That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly he had felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrapped together as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had he known this from the start, known that the North’s bottom cause, the ending of slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral ground outweighs and must forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be on the other side, he could have done nothing. “I believe I have no lawful right.” There were thousands in the North who also thus believed. It was only an extremist minority who disregarded the Constitution’s acquiescence in slavery and wanted emancipation proclaimed at once. Had Lincoln proclaimed it, the North would have split in pieces, the South would have won, the Union would have perished, and slavery would have remained. Lincoln had to wait until the season of anguish and meditation had unblinded thousands besides himself, and thus had placed behind him enough of the North to struggle on to that saving of the Union and that freeing of the slave which was consummated more than two years later by Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. But it was during that interim of anguish and meditation that England did us most of the harm which our memories vaguely but violently treasure. Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, official grounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influence over our English enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, that sympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longer say to it, “but Lincoln says himself that he doesn’t intend to abolish slavery.” Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men of Manchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiastic message to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remain unemployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense of the slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: “I know nothing in my political experience so striking, an a display of spontaneous public action, as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall (in London), when, without one attraction in the form of a popular orator, the vast building, its minor rooms and passages, and the streets adjoining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience. That meeting has had a powerful effect on our newspapers and politicians. It has closed the mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South. And I now write to assure you that any unfriendly act on the part of our Government--no matter which of our aristocratic parties is in power--towards your cause is not to be apprehended. If an attempt were made by the Government in any way to commit us to the South, a spirit would be instantly aroused which would drive that Government from power.”