ty that we were too blind to surrender a hopeless cause.
Our commerce was suffering greatly by a few armed vessels built upon and
furnished from foreign shores, and we were threatened with such
additions from the same quarter as would sweep our trade from the sea
and raise our blockade. We had failed to elicit from European
Governments anything hopeful upon this subject. The preliminary
emancipation proclamation, issued in September, was running its assigned
period to the beginning of the new year. A month later the final
proclamation came, including the announcement that colored men of
suitable condition would be received into the war service. The policy of
emancipation and of employing black soldiers gave to the future a new
aspect, about which hope and fear and doubt contended in uncertain
conflict. According to our political system, as a matter of civil
administration, the General Government had no lawful power to effect
emancipation in any State, and for a long time it had been hoped that
the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it as a military
measure. It was all the while deemed possible that the necessity for it
might come, and that if it should the crisis of the contest would then
be presented. It came, and, as was anticipated, it was followed by dark
and doubtful days. Eleven months having now passed, we are permitted to
take another review. The rebel borders are pressed still farther back,
and by the complete opening of the Mississippi the country dominated by
the rebellion is divided into distinct parts, with no practical
communication between them. Tennessee and Arkansas have been
substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens in
each, owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the beginning of the
rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in their respective
States. Of those States not included in the emancipation proclamation,
Maryland and Missouri, neither of which three years ago would tolerate
any restraint upon the extension of slavery into new Territories, only
dispute now as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits.

Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion full 100,000
are now in the United States military service, about one-half of which
number actually bear arms in the ranks, thus giving the double advantage
of taking so much labor from the insurgent cause and supplying the
places which otherwise must be filled with so ma