authorities that if they would send a suitable officer to New York, measures would be taken to place Arguelles in his charge. The officer was sent, and Arguelles having been arrested by the United States Marshal at New York, was, before any steps could be taken to appeal to any of the courts on his behalf, put on board a steamer bound for Havana. This proceeding caused great indignation until the facts were understood. Arguelles having money, had found zealous friends in New York, and a strong effort was made in his favor. It was stated on his behalf that, instead of being guilty of selling these negroes into slavery, it was the desire of the Cuban authorities to get possession of him and silence him, lest he should publish facts within his knowledge which implicated the authorities themselves in that nefarious traffic. And the fact that he was taken as he was, by direct order of the Government, not by any legal or judicial proceedings, and without having the opportunity to test before the courts the right of the Government thus to send back any one, however criminal, was alleged to spring from the same disregard of liberty and law in which the arbitrary arrests which had been made of rebel sympathizers were said to have had their source. Proceedings were even taken against the United States Marshal under a statute of the State of New York against kidnapping, and everywhere the enemies of the Administration found in the Arguelles case material for assailing it as having trampled upon the right of asylum, exceeded its own legal powers, insulted the laws and courts of the land, and endangered the liberties of the citizen; while the fact of its having aided in the punishment of an atrocious crime, a crime intimately connected with the slave-trade, so abhorrent to the sympathies of the people, was kept out of sight.

Another incident used to feed the public distrust of the Administration, was the temporary suppression of two Democratic newspapers in the city of New York. On Wednesday, May 18th, these two papers, the World and the Journal of Commerce, published what purported

to be a proclamation of President Lincoln. At this time, as will be recollected, General Grant was still struggling with Lee before Spottsylvania, with terrible slaughter and doubtful prospects, while Sigel had been driven back by Imboden, and Butler was held in check by Beauregard. This proclamation announced to the country that General Grant's campaign was virtually closed; and, "in view of the situation in Virginia, the disaster at Red River, the delay at Charleston, and the general state of the country," it appointed the 26th of May as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, and ordered a fresh draft of four hundred thousand men. The morning of its publication was the day of the departure of the mails for Europe. Before its character was discovered, this forged proclamation, telegraphed all over the country, had raised the price of gold five or six per cent., and carried discouragement and dismay to the popular heart. The suppression of the papers by which it had been published, the emphatic denial of its authenticity, and the prompt adoption of measures to detect its author, speedily reassured the public mind. After being satisfied that the publication of the document was inadvertent, the journals seized were permitted to resume publication, the authors of the forgery were sent to Fort Lafayette, and public affairs resumed their ordinary

course.

But the action of the Government gave fresh stimulus to the partisan warfare upon it. As in the Arguelles case and the arbitrary arrests it had been charged with trampling upon the liberties of the citizen, so now it was charged with attacking the liberty of the press. Governor Seymour directed the District Attorney of New York to take measures for the prosecution and punishment of all who had been connected with shutting up the newspaper offices. The matter was brought before a grand-jury, which reported that it was "inexpedient to examine into the subject."

Determined not to be thus thwarted, Governor Seymour, alleging that the grand-jury had disregarded their

oaths, directed the District Attorney to bring the subject before some magistrate. Warrants were accordingly issued by City Judge Russell for the arrest of General Dix and the officers who had acted in the matter. The parties voluntarily appeared before the judge, and an argument of the legal questions involved was had. The judge determined to hold General Dix and the rest for the action of the grand-jury. One grand-jury, however, had already refused to meddle with the matter, and, greatly to the disappointment of those who had aimed to place the State of New York in a position of open hostility to the Government of the United States, no further proceedings were ever taken in the matter.

An effort was made to bring the subject up in Congress. Among other propositions, Mr. Brooks, of New York, proposed to add, as an amendment to a bill for the incorporation of a Newsboys' Home in the District of Columbia, a provision that no newspaper should be suppressed in Washington, or its editor incarcerated, without due process of law. He succeeded in making a speech abounding in denunciations of the Government, but had no other success.

To those men at the North who really sympathized with the South on the slavery question, the whole policy of the Administration upon that subject was distasteful. The Emancipation Proclamation, the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and even the employment of negroes in the army, were with them grave causes of complaint against it. The President's views on this matter were expressed in the following conversational remarks, to some prominent Western gentlemen :

The slightest knowledge of arithmetic (said he) will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed by Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States nearly two hundred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The black men who now assist Union prisoners to escape

are to be converted into our enemies, in the vain hope of gaining the good-will of their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead of one.

You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate success, and the experience of the present war proves their success is inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of four millions of black men into their side of the scale. Will you give our enemies such military advantages as insure success, and then depend upon coaxing, flattery, and concession to get them back into the Union? Abandon all the forts now garrisoned by black men, take two hundred thousand men from our side, and put them in the battle-field, or cornfield, against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks.

We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places. Where are the Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field was open to the War Democrats to put down this rebellion by fighting against both master and slave long before the present policy was inaugurated. There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am President it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.

Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men, raised on Southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has abstracted from the enemy; and instead of checking the South, there are evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our men and the rank and file of the rebel soldiers. Let my enemies prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to the restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue.

Aside from the special causes of attack which we have mentioned, others were brought forward more general in their character. The burdens of the war were made especially prominent. Every thing discouraging was harped upon and magnified, every advantage was belittled and sneered at. The call for five hundred thousand men in June was even deprecated by the friends of the Administration, because of the political capital which its enemies would be sure to make of it. Nor was Mr. Lincoln himself unaware that such would be the result, but,

though recognizing the elements of dissatisfaction which it carried with it, he did not suffer himself to be turned aside in the least from the path which duty to his country required him to pursue. The men were needed, he said, and must be had, and should he fail as a candidate for re-election in consequence of doing his duty to the country, he would have at least, the satisfaction of going down with colors flying.

Financial difficulties were also used in the same way. The gradual rise in the price of gold was pointed at as indicating the approach of that financial ruin which was surely awaiting the country, if the re-election of Mr. Lincoln should mark the determination of the people to pursue the course upon which they had entered.

Amidst these assaults from his opponents, Mr. Lincoln seemed fairly entitled, at least, to the hearty support of all the members of his own party. And yet this very time was chosen by Senator Wade, of Ohio, and H. Winter Davis, of Maryland, to make a violent attack upon him for the course which he had pursued in reference to the Reconstruction Bill, which he had not signed, but had given his reasons for not signing, in his proclamation of July 18th. They charged him with usurpation, with presuming upon the forbearance of his supporters, with defeating the will of the people by an Executive perversion of the Constitution, &c., &c., and closed a long and violent attack by saying that if he wished their support he "must confine himself to his Executive duties to obey and execute, not make the laws-to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization to Congress."

This manifesto, prepared with marked ability, and skilfully adapted to the purpose it was intended to serve, at first created some slight apprehension among the supporters of the President. But it was very soon felt that it met with no response from the popular heart, and it only served to give a momentary buoyancy to the hopes of the Opposition.

Still another incident soon occurred to excite a con