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 were rescued from the
false predicament in which they had been from the beginning, and the
great popular heart leaped with new enthusiasm for "Liberty and Union,
henceforth and forever, one and inseparable." It brought not only moral
but material support to the cause of the government, for within two years
120,000 colored troops were enlisted in the military service and
following the national flag, supported by all the loyalty of the North,
and led by its choicest spirits. One mother said, when her son was
offered the command of the first colored regiment, "If he accepts it I
shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot." He was shot
heading a gallant charge of his regiment.... The Confederates replied to
a request of his friends for his body that they had "buried him under a
layer of his niggers....;" but that mother has lived to enjoy thirty-six
years of his glory, and Boston has erected its noblest monument to his
memory.

The effect of the proclamation upon the actual progress of the war was
not immediate, but wherever the Federal armies advanced they carried
freedom with them, and when the summer came round the new spirit and
force which had animated the heart of the government and people were
manifest. In the first week of July the decisive battle of Gettysburg
turned the tide of war, and the fall of Vicksburg made the great river
free from its source to the Gulf.