第45章 THE CRUCIAL MATTER(6)
The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the States in arms against the Federal Government. Such States were given three months in which to return to the Union. Thereafter, if they did not return, their slaves would be regarded by that Government as free. No distinction was made between slaves owned by supporters of the Confederacy and those whose owners were in opposition to it. The Proclamation had no bearing on those slave States which had not seceded. Needless to add, no seceded State returned, and a second Proclamation making their slaves theoretically free was in due time issued on the first of January, 1863.
It must not be forgotten that this radical change of policy was made in September, 1862. We have already heard of the elections which took place soon after--those elections which mark perhaps the lowest ebb of Lincoln's popularity, when Seymour was elected Governor of New York, and the peace party gained over thirty seats in Congress. It is a question whether, as a purely domestic measure, the Emancipation Proclamation was not, for the time, an injury to the Lincoln Government. And yet it was the real turningpoint in the fortunes of the North. It was the central fact in the maintenance of the blockade.
In England at this time the cotton famine was at its height.
Nearly a million people in the manufacturing districts were wholly dependent upon charity. This result of the blockade had been foreseen by the Confederate Government which was confident that the distress of England's working people would compel the English ministry to intervene and break the blockade. The employers in England whose loss was wholly financial, did as the Confederates hoped they would do. The workmen, however, took a different course. Schooled by a number of able debaters, they fell into line with that third group of political leaders who saw in the victory of the North, whatever its motives, the eventual extinction of slavery. To these people, the Emancipation Proclamation gave a definite programme. It was now, the leaders argued, no longer a question of eventual effect; the North had proclaimed a motive and that motive was the extinction of slavery. Great numbers of Englishmen of all classes who had hitherto held back from supporting Cobden and Bright now ranged themselves on their side. Addresses of praise and sympathy "began to pour into the Legation of the United States in a steady and ever swelling stream." An immense popular demonstration took place at Exeter Hall. Cobden, writing to Sumner, described the new situation in British politics, in a letter amounting to an assurance that the Government never again would attempt to resist the popular pressure in favor of the North.
On the last day of 1862 a meeting of workingmen at Manchester, where the cotton famine was causing untold misery, adopted one of those New Year greetings to Lincoln. Lincoln's reply expressed with his usual directness his own view of the sympathetic relation that had been established between the democratic classes of the two countries:
"I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow this Government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. Ihail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual."