The immediate effect of this action was what had been expected. The friends of liberty, and supporters of the Administration generally, rejoiced at it, believing that the true line of combat had been drawn at last. Robert Dale Owen probably expressed the opinion of most of them when he wrote, "The true and fit question is whether, without a flagrant violation of official duty, the President had the right to refrain from doing it." The effect in Europe is said to have been decisive of the question whether the Confederacy should be recognized as an established nation; but as to this there is some uncertainty. It is certain, however, that much friendship for the Union was won in England, where it had been withheld on account of our attitude on the slavery question. In Manchester, December 31, a mass-meeting of factory operatives was held, and resolutions of sympathy with the Union, and an address to President Lincoln, were voted. The full significance of this can only be understood when it is remembered that these men were largely out of work for want of the cotton that the blockade prevented the South from exporting. The Confederate journals chose to interpret the proclamation as nothing more than an attempt to excite a servile insurrection. The Democratic editors of the North assailed Mr. Lincoln with every verbal weapon of which they were masters, though these had been somewhat blunted by previous use, for he had already been freely called a usurper, a despot, a destroyer of the Constitution, and a keeper of Bastiles. They declared with horror (doubtless in some cases perfectly sincere) that the proclamation had changed the whole character of the war. And this was true, though not in the sense in which they meant it. When begun, it was a war for a temporary peace; the proclamation converted it into a war for a permanent peace. But the autumn elections showed how near Mr. Lincoln came to being ahead of his people after all; for they went largely against the Administration, and even in the States that the Democrats did not carry there was a falling off in the Republican majorities; though the result was partly due to the failure of the peninsula campaign, and the escape of Lee's army after Antietam. Yet this did not shake the great emancipator's faith in the justice and wisdom of what he had done. He said on New Year's evening to a knot of callers: "The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return to their allegiance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept, and not one word of it will I ever recall." [Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.] [Illustration: CHARLES SUMNER.]