e race of life.... I am most happy to believe that the plain
people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that while
in this, the government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the
army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and
proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier
or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag."

Hearty applause greeted that portion of the message which asked for
means to make the contest short and decisive; and Congress acted
promptly by authorizing a loan of $250,000,000 and an army not to exceed
one million men. All of President Lincoln's war measures for which no
previous sanction of law existed were duly legalized; additional direct
income and tariff taxes were laid; and the Force Bill of 1795, and
various other laws relating to conspiracy, piracy, unlawful recruiting,
and kindred topics, were amended or passed.

Throughout the whole history of the South, by no means the least of the
evils entailed by the institution of slavery was the dread of slave
insurrections which haunted every master's household; and this vague
terror was at once intensified by the outbreak of civil war. It stands
to the lasting credit of the negro race in the United States that the
wrongs of their long bondage provoked them to no such crime, and that
the Civil War appears not to have even suggested, much less started, any
such organization or attempt. But the John Brown raid had indicated some
possibility of the kind, and when the Union troops began their movements
Generals Butler in Maryland and Patterson in Pennsylvania, moving
toward Harper's Ferry, and McClellan in West Virginia, in order to
reassure non-combatants, severally issued orders that all attempts at
slave insurrection should be suppressed. It was a most pointed and
significant warning to the leaders of the rebellion how much more
vulnerable the peculiar institution was in war than in peace, and that
their ill-considered scheme to protect and perpetuate slavery would
prove the most potent engine for its destruction.

The first effect of opening hostilities was to give adventurous or
discontented slaves the chance to escape into Union camps, where, even
against orders to the contrary, they found practical means of protection
or concealment for the sake of the help they could render as cooks,
servants, or teamsters, or for the information they could give or
obtain, or the in