armies in the face, because our forces are divided and sent off on Tomfool's errands-to do something that will have no influence on the final and much desired result. Had Grant half of the men that are butting their brains out against cypress trees in that Opelousas country, he could push on; and his first move would call back to his front the columns that now, under Longstreet, threaten Knoxville and the continuity of our line. Hooker and his corps would have been saved to Meade and the fortifications that his army could not have safely assaulted, could not have been turned. Meanwhile a dozen gunboats on the Mississippi could have kept every rebel on the west side of that stream Five hundred men afloat could have done the work of five and thirty thousand in the field. Is not the wisdom, the foresight and necessity of Order No. 3 vindicated in what we relate?

The country inquires why is it that Halleck with that cabbage head of his, retains his place-why is he not permitted to retire to his ancestral krout gardens on the Mohawk, and there, among his kindred, find, in the killing of cut-worms and the care of his cabbage crop, the employment for which his genius is fitted And if Burnside is gobbled up, and Grant is forced to retreat, that inquiry will grow into a demand that will be sure to make itself heard. We, who do not care for all the epauletted dignity that the Presicent can confer on mediocrity, press the demand now. Cabbages for Halleck, and war for those who have genius to comprehend it!"

In a subsequent number of the same paper, we find the following:

"We know no reason, outside of the inefficiency and incompetency of General Halleck, why this array of evils should now confront the country and send a chill down to the soles of every loyal man's boots. And we know of no remedy save that heroic one of sending Halleck, who is responsible for the army's movements, back to the captaincy for which he is best fitted, or to the Mohawk and the cabbages among which he was raised. The disaster now threatening has been foreseen for more than a month, It has been the constant theme of the rebel papers, and their loudest boasts There is not a man in the land who did not know of the movement intended. There is not, save one at Washington, a General-inChief, who would not have made a counter movement to check it. If Knoxville falls, and Burnside is destroyed, let the hero of Corinth -the author of Order No. 3-look out. even Presidential favor can save him!

Not

[From the New York World, Nov. 11, 1863.] "The greatest folly of my life was the issuing of the Emancipation proclamation.' Such were the words of President Lincoln to Wendell Phillips last January, according to the testimony of the latter in a speech he made last week at the Music Hall in New Haven. Before the issuing of that document, President Lincoln gave it as his opinion that it would be

of no more effect than the 'Pope's bull against the comet;' and after he had given it to the world he regards it as 'the greatest folly of his life,' and did not scruple to so inform one of the most influential leaders of the fanatical faction who had forced him into the objectionable measure. President Lincoln has made many notable remarks since he has been in office, but none that is likely to attract so much attention as the above."

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PROCLAMATION...THE RADICAL WAR POLICY. Mr. Lincoln's Letter to the Utica-Springfield Meetings Editor's Remarks on the Negro Policy..." New York Tribune" Pledges the President, &c ...John P. Hale's Bill to Abolish the Constitution...The Proclamation in England..."New York Tribuno" on "Servile Insurrections"...Opinions of English Abolitionists... Mr. Wilberforce on the Folly of the Proclamation... Wendell Phillips on the Rampage... The Proclamation Confessed a Failure... Caleb B. Smith Pledges the Administration against the Proclamation... Mr. Madison on Emancipation... Lord Dunmore's Proclamation... Bancroft, the Historian on the Same...Thurlow Weed's Prediction...Mr. Lincoln on Federal Authority...The Chicago Platform... General Remarks... Post Master General Blair as a Witness...His Rockville Speech.

THE PROCLAMATION AND THE PRESIDENT'S WAR POLICY.

The following is President LINCOLN's letter to the Union Mass Meeting at Springfield, Illinois, and Utica, New York:

"To Hon. James C. Conklin:

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, "August 26th, 1562.

}

"MY DEAR SIR:-Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of Union men, to be held at the Capitol of Illinois on the third day of September, has been received. It would be very agreeable to me thus to meet my old friends, at my own home, but I cannot just now be absent from this city so long as a visit there would require.

"The meeting is to be of those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union, and I am sure that my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the Nation's gratitude to those other noble men, whom no partisan hopes make false to the Nation's life.

"There are those who are dissatisfied with To such I would say, you desire peace, me. and you blame me that we do not have it: but how can we attain it? There are but three conceivable ways:

"First-To suppress the rebellion by force of This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed.

arms.

"If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. If you are not for force nor yet for dissolution, there remains only some imaginable compromise. I do not believe that any compromise under the maintenance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn, tends directly to the opposite belief-that the strength of the rebellion is in its military-its army; and that the army dom

inates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offers, if made by any man or men within that range, in opposition to that, ar simply nothing, for the present, because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise, if one be made with them.

"To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and peace men from the North should meet in convention and frame a proclamation or compromise embracing a restoration of the Union, in what way can that compromise be used to keep Gen. Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Gen. Meade's army can keep Gen. Lee's army out of Pennsylvania, and I think ultimately drive it out of existence. But no paper compromise, to which the controllers of Lee's army are not agreed, can at all effect that army. In an effort at such a compromise we would waste time that the enemy would improve to our disadvantage, and that would be all. A compromise to be effective must be made either with those who control the rebel army, or with the people liberated from the dominion of that army by the success of our

army.

