WAR GONE SLOWLY?

The work of subduing the rebellion has gone slowly as compared with the
impatient demands of an indignant people at the outset; but not slowly
if you consider the vast theatre of the war, the immense extent of the
lines of military operations, and the prodigious advantages possessed by
the rebels at the beginning--partly advantages such as always attend the
first outbreak of a revolutionary conspiracy long matured in secret
against an unsuspecting and unprepared Government, and partly the
extraordinary and peculiar advantages that accrued to them from the
traitorous complicity of Buchanan's Administration, through which the
conspirators were enabled to rob the national treasury, strip the
Government of arms, and possess themselves of national forts, arsenals,
and munitions of war, before the conflict began.

NOT TOO SLOW--WHY? SLAVERY.

But either way the war has not gone too slowly with reference to its
great end--the establishment of a durable peace. If the rebellion had
been crushed at once by overwhelming force, it would have been crushed
only to break out anew. Slavery would have been left unimpaired, and
that would inevitably have entailed another conflict in no long time. In
the interest of slavery the rebels have drawn the sword; let slavery
perish by the sword. In the interest of slavery they have attempted to
overthrow the National Government and to dismember the national domain;
let slavery be overthrown to maintain the Government and to preserve the
integrity of the nation. Let the cause of the war perish with the war.
Not until slavery is extinguished can there be a lasting peace; for not
until then can the conditions of true national unity begin to exist.
What wise and good man would wish to save it from extinction? It is as
incompatible with the highest prosperity of the South as it is with a
true national union between the South and the North. Once extinguished,
there will be a thousand-fold increase in every element of Southern
welfare, economical, social, and moral; and possibilities of national
wealth and strength, greatness and glory, above every nation on the
globe, will be established. Let slavery go down. Let us rejoice that in
the progress and sequel of this war, it must and will go down.

EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.

Looking back, we can now see that much that was trying to the patience
of the loyal masses of the North in the early stages of the war, has
only served to