them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, the Empire and Keystone states and New Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South too, in more colors than one, lent a hand. On the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and white.The job was a great one, and let none be barred who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river, may well be proud, yet even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and better done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and on many fields of less note.

"Nor must Uncle Sam's webbed feet be forgotten. At all the water's margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow mud bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they had been and made their tracks.

"Thanks to all; for the great Republic; for the principles by which it lives and keeps alive; for man's vast fortune-thanks to all! Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are to lose their case and pay the cost. And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and with clenched teeth, and with steady eye, and well-poised payonet, they have helped mankind to this great consummation; while I fear that there will be some white men, unable to forget that with malignant heart, and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

"Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy and final triumph. Let us be quite sober, and let us diligently apply our means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good time will give us the rightful result. [Signed.]

Yours very truly,

"A. LINCOLN." COL

THE NEGRO SOLDIER POLICY.

We have given above the whole of Mr. LINCOLN's epistle to the Utica-Springfield meetings-not that it was necessary for our purpose, but that his friends may not say we have done him injustice by partial extracts. He is here on record as wedded to the policy which the radicals forced him into.

The object of this policy lies deeper than a desire to render aid to white soldiers. This might have been done by employing the negroes as servants and helpers, in camps and ditches. In fact, this is the only way that negroes might be servicable, to which no one has objected. But Sambo must be used as a political machine, and hence he must wear the blue uniform, and become subservient to the

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military power-not that he has or can do any military service, commensurate with the trouble and expense of his equipment and military training. No, the negro as No, the negro as a soldier has made no record in this war, notwithstanding we are told the nation has expended millions for arming, equipping, feeding and clothing some 200,000 negro troops, be the same more or less, and we do not remember to have heard of Sambo, amid the din of battle, save at Milliken's Bend, where a black regiment was forced to the front by a wall of bayonets, in white hands, behind them. True, we have heard in the radical papers of wonderful prodigies performed by the sable sons of Mars, and some officials have even gone so far as to extol their merits above that of the white soldiers, but in all this, they have failed to furnish us with the history of facts and circumstances.

But, do you ask how the negro as a soldier, is to be used to favor political objects? Let us

see.

The Proclamation did not assume to liberate slaves everywhere. Certain districts were excluded. Slavery was still unmolested in the loyal Border States. The radicals insisted on some coup de main to abolish slavery in the border States. How could this be done? Why by the black soldier system. How by that? Let us see. The moment the black soldier system had been established, thousands of enlisting agents took up their positions in the border States, where they went to enlisting the slaves of loyal masters. They created alarm and brought out protests from the Governors of Maryland and Kentucky, but all to no purpose. The enlistments went on, and the general promise was thrown out, as a tub to the whale, that the slaves thus taken should be paid for. But this did not satisfy the loyal slaveholder. He saw in the movement an undisguised effort and determination to abolish slavery in all the localities excepted by the Proclamation, by indirection- a kind of whipthe devil-round-the-stump game.

The radicals saw that if they could, under the protecting ægis of the "military power" seize all the able-bodied slaves in the border States as soldiers, the people from necessity would give up the balance, and thus the negro soldier business would have answered its end. But as for negroes fighting or being of actual use in military operations, the evidence is entirely wanting. If this theory does not solve

the negro soldier scheme, then it must remain unsolved till the end of time, for from past history, we have no data to solve it on the black fighting hypothesis.

The following from the New York Tribune, of December, 1863, is unequivocal, and pledges the President to abolish slavery in all places, without a why or wherefore:

"Slavery, the wicked, wanton fomenter of this horrible strife, must die, or the peace will be but a hollow, delusive truce, to be soon followed by another desolating war. Such is our President's programme, and we indorse every word of it."

*

A BILL TO ABOLISH THE CONSTITUTION.

As carrying out this view, Senator JOHN P. HALE introduced the following in the Senate, December 14, '63:

"Be it enacted, &c.. That hereafter all pereons within the United States of America are

equal before the law; and all claims to personal service, except those founded on contract and the claim of a parent to the service of a minor child, and service rendered in pursuance of sentence for the punishment of crime, be and the same are hereby forever abolished, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

THE PROCLAMATION IN ENGLAND.

