remain to
this day devoted to Slavery, can at best be but half-way loyal to the
Union--and that every hour of deference to Slavery is an hour of added
and deepened peril to the Union.

"I appeal to the testimony of your embassadors in Europe. It is freely
at your service, not mine. Ask them to tell you candidly whether
the seeming subserviency of your policy to the Slaveholding,
Slavery-upholding interest, is not the perplexity, the despair,
of Statesmen of all parties; and be admonished by the general answer.

"I close, as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority
of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you, is a frank,
declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the Laws of the Land,
more especially of the Confiscation Act. That Act gives Freedom to the
Slaves of Rebels coming within our lines, or whom those lines may at any
time inclose. We ask you to render it due obedience by publicly
requiring all your subordinates to recognize and obey it.

"The Rebels are everywhere using the late Anti-Negro riots in the North
--as they have long used your officers' treatment of Negroes in the
South--to convince the Slaves that they have nothing to hope from a
Union success--that we mean in that case to sell them into a bitter
Bondage to defray the cost of the War.

"Let them impress this as a truth on the great mass of their ignorant
and credulous Bondmen, and the Union will never be restored--never. We
can not conquer ten millions of people united in solid phalanx against
us, powerfully aided by Northern sympathizers and European allies.

"We must have scouts, guides, spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers, and
choppers, from the Blacks of the South--whether we allow them to fight
for us or not--or we shall be baffled and repelled.

"As one of the Millions who would gladly have avoided this struggle, at
any sacrifice but that of principle and honor, but who now feel that the
triumph of the Union is indispensable not only to the existence of our
Country, but to the well-being of mankind, I entreat you to render a
hearty and unequivocal obedience to the Law of the Land.
"Yours,
"HORACE GREELEY."

To this letter, President Lincoln at once made the following memorable
reply:

"EXECUTIVE MANSION,
"WASHINGTON, Friday, August 22, 1862.

"HON. HORACE GREELEY

"DEAR SIR:--I have just read yours of