but a few weeks before an excellent judge had written that he "must be ranked among the very greatest of modern strategists beyond a doubt," announced that the Confederates had put forth all their strength, and that a tide of disaster might be expected to set in in other quarters, where they were contending with less of the prestige of success. On the 4th of July Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, after a siege of forty-eight days, during which it had been necessary for the besiegers to fortify their position against Johnstone, who was threatening their rear. Four days later, when the news reached the garrison of Port Hudson, they also surrendered to General Banks, and several ships coming down from St. Louis to New Orleans showed that the Confederates had no remaining stronghold on the river. Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, was abandoned by the Confederates on the 18th. The Federals occupied it, and discovered the private correspondence of Mr. Jefferson Davis, but soon after evacuated the city, and did not pursue Johnstone in his retreat to the east. General Bragg had already retired from Tennessee, and taken up a fortified position at Chattanooga for the defence of Alabama, whither he was slowly followed by Rosencranz, one of the most wary officers in the Federal service. While the Confederates were falling back from Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, General Morgan crossed the Ohio for a raid in Indiana, and spread alarm into Cincinnati. He was soon involved in the general disaster, was pursued, defeated, and taken prisoner. Then the attention of the Americans, which had so long been fixed on Vicksburg, shifted to Charleston, where Beauregard was making the most scientific defence of the whole war against a land and sea force under Gilmore and Dahlgren, supplied with the newest and most formidable engines of destruction. Here, during two months from the middle of July, forts Sumter, Wagner, and Moultrie were attacked from the shore and from the iron-clads, with guns more powerful than any known to European artillerists, and a continued excitement was kept alive in the North by the premature tidings of success, until, on the 6th of September, Morris Island was abandoned by the defenders.

But with the exception of the siege of Charleston the vigour of the Federal advance seemed all at once to collapse. Meade stood inactive on the Rappahannock, where Pope and Burnside and Hooker had been before, and Grant did not at first pursue his brilliant triumph. The conquerors were exhausted by their own efforts, and Mr. Lincoln ordered a conscription of 300,000 men, in order to reinforce his victorious armies. This measure brought the political question once more to the front.

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When Lee was on the Susquehanna nothing but the energy the government and the valour of the army of the Potomac saved the Union. In Pennsylvania itself there was more despondency than alarm. The democratic party was predominant in the neighbouring states of Ohio and New York, and the longing for peace was growing stronger than the hatred of the enemy. The guns of fort Mac

kenzie were pointed against Baltimore, for fear of a revolt in favour of secession. A correspondent wrote from New York: "It seems --so complete is the change in the public sentiment-that if General Lee would only be good enough, having captured Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and left Generals Hill, Longstreet, and Ewell in charge of them, to march to New York, every body would be well pleased. People who six months ago were almost rabid in their passionate assertions that under no circumstances would the North consent to a separation, are resigned to the catastrophe; while many who still believe that the Union can be restored consider that General Lee is far more likely to achieve the object than Mr. Lincoln." The prospect of the conscription encouraged these feelings, and on the 13th of July a riot broke out in New York, which was not entirely quelled till the fourth day. It was directed chiefly against the Abolitionists; and the hatred which the lower orders in that city, especially the Irish, bear to the Negroes, whom they regard as the cause of so much bloodshed, was displayed in a general attack on them, and the slaughter of many. Archbishop Hughes addressed the Irish in a speech which, either because few of the rioters were present, or because it failed to deal with the real cause of the passion that excited them, appears to have made but little impression. Yet one mob was so largely composed of Irishmen that it was turned from its purpose by a few words from a priest. 25,000 Union soldiers were sent to New York to enforce the conscription, and lists were prepared like those of the proscription of Warsaw, by which in a single district no less than 14,000 persons suspected of disaffection were summoned beyond the just quota. Governor Seymour compelled the government to correct the list, and the draft was enforced without further tu mult. It met with resistance in other states,-in Maine, Ohio, Indiana, and Maryland; and many thousands of the conscripts deserted.

These were the consequences of success. The reverses of the Confederates reduced them to much greater straits. The State of North Carolina, from the beginning an unwilling seceder, was the first to show signals of distress and disaffection. The men deserted fast from the armies of Bragg and Lee. The President issued an encouraging address to the troops, conceived in his usual manly and sensible style. Lee put forth a brief but eloquent general order, which is a model for defeated generals. The Vicepresident started for the interior, and made speeches to exhort the people not to despond, and to stand by the Confederate government. But these leaders did not disguise to themselves or the nation the magnitude of the disasters which had befallen them. They set to work to contrive means of recruiting their defeated forces. A general levy of men capable of bearing arms was ordered; and those who had purchased substitutes-and their numbers were very large-were called to the standard. There remained for the last emergency one resource, which promised, indeed, to be infallible,

but which the planters could not contemplate until they were driven to extremity, the arming of the slaves.

