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Lincoln evidently desired to enjoy the sole honor of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, and he deserved to have it; but Sumner thought it might safely have been done after the battles of Fort Donaldson and Shiloh, and the victories of Foote and Farragut on the Mississippi, six months before it was issued; and he urged to have it done at that time.
Whether his judgment was correct in this, it is impossible to decide.
Early in July, 1862, he introduced a bill in the Senate for the organization of the “contrabands” and other negroes into regiments,--a policy suggested by Hamilton in 1780,--and no one can read President Lincoln's Message to Congress in December, 1864, without recognizing that it was only with the assistance of negro troops that the Union was finally preserved.
In spite of the continued differences between Sumner and Seward on American questions they worked together like one man in regard to foreign politics.
Sumner's experience in Europe and his knowledge of public men there was much more extensive than Seward's, and in this line he was of invaluable assistance to the Secretary of State.
Lowell could make a holiday of six years at the Court of St. James, but during the war it was a serious matter to be Minister to England.
In the summer of 1863 affairs there had reached
1905. E. P. DUtton and Co. Boston,.
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