The Fall of the Confederacy. 607 
lost much material, political and moral, force by a policy of 
non-emancipation, and that whether the Confederacy might 
or might not have triumphed if the negroes had been 
emancipated, the non-emancipation policy of the Confede- 
rate administration rendered triumph improbable. 
Are we deceived as to the motive of Secession? Was 
independence a pretence? Was the motive of the Revolu- 
tion the defence of negro slavery? Was the desolating 
war waged to keep the coloured race in fetters ? We know 
it was not so. We know that there was no wavering in 
respect to independence. We know that the offer of the 
retention of negro slavery, on condition of a return to the 
Union, was rejected. We know, too, that in the last ex- 
tremity the Confederate administration was ready to give 
up negro slavery if by that means the Confederacy could 
be saved. But when we grant, as we must do, that the 
South fought for independence, it seems monstrous that 
the Confederate administration did not adopt the policy 
of emancipation. To adhere to the institution of negro 
slavery was to sacrifice at least a third of their military 
strength, was to make the West an unswerving foe, was to 
raise a formidable obstacle to foreign recognition, and was 
to render immediate foreign intervention impossible. As 
the war went on non-emancipation became more and more 
manifestly impolitic. It was bad enough whilst the Federal 
administration hesitated, but it was incalculably worse when 
the cause of negro emancipation was allied to the cause of 
the Union; for then the North gained many advantages over 
their opponents, and strength was added to strength. It 
might have been supposed that at length the eyes of the 
Confederate administration would have been opened, and 
that the emancipation moves of the North would have been 
met by counter emancipation moves. When Northern armies 
were recruited by Southern negroes, it is inexpressibly 
strange that the recruiting for the North was not promptly 
stopped by enlisting the negroes in the Confederate armies. 
When it was seen that the sympathy of Europe was chilled 
because the North proclaimed negro emancipation, and the 
South upheld negro slavery, it is truly marvellous that the 
Confederate administration did not declare that an eman- 
cipation policy was indispensable to the success of Con- 
federacy, and decree the freedom of the negroes. 
In all this may we not—must we not—reverently perceive 
the will of God controlling the purposes of man? The 
North entered upon the struggle and continued it for the 
