work was to be
exposed. After the long discipline of the Revolutionary War, and the
experience of the weakness and impending anarchy of the Confederation,
they understood, far better than we, the dangers to which every
government is liable, from within and from without. And we are just now
beginning to see, that, in the Constitution they adopted, they not only
provided for the interests of peace, but for the dangers and emergencies
of war. Brief sentences, hardly noticed before, now throw open their
doors like a magazine of arms, ready for use in the hour of peril. And
while we shall come out of this struggle, and the political contest
that will follow it, without impairing any of the rights of the States,
the Federal Government _restored_ will stand before the world in a
majesty of strength of which we have before had no conception.

The questions evolved by the war are already attracting public
attention. It is well that they should do so. The peace and prosperity
of the country in future years depend upon their solution. They are so
interwoven that a mistake in regard to one may involve us in other
errors. The power of the Government so to remove the cause of the
present rebellion as to prevent its recurrence, if it have any such
power, is one which it is imperatively bound to exercise,--else all the
treasure and blood expended in quelling it will be wasted. Has it any
such power? Can Slavery be exterminated? And can the Rebel States be
held as conquests, and be restored only upon condition of being forever
free? It is proposed briefly to discuss these questions.

EMANCIPATION.

There are those who believe that the President's Proclamation will cease
to be of any force at the close of the war, and that no slaves will have
any right to their freedom by it except such as may be actually
liberated by the military authorities.

There are others, who hold that the Proclamation has the force of
law,--that by it every slave within the designated territory has now a
legal right to his liberty,--and that, if the military power does not
secure that right to him _during the war_, he may successfully appeal to
the civil power _afterwards_.

If the Proclamation is a law, it must be conceded, that, like all the
laws of war, it will cease to be in force when the war is closed. But
if, like a legislative act, it confers actual rights on the slaves,
whether they are able to secure them in fact or not, then those _rights_