w out the people's life-blood. The
people will forget that a man of energy and of firm purpose in the
White House, such a man would have at once clearly seen his way, and
then a year ago rebellion and slavery would have been crushed.

A man of energy would not have had for his familiar demons, the
Scotts, the Sewards, the Blairs, the border-state politicians, the
Weeds, etc.

_September 5: L. B._--The siege of Charleston _tire en longueur_; it
has cost thousand of lives and millions upon millions, and will
still cost more. And it is already forgotten that when nearly two
years ago Sherman and Dupont took Port Royal, Charleston and
Savannah were defenceless; it is forgotten that Sherman asked for
orders to siege the two cities, _but such were not given_ from
Washington, because Mr. Lincoln-Seward (literally) was afraid to get
possession of the focuses of rebellion, and General McClellan, with
one hundred and fifty thousand men in Washington, could not bear the
idea that the rebels should be disturbed either in Centerville or in
their _chivalric_ homes in South Carolina. It is forgotten that
civil and military leaders and chiefs then and there refused to deal
a death blow to the rebellion.

And as I am _en train_ to recall to memory what is already
forgotten, and what the Illinois letter intends to wholly erase from
the people's memory; I go on.

In the first days and months after the explosion of the rebellion,
Mr. Lincoln was as innocent of any wish to emancipate the slaves, as
could be a Seward, or a Yancey, or McClellan, or a Magruder or a
Wise or a Halleck. All this is forgotten. It is forgotten that
General Butler is the earliest initiator of emancipation, and that
to him exclusively belongs the word and the fact of an emancipated
_contraband_. It is forgotten that when Butler began to emancipate
the contrabands, the _big men_ in the Administration, Lincoln,
General Scott, and Seward, became almost frantic against Butler for
thus introducing the "nigger" into the struggle. The fate of Fremont
is forgotten. Fremont was ahead of the times. Fremont emancipated
when Lincoln-Seward-Scott-Blair, etc., heartily wished to save and
preserve slavery. Down went Fremont.

Early in the summer of 1861 General Fremont wished to do what was now
accomplished by the, until yet, _sans pareil_ Grant--that is, to clear
the Mississippi at a time when neither Island No. 10, nor Vicksburgh,
nor Port Hudson nor any other port was for