ilmore
resolved to establish at once in Boston a political monthly magazine to
be called the _Continental_, to be devoted to this view of the situation.
It was the only political magazine devoted to the Republican cause
published during the war. That it fully succeeded in rapidly attracting
to the Union party a vast number of those who had held aloof owing to
their antipathy to the mere word abolition, is positively true, and still
remembered by many. {242} Very speedily indeed people at large caught at
the idea. I remember the very first time when one evening I heard
Governor Andrews say of a certain politician that he was not an
Abolitionist but an _Emancipationist_; and it was subsequently declared
by my friends in Boston, and that often, that the very bold course taken
by the _Continental Magazine_, and the creation by it of the
Emancipationist wing, had hastened by several months the emancipation of
the slaves by Abraham Lincoln. It was for this alone that the University
of Cambridge, Massachusetts, afterwards, through its president, gave me
the degree of A. M., "for literary services rendered to the country
during the war," which is as complete a proof of what I assert as could
be imagined, for this was in very truth the one sole literary service
which I performed at that time, and there were many of my great literary
friends who declared their belief in, and sympathy with, the services
which I rendered to the cause. But I will now cite some facts which
fully and further confirm what I have said.

The _Continental Magazine_ was, as I may say, a something more than semi-
official organ. Mr. Seward contributed to it two anonymous articles, or
rather their substance, which were written out and forwarded to me by
Oakey Hall, Esq., of New York. We received from the Cabinet at
Washington continual suggestions, for it was well understood that the
_Continental_ was read by all influential Republicans. A contributor had
sent us a very important article indeed, pointing out that there was all
through the South, from the Mississippi to the sea, a line of mountainous
country in which there were few or no slaves, and very little attachment
to the Confederacy. This article, which was extensively republished,
attracted great attention. It gave great strength and encouragement to
the grand plan of the campaign, afterwards realised by Sherman. By
_official request_, to me directed, the author contributed a second
articl