Here was Lincoln’s final answer to Stevens; here, his audacious challenge to the Jacobins.  And now appeared the wisdom of his political strategy, holding back emancipation until Congress was out of the way.  Had Congress been in session what a hubbub would have ensued!  Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, Sumner, Stevens, all hurrying to join issue on the dictatorship; to get it before the country ahead of emancipation.  Rather, one can not imagine Lincoln daring to play this second card, so soon after the first, except with abundant time for the two issues to disentangle themselves in the public mind ere Congress met.  And that was what happened.  When the Houses met in December, the Jacobins found their position revolutionized.  The men who, in July at the head of the Vindictive coalition, dominated Congress, were now a minority faction biting their nails at the President amid the ruins of their coalition.

There were three reasons for this collapse.  First of all, the Abolitionists, for the moment, were a faction by themselves.  Six weeks had sufficed to intoxicate them with their opportunity.  The significance of the Proclamation had had time to arise towering on their spiritual vision, one of the gates of the New Jerusalem.

Limited as it was in application who could doubt that, with one condition, it doomed slavery everywhere.  The condition was a successful prosecution of the war, the restoration of the Union.  Consequently, at that moment, nothing that made issue with the President, that threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support.  The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President’s mood, a possible recantation on January first.  In order to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of.  No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, or about questions of party leadership.  Away with all your “gabble” about such small things!  The Jacobins saw the moving hand—­at least for this moment—­in the crumbling wall of the palace of their delusion.

Many men who were not Abolitionists perceived, before Congress met, that Lincoln had made a great stroke internationally.  The “Liberal party throughout the world” gave a cry of delight, and rose instantly to his support.  John Bright declared that the Emancipation Proclamation “made it impossible for England to intervene for the South” and derided “the silly proposition of the French Emperor looking toward intervention."(1) Bright’s closest friend in America was Sumner and Sumner was chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  He understood the value of international sentiment, its working importance, as good provincials like Chandler did not.  Furthermore, he was always an Abolitionist first and a Jacobin second—­if at all.  From this time forward, the Jacobins were never able to count on him, not even when they rebuilt the Vindictive Coalition a year and a half later.  In December, 1862, how did they dare—­true blue politicians that they were—­how did they dare raise a constitutional issue involving the right of the President to capture, in the way he had, international security?