One of the main arguments in favor of the Proclamation, by the radicals, was, that it would bring the English people to our aid; but the following, from the London Herald, does not wear so favorable an aspect. That paper

says:

"Another symptom of increasing ferocitya new source of frightful crime, on the one side, and provocation to horrible vengeance on the other, [just what we have seen as the father of all the difficulties in reference to exchange of prisoners, whereby thousands of our brave

men have been forced to starve and rot in

Southern prisons, all on account of the negro punctilio red-tape-ism of our Government, is ] disclosed in the demand made in New York for the Abolitionist Proclamation. So far as its nominal purport goes, this would be as futile as Mr. Lincoln's other edicts. Before he can emancipate the Southern negroes, he must conquer the South [just what he himself said to the Chicago divines]. But the demand is not made with a view to the real liberation of the slaves. It is meant to diminish the rebel army, by calling away many officers and men to the defense of their homes. [This failed entirely.] The object is not negro emancipation, but servile insurrection [this was argued by the New York T ibune]-not the manumission of slaves, but the subornation of atrocities, such as those at Cawnpore and Meireut

"For the negro the Northerners care nothing, except as a possible weapon in their hands, by which the more safely and effectually to wreak a cruel and cowardly vengeance on the South. Inferior in every respect to the to rebellion, outdue them in acts of carnage, Sepoys, the negro race would, if once excited as they would fall below them in military courage. They may be useful as assassins and incendiaries; as soldiers against the dominant race, they would be utterly worthless. Fortunately, there is no probability that the North will be able to kindle any general or extensive negro insurrection. On the lines of the Mississippi there might be occasional outbreaks and numerous desertions; a good many plantations might be fired, and a number of fugitives might be added to the Federal army. But neither the issues of the struggle, nor the fate of the servile race would be thereby altered. The war would only be made more ferocious, and the condition of the slaves more miserable. * * These new Abolitionists do not conceal their motives; they have not the decency to pretend conviction; they seek, avowedly, nothing but an instrument of vengeance on their enemy, and an instrument so dastardly, involving the commission of outrages so horrible, that even a government which employs a Mitchell and a Butler must shrink from such a load of infamy."

OPINIONS OF THE ABOLITIONISTS OF ENGLAND.

The London correspondent of the New York Times (Radical) wrote as follows to that paper, in 1862:

sympathy-the everlasting negro. We have "We have still another object of British the most doleful pictures of his unhappy situation, deprived of his Southern home and its comforts, and turned out to freeze and starve. Rejected from some of the Free States, and Scorned in all, what is the poor negro to do? It is a fact that the leading Abolitionists in England are reproaching the Nat onal Government for bringing upon the negroes the calamity of sudden and unprovided freedom. It is costing millions-tasking the resources of a great nation to feed the idle operatives in

Lancashire

How then, they say, can you provide for four millions of slaves, who become free by the Proclamation of President Lincoln on the 1st of January? The great mass of the abolitionists in England would ra her trust the negroes to their masters, than have them run the chances-or rather, meet, what they consider, the certain miseries of a forced and immediate emancipation. The abolition policy of the Government has utterly failed, so far as I have been able to learn, of finding any sympathy on this side of the Atlantic."

MR. WILBERFORCE ON THE PROCLAMATION. Mr. WILBERFORCE, son of the late and fam

"Allow me then to say, that if my father's life had been prolonged, I am certain on the one hand that his abhorance of slavery, and zeal for emancipation would not have lessened, and equally certain on the other hand, that he would have considered it a grievous crime to stir up insurrection and civil war; doubly so if it were done, not from mistaken benevolence, but from selfish political purposes. This, as Mr. Bexton truly says, is the only meaning of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, if it has any meaning at all."

