But the crowning argument to foreign minds was that it was an
utter impossibility for the government to win in the contest; that the
success of the Southern States, so far as separation was concerned, was
as certain as any event yet future and contingent could be; that the
subjugation of the South by the North, even if it could be accomplished,
would prove a calamity to the United States and the world, and especially
calamitous to the negro race; and that such a victory would necessarily
leave the people of the South for many generations cherishing deadly
hostility against the government and the North, and plotting always to
recover their independence.
When Lincoln issued his proclamation he knew that all these ideas were
founded in error; that the national resources were inexhaustible; that
the government could and would win, and that if slavery were once finally
disposed of, the only cause of difference being out of the way, the North
and South would come together again, and by and by be as good friends as
ever. In many quarters abroad the proclamation was welcomed with
enthusiasm by the friends of America; but I think the demonstrations in
its favor that brought more gladness to Lincoln's heart than any other
were the meetings held in the manufacturing centres, by the very
operatives upon whom the war bore the hardest, expressing the most
enthusiastic sympathy with the proclamation, while they bore with heroic
fortitude the grievous privations which the war entailed upon them.
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