and they see, more clearly than we can do, how all important the question of the destiny of the slaves must have become at the head-quarters of the Government.
To Europeans, who went through their task of emancipating their negroes long ago, the incident may seem to show a wonderful slowness, rather than a wonderful advance. We should remember, however, that, when we were just emancipating ours, in islands far away, the Americans were considering it a duty to be silent about negroes, because there was no intention of freeing them, while they were not far away in sugar islands, but on all the plantations, and in all the houses of the Southern States, to which the Northern States were in political subjection. As our position and theirs were opposite then, our sensations about this now incident cannot be identical now. It is like the case of the travellers on the Andes when those who were coming down, and those who were going up had opposite sensations at the same point,—the one party complaining of the cold, while the other exulted in the genial heat. Even we Europeans, however, ought to be able to see the importance of the first act of implication of the Government with the question of emancipation. These words, "We pray for the slave," are the first act of implication of the American Congress with the cause of the negro. Some were present who must have wondered whether Calhoun turned in his grave when the prayer was uttered.
The President's Message shows, without disguise, that Mr. Lincoln means to act in the matter of slavery as the people choose him to act. He never was an Abolitionist. He was always willing that Slavery should continue to exist where it existed already; hut he objected to its spreading over new territory. He was ready to afford it the protection provided in the Constitution; but he objected to any further efforts in its favour. Such was his view when he became President. He did not see that Slavery was the whole cause of the rupture of the Union; and he believed he saw that the Constitution must be preserved exactly as it stood, and that therefore fugitives must be returned to their owners, according to law. By marking the point he has arrived at now, we may perceive how the question is advancing. The President will go only as far, and as fast, as he is pushed. The resolution of Congress in July, which confiscated the slaves of rebel citizens, troubled Mr. Lincoln exceedingly; and it was only by extreme urging, and under pressure of time, that he agreed to it. It was a long step forward: but he has taken a longer now.
In the interval he showed doubt and hesitation about General Fremont's proclamation, that all slaves became free where the Government was present by its civil or military authorities. After some delay he discountenanced the act, and restored the terms to what Congress had made them. Yet it appeared that he expected General Fremont to be pressed upon him again by the people; and he recalled him in a way which need not prevent his future restoration to a high command. The falling off of popular support from the moment when he disavowed the emancipation act of Fremont was a strong hint; and it appears that the President has taken it.
It was an irksome necessity to him that he must say something on the subject in his Message to Congress. He must do it, however, and in a very strange way indeed he has done it. He had been hearing from all quarters of the perplexities of the commanders by land and sea about what to do with the negroes. One general was returning fugitives to their masters: another was receiving all who came, giving them work, and paying them wages; while a third tried to steer a course between the two, taking no notice of fugitives beyond forbidding them to enter the camp. Such inconsistencies could not go on: the soldiers would not permit it, if we may judge by their discontent at all orders which made them oppress the slaves.
By way of experiment, the negroes on the coasts where the Federal forces have established a footing, in South Carolina and Georgia, have been organised as a free labour force. The men work well; they now come in by thousands instead of hundreds; and the case is already so far clear to Mr. Lincoln himself, that, in his Message to Congress, he assumes the necessity of emancipation by proposing a scheme for disposing of the negroes when freed.
It is true, he proposes a plan which is absurd, and which he, and every man who heard his Message, must know to be impracticable. He proposes, by way of introduction, to recognise the independence of Hayti and Liberia. This is a significant proposal, because it means that men of colour may hereafter come to Washington, and be received as envoys. But there is another word to be said first about this proposal.
Hayti is a free republic, which has won its independence by arms. It is now well governed and prosperous; and a considerable number of American blacks have settled, and are daily settling in Hayti, to grow cotton for the Northern States and for Europe, Mr. Lincoln evidently wishes to encourage the emigration of as many of his black fellow-citizens as possible and therefore he is trying whether society will bear the presence of a Haytian envoy at Washington, as the price of getting rid of some hundreds or thousands of its dark-skinned members. The origin and condition of Liberia are different. That settlement was formed, half a century ago, by slave-holders, for the purpose (avowed in the Southern States) of sustaining slavery by deporting thither undesirable negroes, free and slave, and keeping the control of the numbers, and therefore of the value of slaves, by having an outlet in the shape of an African colony. As the scheme was not honest, it was not successful; and for forty years the free negroes of the United States have been resisting bribes and threats, and refusing to expatriate themselves to Africa. They were Americans, they said; they had formed friendships at home, and accumulated property, obtained equality for their children in the common schools, and educated them to form an intelligent society; and they would not go into a land of barbarism, to war with savages, and see the slave trade carried
on along the coast, and slaves held in the settlement itself. That hungry and somewhat disre-