failure. If so, it was typical of its author; he certainly failed as a General; and if the causes of his failure are still debatable, I will venture to say, they will not be so, after the charm and influence of the magnetism of the man himself and political prejudices in his favor, shall have passed away, and the impartial verdict of history, stripped of outside integuments, shall be reached.

Lincoln did err in his dealings with McClellan, and injured his administration severely thereby-more so than the public is aware of; but it was in adhering to McClellan after "forbearance ceased to be a virtue."

He should simply have been dismissed from the army after those infamous and impudent letters from the front, and should not have been retained after March, 1862: and my opinion is, that he was retained largely by reason of Lincoln's unwillingness to destroy McClellan, and this forbearance toward McClellan, in view of the disasters it brought to our cause, was really a blemish apparently on the lustre of Lincoln's great renown, if it had any blemish. And yet this most magnanimous of men sent word to him by Thurlow Weed, in the spring of 1863, that if he would put himself at the head of the Union Democratic party and push forward the sentiment of a vigorous prosecution of the war, he would step aside and do all he could to secure his election in 1864. The suggestion was unheeded, but it attests the self-sacrificing patriotism and devotion to duty of Lincoln, just the same.

One of the most remarkable things that ever happened in the moral world was this: that men of excellent judgment and unsullied patriotism at the North, were firm in the belief that McClellan was all he pretended to be, both in ability and devotion to his duty; and, at the same time, he was the subject of extravagant laudation at the hands of the copperhead press and orators at the North, and equally of the Confederate newspapers and statesmen at the South. While our

loyal press was filled with denunciations of his course, the copper-head and Rebel press were firm in his defence. He was even lauded in the Confederate Congress.

Another solecism in morals is this: that he, the commander-in-chief of our armies, whose duty and common decency and propriety required him to fight and destroy the Rebel armies, should be, with almost unanimity, taken up as the candidate of the party which demanded that the war cease, and that without any agreement or intimation from the Rebels that the war should cease on their part.

The parallelism between McClellan's actions while on the field, and the action of his political friends at Chicago, was significant.

And, on the evening of November 8th, 1864, it is probable that McClellan's next door neighbor might have heard from the recesses of the chamber of the ex-Napoleon, a sepulchral voice soliloquizing:

"FAREWELL! a long FAREWELL to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope: to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips the root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured
Like little wanton boys, that swim on bladders,
These many summers in a sea of glory,

But far beyond my depth. MY HIGH-BLOWN PRIDE
AT LENGTH Broke under ME, and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy

Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye.
I feel my heart new opened. O how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
AND WHEN HE FALLS, HE FALLS LIKE LUCIFER,
NEVER TO HOPE AGAIN."

At Charleston, now the Capital of West Virginia, in 1852, I saw a handsome and modest appearing Octoroon girl in jail, in an apartment accessible by day to two desperate highway robbers, one of whom was also a murderer. She had committed no crime, but was thus detained by a slave-trader who had bought her for the New Orleans market; the law or custom of Virginia providing that a slave-trader could imprison his purchases for safety, until he had completed his gang.

XIII.

LINCOLN AND SLAVERY.

I would not have a slave to till my ground,

To carry me, to fan me when I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth

That sinews bought and sold have ever earned."

"If slavery is not wrong-nothing is wrong."

-CowPER.

--LINCOLN.

"The President would like to have God on his side; but he must have Kentucky."

-FURNESS.

"Abraham Lincoln cared little for the negro or his freedom, though he disliked slavery; but he cared greatly, and with his whole heart and soul, for the Union." -BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

"Colonization and deportation of the slaves when set free was deemed by him an essential part of his emancipation policy."

"When Lincoln very reluctantly issued the preliminary Proclamation he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was * inseparably connected with the policy."

-JULIAN.

"My paramount object is to save the Union; and not either to save or destroy slavery." -LINCOLN. "Expressing no sympathy for the slave *** and showing no dislike to the slaveholders-" -DONN PIATT.

"The President has yielded so much to Border State and negrophobic counsels, that he now finds it difficult to arrest his own descent--" -CHASE (on Sept. 10, 1862.)

In the chronicles of John Rolfe, under date of 1619 -the same who took up" with Pocahontas. occurs, with no moral or philosophical comment, this quaint and portentous statement: "About the last of August came in a Dutch Man-of-Warre, that sold us twenty negars." A declaration containing a greater weight of ill-omen to the nation could not be written.