We cannot admit, Mr. President, that if we had voted for the resolution in the emancipation message of March last, the war would now be substantially ended. We are unable to see how our action in this particular has given, or could give, encouragement to the rebellion. The resolution has passed; and, if there be virtue in it, it will be quite as efficacious as if we had voted for it. We have no power to bind our States in this respect by our votes here; and, whether we had voted the one way or the other, they are in the same condition of freedom to accept or reject its provisions. No, sir, the war has not been prolonged or hindered by our action on this or any other measure. We must look for other causes for that lamented fact. We think there is not much difficulty, not much uncertainty, in pointing out others far more probable and potent in their agencies to that end.

The rebellion derives its strength from the union of all classes in the insurgent States; and while that union lasts the war will never end until they are utterly exhausted. We know that at the inception of these troubles southern society was divided, and that a large portion, perhaps a majority, were opposed to secession. Now the great mass of southern people are united. To discover why they are so we must glance at southern society, and notice the classes into which it has been divided, and which still distinguish it. They are in arms, but not for the same objects; they are moved to a common end,. but by different and even inconsistent reasons. The leaders, which comprehends what was previously known as the State-rights party, and is much the lesser class, seek to break down national independence and set up State domination. With them it is a war against nationality. The other class is fighting, as it supposes, to maintain and preserve its rights of property and domestic safety, which it has been made to believe are assailed by this Government. This latter class are not disunionists per se; they are so only because they have been made to believe that this Administration is inimical to their rights, and is making war on their domestic institution. As long as these two classes act together they will never assent to a peace.

The policy, then, to be pursued, is obvious. The former class will never be reconciled, but the latter may be. Remove their apprehensions; satisfy them that no harm is intended to them and their institutions; that this Government is not making war on their rights of property, but is simply defending its legitimate authority, and they will gladly return to their allegiance as soon as the pressure of military dominion imposed by the Confederate authority is removed from them.

Twelve months ago both Houses of Congress, adopting the spirit of your message, then but recently sent in, declared with singular unanimity the objects of the war, and the country instantly bounded to your side to assist you in carrying it on. If the spirit of that resolution had been adhered to, we are confident that we should before now have seen the end of this deplorable conflict. But what have we seen?

In both Houses of Congress we have heard doctrines subversive of the principles of the Constitution, and seen measure after measure founded in substance on those doctrines proposed and carried through which can have no other effect than to distract and divide loyal men, and exasperate and drive still further from us and their duty the people of the rebellious States. Military officers, following these bad examples, have stepped beyond the just limits of their authority in the same direction, until in several instances you have felt the necessity of interfering to arrest them. And even the passage of the resolution to which you refer has been ostentatiously proclaimed as the triumph of a principle which the people of the southern States regard as ruinous to them. The effect of these measures was foretold, and may now be seen in the indurated state of southern feeling.

To these causes, Mr. President, and not to our omission to vote for the resolution recommended by you, we solemnly believe we are to attribute the terrible earnestness of those in arms against the Government and the continuance of the war. Nor do we (permit us to say, Mr. President, with all respect to you) agree that the institution of slavery is "the lever of their power," but we are of the opinion that "the lever of their power" is the apprehension that the powers of a common Government, created for common and equal protection to the interests of all, will be wielded against the institutions of the southern States.

'There is one other idea in your address we feel called on to notice. After stating the fact of your repudiation of General Hunter's proclamation, you add :

"Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not of fence, to many whose support the country cannot afford to direction is still upon me and is increasing. By conceding Jose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure in this what I now ask, you can relieve me, and, much more, can relieve the country, in this important point."

We have anxiously looked into this passage to discover its true import, but we are yet in painful uncertainty. How can we, by conceding what you now ask, relieve you and the country from the increasing pressure to which you refer? We will not allow ourselves to think that the proposition is, that we consent to give up slavery, to the end that the Hunter proclamation may be let loose on the southern people, for it is too well known that we would not be parties to any such measure, and we have too much respect for you to imagine you would propose it. Can it mean that by sacrificing our interest in slavery we appease the spirit that controls that pressure, cause it to be withdrawn, and rid the country of the pestilent agitation of the slavery question? We are forbidden so to think, for that spirit would not be satisfied with the liberation of 700,000 slaves, and cease its agitation while 3,000,000 remain in bondage. Can it mean that by abandoning slavery in our States we are removing the pressure from you and the country, by preparing for a separation on the line of the cotton States?

