A significant event of the war was the issuance by President Lincoln of his celebrated emancipation proclamation. This highly important measure, promulgated on New Year's day, 1863, sounded the death-knell of slavery, an institution that, in the South, had seemed commercially indispensable. The tidings spread rapidly through Loudoun producing, however, no change in the amicable relations existing between the white and colored races. In all sections of the South some apprehension was at first felt lest the negroes be tempted by Federal rewards to insurrection and the state militias be required to suppress outbreaks. The people of Loudoun, of course, shared in these early misgivings, but here, as elsewhere, the negroes, as a whole, manifested no outward signs of disaffection. History must record to their credit and praise that while actual warfare was being waged on the soil of Loudoun they quietly awaited the final issue of the fiery struggle. Entire communities of women and children were left in their charge, while all able-bodied white men were away on the battlefield, and the trust was faithfully kept. Instances of criminal acts were so rare that at this period none are recalled, and while this fidelity is proof of the peaceable character of the negro, it is also evidence for their owners that slavery had produced no personal hostilities between the two races in Loudoun County, and that the treatment of the negro by his owner under the law had been such as to maintain between them personal attachment and mutual confidence. Many negroes accompanied their owners to the seat of war, not to take part in battle, but to serve in semi-military duties without exposure to danger. Some of them marched in Maryland and Pennsylvania with the armies of Lee, voluntarily returning, although they might have remained in the free States without hindrance. They are still proud of the conduct of their race in those days of anxiety and peril. The proclamation of President Lincoln was regarded in Virginia as a strictly political war measure, designed to place the cause of war distinctly upon the sole question of slavery for an effect to be produced upon foreign countries and with the purpose of making use of negroes as soldiers in the Federal army. The issue of negro freedom had not been distinctly made until this proclamation created it. Hitherto it had been understood that, at the furthest, the Federal authorities would insist only on restriction of slavery to the limits where it already existed and a gradual emancipation upon payment of the value of slaves held at the beginning of the war. But now it was settled that the United States proposed to enforce by arms an instantaneous emancipation without compensation. _Close of the War._