GDG- thenceforward, and forever free;

[Bob Huddleston]

THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION.

	In so many arid forms which States incrust themselves with, once in
a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets of
thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius, the
political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine of class
and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction of catholic
and universal interests. Every step in the history of political liberty is a
sally of the human mind into the untried future, and has the interest of
genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. Liberty is a slow fruit. It
comes, like religion, for short periods, and in rare [639] conditions, as if
awaiting a culture of the race which shall make it organic and permanent.
Such moments of expansion in modern history were the Confession of Augsburg,
the plantation of America, the English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration
of American independence in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the
West Indies, the passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn Laws,
the Magnetic Ocean-Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the passage of the
homestead Bill in the last Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln's
Proclamation on the twenty-second of September. These are acts of great
scope, working on a long future, and on permanent interests,, and honoring
alike those who initiate and those who receive them. These measures provoke
no noisy joy, but are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that
mankind are greater and better than we know. At such times it appears as if
a new public were created to greet the new event. It is as when an orator,
having ended the compliments and pleasantries with which he conciliated
attention, and having run over the superficial fitness and commodities of
the measure he urges, suddenly, lending himself to some happy inspiration,
announces with vibrating voice the grand human principles involved, - the
bravoes and wits who greeted him loudly thus far are surprised and overawed:
a new audience is found in the heart of the assembly, - an audience hitherto
passive and unconcerned, now at last so searched and kindled that they come
forward, every one a representative of mankind, standing for all
nationalities.
	The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his
design, - his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly
the executive of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting only till
it should be unmistakably pronounced, - so fair a mind that none ever
listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of opinion, - so reticent
that his decision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst yet it is the
just sequel of his prior acts, - the firm tone in which he announces it,
without inflation or surplusage, - all these have bespoken such favor to the
act, that, great as the popularity of the President has been, we are
beginning to think that we have underestimated the capacity and virtue which
the Divine Providence has made an instrument of benefit so vast. He has been
permitted to do more for America than any other American man. He is well
entitled to the most indulgent construction. Forget all that we thought
shortcomings, every mistake, every delay. In the extreme embarrassments of
his part, call these endurance, wisdom, magnanimity, illuminated, as they
now are, by this dazzling success.
	When we consider the immense opposition that has been neutralized or
converted by the progress of the war, (for it is not long since the
President anticipated the resignation of a large number of officers in the
army, and the secession of three States, on the promulgation of this
policy,) -when we see how the great stake which foreign nations hold in our
affairs has recently brought every European power as a client into this
court, and it became every day more apparent what gigantic and what remote
interests were to be affected by the decision of the President, - one can
hardly say the deliberation was too long. Against all timorous counsels he
had the courage to seize the moment; and such was his position, and such the
felicity attending the action, that he has replaced Government in the good
graces of mankind. "Better is virtue in the sovereign than plenty in the
season," say the Chinese. 'T is wonderful what power is, and how ill it is
used, and how its ill use makes life mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in
America had lost much of its attraction in the later years. The virtues of a
good magistrate undo a world of mischief and, because Nature works with
rectitude, seem vastly more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are
ever tempered by the good-nature in the people, and the incessant resistance
which fraud and violence encoun-[640]ter. The acts of good governors work at
a geometrical ratio, as one midsummer day seems to repair the damage of a
year of war.
	A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the
dreadful war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to he close
before us. October, November, December will have passed over heating hearts
and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and all men of African
descent who have faculty enough to find their way to our lines are assured
of the Protection of American law.
	It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly
marked by any signal results on the negroes or on the Rebel masters. The
force of the act is that it commits the country to this justice, - that it
compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the Republic to
range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the fashion to this
side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken back. Done, it cannot
be undone by a new Administration. For slavery overpowers the disgust of the
moral sentiment only through immemorial usage. It cannot be introduced as an
improvement of the nineteenth century. This act makes that the lives of our
heroes have not been sacrificed in vain. It makes a victory of our defeats.
Our hurts are healed; the health of the nation is repaired. With a victory
like this, we can stand many disasters. It does not promise the redemption
of the black race: that lies not with us: but it relieves it of our
opposition. The President by this act has paroled all the slaves in America;
they will no more fight against us; and it relieves our race once for all of
its crime and false position. The first condition of success is secured in
putting ourselves right. We have recovered ourselves from our false
position, and planted ourselves on a law of Nature. 

