that, unless the states in arms returned to the union by January 1, 1863, the fatal blow at their “peculiar institution” would be delivered.  Southern leaders treated it with slight regard, and so on the date set the promise was fulfilled.  The proclamation was issued as a war measure, adopted by the President as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, on grounds of military necessity.  It did not abolish slavery.  It simply emancipated slaves in places then in arms against federal authority.  Everywhere else slavery, as far as the Proclamation was concerned, remained lawful.

[Illustration:  ABRAHAM LINCOLN]

To seal forever the proclamation of emancipation, and to extend freedom to the whole country, Congress, in January, 1865, on the urgent recommendation of Lincoln, transmitted to the states the thirteenth amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the United States.  By the end of 1865 the amendment was ratified.  The house was not divided against itself; it did not fall; it was all free.

=The Restraint of Civil Liberty.=—­As in all great wars, particularly those in the nature of a civil strife, it was found necessary to use strong measures to sustain opinion favorable to the administration’s military policies and to frustrate the designs of those who sought to hamper its action.  Within two weeks of his first call for volunteers, Lincoln empowered General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus along the line of march between Philadelphia and Washington and thus to arrest and hold without interference from civil courts any one whom he deemed a menace to the union.  At a later date the area thus ruled by military officers was extended by executive proclamation.  By an act of March 3, 1863, Congress, desiring to lay all doubts about the President’s power, authorized him to suspend the writ throughout the United States or in any part thereof.  It also freed military officers from the necessity of surrendering to civil courts persons arrested under their orders, or even making answers to writs issued from such courts.  In the autumn of that year the President, acting under the terms of this law, declared this ancient and honorable instrument for the protection of civil liberties, the habeas corpus, suspended throughout the length and breadth of the land.  The power of the government was also strengthened by an act defining and punishing certain conspiracies, passed on July 31, 1861—­a measure which imposed heavy penalties on those who by force, intimidation, or threat interfered with the execution of the law.

Thus doubly armed, the military authorities spared no one suspected of active sympathy with the Southern cause.  Editors were arrested and imprisoned, their papers suspended, and their newsboys locked up.  Those who organized “peace meetings” soon found themselves in the toils of the law.  Members of the Maryland legislature, the mayor of Baltimore, and local editors suspected of entertaining secessionist