of the Union, every fighting-man at the South could be brought
into the field, so long as the negroes were left to do the work that
was to feed and clothe him. Were these negroes property? The laws of
war justified us in appropriating them to our own use. Were they
population? The laws of war equally justified us in appealing to them
for aid in a cause which was their own more than it was ours. It was so
much the worse for the South that its property was of a kind that could
be converted from chattels into men, and from men into soldiers, by the
scratch of a pen. The dragon's teeth were not of our sowing, but, so
far from our being under any obligation not to take into our service
the army that sprang from them, it would have been the extreme of
weakness and folly not to do it. If there be no provision in the
Constitution for emancipating the negroes, neither is there any for
taking Richmond; and we give General McClellan too much credit for
intelligence and patriotism to suppose that if, when he asked for a
hundred thousand more men at Harrison's Bar, he had been told that he
could have black ones, he would have refused them.

But supposing the very improbable chance of General McClellan's
election to the Presidency, how would he set about his policy of
conciliation? Would he disarm the colored troops? In favor of
prosecuting the war, as he declares himself to be, this would only
necessitate the draft of just so many white ones in their stead. Would
he recall the proclamation of freedom? This would only be to incite a
servile insurrection. The people have already suffered too much by
General McClellan's genius for retreat, to follow him in another even
more disastrous. But it is idle to suppose that the Rebels are to be
appeased by any exhibition of weakness. Like other men, they would take
fresh courage from it. Force is the only argument to which they are in
a condition to listen, and, like other men, they will yield to it at
last, if it prove irresistible. We cannot think that General McClellan
would wish to go down to posterity as the President who tried to
restore the Union by the reenslaving of men who had fought in its
defence, and had failed in the attempt. We doubt if he had any very
clear conception of what he meant by conciliation and compromise,
except as a gloss to make the unconditional surrender doctrine of the
Chicago Convention a little less odious. If he meant more, if he hoped
to gain political stren