only a throttling nightmare--_the
Union as it was_. But Mr. Seward sustained a policy of delays and not
of blows; the struggle protracts, and, for reasons repeatedly
mentioned, the suppression of rebellion becomes more and more
difficult, and the reconstruction of the old Union as it was a
_mirage_ of his imagination.

But it is not Thurlow Weed, and others of that stamp, who could
enlighten Mr. Seward on such subjects--far, far above their vulgar and
mean politicianism. It is now useless to accuse and condemn Congress
for its so-called violence, as does Mr. Seward, and to assert that but
for Congress he, Mr. Seward, would have long ago patched up the
quarrel. The Congress may be as tame as a lamb, and as subject as a
foot-sole. Mr. Seward may on his knees proffer to the rebels a
compromise and the most stringent safeguards for slavery; to-day the
rebels will spurn all as they would have spurned it during the whole
year. The rebels will act as Mason did when in the Senate hall Mr.
Seward asked the traitor to be introduced to Mr. Lincoln.

The country is in more need of a man than of the many hundreds of
thousands of new levies.

Some time ago Mr. Seward gathered around him his devotees in Congress
(few in number), and unveiled to them that nobody can imagine what
superhuman efforts it cost him to avert foreign intervention. Very
unnecessary demonstration, as he knows it well himself, and, if it
gets into the papers, may turn out to be offensive to the two
cabinets, as they give to Mr. Seward no reason for making such
statements. Should England and France ever decide upon any such step,
then Mr. Seward may write as a Cicero, have all the learning of a
Hugo Grotius, of a Vattel, and of all other publicists combined; he
may send legions of Weeds and Sandfords to Europe, and all this will
not weigh a feather with the cabinets of London and of Paris.

Further, no foreign powers occasioned our defeats _in the
Chickahominy_, but those who were enraptured with the Peninsula
strategy.

Mr. Seward's letter to the great meeting in New York shows that not
his patriotism, but his confidence in success, is slightly notched.

Nobody doubts his patriotism; but Mr. Seward tried to shape mighty
events into a mould after his not-over-gigantic mind, and now he frets
because these events tear his sacrilegious hand.

After much opposition, vacillation, hesitation, and aversion, the
President signed the confiscation and emancipation