are under His hand. He brought the African race here for a great purpose; we hope it is His purpose to remove, at least, a portion of them back to their native home, to civilize and Christianize it. It has been aptly and beautifully said, "America in Africa is the solution of Africa in America." God grant that it may be so. The African race, as we have said in a former article, is one of the great permanent races of the earth. The Scriptures teach us to expect the universal elevation of our race in all its divisions. In this elevation, the African will partake. He is quite as improvable as, and has equal capacity with, any of the races of men, except, perhaps, the Caucasian, upon whom the Creator has conferred the distinction of becoming the pioneer and teacher of civilization and religion to the other races. Woe to us, if we turn our great privilege into an occasion and a pretense for permanent oppression. As, perhaps, the only means of elevating, humanly speaking, the African, God has permitted him to be enslaved by the Caucasian. This was intended to be the occasion of a blessing to him; it will be also to us if we fulfill our mission faithfullybut of an unutterable curse if we are unfaithful stewards. The African will share in the common blessing of the Father of Nations. His elevation requires, perhaps, in the providence of God, his speedy deliverance from bondage here, which has been a discipline and means of introduction to the highest civilization known among men. If this should be so, we may bring destruction upon ourselves, as, indeed, it is most manifest to the most purblind, we are daily in danger of doing; but we shall not be able to thwart, or even retard the accomplishment of the Divine decrees.* * Yet we have no right to take this accomplishment out of the hands of the Almighty into our own hands. If slavery shall perish incidentally in the course of the war, it is the Divine hand that slays it. Hence President Lincoln committed a fatal mistake in his letter addressed "To whom it may concern," in laying it down as a sine qua non to peace, that slavery shall be abolished. We have no right to do evil that good may come. It is the Divine privilege to permit evil that good may come out of it. But it is alike opposed to the Divine law as well as to the Constitution of the Union, for the President or Congress, or the people, to prosecute a war upon our rebellious brethren for the mere abolition of slavery. The war should be waged solely for the suppression of the rebellion and the restoration of the Union-waged vigorously, and with every constitutional means in our hands, to crush the viper. Whatever perishes incidentally in so doing, is right-life, property, or any thing incident thereto. But after the rebellion has An additional reason for President Lincoln's withdrawing from the extreme position assumed by him in his dispatch to Niagara, is prevented by the still further and more culpable one assumed by the pseudo-president Davis in his conference with Colonel Jaques. He will have nothing less than Southern independence, and announces that it is useless to approach him with any other terms. We do not believe that the mass of the people South would this day support this condition precedent to peace, if Mr. Lincoln would offer them the union and peace, provided they were free to exercise their suffrages; and we firmly believe that when we have overthrown their armies and been subdued, and the rebel States have returned to their allegiance in good faith, the Government would have no further right, founded on Divine or human authority, to prosecute the war for any ulterior purpose; nor has it any warrant, human or Divine, for making the abolition of slavery a condition of peace. On the other hand, every consideration of every sort, drawn from every quarter, forbids any such condition being made. Believing, as we think we have good reason to do, that the President reluctantly yielded to the objectionable measures he has instituted, we trust he will not now, in opposition to the wishes and opinions of his best friends, and of a majority of the sober-minded people of the nation, persist in making such a condition as a preliminary to peace; the nation wants peace and Union. Every heart is raised to God in prayer--the nation is in an agony for peace with the Union-with nothing more and nothing less. The nation will endure every thing for the maintenance end integrity of the Union; with that she will be satisfied, and leave slavery to the providence of God and the mortal stab the rebels themselves have given it. We can feel its great heart beat --we can hear its words of supplication uttered from the deep recesses of the soul. O! God of Hosts, is it Thy will Quite to destroy our country fair? Comes up the wail of dark despair. Brother with brother, grasped in death, All of one happy country born, Above them one flag floated free, And now, alas! that flag is torn, By her own sons trailed in the dust, At it is aimed the deadly thrust. freed them from the cruelest tyranny that ever oppressed a people, they will gladly accept Peace, and the Union, and the Constitution. It is certainly a most remarkable exhibition the rebel president makes of the human heart, when he said to Colonel Jaques and Mr. Gilmore, that he, with his hands all reeking with the blood of millions of souls, could look up, right into the face of God, and say with a clear conscience, "Thou canst not say I did it." We might believe Mr. Davis to be so blinded in his fanaticism as to be