Lastly, the great, decisive measure of the war has appeared,—­The President’s Proclamation of Emancipation.

This also has been much misunderstood and misrepresented in England.  It has been said to mean virtually this:—­Be loyal, and you shall keep your slaves; rebel, and they shall be free.

But let us remember what we have just seen of the purpose and meaning of the Union to which the rebellious States are invited back.  It is to a Union which has abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, and interdicted slavery in the Territories,—­which vigorously represses the slave-trade, and hangs the convicted slaver as a pirate,—­which necessitates emancipation by denying expansion to slavery, and facilitates it by the offer of compensation.  Any Slaveholding States which should return to such a Union might fairly be supposed to return with the purpose of peaceable emancipation.  The President’s Proclamation simply means this:—­Come in, and emancipate peaceably with compensation; stay out, and I emancipate, nor will I protect you from the consequences.

That continuance in the Union is thus understood is already made manifest by the votes of Missouri and Delaware in the recent elections.  Both of these States have given strong majorities for emancipation, Missouri, long tending towards emancipation, has already planted herself firmly on the great rock of Freedom, and thrown out her bold and eloquent appeal to the Free States of the North for aid in overcoming the difficulties of her position.  Other States will soon follow; nor is it too much to hope that before a new year has gone far in its course the sacred fire of freedom will have flashed along the whole line of the Border States responsive to the generous proposition of the President and Congress, and that universal emancipation will have become a fixed fact in the American Union.

Will our sisters in England feel no heart-beat at that event?  Is it not one of the predicted voices of the latter day, saying under the whole heavens, “It is done:  the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ”?

And now, Sisters of England, in this solemn, expectant hour, let us speak to you of one thing which fills our hearts with pain and solicitude.

It is an unaccountable fact, and one which we entreat you seriously to ponder, that the party which has brought the cause of Freedom thus far on its way, during the past eventful year, has found little or no support in England.  Sadder than this, the party which makes Slavery the chief corner-stone of its edifice finds in England its strongest defenders.

The voices that have spoken for us who contend for Liberty have been few and scattering.  God forbid that we should forget those few noble voices, so sadly exceptional in the general outcry against us!  They are, alas, too few to be easily forgotten.  False statements have blinded the minds of your community, and turned the most generous sentiments of the British heart against us.  The North are fighting for supremacy and the South for independence, has been the voice.  Independence? for what? to do what?  To prove the doctrine that all men are not equal.  To establish the doctrine that the white may enslave the negro.