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

siderable degree of public anxiety concerning the immediate political future. It was universally understood that a strong desire for peace pervaded the public mind, and that the determination to prosecute the war was the dictate of duty, rather than inclination. To such an extent did this longing for peace influence the sentiments and action of some, among the least resolute and hopeful of the political leaders in the Republican party, that ready access to them was found by agents of the Rebel Govern ment, stationed in Canada for such active service as circumstances might require. Of these agents, who were then at Niagara Falls, were C. C. Clay, formerly United States Senator from Alabama, Professor Holcombe, of Virginia, and George N. Sanders. Acting on their behalf and under their instructions, W. Cornell Jewett, an irresponsible and half-insane adventurer, had put himself in communication with Hon. Horace Greeley, Editor of the New York Tribune, whose intense eagerness for peace had already commended him to the admiration and sympathy of the emissaries of the Rebel Government. In reply to some letter which had been addressed to him, but which has not yet been made public, Jewett wrote on the 5th of July to Mr. Greeley the following letter:

NIAGARA FALLS, July 5, 1864.

MY DEAR MR. GREELEY:-In reply to your note, I have to advise having just left Hon. George N. Sanders, of Kentucky, on the Canada side. I am authorized to state to you, for our use only, not the public, that two ambassadors of Davis & Co. are now in Canada, with full and complete powers for a peace, and Mr. Sanders requests that you come on immediately to me, at Cataract House, to have a private interview, or if you will send the President's protection for him and two friends, they will come on and meet you. He says the whole matter can be consummated by me, you, them, and President Lincoln. Telegraph me in such form that I may know if you come here, or they to come on with me.

The next day Mr. Jewett also telegraphed as follows:

H. GREELEY, Tribune:

Will you come here? Parties have full power. Wrote you yesterday

JEWETT.

This letter and telegram Mr. Greeley enclosed to the President, at Washington, accompanied by the following letter:

NEW YORK, July 7, 1864

MY DEAR SIR:-I venture to enclose you a letter and telegraphic dispatch that I received yesterday from our irrepressible friend, Colorado Jewett, at Niagara Falls. I think they deserve attention. Of course I do not indorse Jewett's positive averment that his friends at the Falls have "full powers" from J. D., though I do not doubt that he thinks they have. I let that statement stand as simply evidencing the anxiety of the Confederates everywhere for peace. So much is beyond doubt.

And therefore I venture to remind you that our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace-shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood; and a wide-spread conviction that the Goverment and its prominent supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching elections.

It is not enough that we anxiously desire a true and lasting peace; we ought to demonstrate and establish the truth beyond cavil. The fact that A. H. Stephens was not permitted a year ago to visit and confer with the authorities at Washington has done harm, which the tone at the late National Convention at Baltimore is not calculated to counteract.

I entreat you, in your own time and manner, to submit overtures for pacification to the Southern insurgents, which the impartial must pronounce frank and generous. If only with a view to the momentous election soon to occur in North Carolina, and of the draft to be enforced in the Free States, this should be done at once. I would give the safe-conduct required by the rebel envoys at Niagara, upon their parole to avoid observation and to refrain from all communication with their sympathizers in the loyal States; but you may see reasons for declining it. But whether through them or otherwise, do not, I entreat you, fail to make the Southern people comprehend that you, and all of us, are anxious for peace, and prepared to grant liberal terms. I venture to suggest the following

plan of adjustment.

1. The Union is restored and declared perpetual.

2. Slavery is utterly and forever abolished throughout the same. 3. A complete amnesty for all political offences, with a restoration of all the inhabitants of each State to all the privileges of citizens of the United States.

4. The Union to pay four hundred million dollars ($400,000,000) in five per cent. United States stock to the late Slave States, loyal and seces

sion alike, to be apportioned pro rata, according to their slave population respectively, by the census of 1860, in compensation for the losses of their loyal citizens by the abolition of slavery. Each State to be entitled to its quota upon the ratification by its legislature of this adjustment. The bonds to be at the absolute disposal of the legislature aforesaid.

5. The said Slave States to be entitled henceforth to representation in the House on the basis of their total, instead of their federal population, the whole now being free.

6. A national convention, to be assembled so soon as may be, to ratify this adjustment, and make such changes in the Constitution as may be deemed advisable.

Mr. President, I fear you do not realize how intently the people desire any peace consistent with the national integrity and honor, and how joyously they would hail its achievement, and bless its authors. With United States stocks worth but forty cents in gold per dollar, and drafting about to commence on the third million of Union soldiers, can this be wondered at?

I do not say that a just peace is now attainable, though I believe it to be so. But I do say that a frank offer by you to the insurgents of terms which the impartial say ought to be accepted will, at the worst, prove an immense and sorely needed advantage to the national cause. It may save us from a Northern insurrection.

Yours, truly,

Hon. A. LINCOLN, President, Washington, D. C.

HORACE GREELEY.

P. S.-Even though it should be deemed unadvisable to make an offer of terms to the rebels, I insist that, in any possible case, it is desirable. that any offer they may be disposed to make should be received, and either accepted or rejected. I beg you to invite those now at Niagara to exhibit their credentials and submit their ultimatum.

H. G.

To this letter the President sent the following answer :

Hon. HORACE GREELEY:

WASHINGTON, D. C., July 9, 1864

DEAR SIR:-Your letter of the 7th, with enclosures, received. If you can find any person anywhere professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come to me with you, and that if he really brings such proposition, he shall, at the least, have safe-conduct with the paper (and without publicity if he chooses) to the point where you shall have met him. The same if there be two or more persons.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.