reat seals of duty and right, permit them to
float along the current of circumstances without comprehending
the hour of visitation or the momentous day of opportunity. Yes,
we may thank God that in the hour when the nation's life was
convulsed, and fearful gloom had shed its shadows over the land,
the President reached out his hand through the darkness to break
the chains on which the rust of centuries had gathered. Well,
did you ever expect to see this day? I know that all is not
accomplished; but we may rejoice in what has been already
wrought,--the wondrous change in so short a time. Just a little
while since the American flag to the flying bondman was an
ensign of bondage; now it has become a symbol of protection and
freedom. Once the slave was a despised and trampled on pariah;
now he has become a useful ally to the American government. From
the crimson sods of war springs the white flower of freedom, and
songs of deliverance mingle with the crash and roar of war. The
shadow of the American army becomes a covert for the slave, and
beneath the American Eagle he grasps the key of knowledge and is
lifted to a higher destiny."

This letter we had intended should complete the sketch of Mrs. Harper's
Anti-Slavery labors; but in turning to another epistle dated Boston,
April 19th, on the Assassination of the President, we feel that a part
of it is too interesting to omit:

"Sorrow treads on the footsteps of the nation's joy. A few days
since the telegraph thrilled and throbbed with a nation's joy.
To-day a nation sits down beneath the shadow of its mournful
grief. Oh, what a terrible lesson does this event read to us! A
few years since slavery tortured, burned, hung and outraged us,
and the nation passed by and said, they had nothing to do with
slavery where it was, slavery would have something to do with
them where they were. Oh, how fearfully the judgments of Ichabod
have pressed upon the nation's life! Well, it may be in the
providence of God this blow was needed to intensify the nation's
hatred of slavery, to show the utter fallacy of basing national
reconstruction upon the votes of returned rebels, and rejecting
loyal black men; making (after all the blood poured out like
water, and wealth scattered like chaff) a return to the old idea
that a white rebel is better or of more accoun