omulgation was as skilfully chosen
as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the
friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its
appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that
the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights
respected under the Federal Constitution. But by allowing seventeen
months to elapse before issuing it, the President compelled the Rebels
to commit themselves absolutely to the cause of the Union's overthrow
without reference to any attack that had been made on Slavery in a time
of war. It has not, therefore, been in the power of their allies here to
say that the issuing of the Proclamation placed an impassable gulf
between the Union and the Confederacy; for the Confederates were as loud
in their declarations that they never would return into the Union before
the Proclamation appeared as they have been since its appearance. They
were caught completely, and deprived of the only pretence that could
have been invented for their benefit, by themselves or by their friends.
The adoption of an Emancipation policy did not cause us the loss of one
friend in the South, while it gained friends for our cause in every
country that felt an interest in our struggle. It prevented the
acknowledgment of the Southern Confederacy by France, and by other
nations, as French example would have found prompt imitation. Its
appearance was the turning event of the war, and it was most happily
timed for both foreign and domestic effect. It will be the noblest fact
in President Lincoln's history, that by the same action he announced
freedom to four millions of bondmen, and secured his country against
even the possibility of foreign mediation, foreign intervention, and
foreign war.

The political state of the country, as indicated by the result of recent
elections, is not without interest, in connection with the Presidential
contest. Since the nomination of General McClellan, elections have been
held in several States for local officers and Members of Congress, and
the results are highly favorable to the Union cause. The first election
was held in Vermont, and the Union party reelected their candidate for
Governor, and all their candidates for Members of Congress, by a
majority of more than twenty thousand. They have also a great majority
in the Legislature, the Democrats not choosing so much as one Senator,
and but few Members of th