That Government was not much ahead of the people in 1861, and through most of the present year, respecting the position of slavery, is very evident to all who know what it did, and what it refused to do, with regard to that institution.  With a hardiness that would have been strongly offensive, if it had not been singularly ridiculous, Mr. Seward told the astonished world of Europe that the fate of slavery did not depend upon the event of our contest,—­which was as much as to say that we should not injure it, happen what might; and no one then supposed that the Confederates would willingly strike a blow at it, either to conciliate foreign nations or to obtain black soldiers.  The words of the Secretary of State did us harm in England, with the religious portion of whose people it is something like an article of faith that slavery is an addition to the list of deadly sins.  They injured us, too, with the members of the various schools of liberal politicians over all Europe; and they furnished to our enemies abroad the argument that there really was no difference between the North and the South on the slavery question, and that therefore the sympathies of all generous minds should be with the Southrons, who were the weaker party.  Our cause was irreparably damaged in Europe through the indiscretion of the Honorable Secretary, who cannot be accused of any love for slavery, but who was then, as he appears to be up to the present hour, ignorant of the nature and the extent of the contest of which his country is the scene.  Other members of the Administration had sounder ideas, but their weight in it was not equal to that of the Secretary of State.

It is but fair to the President to say, that his conduct was such that it was obvious that he did not favor slavery because he had any respect for it.  He pulled so hard upon the chains that bound him, that his desire to throw them off was clear to the world; but they were too strong, and too well fastened, to be got rid of easily.  He feared that all the Unionists of the Border States would be lost, if he should adopt the views of the Emancipationists; and the fear was natural, though in point of fact his course had no good effect in those States, beyond that of conciliating a portion of the Kentuckians.  North Carolina, under the old system the most moderate of the Slave States, was as far gone in Secession as South Carolina, and furnished far more men to the Southern armies than her neighbor.  The Virginians and Missourians who went with us would have pursued the same course, had the President’s opinions on slavery been as radical and pronounced as those of Mr. Garrison.  Maryland was kept from wheeling into the Secession line only by the presence on her soil, and in her vicinity, of strong Federal armies.  In Tennessee, at a later period of the war, as in North Carolina, Federal power extended as far as Federal guns could throw Federal shot, though Tennessee had not been renowned for her extreme attachment to slavery.