We are forbidden so to think, because it is known that we are, and we believe that you

man, from the North or from the South, to go further than we in the accomplishment of the great work before us. That, in order to carry out these views, we will, so far as may be in our power, ask the people of the border States calmly, deliberately, and fairly to consider your recommendations. We are the more emboldened to assume this position from the fact, now become history, that the leaders of the southern rebellion have offered to abolish slavery among them as a condition to foreign intervention in favor of their independence as a nation.

If they can give up slavery to destroy the Union, we can surely ask our people to consider the question of emancipation to save the Union.

With great respect, your obedient servants,

JOHN W. NOELL,
SAMUEL L. CASEY,
GEORGE P. FISHER,
A. J. CLEMENTS,
WILLIAM G. BROWN,
JACOB B. BLAIR,
W. T. WILLEY.

REPLY OF MR. MAYNARD.

I

But do not infer that I am insensible to your appeal. am not. You are surrounded with difficulties far greater than have embarrassed any of your predecessors. You need the support of every American citizen, and you ought to have it-active, zealous, and honest The union of every Union man to aid you in preserving the Union is the duty of the time. Differences as to policy and methods must be subordinated to the common purpose.

In looking for the cause of this rebellion, it is natural that each section and each party should ascribe as little blame as possible to itself, and as much as possible to its opponent section and party. Possibly you and I might not sree on a comparison of our views. That there should be differences of opinion as to the best mode of conducting our military operations, and the best men to lead our armies, is equally natural. Contests on such questions weaken ourselves and strengthen our enemies. They are unprofitable, and possibly unpatriotic. Somebody must yield, or we waste our strength in a contemptible struggle among ourselves.

You appeal to the loyal men of the slave States to sacrifice something of feeling and a great deal of interest. The sacrifices they have already made and the sufferings they have endured give the best assurance that the appeal will not have been made in vain. He who is not ready to yield all his material interests, and to forego his most cherished sentiments and opinions for the preservation of his country, although he may have periled his life on the battle-field in her defence, is but half a patriot. Among the loyal people that I represent there are no half patriots.

Already the rebellion has cost us much, even to our undoing; we are content, if need be, to give up the rest to suppress it. We have stood by you from the beginning of this struggle, and we mean to stand by you, God willing, till the end of it.

I did not vote for the resolution to which you allude, solely for the reason that at the time I was absent at the capital of my own State. It is right.

Should any of the slave States think proper to terminate that institution, as several of them, I understand, or at least some of their citizens propose, justice and a generous comity require that the country should interpose to aid it in lessening the burden, public and private, occasioned by so radical a change in its social and industrial relations.

I will not now speculate upon the effect, at home or abroad, of the adoption of your policy, nor inquire what action of the rebel leaders has rendered something of the kind important. Your whole administration gives the highest assurance that you are moved, not so much from a desire to see all men everywhere made free, as from a higher desire to preserve free institutions for the benefit of men already free; not to make slaves freemen, but to prevent freemen from being made slaves; not to destroy an institution, which a portion of us only consider bad, but to save institutions which we all alike consider good. I am satisfied you would not ask from any of your fellow-citizens a

us.

The border States, so far, are the chief sufferers by this war, and the true Union men of those States have made the greatest sacrifices for the preservation of the Government. This fact does not proceed from mismanagement on the part of the Union authorities, or a want of regard for our people, but it is the necessary result of the war that is upun Our States are the battle-fields. Our people, divided among themselves, maddened by the struggle and blinded by the smoke of battle, invited upon our soil contending armies--the one to destroy the Government, the other to maintain it. The consequence to us is plain. The shock of the contest upturns society and desolates the land. We have made sacrifices, but at last they were only the sacrifices demanded by duty, and unless we are willing to make others, indeed any that the good of the country, involved in the overthrow of treason, may exact at our hands, our title to patriotism is not complete.

