such additions from the same quarter as would sweep our trade
from the sea and raise our blockade. We had failed to elicit from
European Governments 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 that final proclamation came, including the
announcement that colored men of suitable condition would be
received into the army service. The policy of emancipation, and
of employing black soldiers, 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 General 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 presented. It came, and, as
was anticipated, was followed by dark and doubtful days. Eleven
months have now passed, and 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 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 respective States. Of those States not
included in the Emancipation Proclamation, Maryland and Missouri,
neither of which three years ago would tolerate any restraint
upon the extension of slavery into the new Territories, only