egate, will
eventually be equivalent to the overthrow of his armies and the capture
of his cities. The large number of slaves rushing to our lines, and the
still greater number rendered restless under restraint, and preparing to
escape, may be expected, in any other year, to make even his supply of
bread precarious, and still further to paralyze his strength and destroy
his means of resistance. But in addition to these accumulating
difficulties and misfortunes, our armies are everywhere moving down upon
him apparently with irresistible force, and threaten to anticipate the
slower, but not less certain work of physical exhaustion. He is hard
pressed in Virginia, where his pretended capital is again menaced; he is
driven out of Kentucky and Missouri, and is fast receding before our
victorious forces in Tennessee. We have penetrated into Mississippi, and
await only the swelling of the waters to capture its last stronghold,
Vicksburg, when the great valley from Cairo to New Orleans will be in
our possession, and the rebel confederacy will be sundered through its
very spine. We hold important points on the Atlantic coast and in the
Gulf, including the great metropolis of the South, New Orleans, and the
whole coast of Texas.

By her own energies alone, these losses can never be recovered by the
South. Without aid from abroad, there is not the remotest possibility of
prolonging the contest for another year, much less of establishing the
Confederate Government on any permanent basis. And even with such
interference, supposing it to be successful, the career of the new power
would be brief, and full of trouble. It would merely exchange its
position of equality in the old Union, for one of degrading dependence
and subserviency to some one of the great European Governments. The
system of slavery could not be preserved. The demoralization has already
gone too far; and no French sovereign or English administration could
safely venture to interfere in our quarrel for the purpose of upholding
that institution. In the midst of a dissolving social organization, this
exhausted and fragmentary American power, galvanized into temporary
vitality by the sinister aid of foreign arms, would be compelled to
undertake the task of determining its boundaries, defending its
frontiers, and reorganizing its chaotic society. All this would have to
be accomplished in the presence of a still powerful adversary, jealous
of her own rights, and ever ready