as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he known this
from the start, known that the North's bottom cause, the ending of
slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and must
forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, he
could have done nothing. "I believe I have no lawful right." There were
thousands in the North who also thus believed. It was only an extremist
minority who disregarded the Constitution's acquiescence in slavery and
wanted emancipation proclaimed at once. Had Lincoln proclaimed it, the
North would have split in pieces, the South would have won, the Union
would have perished, and slavery would have remained. Lincoln had to wait
until the season of anguish and meditation had unblinded thousands
besides himself, and thus had placed behind him enough of the North to
struggle on to that saving of the Union and that freeing of the slave
which was consummated more than two years later by Lee's surrender to
Grant at Appomattox.

But it was during that interim of anguish and meditation that England did
us most of the harm which our memories vaguely but violently treasure.
Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, official
grounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influence over our
English enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, that
sympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longer say to
it, "but Lincoln says himself that he doesn't intend to abolish slavery."

Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, the
Abolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men of
Manchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiastic
message to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remain unem-
ployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense of
the slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: "I know nothing