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[352] to battle would be, when it was first made, as he ever became afterwards. Abhorring bloodshed, and willing to avoid it up to the last possible moment, he saw no alternative but victory, after the dernier ressort of Slavery had been invoked. As a war-measure, he was, from the start, in favor of a Proclamation of Emancipation; the earliest, probably, to entertain this opinion; certainly the first to openly express it. The result vindicated his prescience. He had foreseen, also, that the danger of a recognition of the Southern Confederacy by the great Powers of Europe, could be averted in no other way; for no European Cabinet would hazard intervention or recognition of the South, if they clearly saw that the struggle had become a simple issue between Freedom and Slavery. He was therefore urgent in pressing these views, at all times, and in all quarters.
United States Publishing Company, 1874.
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