If it be objected, that this Proclamation may take effect in emancipating the slaves of those who are loyal citizens in the rebellious States, then I answer-: first, that the number of these persons must be exceedingly small, as compared with the whole people,―: secondly, that a measure demanded by a great public necessity for the suppression of the rebellion, is not to be balked in its course for the sake of this small minority of persons, who are not in active rebellion-: thirdly, that the theory of the President is, that these persons should receive compensation from the Federal Government for the loss of their slaves. I confess, that I do not see any force in the objection. The loyal people of the Free States are suffering most severely in consequence of this war; and why should not the loyal people, if any there be, in the rebellious States, be willing to accept a measure, not primarily aimed at them, but designed to crush this accursed treason, even though they may be sufferers in its practical execution by reason of their connection with traitors? Is slavery so dear to them that they cannot give it up even to save the Union? If truly loyal, they will welcome the blow, and trust to the government to do them justice afterwards.

Those who are very sensitive about the Constitution at this time, who want the war prosecuted, as they say, according to the Constitution, and doubt the constitutionality of this measure, seem to forget that this very Constitution bestows upon the Government the war-power, of which the President is the executive agent. In discharging the trusts committed to him, the Constitution makes it his duty to conquer the foe, and use all the means in his power for this purpose. Traitors against the Constitution have no rights under it, except to be conquered and hung. They surely are not the men to plead the Constitution in their own behalf.

Will not the measure exasperate the rebels, and make them more persistent than they otherwise would be? I think, the experience of the last eighteen months supplies an ample answer to this question. These men are not to be exasperated. They are already as determined as they can be. They are not to be conciliated by any emollient system of treatment. They mean

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to fight, and to keep fighting; and fight they undoubtedly will until they are conquered, as perhaps no other people were ever conquered in the history of human warfare. It is high time to relinquish the false idea of coaxing this rebellien into good nature. We have already lost much by playing war; and now if we mean to win in this struggle, we must make the rebels feel the war in its utmost severity. This is the shortest, surest, and most merciful way to the end.

As to the question of expediency, the President having taken this ground, and after long delay and much consideration, issued his Proclamation, the measure becomes expedient, even if it were not so before. As I read events, the Proclamation is not ahead of Providence; nor is it in advance of a rapidly increasing drift of public sentiment; and the way now to solve the problem of expediency, is to put on the armor, and make the destruction of slavery as the means, and the preservation of the Union as the end, the grand watchwords of the struggle. Let us carry freedom and victory in the same hand. The power that can gain the latter, can also gain the former. If we can conquer this rebellion, we can also kill slavery while doing it. We now have the opportunity, as we should not have in times of peace. We can now rid the land of that which has so long been its curse and its shame. The hour for doing this work, and the only hour possible since the Revolutionary age, has come; and my prayer to God is, that we may see our opportunity. He does not mean, if I read his providence correctly, to let us off with any half-way work on this subject. We must now lay the axe at the root of the tree, and put an end to slavery. I have no denunciations for those who dissent from these opinions. They are my opinions; and I utter them in the fear of God.

In respect to the equity and moral justice of the result accruing from this measure, I have no doubt. I hold, as I ever have held, that the system of human slavery is wrong—a sin against God and the dearest rights of our nature. For this wrong we are now suffering as a people. God is angry with us, and punishing us for this sin, and punishing those most severely who have sinned most grievously. The best way to please God and

secure his favor, is to put away this evil from the land, to do right, to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. If with the opportunity we now have, and the discipline through which we have passed, and are still passing, we come short of this point,—if we undertake to cheat eternal justice,—then my belief is, that a night of deeper shades than this dark hour awaits us in the future.. You may depend upon it, that it is safe to do right; and the American people can commit no mistake so great as in this hour to fail in executing that sentence of death against slavery, for which Providence calls, and which God's justice must approve. The ways and the methods I leave with those whose is the official task, pledging to them my support and my prayers, and beseeching Almighty God to give them alike. the nerve and the wisdom to compass the end. "I frankly confess to you, gentlemen, (said a distinguished politician, addressing an assembly not long since,) I frankly confess to you, that, for myself, I take no interest in the negro; but, gentlemen, I am at a loss to conceive how any man can review the history of this rebellion without a clear conviction that Almighty Providence does!" Just so, my hearers. God does take an interest in some four millions of slaves; he is showing that interest at this hour; and the time has fully come for us, the creatures of his power and the ministers of his providence, to inquire for the path of duty on this subject, and then walk in it. My greatest concern about the nation lies at this very point.

