and interpreters, must grow to meet critical situations. In 1861 the,
moral idea of the Civil War was obscured and hidden by economic and
material interests. The Abraham Lincoln who entered the White House in
1881 was indeed the name man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation in
1863; and yet, in a sense, he was not the same man; events and
responsibilities had effected a profound but logical growth in his
personality. And the people of the Union were not ready to endorse
Emancipation in 1861. In 1863, in the darkest hour of the war, the
spirit of the North responded to the call, and, despite the vilification
of the President, was true to him to victory. More significant still,
in view of the events of today, is what then occurred in England. The
British Government was unfriendly; the British people as a whole had
looked upon our Civil War very much in the same light as the American
people regarded the present war at its inception--which is to say that
the economic and materialistic issue seemed to overshadow the moral one.
When Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it to be a war for human freedom, the
sentiment of the British people changed--of the British people as
distinct from the governing classes; and the textile workers of the
northern counties, whose mills could not get cotton on account of the
blockade, declared their willingness to suffer and starve if the slaves
in America might be freed.

Abraham Lincoln at that time represented the American people as the
British Government did not represent the British people. We are
concerned today with peoples rather than governments.

It remained for an American President to announce the moral issue of the
present war, and thus to solidify behind him, not only the liberal mind
of America, but the liberal elements within the nations of Europe. He
became the democratic leader of the world. The issue, simply stated, is