illustrated the truth and justified the hope. Time has quite nearly
solved that problem and some others almost equally perplexing. The
stream of historical causes has borne the nation onward on the bosom of
its inevitable flow, until we can now almost see clear through to the
end; at any rate, we have reached a point where we can look backward and
forward with perhaps greater advantage than at any former period. What
changes of opinion have been wrought! How many doubts resolved! How many
fears dispelled! How many old prejudices and preconceived notions have
been abandoned! How many vexed questions put at rest! How many things
have safely got an established place among accepted and almost generally
acceptable facts, which were once matters of loyal foreboding and of
disloyal denunciation! No man of good sense and loyalty now doubts the
rightfulness and wisdom of depriving the rebels of the aid derived from
their slaves, and making them an element of strength on our side; while
the fact that the enfranchised slaves make good soldiers, is put beyond
question by an amenability to military discipline and a bravery in
battle not surpassed by any troops in the world.


HAS THE WAR GONE SLOWLY?

The work of subduing the rebellion has gone slowly as compared with the
impatient demands of an indignant people at the outset; but not slowly
if you consider the vast theatre of the war, the immense extent of the
lines of military operations, and the prodigious advantages possessed by
the rebels at the beginning--partly advantages such as always attend the
first outbreak of a revolutionary conspiracy long matured in secret
against an unsuspecting and unprepared Government, and partly the
extraordinary and peculiar advantages that accrued to them from the
traitorous complicity of Buchanan's Administration, through which the