WENDELL PHILLIPS ON THE RAMPAGE,

WENDELL PHILLIPS made a speech at the Cooper Institute, December 22, 1863. We select the cream of said speech:

X X X "What Grant has not done he will do. Not now. Every ounce of food his men eat is brought to them fifteen miles over the hills, and that arm of the service needs rest as well as the others. He may not be heard from for sixty or ninety days. But be assured of this-he won't sit down and dig. [Long continued applause.] When he does move, it will be to see the South retreat to the real Gulf States-Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. They have no means of bringing food to this army, and the army must go to the food. But when they have reached it, when five or six millions of men make up their minds that the forlorn spot is reached, then be sure the war is not yet ended. The South is a brave people. Four years ago I said to you under this roof, "The South is no coward," and you laughed at me. You know now, that however deluded, the South does believe a lie, and, is willing to fight for it. The last forlorn refuge for such a people is a bloody fight. The war does not touch its end, and yet its end is certain, and we may now read it in the light of our power and our own perseverance. The Union is to be reconstructed with a cement that laughs all interference to scorn. Daniel Webster said the cement of the Union was the fugitive Slave bill. Sin never cemented anything. The cement of this Union is to be the mutual respect of the sections, bred of that blood which has mingled on bravely contested fields. The South thought of the Yankees as one who knew only how to cheat-she met him at Chattanooga and changed her mind The North thought of the South as only gasconade-she has struggled with her for four years, and learned to respect her sincerity if not her intelligence. Out of that mutual respect is to grow a Union as indestructible and as indivisable as the granite that holds up the continent. The question is here at the North, how far we will go. All civil wars are ended by compromise. There never was a civil war in history in which one party gained a clear victory. The only question is, what shall we compromise on? Once launched on the stormy, turbid waters of politics, you cannot tell.

see.

I, if faithful, can say this to the nation, and the future: You may compromise when and where you please, with one exception, and that is, that the tap root of slavery shall be cut. [Applause.] Let thirty Senators and Representatives enter Congress under the proclamation, and what will be their first attempt? It will be, gentlemen, fund our debt. Your Representatives will want a tariff to pay Mr. Chase's interest. The reply of the South will be, "Granted, provided that you tack on to it, by way of rider, a tariff that will pay our interest too; only upon that condition shall you have a policy that is not tantamount to repudiation." Do you say that is not possible? Let me The builders of private ships in England have some $100,000,000 of this scrip. Suppose they come to the doors of your reconstructed Congress and say, "This paper is not worth five cents on the dollar, but we will give you $20,000,000 of it if you will make the other $80,000,000 worth par." Did you ever know a Congress that could not be bought for $20,000,000? Do you ever hope to see one? The first item of compromise, then, will be three or four thousand million dollars debt. I do not object to that particularly myself. It is the atonement which God demands of this nation for twenty years of sin. No sin is washed out in words. You cannot cheat the devil of his due. Our fathers sinned against that victim race; and God mortgages the hand of every living man, and every child that is to be born for the next half century, to atone for the nation's iniquity. There will be other compromises. One is the first element of Mr. Lincoln's project of reconstruction, which is this: He puts his own act and all the acts of Congress at the feet of the Supreme Court, and says the South is to swear to support the various acts of the government so far as the Supreme Court holds them to be valid. I do not say that he could say anything else. I am only telling you what he does say. What does his proclamation of January 1st, 1863, mean? Some members of the Cabinet say it means that any negro that can get hold of it is free. Mr. Chase says that every negro down to the Gulf that ever sees the flag is free. I asked the shrewdest member of the House of Representatives what he would give for the proclamation before the Supreme Court? "Little or nothing," he said.. A prominent New England Senator said to me the greatest danger to the proclamation was from the Supreme Court. Leading Republicans in my State say there is no law in it, that it is not worth the paper on which it is written. Mr. Lincoln says, as he ought to say, nothing. He cannot say anything. The meaning of that proclamation nobody knows until the Supreme Court has decided it. In other words, the proclamation of January 1, 1863, is to be filtered through the secession heart of a man in Baltimore, but his soul, if he has got one, is in Richmond. [Laughter.] It is το pass the ordeal of a Bench of Judges who made the D ed