clamation of emancipation, as simple justice, as
military policy, as mercy to the South, to put us right at home and
abroad, to destroy at once the cause of the Republic's shame and sorrow.
He combats various objections: such as that a proclamation of that
nature would send home instantly the pro-slavery officers and men who
are now fighting merely to enhance their own importance or to restore
the state of things before the war: that a proclamation of emancipation,
finding its way, as it surely would, to the heart of every slave, would
breed insurrections and all the horrors of a servile war: that such
a document would not be worth the paper which it blotted, until the
military power of the South was definitively broken: that it would
convert the Border States into active foes, and make them rush by
natural proclivity into the bosom of Secession. Mr. Conway disposes well
of a great deal of trash which even good Republican papers, upon which
we have hitherto relied, but can do so no longer, have vented under all
these heads of objections.

He writes with such enthusiasm, and is so plainly a dear lover and
worshipper of the justice which can alone exalt this nation, that we are
carried clear over the wretched half-republicanism which has been trying
all the year to say eminently sound and unexceptionable things, we
forget the deceit and expediency whose leaded columns have been more
formidable than those which rolled the tide of war back again to the
Potomac. Great is the animating power of faith, when faithfully brought
home to the universal instinct for righteousness. Mr. Conway was born
and bred among slaveholders, knows them and their institution, knows
the slave, and his moral condition, and his expectations: so that these
inspiriting prophecies of his are more than those of a lively and
talented pamphleteer.

His earnest purpose in writing lifts us pretty well over some things in
his style which seem to us discordant with his glorious theme. He has
a way, as good as the President's, to whom much of his matter is
addressed, of making his apologues and stories tell; they are apt, and
give the reader the sensation of being clinched. One feels like a nail
when it catches the board. But sometimes the transition to a grotesque
allusion from a fine touch of fancy or from the inbred religiousness
of the subject is abrupt. Jean Paul may offer you, in his most glowing
page, a quid of tobacco, if he pleases; the shock is pict