large amount of labour was withdrawn from the industry necessary to the South, and by the end of the war 180,000 coloured troops were in arms for the North, rendering services, especially in occupying conquered territory that was unhealthy for white troops, without which, in Lincoln’s opinion, the war could never have been finished.  The Proclamation had indeed an indirect effect more far-reaching than this; it committed the North to a course from which there could be no turning back, except by surrender; it made it a political certainty that by one means or another slavery would be ended if the North won.  But in Lincoln’s view of his duty as President, this ulterior consequence was not to determine his action.  The fateful step by which the end of slavery was precipitated would not have taken the form it did take if it had not come to commend itself to him as a military measure conducing to the suppression of rebellion.

On the broader grounds on which we naturally look at this measure, many people in the North had, as we have seen, been anxious from the beginning that he should adopt an active policy of freeing Southern slaves.  It was intolerable to think that the war might end and leave slavery where it was.  To convert the war into a crusade against slavery seemed to many the best way of arousing and uniting the North.  This argument was reinforced by some of the American Ministers abroad.  They were aware that people in Europe misunderstood and disliked the Constitutional propriety with which the Union government insisted that it was not attacking the domestic institutions of Southern States.  English people did not know the American Constitution, and when told that the North did not threaten to abolish slavery would answer “Why not?” Many Englishmen, who might dislike the North and might have their doubts as to whether slavery was as bad as it was said to be, would none the less have respected men who would fight against it.  They had no interest in the attempt of some of their own seceded Colonists to coerce, upon some metaphysical ground of law, others who in their turn wished to secede from them.  Seward, with wonderful misjudgment, had instructed Ministers abroad to explain that no attack was threatened on slavery, for he was afraid that the purchasers of cotton in Europe would feel threatened in their selfish interests; the agents of the South were astute enough to take the same line and insist like him that the North was no more hostile to slavery than the South.  If this misunderstanding were removed English hostility to the North would never again take a dangerous form.  Lincoln, who knew less of affairs but more of men than Seward, was easily made to see this.  Yet, with full knowledge of the reasons for adopting a decided policy against slavery, Lincoln waited through seventeen months of the war till the moment had come for him to strike his blow.