"If that fail
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble'

The Government has assured itself of the best constituency in the world:
every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart,
every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of the
cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of the mechanics, the
endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience of women, the sympathy of
distant nations, - all rally to its support.
	Of course, we are assuming the firmness of the policy thus declared.
It must not be a paper proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in
earnest, and, as he has been slow in making up his mind, has resisted the
importunacy of parties and of events to the latest moment, he will be as
absolute in his adhesion. Not only will he repeat and follow up his stroke,
but the nation will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler has duties,
so has the citizen. In times like these, when the nation is imperilled, what
man can, without shame, receive good news from day to day, without giving
good news of himself? What right has any one to read in the journals tidings
of victories, if he has not bought them by his own valor, treasure, personal
sacrifice, or by service as good in his own department? With this blot
removed from our national honor, this heavy load lifted off the national
heart, we shall not fear henceforward to show our faces among mankind. We
shall cease to be hypocrites and pretenders, but what we have styled our
free institutions will be such.
	In the light of this event the public distress begins to he removed.
What if the brokers' quotations show our stocks discredited, and the gold
dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables are
fallacious. Every acre in the Free States gained substantial value on the
twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war has been reached,
and begun to be removed. Every man's house-lot and garden are relieved of
the malaria which the purest winds and the strongest sunshine could not
penetrate and purge. The territory of the Union shines to-day with a lustre
which every European emigrant can discern [641] from far: a sign of inmost
security and permanence. Is it feared that taxes will check immigration?
That depends on what the taxes are spent for. If they go to fill up this
yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed armies and populations, and created
plague, and neutralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of this
continent, - then this taxation, which makes the land wholesome and
habitable, and will draw all men unto it, is the best investment in which
property-holder ever lodged his earnings.
	Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the Proclamation, it
remains to he said that the President had no choice. He might look wistfully
for what variety of courses lay open to him: every line hut one was closed
up with fire. This one, too, bristled with danger, hut through it was the
sole safety. The measure he has adopted was imperative. It is wonderful to
see the unseasonable senility of what is called the Peace party, through all
its masks, blinding their eyes to the main feature of the war, namely, its
inevitableness. The war existed long before the cannonade of Sumter, and
could not be postponed. It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but war
was in the minds and bones of the combatants, it was written on the iron
leaf, and you might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a
peaceable secession of the Rebels, the divided sentiment of the Border
States made peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the
South made it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the border
might be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the Confederacy
New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they would have demanded St.
Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they would have insisted on
Washington. Give them Washington, and they would have assumed the army and
navy, arid, through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It looks as
if the battlefield would have been at least as large in that event as It is
now. The war was formidable, but could not be avoided. The war was and is an
immense mischief, but brought with it the immense benefit of drawing a line,
and rallying the Free States to fix it impassably, - preventing the whole
force of Southern connection and influence throughout the North from
distracting every city with endless confusion, detaching that force and
reducing it to handfuls, and, in the progress of hostilities, disinfecting
us of our habitual proclivity, through the affection of trade, and the
traditions of the Democratic party, to follow Southern leading.
	These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the Federal
Government are overlooked, especially by our foreign critics. The popular
statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the impossibility of our
success. "If you could add," say they, "to your strength the whole army of
England. of France, arid of Austria, you could not coerce eight millions of
people to come under this Government against their will." This is an odd
thing for an Englishman, a Frenchman, or an Austrian to say, who remembers
the Europe of the last seventy years, - the condition of Italy, until 1859,-
of Poland, since 1793,-of France, of French Algiers, - of British Ireland,
and British India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical
aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that, in the
Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with slavery, give
the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic complexion; and
those States have shown every year a more hostile and aggressive temper,
until the instinct of self-preservation forced ns into the war. And the aim
of the war on our part is indicated by the aim of the President's
Proclamation namely, to break up the false combination of Southern society,
to destroy the piratic feature in it which makes it our enemy only as it is
the enemy of the human race, and so allow its reconstruction on a just and
healthful basis. Then new affinities will act, the old repulsions will
cease, and, [642] the cause of war being removed, Nature and trade may be
trusted to establish a lasting peace.
	We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of
the Government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the Free
States, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive as
to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent joy
which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has
breathed into the world.
	It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves, until this edict
could be put on board. It will be an insurance to the ship as it goes
plunging through the sea with glad tidings to all people. Happy are the
young who find the pestilence cleansed out of the earth, leaving open to
them an honest career. Happy the old, who see Nature purified before they
depart. Do not let the dying die: hold them back to this world, until you
have charged their ear and heart with this message to other spiritual
societies, announcing the melioration of our planet.

"Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age."

	Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation
respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in their
bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive music, - a
race naturally benevolent, joyous, docile, industrious, and whose very
miseries sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in a more
moral age, will not only defend their independence, but will give them a
rank among nations. 

The President's Proclamation, by R. W. Emerson: pp. 638-642  Atlantic
Monthly. Vol. 10:61 (November 1862) 


Take care,

Bob

Judy and Bob Huddleston
10643 Sperry Street
Northglenn, CO  80234-3612
303.451.6376  Huddleston.r at comcast.net

I am A thousand times meaner A hundred times Harder and A damed sight wors
Looking than I Ever was so you can form some sort of an idea what sort of A
Looking man you have now for A Husband if this kind of Buisness wont make
men hard I should like to know what will it is Everyone for himself and dam
the one that pulls the hind tit

Henry Clemons of Company K, 23rd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, to his wife
Anna in Sauk City, Wis, January 15, 1863