...on from bad to worse," he explained subsequently, "until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing,...card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game!" For several weeks he had been preparing a draft of a proclamation that would emancipate the slaves....

...Lincoln nevertheless resolved to play his trump. "I felt," he said, "that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing;...card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game." Seward, however, urged him to proceed cautiously. The Secretary of State, studying the diplomatic dispatches,...

...disaster, Lincoln called his Cabinet. And as he told it himself at a later time: "I felt that we ... must change our tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy ... I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and ... I said to the Cabinet that I ... had...

...issued the Emancipation Proclamation because he "felt that we had reached the end of our rope. . . ; that we had about played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game." Later, Lincoln told the British orator George Thomson that he had acted "in the last extremity" because...

...Proclamation." "Things had gone on 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;...knowledge of the Cabinet I prepared the original draft of the proclamation and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject. . . All...