At the siege of Port Hudson and the siege of Charleston regiments of runaway slaves had been employed by the Federals, and they had fought with ferocity and with disproportionate loss. In Louisiana General Banks had caused the Negroes to be taken forcibly from the plantations to be enrolled in his army. At New Orleans the secessionist inhabitants were at the mercy of Negro, soldiers fresh from the slaughter of their brethren up the river. The government of Richmond attempted to put a stop to a practice which menaced them with such intolerable horrors, and declared that they would give no quarter to white officers in command of blacks, and that Negro prisoners would be dealt with by their own states. Mr. Lincoln replied that he owed equal protection to all the soldiers of the Union, and that he would retaliate on Confederate prisoners. At the very moment of the disasters of Gettysburg and Vicksburg Mr. Stephens made an attempt to go to Washington to obtain an understanding on this point; but he was not allowed to proceed. Since the victories of Grant and Banks, the slaves of the whole States were almost entirely at the disposal of the Federals, and the Federals were determined to use them. Mississippi and Louisiana together contained above 750,000 slaves, and might furnish whole armies of Negro troops. Not the hatred the slaves bore to their masters made the prospect appalling, but the ease with which they might be first taught by the discipline of the army, then urged on by the frenzy of bloodshed, and inflamed by philanthropists and preachers, to inflict upon an enemy from whom they could not hope for quarter atrocities such as stained the revolution in Hayti.

The vagueness of the rumour that has announced the deliberations of the Southern statesmen on this terrible crisis, and the prolonged doubt as to the result, prove how momentous the resolution will be. No terms can be offered which will make the slaves fight bravely for their masters, short of the virtual emancipation of the whole slave population. The slave-owner must ultimately lose nearly the whole value of his property; and the mode in which freedom can be regulated in the plantation States has never yet been discovered. And, besides the obvious consideration of private interest, slavery has become to the Southern patriot, as the ring and crozier in the great medieval controversy, a sort of symbol of independence and self-government. The institution has become dearer to the planters from the attacks to which it has given rise, not out of obstinacy and resentment, but because it has been identified with the whole system of their rights, just as the question of free trade might have been, or the bank question. In one sense they have fought for slavery, inasmuch as the consent to emancipate would have disarmed a large section of their enemies.

Yet it is easy to understand the strength of the motives which must overcome sooner or later the force of these objections. The spirit of material sacrifice has been strengthened by much practice

among the slave-owners. Devastated homes, slaughtered kindred, the absence of luxuries and the scanty supply of necessaries, ruin at the doors of thousands of families,-all this must have broken in many minds to the idea of one sacrifice more, if there is a prospect that it may retrieve many other losses. Cotton has lost its supremacy, for England has stood the worst, and is not coerced by the want of it. Every field planted with corn shakes the basis of slavery. So firm has hitherto been the resolution of the South not to submit, that it is hard to believe that there is any sacrifice which it will refuse to make for independence. Rather than save slavery by returning to the Union, we can hardly doubt that the Confederates will choose freedom at the price of emancipation.

There has always been in the North one great party that would give up the Union to deliver America from the curse of slavery. The tyranny with which the government has carried on the war to satisfy this party has strengthened in another political section the respect for state-rights and self-government. The same exhaustion from the effort to maintain so vast a struggle may remove in the South the great source of difference from the North, and develope in the North a principle of amity and alliance with the South. An act of emancipation would place the strict Abolitionists, as well as the whole Democratic party, on far better terms with Mr. Davis than with Mr. Lincoln and the Republicans. The decision to turn their slaves into soldiers will bring before the Southern statesmen a problem on which they have always closed their eyes, namely, the possibility of a restored Union on their own political principles, by a victory of self-government over the absolutism of the majority, and of freedom over Slavery. A confederation embracing the old Union, without a popular despotism at Washington or slavery at Richmond, offers a prospect which the leaders of secession ought not utterly to repudiate. It would redeem the American Democracy from both its supreme defects, and constitute the freest and most powerful nation in the world.

LONDON: PRINTED BY LEVEY AND ROBSON, GREAT NEW STREET, FETTER LANE, B.C.

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