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 even tried to
preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter,
I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution
altogether. When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted
military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it
an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron,
then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity.
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I
forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity
had come. When, in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and
successive appeals to the Border States to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military
emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that
measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best
judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union,
and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the
colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for
greater gain than loss; but of this I was not entirely confident.
More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign
relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white
military force--no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it
shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen,
and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there
can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them