When you submitted your proposition to Congress, in March last, "that the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system," I gave it a most cheerful support, and I am satisfied it would have received the approbation of a large majority of the border States delegations in both branches of Congress, if, in the first place, they had believed the war, with its continued evils-the most prominent of which, in a material point of view, is its injurious effect on the institution of slavery in our States-could possibly have been protracted for another twelve months; and if, in the second place, they had felt assured that the party having the ma jority in Congress would, like yourself, be equally prompt in practical action as in the expression of a sentiment. While scarcely any one doubted your own sincerity in the premises, and your earnest wish speedily to terminate the war, you can readily conceive the grounds for difference of opinion where conclusions could only be based upon conjecture.

Believing, as I did, that the war was not so near its termination as some supposed, and feeling disposed to accord to others the same sincerity of purpose that I should claim for myself under similar circumstances, I voted for the proposition. I will suppose that others were actuated by no sinister motives.

In doing so, Mr. President, I desire to be distinctly understood by you and by my constituents. I did not suppose at the time that I was personally making any sacrifice by supporting the resolution, nor that the people of my State were called upon to make any sacrifice, either in considering or accepting the proposition, if they saw fit. I agreed with you in the remarks contained in the message acconipanying the resolution, that "the Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed." * ** War has been and continues to be an indispensable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, however, re sistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it. It is truly "impossible" to foresee all the evils resulting from a war so stupendous as the present. I shall be much rejoiced if something more dreadful than the sale of freedom to a few slaves in the border States shall not result from it. If it closes

with the Government of our fathers secure, and constitutional liberty in all its purity guarantied to the white man, the result will be better than that having a place in the fears of many good men at present, and much better than the past history of such revolutions can justify us in expecting. In this period of the nation's distress, I know of no human institution too sacred for discussion; no material interest belonging to the citizen that he should not willingly place upon the altar of his country, if demanded by the public good. The man who cannot now sacrifice party and put aside selfish considerations is more than half disloyal. Such a man does not deserve the blessings of good government. Pride of opinion, based upon sectional jealousies, should not be permitted to control the decision of any political question. These remarks are general, but apply with peculiar force to the people of the border States at present. Let us look at our condition. A desolating war is upon us. We cannot escape it if we would. If the Union armies were to-day withdrawn from the border States without first crushing the rebellion in the South, no rational man can doubt for a moment that the adherents of the Union cause in those States would soon be driven in exile from their homes by the exultant rebels, who have so long hoped to return and take vengeance upon us.

The people of the border States understand very well the unfriendly and selfish spirit exercised toward them by the leaders of this cotton State rebellion; beginning some time previous to its outbreak. They will not fail to remember their insolent refusal to counsel with us, and their haughty assumption of responsibility upon themselves for their misguided action. Our people will not soon forget that, while declaiming against coercion, they closed their doors against the exportation of slaves from the border States into the South, with the avowed purpose of forcing us into rebellion through fears of losing that species of property. They knew very well the effect to be produced on slavery by a civil war, especially in those States into which hostile armies might penetrate, and upon the soil of which the great contests for the success of republican government were to be decided. They wanted some intermediate ground for the conflict of arms-territory where the population would be divided. They knew, also, that by keeping slavery in the border States the mere "friction and abrasion," to which you so appropriately allude, would keep up a constant irritation, resulting necessarily from the frequent losses to which the owners would be subjected. They also calculated largely, and not without reason, upon the repugnance of non-slaveholders in those States to a free negro population. In the meantime they intended persistently to charge the overthrow of slavery to be the object of the Government, and hostility to this institution the origin of the war. By this means the unavoidable incidents of the strife might easily be charged as the settled purposes of the Government. Again, it was well understood by these men that exemplary conduct on the part of every officer and soldier employed by the Government could not in the nature of things be expected, and the hope was entertained, upon the most reasonable grounds, that every commission of wrong and every omission of duty would produce a new cause for excitement and a new incentive to rebellion.

By these means the war was to be kept in the border States, regardless of our interests, until an exhausted treasury should render it necessary to send the tax-gatherer among our people, to take the little that might be left them from the devastations of war. They then expected a clamor for peace by us, resulting in the interference of France and England, whose operatives in the meantime would be driven to want, and whose aristocracy have ever been ready to welcome a dissolution of the American Union.

This cunningly-devised plan for securing a Gulf-Confederacy, commanding the mouths of the great western rivers, the Gulf of Mexico, and the southern Atlantic ocean, with their own territory unscathed by the horrors of war, and surrounded by the border States, half of whose population would be left in sympathy with them for many years to come, owing to the irritations to which I have alluded, has so far succeeded too well.

