Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1864-10-27

announce any proposition which was clearer than
this and his statement then made in defence of the
President stands to-day in unanswerabe condemns
ton of the policy subsequently adopted by the Ad
ministration, and in unanswerable defence of the
friends Of Gen. Mcclellan from the imputation
falsely sought to be fastened on them for their
steadfast allegiance to principle in the conduct of
the war
Nor was this single utteranoe of the Admin
istration On the 10th of March, 1861, Mr.
Seward again wrote to Mr.. Adams as follows:
" If the Government of the United States should prec
patey decree the immediate abolition of slavery ii would
reinygorate the declining nsurrecon in every part Of the
South and on the other hand if the insurgents at home
would avow the policy of opposition to slavery which their
abroad to make preences to- the
insurrecon would perish for want of its necessary ali
ment namely, opposition to abolition"
Here it will be seen that Mr.. Seward assumes,
what was an undoubted and undisputed fact, that
opposition to abolition" was the Unnecessary ali
ment" of the instruction. If this aliment should
be withdrawn by the adoption Of "policy of op-
position to slavery" on the part of the insurgents
themselves, the would ipso facto cease, for the
want of its reason Of existence. And this being
SO, it necessarily followed, argued Mr.. Seward,
that to decree the immediate abolition of slavery
would be ito invigorate the declining instruction
in every part Of the South, because it would be
to furnish to the instruction, in degree other
wise impossible, the Unnecessary aliment" on which
it fed and depended for its being. 1t would be
impossible to express in stronger terms the impo-
Icy of emancipation by Executive decree, in
stead of by the actual contact of our arms, to
which latter consequence of the war no friend of
the Union was opposed.
And if such was the impolicy Of military edicto
universal emancipation we might have expected that
the Administration, in holding these views, would
classify the advocates of such measure with the
practical aiders and abettors of the insurgents.
And it did SO. Writing in this sense, on the 5th
of July, 1862, scarcely more than two months be-
fore the preliminary edct of emancipation was
issued by the President, Mr.. Seward held the fol-
lowing explicit language:
II seems as il the advocates of african slaos
~ and IT'S most Dehemen opponents acting
together to precpitae seruile narhe former by max
Ing the most desperate attempts overthrow the Federal
Uuion the latter by demanding edct IF universal eman
cpaon as LAWFUL and necessa'y not as they say the
only legitimate ,0ay Of saoing the Union"
Such is the record Of the President on this
subject. Tried by this record, the Administration
is speechess for the accusation of Gen. Mcclellan
or his friends on this score, while for itself it is
convicted out Of its own mouth on the charge Of
having :" reinvigorated the declining insurrection
in every part of the South" and of having con-
scented to "act in concert" with the extreme
advocates of African slavery" by yielding to the
demand for IAN edict of universal emancipation"
when the Administration knew it would have
disastrous tendency, however warmly it was
"lawful and necessary, if not, as they said, the
only Legitimate way of saving the Union"
And it is in view of such declarations on the
part of the Administration that conservative men
who then sustained it, and who to-day sustain the
principles from which it has apostatized, can mea-
sure the monstrous detection from the cause of the
Union which was knowingly practised by the Ad-
ministration when it espoused policy against
which it was committed, no le,s by its own public
pledges and private convictions than by the letter
and spirit of the Constitution binding it to obey
the Constitution in the act Of vindicating and re-
asserting its authority against armed sedition In
stead Of standing by that Constitution and keeping
its own faith with the nation, the Administration,
in weak complaisancc to "the Greeley faction"
preferred to make itself the accomplice of tho
"extreme advocates of slavery" and this not in
ignorance of what it was doing, but in the full
knowledge Of its pernicious consequences, as ap-
pears from the avowas Of the President, speaking to
to our foreign representatives through his Secretary
Of State.
And it is in the light Of such recent his
tory that every body perceive the gratuitous in
justice Of the slanderous imputations cast on TN
motives of the friends Of Gen. Mcclellan, bel
cause, in their answering allegiance to the
principles Of constitutional duty and political
expediency originally propounded by the Ad-
ministration, in common with the great mass
Of the supporters of the Government, they have
refused, as they still refuse, to endorse policy
which was fore-ordained to be failure in the e,ti-
nation of those who weakly adopted it to conc-
late faction in the Loyal States And that the evil
consequences Of this policy have been such as Mr..
Seward foreshadowed is now admitted by candid
supporters Of the President, even among those who
4 II. II