e are pointed to the multitude of slaves daily seeking the
protection of the United States flag, and are informed that slaveholders
are contending for the right to retain their property. As if the
Fugitive-Slave Law--of which Mr. Douglas said, in one of his latest
speeches, that not one of the Federal statutes had ever been more
implicitly obeyed--did not afford the South most ample protection, so
long as it remained in the Union!

Another grievance of which you bitterly complain, another count in the
long indictment which you have drawn up against the Administration, is
what you denominate its anti-slavery policy. You disapprove of the
Emancipation Proclamation, you denounce the employment of armed negroes;
and therefore you have no stomach for the fight.

But has not the President published to the world that the Proclamation
was a measure of military necessity? and has he not also said that its
constitutionality is to be decided and the extent and duration of its
privileges and penalties are to be defined by the Supreme Court of the
United States? If, as you are accustomed to assert, the Proclamation is
a dead letter, it certainly need not give you very serious discomfort.
If it exercises a powerful influence in crippling the energies of the
South, it surely is not among Northern men that we should look for its
opponents. As to its future efficacy and binding force, shall we not do
well to leave this question, and all similar and at present purely
speculative inquiries, till that time--which may Heaven hasten!--when
this war shall terminate in the restoration of the Union and the
acknowledged supremacy of the Constitution?

And now a word about that formidable bugbear, the enlistment of negro
soldiers. For my own part, I candidly confess that I am utterly unable
to comprehend your unmeasured abuse of this expedient. If slaves are
chattels, I can conceive of no good reason why we may not confiscate
them as Rebel property, useful to the Rebels in their armed resistance
to Federal authority, precisely as we appropriate their corn and cattle.
And when once confiscated, why should they not be employed in whatever
manner will make them most serviceable to us? But you insist that they
shall not be armed. You might with equal show of reason contend that the
mules which we have taken from the Rebels may be rightfully used in
ambulances, but must not be used in ammunition-wagons.

But if slaves are not chattels, they are hum