every indispensable means, that government—­that nation—­of which that Constitution was the organic law.  Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution?  By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.  I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation.  Right or wrong, I assumed this ground; and now avow it.  I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution, all together.  When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity.  When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not think it an indispensable necessity.  When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come.  When, in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border States to favour compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure.  They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or laying strong hand upon the coloured element.  I chose the latter.  In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this I was not entirely confident.  More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force,—­no loss by it anyhow or anywhere.  On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and labourers.  These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no cavilling.  We have the men, and we could not have had them without the measure.

And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns.  If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot face the truth.

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation.  In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity.  I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.  Now, at the end of three years’ struggle, the nation’s condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected.  God alone can claim it.  Whither it is tending seems plain.  If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.