Two eventualities forestalled the complete breakup of the United States: Lincoln's proclamation freeing slaves in Confederate states and the quiet intervention of Russia.
PREEMPTIVE STRIKES On September 22, 1862, just days after the federal army stopped a Confederate advance ar the battle of Anrietam, Lincoln announced his plans to order the freeing of Southern slaves unless the Southern states returned to the Union. This decree had been held in abeyance for nine months awaiting a Union battlefield victory. With no response from the South, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. He proclaimed freedom for all slaves in Rebel-held territory. It was a purely political act, since obviously he had no authoriry in those areas. But it brought the issue of slavery to the forefront of the conflict. Lincoln later explained this pragmatic gesture by saying, "Things had gone from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy." In other words, it was halfway through this fratricidal war that slavery became a central issue. The proclamation was a brilliant strategic maneuver as the citizens of neither Britain nor France would have accepted their nation's support of slavery—and it strengthened Lincoln's hand at home. When Lincoln instituted the first military draft in 1863, there were riots in several major rides including New York. Between July 13 and 16 more than one thousand people were killed or wounded as army troops restored peace at gunpoint. "After the passage of many years, it is easy to forget that Lincoln had an insurrection on his hands in the North as well as in the South," commented Griffin dryly. "To control [this Northern] insurrection, Lincoln ignored the Constitution once again by suspending the right of habeas corpus, which made it possible for the government to imprison its critics without formal charges and without trial. Thus, under the banner of opposing slavery, American citizens in the North, not only were killed on the streets of their own cities, they were put into military
