Mr. Lincoln, like others, shared in this enlightenment, only he always regarded himself as more of an instrument, than most would have done, in the hand of God, to relieve the land in some way of slavery. Into this conviction he had been growing from the first, until in his second inaugural (March 4, 1865) he could speak with such prophetic insight and confidence, as follows ::

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses. For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from the Divine attribute which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? If God wills that it shall continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword; as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said: "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

And at this period of the war, in an interview with a delegation from Chicago, who came to urge emancipation, in explaining his position and the difficulties attending it, he said: "Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is upon my mind, by day and by night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will, that will I do." But when he had proposed to the border States the plan of compensated emancipation, the most convincing and satisfactory, as it seems to us, that was ever rejected by any who were not smitten by judicial blindness, and which ought to have

been just as satisfactory to the free States from an economical point of view, if from no other, had not similar blindness fallen upon them; and when he saw McClellan's well-appointed army, the best put into the field during the war, wasted and utterly defeated; and found the two levies of 300,000 each, furnished by the eighteen loyal governors, soon after hardly able to hold back an invading army at Antietam, he became satisfied that we were contending with Providence in an unequal strife, not likely to be ended until on both sides we were ready to give up that "wedge of gold" which made all Israel sin. Then it was," says Mr. Lincoln, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Maryland, I would crown the result by a declaration of freedom to the slaves."

The battle was fought on the 17th of September, and on the night of the 19th, that army retreated across the Potomac into Virginia. On the 22d, the President issued his proclamation of warning, that upon the first day of January next, every slave should be set free, in any State or portion of a State then found in rebellion. And when that day arrived, that decree went forth, and "the year of jubilee" had come. Not that the morning broke cloudless and bright, for "the wealth of 250 years of unrequited toil had not been sunk, nor the blood drawn by the lash paid by that drawn with the sword." But the blood was being paid, and the wealth sunk, until we were glad enough, if the nation might be spared, to bow in penitence together before the Judgment seat, and put away forever the accursed thing which had so long made us sin.

During the next year, the Union cause met with many hindrances and some severe reverses. The autumn had scarcely passed away before we had lost 13,000 of our Northern troops in an unsuccessful assault on Fredericksburg, and 17,000 more at Chancellorville. And though McClellan's army had been recruited and reorganized, it was

scarcely able to protect Washington, and did not prevent another invasion of the Northern States the next summer. Immense forces were gathered and put into the field on both sides, and there was great activity and vigor displayed, particularly in the Southwest, and with varying success, until the midsummer of 1863, when the "peace party" at the North began to say, that the war should never have been undertaken, and that the South could never be conquered, and was discouraging enlistments and fairly compromising itself with treason, when the great improvement to the Union cause began. General Grant was coming into notice, and was soon to take command of all our armies and bring the struggle to its proper issue. With the indomitable West behind him, and such generals as Sherman, Thomas, Rosecrans and Logan around him, and with Commodore Foote's fleet in advance opening the Tennessee and the Upper Mississippi, he had possessed himself of one important position after another, and driven the Confederates before him until he had invested Vicksburg, and was slowly but steadily reducing it by starvation. All efforts to relieve it had been useless, and both South and North were watching the struggle there, as likely to decide the possession of the great Southwest. It was in this state of things, when the bells and cannon of the North were ushering in the Fourth of July, 1863, that the telegraph announced the fall of Vicksburg, and redoubled every patriot's hope. Then, too, it was announced that the battle of Gettysburg was won, a battle that was to this land what Waterloo was to Europe, which had engaged two armies of 60,000 men, one-third of each of whom were to be reported killed, wounded, or missing; a battle over which the whole nation had hung for three days, hoping and fearing, until news came that victory had been granted to freedom, union, and the perpetuity of our Republic. This was the meaning of it, which both North and South more than sus

pected then, though we could not fully understand it as we do now, when all of us may rejoice together over it as what was meant for our salvation even more than as the punishment of our sins. It meant that slavery was forever disposed of upon this continent. this continent. It meant that the African slave trade, which was introduced into Virginia the very year the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon our New England shores, and was one of the complaints of the Colonies against the Mother Country, when our Declaration of Independence was declared, and was only admitted into the Constitution under restrictions which it was hoped would eventually remove it, and without which our Constitution could not have been adopted; after a continuance here of two centuries and a half, and with a growth in the slave States equal to that of the white population, and an encroachment all the while upon free territory and the threatening of new conquests for the building up of a vast slave republic, whatever that might have proved to be; the overthrow of this whole system came, and came through the struggles and necessities of war. And when all human strength was weak, and our wisdom folly, we were led to acknowledge that there is "a power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness," and a God above who established and enforces such a law, and we bow before Him, with our wise and devout President, saying, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

CHAPTER XVI.

A TURNING POINT IN THE WAR.

Effect of the Battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg-New Development of the Peace Party at This Very Time-The Draft RiotsGovernor Buckingham's Vindication for Lending Arms to Keep the Peace-The Several Calls for Troops-Connecticut's RecordNo Draft in the State.

The effect of the fall of Vicksburg, July 4, 1863, and of the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, soon began to show itself upon both the Union and the Confederate cause. There had been a great amount of difficult and useful work accomplished by the Union government during the last year, but since the defeat of our Peninsular army up to these successes, no great achievements had encouraged the North. We had built up a good navy, retaken almost all the forts seized by the South at the beginning of the war, and nearly broken up blockade running. The export of cotton could no longer do much to keep up the credit of the Confederacy, while we were constantly seizing and confiscating the swiftest English steamers, loaded with arms, supplies of all kinds, and British gold. Missouri had been held in the Union, and our frontier army had pushed on beyond and was operating in Arkansas. The frontier line of the Confederacy, which at first included within it Kentucky and Tennessee, stretching west to the Mississippi, had been steadily pushed back to Cumberland Gap, and then to Nashville and to Chattanooga, until at this time it had reached Vicksburg. Admiral Foote had opened the upper Mississippi, and Farragut the