"South of the line, noble little Delaware led off right from the first. Maryland was made to seem against the Union. Our soldiers were assaulted, bridges were burned, and railroads torn up within her limits, and we were many days, at one time, without the ability to bring a single regiment over her soil to the Capital. Now her bridges and railroads are repaired and open to the Government; she already gives seven regiments to the cause of the Union and none to the enemy; and her people, at a regular election, have sustained the Union by a larger majority and a larger aggregate vote than they ever before gave to any candidate or any question. Kentucky, too, for some time in doubt, is now decidedly, and I think unchangeably, ranged on the side of the Union. Missouri is comparatively quiet, and I believe can not again be overrun by the insurrectionists. . . . After a somewhat bloody struggle of months, winter closes on the Union people of Western Virginia, leaving them masters of their own country." A footing had been obtained on the southern coast at Hatteras, Port Royal, Tybee Island, near Savannah, and Ship Island; and there were some general accounts of popular movements, in behalf of the Union, in North Carolina and Tennessee. "These things demonstrate that the cause of the Union is advancing steadily and certainly southward."

A marked change in the tone and temper of Congress in regard to the vexed question since the close of the special session was at once manifest. In advance of the message Senator Trumbull gave notice of a bill

which he introduced on the 5th-" for the confiscation of the property of the rebels, and giving freedom

to the persons they held in slavery." Representative Elliot, of Massachusetts, also, on the first day of the session, offered resolutions aimed at the latter object, which the House, by 56 ayes and 70 noes, refused to lay on the table. Messrs Stevens and Campbell, of Pennsylvania, each presented similar resolutions at the same sitting. On the other hand, a resolution reaffirming the conservative Crittenden resolution, which passed the House with only two dissenting votes in July, was laid on the table (December 3d) on motion of Thaddeus Stevens, 71 to 65. On the 16th, a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia was introduced by Senator Wilson. These and several later demonstrations against the Confederate corner-stone occupied much of the attention of both Houses throughout the session.

Commodore Wilkes had been thanked in a personal letter by Secretary Welles, and applauded in his official report, for the arrest of the Confederate Ambassadors, Mason and Slidell. With great haste and abundant zeal the House of Representatives by resolution unanimously commended the act. The press and the people had found no hero deemed so worthy of their worship since Anderson exchanged Moultrie for Sumter. The President could share the popular feeling without forgetting his official responsibility. When he had thought for a moment on first hearing news of the exploit, he said: "These men must be given up. We have no right to stop a British mail-ship to search for contraband passengers, whatever was formerly done by Britain. herself."

The British were indignant when they heard the

tale told by the Trent's captain, and there was a general outcry for war. British regiments were promptly dispatched to Canada and more British warships were ordered to our Atlantic coast. Restitution and apology were demanded with all possible haste. Happily

so it seems - there was no submarine cable to speed irrevocable words. Weeks instead of hours measured the period of negotiation, giving leisure, as the correspondence went on, to calculate the proportion, in case of war, between cause and consequence.

The international crisis gave exultant hope to the Confederates and their friends. The Opposition members of Congress assumed the part of champions of Wilkes, and scorned any thought of yielding to English insolence and menace. They were delighted to believe the Administration was in a dilemma of which either horn would be its fate. There were leading Republican members, too, who-willing to take up the burden of another war if that were necessary were for the moment intent upon sustaining the action of the gallant Commodore.

The decision was communicated to Congress on the 30th of December. Secretary Seward's final letter in the case, under date of the 26th, conceding that the detention of the Trent was technically wrong, disclaimed the act as unauthorized by the Government, and agreed to surrender the prisoners into British custody. No other reparation or apology was offered, and this was promptly accepted as an amicable conclusion of the whole matter. "This concession of the Federal Government," says Alfriend in his Life of Jefferson Davis, "was the first of numerous disappointments in store

for the Southern people in the hope, so universally indulged, of foreign intervention.”

In his Diary, the exiled Polish Count, Gurowski. then employed in the State Department as a translator, a man much given to extravagant and cynical utterances, yet trustworthy as to the direct statement of facts within his own knowledge,- wrote in December, 1861:

The Trent affair finished. We are a little humbled, but it was expedient to terminate it so. . . Europe will applaud us, and the relation with England will become clarified. Perhaps England would not have been so stiff in this Trent affair but for the fixed idea . . . that Seward wishes to pick a quarrel with England. The first weeks of Seward's premiership point that way.

Mr. Seward has the honors of the Trent affair. It is well as it is; the argument is smart, but a little too long, and not in a genuine diplomatic style. But Lincoln ought to have a little credit for it, as from the start he was for giving the traitors up.

Mr. Seward's review of the case was so skillfully done as to soothe the public mind and relieve its dissatisfaction. While making the concession seem to turn on the point that Wilkes had not brought the Trent to port for judicial action, he courteously hinted to Lord John Russell that the American Government was more consistent in granting, than the British Government in making, the present demand.