It claims to have adopted
emancipation only as a war measure; the great purpose of the war being
avowedly the recovery of Governmental possessions and the restoration of
the Union. Many moralists, failing, as we believe, to see the real
significance of the idea of political unity, have looked upon the
proposed object of the Government as a low and unworthy one; but have,
nevertheless, rejoiced that the hand of Providence is in the work, and
overruling it to bring out of these meaner aims a great and noble
result.
It may be well to recollect in this connection that it is not always
when great moral ends are the real aim and purpose of a movement that
the greatest good has been accomplished. The greatest moral results have
often followed when the movement proposed no moral end whatever; while
efforts having a direct moral aim have resulted in signal failure, and
sometimes in disaster even to the very end proposed. Well-meant efforts
to save the heathen in a spiritual way have sometimes resulted in their
physical destruction, through the stealthy obtrusion of the pests of
civilization.
It is by no means as yet a settled question that emancipation will
enhance the happiness of our negro population, or that it may not be the
beginning of a series of disasters to the race which will eventuate in
its extinction on this continent.
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