can continent, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, disclosed at once necessities for a better channel to be constructed across that continent, and made a full revelation that that better channel could be constructed across the Isthmus of Darien, and nowhere else. During the past three hundred years, statesmanship and humanitarianism have combined with ever-increasing diligence and effort to find the means of effecting an enterprise which is, perhaps, the only one that ever has commanded universal assent, and commended itself to the desire of all mankind. Every advance of modern civilization in Europe, the establishment of every new nation in America, every opening of any secluded Asiatic State and nation that has occurred, has increased the zeal and the energy of the friends of progress in favor of a canal across the Isthmus of Darien. We habitually feel and say that we are living in an important and interesting period. We do indeed have occasion and opportunity to labor effectually in various ways in the cause of civilization and humanity; but, if I do not mistake, the chief of all the advantages of statesmen of the present day in all the countries, is that they can take part in the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Darien. Gentlemen, to accept our respective parts in this great enterprise is the work of this night. We are Americans. We are charged with responsibilities of establishing on the American continent a higher condition of civilization and freedom than has ever before been attained in any part of the world. We all acknowledge and feel this responsibility. The destiny which we wish to realize as Americans is set plainly before us and distinctly within our reach; but that destiny can only be attained by the execution of the Darien ship canal. The reason is obvious. While the electric telegraph can and must be used for the interchange of ideas between nations, and while improved highways must and will be used for overland travel and intercourse, yet the mineral, forest, and agricultural bulk productions of the earth can only be exchanged by navigation, and this navigation must be made as cheap and as frequent and as expeditious as is possible. But the navigation by sailing vessels is coming to an end, and commerce is confiding the trust of navigation exclusively to steam vessels. Commerce can no longer afford to use the circuitous and perilous navigation around the Capes. It must and will have shorter channels of transport, and of these there can be but two- the one across the Isthmus of Suez,

the other across the Isthmus of Darien. A canal across the Isthmus of Suez already approaches its completion. If that channel is to secure the patronage of universal commerce, it will be fully enlarged and completely adapted to the interests of modern commerce. In that case the commerce of even the Atlantic American coast, from the St. Lawrence to Cape Horn, will be turned eastward across the Atlantic, and through the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, and the Indian Ocean to India and China. It would be a reproach to American enterprise and statesmanship to suppose that we are thus to become tributaries to ancient and effete Egypt, when by piercing the Isthmus of Darien we can bring the trade of even the Mediterranean and of the European Atlantic coasts through a channel of our own, so palpably indicated by nature that all the world has accepted it as feasible and necessary. We have undertaken to develop the resources of our own continent, and to regulate and restore the Asiatic nations to free self-government, prosperity, and happiness. The Darien ship canal is the only enterprise connected with the great work of civilization which remains to be undertaken. It was a mistake to suppose that we have been hitherto either inactive or idle in regard to this important matter. We have built a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama, and within twelve months more we shall have stretched a railroad across the continent from New York to San Francisco. We have abundant assurance that these achievements are profitable and useful. Both of them, however, are profitable and useful only as types and shadows of the Darien ship canal, which we all feel and know must be transcendently profitable and transcendently useful. The Executive Government of the United States, gentlemen, has adopted the enterprise in which you are engaged. It has provided for a full, satisfactory, and final survey, preparatory to the construction of the Darien ship canal. It is engaged in negotiating with the Republic of Colombia for its consent to your achievement of the enterprise. The President will go forward with renewed zeal and vigor on receiving the assurances which you have given me that the city of New York has named the men who will undertake that achievement, and stand ready to furnish the hundred million of dollars which it may be expected to cost. Personal courtesies such as yours, gentlemen, deserve personal acknowledgments. In return for the kindness with which you have received me into your enlightened and noble consultations,

I can only give you my sincere thanks, and say that if I shall be able to identify my name with yours in the prosecution of this great enterprise, I shall certainly feel more assured hereafter than I have ever been heretofore that I have lived not altogether in vain.

A VISIT FROM FRIENDS.

Auburn, April 21, 1870.

GENTLEMEN OF SYRACUSE: If my life and your own lives had been merely domestic, it would, nevertheless, even in that case, have been a pleasant thing to meet you now, in this balmy spring season, and renew the pledge of a friendship of thirty and more years.

I will not attempt to describe my emotion in receiving this visit from you, which opens afresh the domestic cares, anxieties, pleasures, and sorrows, of so long a period, intermingling everywhere with national trials, dangers, triumphs, and calamities, such only as fearful commotion and revolutionary war could have produced. You know that it is not my habit to dwell on the topics of the past.

You have reminded me, that since we parted last, I have been, in some sort, a traveller; and you greet me all the more cordially, as a neighbor returned home. I should like, if it were convenient, to speak to you of the glaciers, mountains, forests, and table-lands, of the mines and caves, of the cataracts, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, their majesty, beauty, and riches; of states beginning and states begun, of states growing, of states struggling, of states rising, and of states dissolving to recompose themselves again; of men and Indian, African, Asiatic, and our own; their characters and wants, powers, parts, and places; in the complex system of American republican civilization, as I saw nature and men in the field I have surveyed-from the Arctic to the equator, and between the

races

two oceans.

The impulse to utterance on that line fortifies itself by recalling certain promises to speak without reserve (here in Auburn), promises which I made to all those sorts and conditions of men, with a view to moderate my expressions of gratitude, on the spot, for welcomes not less suggestive than oppressive, received in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, California, Cuba, and Mexico.

But, gentlemen, you have promised me that this visit shall be an informal one. Moreover, I have scarcely yet recovered from the chill which the March snows gave me, on a too sudden arrival here from the West Indies. Let it suffice to say, that everywhere, within the United States and without the United States, I found, in political institutions and in the current of political events, and in the progress of order, law, freedom, and humanity, a full confirmation of the principles, policies, and sentiments in which the people of Auburn and Syracuse have been educated themselves, and which, without shrinking from the sacrifice of life and fortune, they have so long maintained. Gentlemen, I have trusted you long, and you have adhered to me with perseverance. Let us thank God with humility and reverence for the blessing of such a friendship, and hope and strive that it may continue to the end of our days.

Gentlemen, the first century of our national existence draws to a close. While the seals of the second century are being opened, we shall be passing away, relying on the benevolence of God, and the progress of humanity. Let us hope, without doubting, that our successors will be wiser and better than we have been; that henceforth, the reformer of the nation may never be found lacking in patience, the patriot in zeal, the soldier in prudence, or the statesman in constancy, and above all, that the nation itself may never distrust its own gracious destiny. Amen.

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WHEREAS, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit : —

“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom:

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any state, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such states shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such state, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaim for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the states and parts of states wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free; and that the executive government of

1 For Proclamation of September, 1862, see ante, p. 345.

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