culture of our New England cities to win them from their barbarism, and consecrate the transfer of the African race in America to its new guardians. It is quite too early to speculate with much confidence on the results of a movement so vast, so sure to leave deepening traces in the coming generations. We are not among those who condemn our government for not hastening the movement by an act of immediate emancipation. For this, we are sure, the country was unprepared. In the North, it would have invited the most furious strife of parties, instead of that magnificent uprising of a nation's loyalty which we have witnessed. In the South, it would have forced on an internecine war of section and race, which hardly any imaginable benefits of mere freedom would have been sufficient to set off. We admire the caution, full as much as we do the strong and courageous grasp, with which the helm has been governed, as we shot those perilous rapids we are fast leaving behind. To restore the dominion of constitutional law, in the midst of dangers that the world was almost agreed to pronounce fatal, seems to us a grander triumph than to inaugurate a revolution so convulsive as that must have been. But we should be sorry not to believe that the victory and security of freedom have been the end held steadily in view by the administration, or that it has not taken advantage of events, as far as seemed right and safe, to secure those noblest objects of human government, which, to all right minds, are hardly less sacred than the very existence of government itself. A very slight review of the points at which slavery has been touched in the progress of the war will serve to bring us back to the immediate topic of our discussion. Among the alleged motives of secession, we find expressed alarm at the increase of the slave population, with apprehensions (as in the Mobile "Declaration of Causes ") of "negro equality" to result from the Republican triumph; and among its earliest steps we find the forming of "vigilance associations" to repress the liberties of negroes, and the enrolling of "minute men" to enforce the law of the suspect, with a ferocity worthy of the palmiest days of the Reign of Terror. In April, 1861, during the famous march of the Massachu setts Eighth to the relief of Washington, General Butler offered the service of his troops to suppress a threatened insurrection in Maryland, taking the ground, in his correspondence with Governor Andrew, that his duty was, everywhere alike and simply, the defence of law. In May, at Fortress Monroe, General Butler refused to surrender, to the claim of masters in rebellion, slaves liable to be employed in the service of the enemy, as contraband of war, which phrase has nearly supplanted every other in familiar talk, where refugee slaves are spoken of. From this time the fortress has been the resort of a population of several thousand fugitives. In August, this decision was sanctioned by an act of Congress, confiscating such property of the rebels, slaves included, as had actually been employed for hostile uses. In September, General Fremont, hard pressed by the difficulties of his department, declared by proclamation all slaves of rebel masters in Missouri free. This act was limited in its operation by the President to the cases covered by the confiscation act of Congress; but its principle has been adopted in a bill just passed by the House of Representatives. In November, after the conquest of Port Royal, a large district, including the celebrated Sea Islands, was forsaken by its white inhabitants, who took with them many of the ablerbodied and more intelligent of the slaves, leaving ten or twelve thousand more to the protection of the United States. Early in the present year, an article of war was enacted to remedy the scandal and cruelty of repeated surrender of fugitive slaves by army officers, forbidding any one in the military service of the United States to deliver up any such fugitive. In March, on the recommendation of the President, a resolution was passed by Congress, offering the aid of the national treasury to such States as shall determine on a policy of emancipation. This measure was presented on purely political grounds, to detach the interests of the Border States from those of the Slave States. By the act of April 16, emancipation was decreed by Congress in the District of Columbia, a million dollars being appropriated for compensation to loyal owners. By an act approved June 20, slavery was forever prohibited in Territories of the United States; and a treaty has within a month passed its final stage of ratification, by which America concedes to England the right of visitation and search, for the more effectual suppression of the African slave-trade. On the 9th of May, General Hunter, commanding at Hilton Head, issued a proclamation declaring emancipation, as the necessary result of martial law, throughout his military district, including the States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. This act has been since disowned by the President, who, however, in doing it, intimates that this extreme measure, emancipation by authority of the war-power, may yet be held in reserve, and entreats attention to the resolution passed by Congress in March. Still later, Mr. Stanley, Military Governor of North Carolina, has attempted to put in force the Black Code of that State, by the rendition of fugitives, the suppression of colored schools, and the expulsion of free citizens who remonstrated against his course, a perversion of arbitrary power which, it is understood, has been promptly rebuked by the President. These are the phases of progress hitherto, marked by brief steps