ding country, was an indication of
complaisance rather than of conviction. To prove this nothing of the
sort, while Brazil was placed at the head of modern slaveholding
countries, was to overtax the resources of human sophistry.

The Proclamation is an immense fact. If it were no more than a
recognition from the highest quarter of the deadly antagonism between
slavery and the Union, it would have inexhaustible significance. The
American republic, bleeding at every pore while fighting desperately for
life, arraigns slavery as her chief enemy and peril. The truth was long
since clear to every candid mind; but truth gains force by recognition.
Thousands realize a fact thus proclaimed, who have hitherto ignored and
resisted it.

For thirty years, the charge of disloyalty has borne heavily on the
American champion of Universal Liberty. True, as to a very few, who
could not obtain the assent of their consciences to compacts which bound
them to aid the oppressor against his victim, they were made a weapon of
offense against all. Abolitionists were execrated and hooted by the mob
as champions at once of Negro Equality and of National dissolution.

The times are bravely altered. The partnership between Slavery and
Unionism is absolutely dissolved. Like most divorces, this involves a
deadly quarrel. Not even the soaring platitudes of George Francis Train
can longer evoke cheers for the Union blent with curses on Abolition. In
a strictly, sternly real sense, "Liberty and Union" are henceforth "one
and inseparable!"

For thirty years, our great seaboard merchants, our shippers, our
factors, have given their patronage to pro-slavery journals and their
votes to pro-slavery politicians, with intent to preserve the Union and
lay the red spectre of civil war. Their recompense is found in the
repudiation of the immense debts for merchandise due them from the
South, and a gigantic war waged by the Slave Power for the overthrow of
the Union. The profits of a lifetime of obsequious pandering to the
master crime of our era are swept away at a blow, and the arm that
strikes it is that of the monster they have made such sacrifices of
conscience and manhood to conciliate. Was ever retribution more signal?

To-day, the American Union, through the official action of its President
and Congress, stands distinctly on the side of Liberty for All. Its
success in the fearful struggle forced upon it involves the overthrow
and extinction of American