Can you see the position of those Englishmen who condemned slavery and praised liberty?
We ourselves said we were not out to abolish slavery, we disclaimed any such object, by our own words we cut the ground away from them.
Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect upon January 1, 1863, did Lincoln proclaim emancipation--thus doing what he had said twenty-two months before "I believe I have no lawful right to do." That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight.

Slowly he had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped together as to merge and be one and the same thing.

But even had he known this from the start, known that the North's bottom cause, the ending of slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and must forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, he could have done nothing.

"I believe I have no lawful right." There were thousands in the North who also thus believed.

It was only an extremist minority who disregarded the Constitution's acquiescence in slavery and wanted emancipation proclaimed at once.