in these crowded months, which serve to measure the advance we are making towards a practical resolution of this hard matter. A task of practical statesmanship more perplexed and delicate, and surrounded by more conflicting circumstances, could hardly have been given to any government. It will no doubt prove to have been wise, on the whole, not to hurry or anticipate matters, to leave as much as possible to the solution of events, and not to dictate in advance any line of policy which a few days more might show to be mischievous or needless. Besides, one must consider not only what materials he has to work on, but what tools he has to work with. Slaves have been "delivered up" by our regiments under circumstances of great barbarity and infamy, even, it is said, slaves who have hazarded their lives to bring important information to the camp. Their presence within the lines has been forbidden by military rule by some of our commanding generals; while in other cases, as in the great victories of Roanoke Island and Fort Donelson, they have brought the precise information, at the critical time, on which the success turned; and their service has been of infinite value as guides in the forests of Virginia, and as pilots in the waters of the Carolinas. By constant testimony, slaves have been freely employed by the rebel armies, not only in fortifications, but in the ranks; while the story is told of a free negro, who, for the mere suggestion that the blacks would love to fight" on the side of the Union, was brutally knocked down by a Northern officer. And while these outrages, or many of them, as well as the clumsy game of cross-purposes in issuing proclamations only to be nullified and disowned, might have been checked by a few plain rules laid down at starting, yet the very temper they evince, even among some of our best officers and men, shows the immense difficulties that beset the government at every stage in dealing with any matter that rouses that most irritable instinct, the prejudice of race. blunder on, and feel our way by groping as in the dark. Meanwhile, steps have been already taken for enlisting negro regiments in some departments of the service, probably for pioneer as well as garrison duty; and it seems to be well understood that the President stands prepared, should the military situation absolutely demand, to declare immediate and unconditional emancipation. By no fallacy, and under no pretext, shall slavery be allowed to destroy the government, or divide the territory of the republic. So we A double process is denoted in the record we have just given, which it is very interesting to observe. On the one hand, the interest of the dominant race, the welfare of the republic at large, is consulted in those measures which impress one type more distinctly on its policy, such as the freedom of the District, the freedom of the Territories (including the homestead act), and the steps taken towards general emancipation. On the other hand, the government accepts more and more frankly the position which the year's history illustrates so clearly, that the guardianship of the colored race is forfeited by its former masters, and is now in the keeping of the Union at large, and of the North, which more and more represents the Union. To some of the questions raised by this new posture of affairs we shall direct the rest of what we have to say. First, the direct effects of the war on the institution of slavery. In the cruelly suggestive language of the market, the Southern country has been divided in two portions, the slave-producing and the slave-consuming States. And the conditions of demand and supply had got so far adjusted as to make that population much more stationary than our theories would have taught. As long ago as September, 1848, we pointed out in this journal that tendency or drift of the colored race which indicates the great Southwest as its future home. Statistics still justify the theory, but by a rate of progress almost imperceptible, and quite baffling to our anticipations. The natural law of emigration was held in check by two things, the political advantage given to slavery, which made it next to impossible to get the leverage to displace it where once established, and the systematizing of that detestable "branch of industry" which fed the enormous consumption of the cotton and sugar plantations. So that, up to the very outset of the war, our prophecies have been confounded by finding the Border States apparently as far from emancipation as thirty years ago. The efforts to restore the African slave-trade at the South, and the war of attack and defence waged along the northern frontier of slavery, were mere incidents in the struggle by which the equilibrium was violently maintained. Against a structure already strained and undermined, war strikes a shattering blow. The conciliatory proposal of the President only anticipates what time would have rudely and violently compelled, - emancipation in the Border States, resulting from the conflict into which they were fatally dragged. It found Delaware on the very verge of adopting the policy it suggests. In Maryland, it has led to a resolute expression of the need to make that State independent of the interests and the dictation of the South. Kentucky has suffered too much from the war to be tender towards the rebellion, its authors, or its cause; and is in the mood to welcome, we should think, so hopeful an offer of relief. In Missouri,- a great peninsula of bondage thrust out into the free Northwest, the slave population has dwindled, we are told, from the figures of the last census (114,965) as low as to fifty thousand; and the Legislature there have just - |