e same quarter as would sweep our trade from
the seas and raise our blockade. We had failed to elicit from European
governments anything hopeful upon this subject. The preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, issued in September, was running its assigned
period to the beginning of the new year. A month later the final
proclamation came, including the announcement that coloured men of
suitable condition would be received into the war service. The policy of
emancipation and of employing black soldiers gave to the future a new
aspect, about which hope and fear and doubt contended in uncertain
conflict. According to our political system, as a matter of civil
administration, the general government had no lawful power to effect
emancipation in any State, and for a long time it had been hoped that
the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it as a military
measure. It was all the while deemed possible that the necessity for it
might come and that, if it should, the crisis of the contest would then
be presented. It came, and, as was anticipated, was followed by dark and
doubtful days. Eleven months having now passed, we are permitted to take
another review. The rebel borders are pressed still farther back, and by
the complete opening of the Mississippi, the country dominated by the
rebellion is divided into distinct parts, with no practical
communication between them. Tennessee and Arkansas have been
substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens in
each, owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the beginning of the
rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in their respective
States. Of those States not included in the Emancipation Proclamation,
Maryland and Missouri, neither of which three years ago would tolerate
any restraint upon the extension of slavery into new Territories, only
dispute now as to the best mode of removing it within their own limits.

Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the rebellion, full one
hundred thousand are now in the United States military service, about
one-half of which number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving
the double advantage of taking so much labour from the insurgent cause
and supplying the places which otherwise must be filled with so many
white men. So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good
soldiers as any. No servile insurrection or tendency to violence or
cruelty has marked the measures of emancipation and