At about three o'clock in the afternoon, after full three hours
of such greetings and handshakings, when his own hand was so
weary it could scarcely hold a pen, the President and perhaps a
dozen friends, went up to the Executive Office, and there,
without any pre-arranged ceremony, he signed his name to the
greatest state paper of the century, which banished the curse of
slavery from our land, and set almost four million people free.
X. THE MAN WHO WAS PRESIDENT
The way Mr. Lincoln signed this most important state paper was
thoroughly in keeping with his nature. He hated all shams and
show and pretense, and being absolutely without affectation of
any kind, it would never have occurred to him to pose for effect
while signing the Emancipation Proclamation or any other paper.
He never thought of himself as a President to be set up before a
multitude and admired, but always as a President charged with
duties which he owed to every citizen. In fulfilling these he did
not stand upon ceremony, but took the most direct way to the end
he had in view.
It is not often that a President pleads a cause before Congress.
Mr. Lincoln did not find it beneath his dignity at one time to go
in person to the Capitol, and calling a number of the leading
senators and representatives around him, explain to them, with
the aid of a map, his reasons for believing that the final stand
of the Confederates would be made in that part of the South where
the seven States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia come together; and
strive in this way to interest them in the sad plight of the
loyal people of Tennessee who were being persecuted by the
Confederate government, but whose mountainous region might, with
a little help, be made a citadel of Union strength in the very
heart of this stronghold of rebellion.
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