The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-23 00:00:00

REVIEW OF THE WAR.

When Congress assembled a year a gche war had already
lasted nearly 20 months, and there had been many conflicts
on both land and sea, with varying results ; the rebellion had
been pressed back into reduced limits, yet the tone of public
feeling and opinion at home and abroad was not satisfactory.
With other signs the popular elections then just past indi•
cated uneasiness among ourselves, while, amid much that
was cold and menacing, the kindest words coming from
Europe were uttered in accents of pity, that we were too
blind to surreLder a hopeless cause.

Our commerce was suffering greatly by a few armed ves-
sels built upon and furnished from foreign shores, and we
were threatened with such additions from the same guar-
tors as would sweep our trade from the sea and raise the
blockade. We had failed to elicit from European Govern-
ments 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 in the war service. The policy
of emancipation and of employing black sDldiers 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 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 pre-
sented. 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
further back, and by the complete opening of the Mississippi
the country dominated by the rebellion is divided into two
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 re-
spective States. Of these States not included in the emanci-
pation 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 rebel-
lion, full 100,000 are now in the United States military ser-
anti supplying the
vice, about one-half of which number actually bear arms in
the ranks, thus giving the double advantage of taking so
muchplaces labour.svhi
h fromether thewis
otherwise
m insurgentustbe filled
cause,
with so many whito
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 emancipa-
tion and arming the blacks.

These measures have been much discussed in foreign
countries, and contemporary with such discussion, the tone
of public sentiment there is much improved. At home the
same measures have been fully discussed, supported, criti-
cised, and denounced, and the annual elections following are
highly encouraging to those whose official duty it is to bear
the country through this great trial. Thus we have the
mew reckoning. The crisis which threatened to divide the
friends of the Union is past.
Looking now to the present and future, and with a refer-
ence to a resumption of the national authority in the Sta es
wherein that authority has been suspended I have thought
fit to issue a proclamation—a copy of which is herewith
transmitted. On examination of this proclamation it will
appear (as is believed) that nothing is attempted beyond
what is amply justified by the Constitution. True, the form
of an oath is given, but no man is coerced to take it,

The man is onlypromisedapardon in case he voluntarily
takes the oath. The Constitution authorises the Executive
to grant or withhold the pardon at his own absolute discre-
tion, and this includes the power to grant on terms, as is
fully established by judicial and other authorities. It is also
proffered that if in any of the States named a State Govern-
ment shall be recognised and guaranteed by the United
States, and that under it the State shall, on the Constitu-
tional conditions, be protected against invasion and domestic
violence.

The constitutional obligation of the United States to gua-
rantee to every State in the Union a Republican form of Go-
vernment, and to protect the State in the cases stated, is ex-
plicit and full. But why tender the benefits of this provision
only to a State Government set up in this particular way ?
This section of the Constitution contemplates a case wherein
the element within a State in favour of Republican Govern-
ment in the Union may be too feeble for an opposite and
hostile element external to or even within the State, and
such are precisely the cases with which we are now dealing.
An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State Go-
vernment constructed in whole, or in preponderating part,
from the very element against whose hostility and violence
it is to be protected, is simply absurd. There must be a test
by which to separate the opposing elements so as to build
only from the sound, and that test !...s a sufficiently liberal
one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn re-
cantation of his movements.

But if it be proper to require as a test of admission to the
political body, an oath of allegiance to the United States,
and to the Union under it, why not also to the laws
and
proclamations in regard to slavery ?
Those laws and proclamations were put forth for the pur-
pose of aiding in the suppression of the rebellion. To give
them the fullest effect there had to be a pledge for their
maintenance. In my judgment they have aided and will
further aid the cause for which they were intended.
To now abandon them would be not only to relinquish a
lever of power, but would also be a cruel and astounding
breach of faith.