Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-08-25


and parts of States are and hencef0rUard shall B.
free; and that the Executive Government of the
United States, including the military and nava
authorities thereof will recognise and maintain the
freedom Of such persons"
1t is quite true that in his letter to the Spring
field Convention, in the year 1858, the President
wrote as follows:
% You say you win not fight to free negroes Some OF
them willing to fight for YOU But no matter fpht
you then exclusively to save tue Union is,ued the pro
csmatiOn on purpose to aid you in saving the Union.
Whenever You shall have conquered all resistance the
Union shalt urge yon to eontnus ehttng oi be an
apt time ten for pou to declare yOa asA fight free
negroes"
But it is equally true that in that letter he held
the following language:
You dislike the emancipation proclamation and per-
haps you would have it retraoed You say il is unconsh
tutona think differently. think the Constitution in
tests its Commander Chief with the law of in time
Of war But the proclamation, law, either is valid
not valid. If it is not valid it needs no
II valid it be reracted any more than the dead
be brought to life Some of you profess to think its
retractiOn would operate fAvoraby for the Union Why
better after the reraoon than before the ssue3 There
was than year and half Of trial suppress the
rebellion before the proclamation issued the last hun
dred days of which passed under explicit notice that
coming unless averted by those revolt returning
their allegiance"
Now, it is apparent to every body that the Presi-
dent could not keep both of these engagements
wnless he could succeed in making the practical re-
soratiom Of the Union coincident aoih The practical
him to be free. Butthe President has never openly
the conclusion to which he was shut
up by his declarations on this subject until that
acknowledgement was made in the letter patent
"to whom it may concern" On the contrary,
while confessing that it would be Gan astounding
breach of faith" not to keep his promise to the
blacks of the South, he has allowed it TO be under
stood, at the same time, that "whenever you shall
have conquered all resistance to the Union, If 1
shall urge yon to continue fighting, 1t a0il le an
apt time Jor you to declare you DiU not fight to
free negroes"
But, supposiDg all resistance to the Union should
be conquered before all the negroes "ordered and
declared" to be free are made practically free, he
would, according to his own theory, be compelled
to commit what he has himself described as an as
founding breach of faith to the latter if he should
urge men to continue fighting to free negroes"
And if he should urge men to continue fighting
under such circumstances he would prove that
emancip patton, not the Union, the ultimate end
and object Of the war. Such are the two horns of
the dilemma on the one or the other of which the
President must be impaled should he accept any
terms of peace which 40 not equally embrace the
practical restoration of the Union and the pract-
cal freedom of all the slaves whom he ordered and
declared to be "nop, HENoEFoRTH and FOREVER
free," and whose freedom he pledged himself /" to
AND MAINTAIN" with all the power OF
the army and navy Of the United States.
Until the appearance of the late manifesto we
could not foresee that the President would not,
1t whatever sacrfceof consistency, absolve himself
from the promise, made to the slaves Of the South,
if those promises should seem to be in the way of
the restoration Of the Union. But that manifesto
makes it clear to our minds that the President
means to follow his policy to its legitimate and
logical conclusions, which necessarily contemplate
the continuance Of the war until he shall coerce
g the abandonment of slavery" well as the terri
lorial integrity of the whole Union" 1t is only
when both these ends concur that he can claim to
have kept his engagements And those who i'm
pute to him willingness to receive and consider
looking to restoration Of the Union
without providing for the freedom of the slaves
whom he pledged to maintain in the freedom with
which he theoretically invested them on the 1st of
January, 1868, and in the act of doing which he in
voked q the considerate judgment of men and the
gracious favor of Almighty God, must suspect him
of vaclation and infrmity of purpose little Gre
diable to his character.
No friend of the President must disguise from
himself either the nature or the extent of his
committals on this subject. They pledge him
as much to wage war for the emancipation of
slaves as FIR the restoration Of the Union And
if he did not mean to keep his pledse to the
slaves--ii he expected to make peace on terms
which should embrace the emancipation of some,
not all, Of those whom he ordered and decreed to
be then, thenceforward and forever free-it is
enough to say that the pledge should never have
been made. Tue example which the Times oites
Of an Administration which, in the matter of the
Oregon controversy, declared for y.four-fo forty
or fight" and afterwards made peace on the line of
the forty.ninth parallel, is suggestive to us Of a
precedent rather to be avoided than initiated.
We conclude, therefore, that we have not mis-
rJor tho rdcopt M nifasto n L.