acquiring Union territory. The
Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and
that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery. The
black men who now assist Union prisoners to escape, they are to be
converted into our enemies in the vain hope of gaining the good
will of their masters. We shall have to fight two nations instead
of one.

'You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate
success; and the experience of the present war proves their success
is inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of millions of
black men into their side of the scale. Will you give our enemies
such military advantages as insure success, and then depend on
coaxing, flattery, and concession to get them back into the Union?
Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men, take two hundred
thousand men from our side and put them in the battle field or corn
field against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in
three weeks.

'We have to hold territory in inclement and sickly places; where
are the Democrats to do this? It was a free fight, and the field
was open to the war Democrats to put down this rebellion by
fighting against both master and slave, long before the present
policy was inaugurated.

'There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to
slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win
the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should
deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will
keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I am now
carrying on this war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as
I am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of
restoring the Union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion
without the use of the emancipation policy, and every other policy
calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the
rebellion.

'Freedom has given us two hundred thousand men raised on Southern
soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has subtracted from
the enemy; and instead of alienating the South, there are now
evidences of a fraternal feeling growing up between our men and the
rank and file of the rebel soldiers. Let my enemies prove to the
country that the destruct