It is a question whether, as a purely
domestic measure, the Emancipation Proclamation was not, for the
time, an injury to the Lincoln Government. And yet it was the
real turningpoint in the fortunes of the North. It was the
central fact in the maintenance of the blockade.
In England at this time the cotton famine was at its height.
Nearly a million people in the manufacturing districts were
wholly dependent upon charity. This result of the blockade had
been foreseen by the Confederate Government which was confident
that the distress of England's working people would compel the
English ministry to intervene and break the blockade. The
employers in England whose loss was wholly financial, did as the
Confederates hoped they would do. The workmen, however, took a
different course. Schooled by a number of able debaters, they
fell into line with that third group of political leaders who saw
in the victory of the North, whatever its motives, the eventual
extinction of slavery. To these people, the Emancipation
Proclamation gave a definite programme. It was now, the leaders
argued, no longer a question of eventual effect; the North had
proclaimed a motive and that motive was the extinction of
slavery. Great numbers of Englishmen of all classes who had
hitherto held back from supporting Cobden and Bright now ranged
themselves on their side.
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