siness among ourselves, while amid
much that was cold and menacing, the kindest words coming from
Europe were uttered in accents of pity, that we were too blind to
surrender a hopeless cause. Our commerce was suffering greatly by
a few armed vessels built upon and furnished from foreign shores,
and we were threatened with such additions from the same quarter
as would sweep our trade from the sea and raise the blockade. We
had failed to elicit from European governments any thing hopeful
on this subject. . . .

"We are now permitted to take another view. The rebel borders are
pressed still further back, and by the complete opening of the
Mississippi the country, dominated by the Rebellion, is divided
into distinct parts with no practical communication between them.
Tennessee and Arkansas have been substantially cleared of insurgent
control, and influential citizens in each,--owners of slaves and
advocates of slavery at the beginning of the Rebellion,--now declare
openly for emancipation in their respective States. Of those States
not included in the Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland and Missouri,
neither of which three years ago would tolerate any restraint upon
the extension of slavery into new territories, only now dispute as
to the best mode of removing it within their own limits." The
President dwelt with much satisfaction upon the good behavior of
the slave population. "Full one hundred thousand of them are now
in the United-States military service, about one-half of which
number actually bear arms in the ranks, thus giving a double
advantage,--of taking so much labor from the insurgents' cause,
and supplying the places which otherwise might be filled with so
many white men. So far as tested it is difficult to say that they
are not as good soldiers as any. No servile insurrection or tendency
to cruelty has marked the measures of emancipation and the arming
of the blacks. . . . Thus we have a new reckoning. The crisis
which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past."

The Thirty-seventh Congress was distinguished for its effective
legislation on all subjects relating to the finances and to the
recruitment of a great army. It was reserved to the Thirty-eighth
Congress to take steps for the final abolition of slavery by the
submission to the States of a Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The course of events had prepared the public mind for the most
radical measures. In the short spa