"Now, allow me to assure you that no word or intimation from the rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowledge or belief. All charges or intimations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless, and I promise you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be rejected and kept secret from you.

they cannot use it, end even destroy their own to keep it from the enemy. Civilized belligerants do all in their power to help themselves or hurt the enemy, except in a few things regarded as barbarous and cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre of vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female. But the proclamation as a law is valid or not valid. If it is not valid, it wants no retraction. If it is valid it cannot be retracted any more than the dead can be brought to life.

"Some of you profess to think that retraction would operate favorably to the Union. Why better after the retraction than before the issue? There was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation was issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an explicit notice that it was coming unless averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance.

"The war has certainly progressed as favor ably to us since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have given us our most important victories, believe the emancipation policy and the aid of colored troops constitute the heaviest blows yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of those successes could not have been achieved where' it was, but for the aid of black soldiers.

[We'd like to see the proof of this.] "Among the commanders holding these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called abolitionism, or the Republican

"I freely acknowledge myself to be the servant of the people aecording to the bond of the service, the United States Constitution, and as such I am responsible to them. But, to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely. There is a difference between you and myself upon the subject. I certainly wish all men could be free, while you, I suppose, do not. Yet I have neither adopted or proposed any measure which is not consistent with even your view, provided you are for the Union.

"I suggested a compensated emancipation, to which you replied that you wished not to be taxed to buy negroes, but I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes except in such a way as to save you from greater taxation, in order to save the Union exclusively by other means. You dislike the emancipation and perhaps would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I think differently. I think the Constitution vests its Commander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is that slaves are property. Has there ever been any question, that by the laws of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? and is it not needed whenever the taking of it helps us or hurts the enemy? Armies, the world over, destroy the enemy's property when

military opinions. I submit their opinions, as being entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and arming blacks are unwise as military meas ures, and were not adopted as such in good faith.

"You say that you will not fight to free negroes; some of them seem willing enough to fight for you, but no matter. Fight you then exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation and propose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue tighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare [that you shall not fight to free negroes. I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy in his resistance to you. You think differently.

"I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motive. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom, and the promise being made must be kept.

"The signs look better. The Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea, thanks to the Great Northwest for it. Nor yet wholly to

them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, the Empire and Keystone states and New Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South too, in more colors than one. lent a hand. On the spot, their part of the history was jotted down in black and white.The job was a great one, and let none be barred who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river, may well be proud, yet even that is not all.It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and better done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg and on many fields

of less note.

"Nor must Uncle Sam's webbed feet be forgotten. At all the water's margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow mud bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they had been and made their tracks.

"Thanks to all; for the great Republic; for the principles by which it lives and keeps alive; for man's vast fortune-thanks to all! Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, aud that they who take such appeal are to lose their case and pay the cost. And then there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and with clenched teeth, and with steady eye, and well-poised oayonet, they have helped mankind to this great consummation; while I fear that there will be some white men, unable to forget that with malignant heart, and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

"Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy and final triumph. Let us be quite sober, and let us diligently apply our means, never doubting that a just God, in His own good time will give us the rightful result. [Signed.]

Yours very truly,

"A. LINCOLN."

THE NEGRO SOLDIER POLICY.

We have given above the whole of Mr. LINCOLN's epistle to the Utica-Springfield meetings-not that it was necessary for our purpose, but that his friends may not say we have done him injustice by partial extracts. He is here on record as wedded to the policy which the radicals forced him into.

The object of this policy lies deeper than a desire to render aid to white soldiers. This might have been done by employing the negroes as servants and helpers, in camps and ditches In fact, this is the only way that negroes might be servicable, to which no one has objected. But Sambo must be used as a political machine, and hence he must wear the blue uniform, and become subservient to the

military power-not that he has or can do any military service, commensurate with the trouble and expense of his equipment and military training. No, the negro as a soldier has made no record in this war, notwithstanding we are told the nation has expended millions for arming, equipping, feeding and clothing some 200,000 negro troops, be the same more or less, and we do not remember to have heard of Sambo, amid the din of battle, save at Milliken's Bend, where a black regiment was forced to the front by a wall of bayonets, in white hands, behind them. True, we have heard in the radical papers of wonderful prodigies performed by the sable sons of Mars, and some officials have even gone so far as to extol their merits above that of the white soldiers, but in all this, they have failed to furnish us with the history of facts and circumstances.

But, do you ask how the negro as a soldier, is to be used to favor political objects? Let us

see.

