hough Mrs. Harper was not at that time very well, she accepted an
invitation to address a public meeting in Columbus, Ohio, an allusion to
which we find in a letter dated at Grove City, O., which we copy with
the feeling that many who may read this volume will sympathize with
every word uttered relative to the Proclamation:

"I spoke in Columbus on the President's Proclamation.... But was
not such an event worthy the awakening of every power--the
congratulation of every faculty? What hath God wrought! We may
well exclaim how event after event has paved the way for
freedom. In the crucible of disaster and defeat God has stirred
the nation, and permitted no permanent victory to crown her
banners while she kept her hand upon the trembling slave and
held him back from freedom. And even now the scale may still
seem to oscillate between the contending parties, and some may
say, Why does not God give us full and quick victory? My friend,
do not despair if even deeper shadows gather around the fate of
the nation, that truth will not ultimately triumph, and the
right be established and vindicated; but the deadly gangrene has
taken such deep and almost fatal hold upon the nation that the
very centres of its life seem to be involved in its eradication.
Just look, after all the trials deep and fiery through which the
nation has waded, how mournfully suggestive was the response the
proclamation received from the democratic triumphs which
followed so close upon its footsteps. Well, thank God that the
President did not fail us, that the fierce rumbling of
democratic thunder did not shake from his hand the bolt he
leveled against slavery. Oh, it would have been so sad if, after
all the desolation and carnage that have dyed our plains with
blood and crimsoned our borders with warfare, the pale young
corpses trodden down by the hoofs of war, the dim eyes that have
looked their last upon the loved and lost, had the arm of
Executive power failed us in the nation's fearful crisis! For
how mournful it is when the unrighted wrongs and fearful agonies
of ages reach their culminating point, and events solemn,
terrible and sublime marshal themselves in dread array to mould
the destiny of nations, the hands appointed to hold the helm of
affairs, instead of grasping the mighty occasions and stamping
them with the g