With such evidence as this, how absurd is the statement sometimes heard that slavery has nothing to do with this war! Nothing to do with it, when but for slavery in the South, resisted in the North, the rebellion would never have broken out? Nothing to do with it, when the Southerners avowedly declare that they fight

to maintain and extend it? Nothing to do with it, when tens of thousands in the Federal army would not draw a sword nor fire a shot but in the hope of now and for ever smiting down this Goliath of wickedness? Nothing to do with it, when the Northern army liberates wherever it goes, while the Southerners drive to bondage all in whose veins is a trace of African blood? Ask the multitudes who, since the war broke out have obtained their freedom, whether it has nothing to do with

It is virtually, if

it! It has everything to do with it. not ostensibly, a war of Emancipation. The South, from the first, declared that it was so on the part of the North. We think it would have been well had the North as explicitly proclaimed it themselves. But whether so intended or not at the beginning, this it has now become by the inevitable progress of events. History has no such conflict on the roll of Freedom's struggles. Never before was tyranny so terrible, contended for so openly, and on such a scale. Never before were millions of one race banded together to fight to the death in defence of a claim to treat another race as mere cattle, and for the further right to spread this pestilence

far and wide through the world, unchecked. Shall slavery continue to degrade millions of our fellow-creatures through future generations, and to extend its deadly influence over new empires-or shall it now receive its death-blow, the children of Africa be free, and America be delivered from what has so long marred her beauty, destroyed her peace, hindered her usefulness, and provoked the wrath of God? This is the great issue now pending!

IV.

ON WHICH SIDE SHOULD THE SYMPATHY OF ENGLAND BE ENLISTED?

There can be no hesitation as to the reply to this question. Our glorious history, the struggles of our forefathers, the memory of freedom's heroes whose names are household words, our equal laws, the emancipation of our own slaves, our open and inviolable asylum for fugitives from tyranny of every hue and from every land, our frequent remonstrances with our American brethren on this subject, our reiterated and unqualified condemnation of this great sin, our churches, our bibles, our prayers, all demand that every heart should beat in sympathy with those who are banded together to accomplish what we have so long urged upon them, the total abolition of slavery throughout the empire.

How then can we explain the apparent lack of this sympathy? Partly by the prevailing ignorance and mis

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conception respecting American affairs caused by the gross unfairness of our leading newspapers. The Times especially, by letters to the editor, and one-sided narratives from correspondents, and clever leading articles, has systematically cast ridicule or condemnation on the North, while it has held up the South to admiration. But the suppression or perversion of truth secures only a temporary purpose. England's heart ever beats true to liberty, and her sympathy will be all the more emphatic from having been thus for a while restrained.

Mere politicians think that it would be better for Europe that the great Republic of America should be divided, and thus many who detest slavery, do not sympathize with the North in their effort to restore the Union. It is generally considered that this effort is hopeless, and that the blood and treasure expended in it are absolutely wasted. Thus the sympathy felt with the North so far as the North is opposed to slavery, is checked in its expression by disapproval of a war so sanguinary, yet so unlikely to lead to any equivalent result. It has been supposed that the North has hitherto been fighting for the Union as it was. But by that Union, slavery was guaranteed in the States where it already existed, and fugitives were sent back to their incensed owners. Not because they are indifferent about slavery, but because they so deeply abhor it; many in this country have no sympathy with the North in a struggle, the issue of which, if they succeed, will in their

opinion, rivet more tightly the fetters of the slave, and render his escape more difficult than ever. They therefore wish the South to become a separate Confederation in order that slavery may cease to have the entire power of the Union to prop it up, and that slaves may the more easily escape by the land of freedom being brought so much nearer to them.

But this tendency to favor the final separation of the southern States will be checked as the true nature of the quarrel is better understood. The South are struggling not about tariffs, not to resist tyranny, not from a noble desire for self-government, but to preserve and extend slavery. We have seen by their own confession, that the maintenance of the Union as it was, would be the destruction of the system. It must spread or die. We have seen how, after years of struggle, the North finally said to the South: "Hitherto shall thou come but no farther," and how, by such restraint of slavery they designed its final extinction. Though when the war first broke out the avowed purpose was to restore the Union as it was, this is no longer the case. We have seen how, since the secession of the South, great advances have been already made towards emancipation. If the South is brought back, it will be no longer as an arrogant dictator, but humbled, crippled, impotent to carry out its evil purposes. After the first of January its slaves will be legally free, and then its restoration will secure a vast territory where the negro race, already

domiciled, will cultivate the soil as free-laborers, their liberty guaranteed by the whole power of the Union. But if the South become a separate nation, they do so avowedly to perpetuate and indefinitely extend all the horrors of slavery.

The Westminster Quarterly Review of this month says, "Should these conspirators succeed in making good their independence, and possessing themselves of a part of the territories, being those which are in immediate contact with Mexico, nothing is to be expected but the spread of the institution by conquest (unless prevented by some European power) over that vast country and ultimately over all Spanish America, and if circumstances permit, the conquest and annexation of the West Indies; while so vast an extension of the field for the employment of slaves would raise up a demand for more, which would in all probability lead to that reopening of the African slave-trade, the legitimacy and necessity of which have long been publicly asserted by many organs of the South. Such are the issues to humanity which are at stake in the present contest between free and slave-holding America; and such is the cause to which a majority of English writers, and of Englishmen who have the ear of the public, have given the support of their sympathies."

But I repeat, the heart of England beats true to liberty. It is impossible she should sympathize with Slavery. It is impossible therefore, when the question is