When The Tide Turned

 song McClellan, who had boasted that he had never befriended a single fugitive, was permitted to educate the nation by sacrificing thousands of lives in the swamps of the Chicahominy. After the defeat of the second Manassas, the North, which two months before had expected the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee, could now contemplate the prospect of new battlefields in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Then to a sorely chastised nation came the announcement of the Proclamation; not as an act of justice, not in obedience to Higher Law, came this belated document, but sim­ply as a war measure. And there were many who remembered that it was nearly two 33 years since Sumter fell, and they asked if it was to be simply a war measure, why did it not appear with the war? Lydia Maria Child spoke for thousands when she said, "It was a measure to which we were forced by our own perils; no recognition of the principles of justice and humanity surrounded that politic act with a halo of moral glory".

But the renewed bitterness and fury of the South discovered the fact that the Dragon of Slavery had been wounded. The year of jubilee, that day of freedom, that time of which the slaves had whispered in cabin, and in swamp, was it really here? Not as the South had feared, not as the North had hoped, yet a great light shone where before darkness had reigned. For months the conservative North had cried, "Save the Union, but not through the negro; let this be a white man's war, a white man's victory"; and the President had waited, waited until there was no longer an impulse to fill the broken ranks of the army. Now, there was scarcely a household in all the land that had not felt the agony of that time. The war Democrats, brave and loyal men, who had most willingly shouldered their muskets to defend the "Union as it was" - men of whom the nation then stood in such awe, lest they throw down their guns at the mention of slavery were now no longer formidable. How many of them in the army had paid the price of prejudice with their lives, and those at home knew that the graves of their sons had been made on many a battlefield.

Then the nation faced its new danger. For months the disloyal people of the North had been sowing seed which was to bloom in the great draft riots of the summer of 1863. The blighting words, "The war is a failure", passed from lip to lip, and just now it appeared that England thought so too. No men stood ready to take the places of those whose term of enlistment would soon expire. It was but two years since the first soldiers were swept toward the front on waves of patriotic love. Must the nation now be served by drafted men instead of loyal volunteers? This is but a faint and most imperfect portrayal of the minds of men, and the extremity of the nation, when in January, 1863, Governor Andrew came back from Washington with permission from Secretary Stanton to enlist men of African descent, upon an entirely equal foot­ing with white troops. Not as General Butler had organized the Louisiana Guards from free negroes, nor as General Saxton had recruited the first South Carolina.