beggary[924].”

The London newspaper press was very nearly a unit in treating the proclamation with derision and contempt and no other one situation in the Civil War came in for such vigorous denunciation.  Citations setting forth such comment have frequently been gathered together illustrative of the extent of press condemnation and of its unity in vicious editorials[925].  There is no need to repeat many of them here, but a few will indicate their tone.  The Times greeted the news with an assertion that this was a final desperate play by Lincoln, as hope of victory waned.  It was his “last card[926],” a phrase that caught the fancy of lesser papers and was repeated by them.  October 21, appeared the “strongest” of the Times editorials: 

[Illustration:  ABE LINCOLN’S LAST CARD; OR, ROUGE-ET-NOIR. Reproduced by permission of the Proprietors of “Punch"]

“...  We have here the history of the beginning of the end, but who can tell how the pages will be written which are yet to be filled before the inevitable separation is accomplished?  Are scenes like those which we a short time since described from Dahomey yet to interpose, and is the reign of the last PRESIDENT to go out amid horrible massacres of white women and children, to be followed by the extermination of the black race in the South?  Is LINCOLN yet a name not known to us as it will be known to posterity, and is it ultimately to be classed among that catalogue of monsters, the wholesale assassins and butchers of their kind?

“...  We will attempt at present to predict nothing as to what the consequence of Mr. Lincoln’s new policy may be, except that it certainly will not have the effect of restoring the Union.  It will not deprive Mr. Lincoln of the distinctive affix which he will share with many, for the most part foolish and incompetent, Kings and Emperors, Caliphs and Doges, that of being LINCOLN—­’the Last.’”

The Times led the way; other papers followed on.  The Liverpool Post thought a slave rising inevitable[927], as did also nearly every paper acknowledging anti-Northern sentiments, or professedly neutral, while even pro-Northern journals at first