The Proclamation did not assume to liberate slaves everywhere. Certain districts were excluded. Slavery was still unmolested in the loyal Border States. The radicals insisted on some coup de main to abolish slavery in the border States. How could this be done? Why by the black soldier system. How by that? Let us see. The moment the black soldier system had been established, thousands of enlisting agents took up their positions in the border States, where they went to enlisting the slaves of loyal masters. They created alarm and brought out protests from the Governors of Maryland and Kentucky, but all to no purpose. The enlistments went on, and the general promise was thrown out, as a tub to the whale, that the slaves thus taken should be paid for. But this did not satisfy the loyal slaveholder. He saw in the movement an undisguised effort and determination to abolish slavery in all the localities excepted by the Proclamation, by indirection—a kind of whipthe devil-round-the-stump game.

The radicals saw that if they could, under the protecting ægis of the "military power" seize all the able-bodied slaves in the border States as soldiers, the people from necessity would give up the balance, and thus the negro soldier business would have answered its end. But as for negroes fighting or being of actual use in military operations, the evidence is entirely wanting. If this theory does not solve

the negro soldier scheme, then it must remain unsolved till the end of time, for from past history, we have no data to solve it on the black fighting hypothesis.

The following from the New York Tribune, of December, 1863, is unequivocal, and pledges the President to abolish slavery in all places, without a why or wherefore:

"Slavery, the wicked, wanton fomenter of this horrible strife, must die, or the peace will be but a hollow, delusive truce, to be soon followed by another desolating war. * Such is our President's programme, and we indorse every word of it.""

*

*

A BILL TO ABOLISH THE CONSTITUTION.

As carrying out this view, Senator JOHN P. HALE introduced the following in the Senate, December 14, '63:

"Be it enacted. &c.. That hereafter all per eons within the United States of America are equal before the law; and all claims to personal service, except those founded on contract and the claim of a parent to the service of a minor child, and service rendered in pursuance of sentence for the punishment of crime, be and the same are hereby forever abolished, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

THE PROCLAMATION IN ENGLAND.

One of the main arguments in favor of the Proclamation, by the radicals, was, that it would bring the English people to our aid; but the following, from the London Herald, does not wear so favorable an aspect. That paper

says:

"Another symptom of increasing ferocitya new source of frightful crime, on the one side, and provocation to horrible vengeance on the other, [just what we have seen as the father of all the difficulties in reference to exchange of prisoners, whereby thousands of our brave

men have been forced to starve and rot in

Southern prisons, all on account of the negro punctilio red-tape-ism of our Government.] is disclosed in the demand made in New York for the Abolitionist Proclamation. So far as its nominal purport goes. this would be as futile as Mr. Lincoln's other edicts. Before he can emancipate the Southern negroes, he must conquer the South [just what he himself said to the Chicago divines]. But the demand is not made with a view to the real liberation of the slaves. It is meant to diminish the rebel army, by calling away many officers and men to the defense of their homes. [This failed entirely] The object is not negro emancipation, but servile insurrection [this was argued by the New York T ibune]-not the manumission of slaves, but the subornation of atrocities, such as those at Cawnpore and Meireut

against women and children of Southern families.

"For the negro the Northerners care nothing, except as a possible weapon in their hands, by which the more safely and effectually to wreak a cruel and cowardly vengeance on the South. Inferior in every respect to the to rebellion, outdue them in acts of carnage, Sepoys, the negro race would, if once excited as they would fall below them in military courage. They may be useful as assassins and incendiaries; as soldiers against the dominant race, they would be utterly worthless. Fortunately, there is no probability that the North will be able to kindle any general or extensive negro insurrection. On the lines of the Mississippi there might be occasional outbreaks and numerous desertion3; a good many plantations might be fired, and a number of fugitives might be added to the Federal army. But neither the issues of the struggle, nor the fate of the servile race would be thereby altered. The war would only be made more ferocious, and the condition of the slaves more miserable. These new Abolitionists do not conceal their motives; they have not the decency to pretend conviction; they seek, avowedly, nothing but an instrument of vengeance on their enemy, and an instrument so dastardly, involving the commission of outrages so horrible. that even a government which employs a Mitchell and a Butler must shrink from such a load of infamy."

* *

OPINIONS OF THE ABOLITIONISTS OF ENGLAND.

The London correspondent of the New York Times (Radical) wrote as follows to that paper, in 1862:

sympathy-the everlasting negro. We have "We have still another object of British the most doleful pictures of his unhappy situation, deprived of his Southern home and its comforts, and turned out to freeze and starve. Rejected from some of the Free States, and scorned in all, what is the poor negro to do? It is a fact that the leading Abolitionists in England are reproaching the Nat onal Government for bringing upon the negroes the It is costing millions-tasking the resources of calamity of sudden and unprovided freedom. a great nation-to feed the idle operatives in Lancashire

How then, they say, can you provide for four millions of slaves, who become free by the Proclamation of President Lincoln on the 1st of January? The great mass of the abolitionists in England would rather trust the negroes to their masters, than have them run the chances-or rather, meet, what they consider, the certain miseries of a forced and immediate emancipation. The abolition policy of the Government has utterly failed, so far as I have been able to learn, of finding any sympathy on this side of the Atlantic."

MR. WILBERFORCE ON THE PROCLAMATION. Mr. WILBERFORCE, son of the late and fam