If

The third question growing out of the times, is one of enlarged and generous Christian philanthropy. It is sometimes called the negro-question in distinction from that of slavery. we put away slavery, as I pray God that we may, then we must not butcher the black man to get rid of him, but treat him in the sequel of his history according to the law of love. As the superior race, we have injured him quite long enough. Let us now try to do him good. As an inferior, ignorant, degraded, comparatively helpless race, subject to enormous disadvantages, he appeals to our philanthropy. We owe to him the duties of philanthropy. If he can constitute, either in part or in whole, the laboring population of the Southern States, being rewarded

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for the toil of his hands, and duly protected in his rights as a man,—if this be the best arrangement for him and also for the white race-then so be it. I have no objections. For one I do not wish to drive him from this land, nolens volens, whether he will or not, and whether this is best or not. The idea, that, being free, he will emigrate to the North, and here make a jar in our system of labor, which is the fear of some, seems to me not well founded. The climate is against it. The proclivities and affinities of the black man are for Southern latitudes. Left to himself, he will instinctively choose the sunny South. It is now his home. Remove slavery; and the tendency of the blacks who are now at the North, will be to go to the Southern States, where they can find a people of their own race in much larger numbers than they can find them here.

If, on the other hand, the black man cannot here, in immediate contact with the white race, realize his true and proper destiny, as, I am inclined to think, will prove the fact, though in this I may be mistaken, then the dictate of philanthropy is that we should find him a home, and furnish him with all the facilities in our power for reaching it. He must live somewhere; and if it be a settled fact that he cannot live here to his own advantage or ours, then let us look about the world, and see what we can do for him. Men of our race brought him here; and we their descendants have a duty to perform in giving him a home somewhere. If we cannot send him back to Africa, as I think we cannot in sufficient numbers to solve the problem, then we must seek for him a home nearer by, at some place more convenient of access, where this government could extend over him its fostering and protecting care. It would not be wonderful, if in the sequel of Providence the State of Florida, and perhaps portions of Albama, or the States of Central America, should finally become the resting place and residence of this outcast and unhappy race. We are in the mere dawn of this problem; we cannot see very far into it at present; and the dictate of philan thropy is that we should make ourselves attentive students of the facts as they may be developed by Providence, and then act accordingly. The President, I perceive, is strongly inclined to

the theory, that as we remove the system of slavery, the black race must be separated from the whites, and settled elsewhere. Perhaps he is right in this opinion, and perhaps the facts will show that he is not right. It is high time that the best minds in the nation should be thinking upon the subject. We have the question on hand, or judging from the indications of Providence, we soon shall have in a very practical form; and we ought to be making up our minds as to what is just, and wise, and humane, and Christian. The question as to what we shall do with the black man, and what we shall do for him, if released from the bondage of slavery, let me tell you, is one of the great questions of the age. In its solution he is for the most part dependent upon the friendship, the kind regards, and Christian philanthropy of the white race. He has no power to solve it himself. As he merges into freedom, he must receive his destiny from those at whose hands he receives that freedom. They will fix his position and his home rather than himself. He cannot conquer his own destiny. His intelligence, powers of combination, and resources of action are not equal to the task. He appeals to us to think for him; and think we must, and act we must, as wise and good men, thinking and acting in the fear of God, endeavoring to carry out towards the black man the principles of a sound, impartial, Christian philanthropy.

It is quite possible, moreover, that we are seriously underrating the capacities of the black man to help himself. Perhaps what he most wants from the white race, is that we should let him alone, and give him a chance to work out his own destiny. This we have not hitherto done. We have subjected him to great disadvantages in the Free States, and in the Slave States oppressed him by one of the most cruel despotisms that human nature ever felt. We have not been content to let the black man alone, and let him take his chances with other men on the field of life. If now we would practice this species of justice towards him, both North and South, perhaps the Providence of God, at least in the course of a few generations, would show that we are making more of the negro-question than really belongs to it. At any rate, a good beginning towards the end will