imensions. The Sanitary Commission, which
had seven thousand societies, distributed, under the direction of an
unpaid board, spontaneous contributions to the amount of fifteen
millions in supplies or money--a million and a half in money from
California alone--and dotted the scene of war, from Paducah to Port
Royal, from Belle Plain, Virginia, to Brownsville, Texas, with homes
and lodges.

The country had for its allies the river Mississippi, which would not
be divided, and the range of mountains which carried the stronghold of
the free through Western Virginia and Kentucky and Tennessee to the
highlands of Alabama. But it invoked the still higher power of immortal
justice. In ancient Greece, where servitude was the universal custom,
it was held that if a child were to strike its parent, the slave should
defend the parent, and by that act recover his freedom. After vain
resistance, LINCOLN, who had tried to solve the question by gradual
emancipation, by colonization, and by compensation, at last saw that
slavery must be abolished, or the republic must die; and on the first
day of January, 1863, he wrote liberty on the banners of the armies.
When this proclamation, which struck the fetters from three millions of
slaves, reached Europe, Lord Russell, a countryman of Milton and
Wilberforce, eagerly put himself forward to speak of it in the name of
mankind, saying: "It is of a very strange nature;" "a measure of war of
a very questionable kind;" an act "of vengeance on the slave owner,"
that does no more than "profess to emancipate slaves where the United
States authorities cannot make emancipation a reality." Now there was
no part of the country embraced in the proclamation where the United
States could not and did not make emancipation a reality.

Those who saw LINCOLN most frequently had never before heard him speak
with bitterness of any human being, but he did not conceal how keenly
he felt that he had been wronged by Lord Russell. And he wrote, in
reply to other cavils: "The emancipation policy and the use of colored
troops were the greatest blows yet dealt to the rebellion; the job was
a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable
part in it. I hope peace will come soon, and come to stay; then will
there be some black men who can remember that they have helped mankind
to this great consummation."

The proclamation accomplished its end, for, during the war, our armies
came into military posses