President of the United States. Probably, if he had been a private
citizen, he would have been the foremost man of the Emancipation party;
but the place he holds is so high that he must look over the whole land,
and necessarily he sees much that others can never behold. He saw that
one of two things would happen in a few months after the beginning of
active warfare, toward the close of last winter: either the Rebels would
be beaten in the field, in which event there would be reasonable hope
of the Union's reconstruction, and the people could then take charge
of slavery, and settle its future condition as to them should seem
best,--or our armies would be beaten, and the people would be made to
understand that slavery could no longer be allowed to exist for the
support of an enemy who had announced from the beginning of their
war-movement that their choice was fixed upon conquest, or, failing
that, annihilation.

It was written that we should fail in the field. We sought to take
Richmond, with an army of force that appeared to be adequate to the
work. We were beaten; and after some months of severe warfare, the
country had the supreme felicity of celebrating the eighty-sixth
anniversary of its Independence by thanking Heaven that its principal
army had escaped capture by falling back to the fever-laden banks of a
river on which lay a naval force so strong as to prevent the further
advance of the victorious Southrons. The exertions that were made to
remove that army from a place that threatened its total destruction
through pestilence led to another series of actions, in which we were
again beaten, and the Secession armies found themselves hard by the very
station which they had so long held after their victory at Bull Run.
Had their numbers been half as large as we estimated them by way of
accounting for our defeats, they could have marched into Washington,
and the American Union would have been at an end, while the Southern
Confederacy would have taken the place which the United States had
possessed among the nations. Fortunately, the enemy were not strong
enough to hazard everything upon one daring stroke. General Lee was
as prudent, or as timid, after his victories over General Pope, as,
according to some authorities, Hannibal was after winning "the field
of blood" at Cannae. What he did, however, was sufficient to show
how serious was the danger that threatened us. If he could not take
Washington, which stood for Rom