Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat.
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

ln the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I believe the song above is an appropriate way to end the revised Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. The song not only explains what Lincoln meant when he called for a "new birth of freedom"; it also is also an apt symbol of how the Civil War transformed Lincoln himself. The man who in his debates with Stephen Douglas "agreed that the negro is not my equal...." became the President who made the Civil War about emancipation, then about equality for all, who made his words law in the thirteenth amendment, and who finally died because he dared to approve of black men voting.

I think this all began with the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Lincoln must have heard this song since the whole Northern army was singing it. The wife of a prominent abolitionist, Julia Ward Howe, had written the song to give the Union troops a cause. The cause Lincoln had given them, restoring the Union, was failing. The better equipped, much larger Union Army had been defeated again and again by barefoot boys in rags. Lincoln must have realized that his cause was not enough to motivate the Union troops.

So in the fall of 1862 Lincoln wrote and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which would free the slaves in the "states in rebellion" if they did not return to the Union immediately. When the Southern government ignored the Proclamation (as no doubt Lincoln had expected it would) the Northern troops had the cause they needed to win the war; the cause they sang about in the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

However, I believe there was more to Lincoln's decision than just political expediency. If he just wanted to provide the Union troops with a cause, ending slavery would have been enough. However, he soon gave the Gettysburg Address to expand the war's purpose to providing equality for all Americans, including Blacks. He made a "new birth of freedom" more than just words when he made sure the thirteenth amendment was added to The Constitution before the end of his first term. Then in his Second Inaugural Lincoln surprised everyone by proposing the Civil War was the whole nation's punishment for slavery and then stating:

"With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds;.....to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations"