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of the New World and made iron and steel and wheat and hay and wool and corn and potatoes, and all the products of field, forest and mine the mere instruments of civilization. It divested religious creeds of the bigotry of slavery and transformed nominal Christians into good Samaritans: it put a new interpretation upon the Bible itself by reading aright its spirit of freedom, peace and goodwill. And finally, it inspired the victorious Nation to a clemency towards the vanquished Confederates such as was never before displayed by the victor: it bred that lofty and rarer spirit of “malice towards none and charity for all."

The war cleared away forever all doubts of the nature, scope and administrative power of the United States as a Nation. It demonstrated that the doctrine of State sovereignty is not administrable and must be rejected in the interpretation of republican institutions in America. It proved that the National quality of American citizenship is paramount to the State quality. And it also proved, as the Constitution of Mississippi of 1890 declares, that a State in the American Union has not the right to withdraw because of any real or supposed grievance. It is one of the paradoxes of history that the States which insisted on the right of secession should have made themselves the instruments of proving the indissolubility of the Union.

Viewed in its larger meaning the Civil War was a change in a state of the national mind, comparable to the advance to a higher plane of the waters of the great encircling sea because of cosmic changes. The North saw and still sees in the Confederacy what a Southern historian of the conflict calls "the most absolute and arrogant despotism." The North believes that the mighty struggle was a struggle between free Nationality and slaveholding Confederacy and leaves to the considerate judgment of all history the motive and spirit which animated it throughout that struggle.

Historians and writers on the war seem to have failed to take note of the singular absence from literature of any

speech, or phrase which embodies the Southern Confederacy. Great and humane movements, culminating in revolutions, have a literature of their own-like the literature of the American Revolution which has become the familiar speech of the world. America cherishes the words of Washington, and Patrick Henry, of Jefferson and Adams, of Pinckney and Marshall. Their utterances were the principles and remain the principles of civil liberty. No such words, no such utterances fell from the lips of any adherent of the Southern Confederacy. Lincoln's words have passed into the speech of the world: but who remembers any utterance of Jefferson Davis and cherishes it as the voice of hope and consolation; of liberty and justice; of tenderness and humanity?

The Southern Confederacy had no excuse for existence. Courts of Justice and Congresses have pronounced all its acts illegal and void: but the world would needs have treated them so even without this formal reminder of their character. No one sings a Confederate song; no one quotes a Confederate poem; no one remembers a Confederate speech. For four years a Confederate Congress assembled in Richmond: and had its members all been born dumb the silence from world-speech could not be more perfect. Men study Cicero's Orations, and Demosthenes's Philippics to this day as men till the end of time will study Lincoln's Gettysburg Oration and the Second Inaugural, because the heart of man recognizes its own and the principles of right and justice are eternal.

The Civil War called forth from obscurity a man whose thoughts and words and public services must for all time. remain the truest exposition of the causes and the purpose of the conflict: Abraham Lincoln. No interpretation of that mighty change in the Nation's mind surpasses that interpretation which he gave at the dedication of a portion of the field of the war's greatest battle, Gettysburg:

"That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

APPENDIX

FINAL EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtytwo, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein

a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the fortyeight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

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