sincere, if he had not also said, that they were not fighting for slavery, and never had been, but simply for independence. This is sheer and arraut hypocrisy, and Mr. Davis knows it as well as all the world does. They are fighting to maintain slavery-the rebellion was instituted to make slavery a perpetual institution, and proh pudor, to make it the basis-the corner-stone of pretended republican institutions, O! God of Hosts, to Thee we cry, Our hope and faith are still in Thee; This deadly strife, O! God, compose, To our loved land restore sweet peace; In flowery bowers let her repose, And to Thy name ne'er praise shall cease. Our glorious land again restore, A happy and united land; From North to South, from shore to shore, Shall brother still with brother strive, Asunder shall we madly rive Our father-land in deadly rage? O! God, forbid; in mercy speak, In mercy bid the storm to cease, And let the bow of promise break The cloud, and spare the land in peace. Then shall to Thee, O! God, arise but really of the meanest form of oligarchy that ever disgraced and afflicted the earth. But the rebellion, if persisted in, will as certainly end in the overthrow of slavery, as that Effect is, by Divine decree not to be broken by any human effort, connected with Cause. ART. V.-The Peace Panic-Its Authors and Objects. 1. WE have before us a small outline map of the United States, entitled "Historical Sketch of the Rebellion "-published at the office of the United States Coast Survey. It has, no doubt, been inspected by many thousands of persons, and could be studied, without much trouble, by every one. A new edition, bringing down the information it conveys to the time of the new issue, and widely scattered over the country, should do more to direct and satisfy the minds of men-both loyal and disloyal than all the party documents that will flood the country during the impending Presidential canvass. 2. The waving lines drawn across this map, from east to west, and from the southern edge of the loyal States, as they stood when the war began, drawn south, present to the eye, most distinctly, the progress of the nation in subduing the rebellion, in the territorial aspect of the matter-during the two years and a half, extending from July, 1861, to January, 1864. The blue line divides the loyal States from those that had seceded; and shows that in point of territorial extent, the rebellious States were fully as large, if not larger than the loyal States, in July, 1861-the period at which all parties may be considered as having openly taken position. 3. No line runs north of this blue line. No conquest has been made by the insurgents. All their attempts at invasion have utterly failed. All their destructive raids have ended in defeat, and, probably, in the aggregate, the whole raid, invasion, and guerrilla systems of the rebels, have cost them a great deal more than they ever gained by them. The bare inspection of this map shows that the insurgents were never able to wage aggressive war with the United States. Their silly boasts, their insolent pretensions, their absurd demands, their boasted, skill in war, are all exploded by this map. It is clear to every one who will look at this map, that the independence of the revolted States never was possible, by arms. 4. The red line shows the state of the territorial question, in July, 1863-two years after the war began. This red line embraces, adding the spaces blockaded, nearly the entire Atlantic and Gulf coast of the rebel States; they had lost it all. Then it embraces a country, extending from the Atlantic to the west, as far as the Indian country south of Kansas, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, or more. This red line runs, waving south, from both its eastern and western extremity, so as to embrace the country on both sides of the Mississippi river, and that on the Gulf shore, for some distance both ways from New Orleans. In its greatest width, from south to north, this conquered region is a thousand miles wide, or more, and its average width can not be less than five or six hundred miles. That is, a country fifteen hundred miles long, by five hundred miles wide, is conquered, overrun, occupied, and rendered useless to the rebels in their further attempts. Their whole seaboard is lost, the best half of their country is conquered; and the portion left is cut in two; all in two years. And yet, men who desire us to believe that they are not only loyal, but honest and truthful, profess to believe that the war has been a total failure, and that the safety of the nation demands the immediate cessation of hostilities, and the conclusion of peace on the best terms we can get. 5. The yellow line across this map, shows the territory we conquered from the insurgents, during about half a year, extending from July, 1863, to January, 1864-when the "Historical Sketch" terminates. This yellow line adds to our conquests a considerable territory, along its eastern course, and south of its western portion. So the territorial question stood at the commencement of the year 1864. The disgraceful reverse of our arms under General Banks, has temporarily lost us territory west of the Mississippi. The disreputable failures by General Sigel and General Hunter, have temporarily arrested our conquests in Central Virginia. But the glorious career of General Grant, General Meade, General Sherman, and Admiral Farragut, are extending and confirming our conquests in the very vitals of the rebel country. As far as can be clearly |
