In parts it has often
been compared with the lofty portions of the Old Testament. Mr.
Lincoln's own contemporaneous criticism is interesting. "I expect it,"
he said, "to wear as well as, perhaps better than, anything I have
produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not
flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case is to
deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I
thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it
falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to
tell it."
CHAPTER XII
EMANCIPATION COMPLETED
On January 1, 1863, when the President issued the Proclamation of
Emancipation, he stepped to the uttermost boundary of his authority in
the direction of the abolition of slavery. Indeed a large proportion of
the people believed that he had trespassed beyond that boundary; and
among the defenders of the measure there were many who felt bound to
maintain it as a legitimate exercise of the war power, while in their
inmost souls they thought that its real basis of justification lay in
its intrinsic righteousness. Perhaps the President himself was somewhat
of this way of thinking. He once said: "I felt that measure, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the
Union.
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