In Missouri they have already caused us to lose a third or more of the slaves owned at the time of the last census. In addition to this, I can make no estimate of the vast amount of property of every character that has been destroyed by military operations in the State. The loss from general depreciation of values, and the utter prostration of every business interest of our people, is wholly beyond calculation. The experience of Missouri is but the experience of other sections of the country similarly situated. The question is therefore forced upon us, "How long is this war to continue; and, if continued, as it has been, on our soil, aided by the treason and folly of our own citizens, acting in concert with the Confederates, how long can slavery, or, if you please, any other property interest, survive in our States?" As things now are, the people of the border States yet divided, we cannot expect an immediate termination of the

struggle, except upon condition of southern independence, losing thereby control of the lower Mississippi. For this we in Missouri are not prepared, nor are we prepared to become one of the Confederate States, should the terrible calamity of dissolution occur. This, I presume, the Union men of Missouri would resist to the death. And whether they should do so or not, I will not suppose for an instant that the Government of the United States would upon any condition submit to the loss of territory so essential to its future commercial greatness as is the State of Missouri. But should all other reasons fail to prevent such a misfor tune to our people of Missouri, there is one that cannot fail. The Confederates never wanted us, and would not have us. I assume, therefore, that the war will not cease, but will be continued until the rebellion shall be overcome. It cannot and will not cease, so far as the people of Missouri are concerned, except upon condition of our remaining in the Union, and the whole West will demand the entire control of the Mississippi river to the Gulf. Our interest is therefore bound up with the interests of those States maintaining the Union, and especially with the great States of the West, that must be consulted in regard to the terms of any peace that may be suggested, even by the nations of Europe, should they at any time unfortunately depart from their former pacific policy and determine to intervene in our affairs.

The war, then, will have to be continued until the Union shall be practically restored. In this alone consists the future safety of the border States themselves. A separation of the Union is ruinous to them. The preservation of the Union can only be secured by a continuation of the war. The consequences of that continuation may be judged of by the experience of the last twelve months. The people of my State are as competent to pass judgment in the premises as I am. I have every confidence in their intelligence, their honesty, and their patriotism.

In your own language, the proposition you make "sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfero with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them."

In this view of the subject I can frankly say to you that, personally, I never could appreciate the objections so frequently urged against the proposition. If I understood you properly, it was your opinion, not that slavery should be removed in order to secure our loyalty to the Government, for every personal act of your administration precludes such as inference, but you believe that the peculiar species of property was in imminent danger from the war in which we were engaged, and that common justice demanded remuneration for the loss of it. You then believed, and again express the opinion, that the peculiar nature of the contest is such that its loss is almost inevitable, and lest any pretext for a charge of injustice against the Government be given to its enemies, you propose to extend to the people of those States standing by the Union the choice of payment for their slaves or the responsibility of loss, should it occur, without complaint against the Government. Placing the matter in this light, (a mere remuneration for losses rendered inevitable by the casualties of war,) the objection of a constitutional character may be rendered much less formidable in the minds of northern Representatives whose constituents will have to share in the payment of the money; and, so far as the border States are concerned, this objection should be most sparingly urged, for it being a matter entirely of their own free choice," in case of a desire to accept, no serious argument will likely be urged against the receipt of the money, or a fund for colonization. But, aside from the power derived from the operations of war, there may be found numerous precedents in the legislation of the past, such as grants of land and money to the several States for specified objects deemed worthy by the Federal Congress. And in addition to this may be cited a deliberate opinion of Mr. Webster upon this very subject, in one of the ablest arguments of his life.

I allude to this question of power merely in vindication of the position assumed by me in my vote for the resolution of March last. In your last communication to us, you beg of us to commend this subject to the consideration of our States and people." While I entirely differ with you in the opinion expressed, that had the members from the border States approved of your resolution of March last "the war would now be substantially ended," and while I do not regard the suggestion "as one of the most potent and swift means of ending" the war, I am yet free to say that I have the most unbounded confidence in your sincerity of purpose in calling our attention to the dangers surrounding us. I am satisfied that you appreciate the. troubles of the border States, and that your suggestions are intended for our good. I feel the force of your urgent appeal, and the logic of surrounding circumstances brings conviction even to an unwilling believer. Having said that,