did not believe she could be again
overrun by the insurrectionists. These Border slave States, none
of which "would promise a single soldier at first, have now an
aggregate of not less than forty thousand in the field for the
Union; while of their citizens certainly not more than a third of
that number, and they of doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence,
are in arms against it." Beyond these results the President had
some "general accounts of popular movements in behalf of the Union
in North Carolina and Tennessee," and he expressed his belief that
"the cause of the Union is advancing steadily and certainly
Southward."

The one marked change in the popular opinion of the free States,
now reflected in Congress, was in respect to the mode of dealing
with Slavery. Mr. Lincoln was conservative, and always desired to
keep somewhat in the rear rather than too far in advance of the
public judgment. In his message he avoided all direct expression
upon the Slavery question, but with the peculiar shrewdness which
characterized his political discussion he announced a series of
general truths respecting labor and capital which, in effect, were
deadly hostile to the institution. He directed attention to the
fact the "the insurrection is largely if not exclusively a war upon
the first principle of popular government--the rights of the people."
Conclusive evidence of this appeared in "the maturely considered
public documents as well as in the general tone of the insurgents."
He discerned a disposition to abridge the right of suffrage and to
deny to the people the "right to participate in the selection of
public officers except those of the Legislature." He found indeed
that "monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge
from the power of the people." While he did not think it fitting
to make "a general argument in favor of popular institutions," he
felt that he should scarcely be justified were he "to omit raising
a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism." It
was, he said, "the effort to place capital on an equal footing
with, if not above, labor in the structure of government," and it
assumed "that labor is available only in connection with capital;
that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow
by the use of it induces him to labor."

THE PRESIDENT'S ANTI-SLAVERY ARGUMENT.

Mr. Lincoln found that the next step in this line of ar