“I understood that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving by 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 ever 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.”

And so, at last, when in his judgment the indispensable necessity had come, he struck the fatal blow, and signed the proclamation which has made his name immortal.  By it, the President, as Commander-in-Chief in time of actual armed rebellion, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing the rebellion, proclaimed all persons held as slaves in the States and parts of States then in rebellion to be thenceforward free, and declared that the executive, with the army and navy, would recognize and maintain their freedom.

In the other great steps of the government, which led to the triumphant prosecution of the war, he necessarily shared the responsibility and the credit with the great statesmen who stayed up his hands in his cabinet, with Seward, Chase and Stanton, and the rest,—­and with his generals and admirals, his soldiers and sailors, but this great act was absolutely his own.  The conception and execution were exclusively his.  He laid it before his cabinet as a measure on which his mind was made up and could not be changed, asking them only for suggestions as to details.  He chose the time and the circumstances under which the Emancipation should be proclaimed and when it should take effect.

It came not an hour too soon; but public opinion in the North would not have sustained it earlier.  In the first eighteen months of the war its ravages had extended from the Atlantic to beyond the Mississippi.  Many victories in the West had been balanced and paralyzed by inaction and disasters in Virginia, only partially redeemed by the bloody and indecisive battle of Antietam; a reaction had set in from the general enthusiasm which had swept the Northern States after the assault upon Sumter.  It could not truly be said that they had lost heart, but faction was raising its head.  Heard through the land like the blast of a bugle, the proclamation rallied the patriotism of the country to fresh sacrifices and renewed ardor.  It was a step that could not be revoked.  It relieved the conscience of the nation from an incubus that had oppressed it from its birth.  The United States