in order to protect slavery?  It really does seem to me too simple for argument.  I am anxiously waiting for the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing in the slavery end.  We shall be rolling about in every direction until that is done.  I don’t know that it is to be done by proclamation.  Rather perhaps by facts. . . .  Well, I console myself with thinking that the people—­the American people, at least —­is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation, and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect.  After all, it seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be going ahead.  I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling itself to death.  With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think the restored Union neither possible nor desirable.  Don’t understand me as not taking into account all the strategical considerations against premature governmental utterances on this great subject.  But are there any trustworthy friends to the Union among the slaveholders?  Should we lose many Kentuckians and Virginians who are now with us, if we boldly confiscated the slaves of all rebels? —­and a confiscation of property which has legs and so confiscates itself, at command, is not only a legal, but would prove a very practical measure in time of war.  In brief, the time is fast approaching, I think, when ‘Thorough’ should be written on all our banners.  Slavery will never accept a subordinate position.  The great Republic and Slavery cannot both survive.  We have been defied to mortal combat, and yet we hesitate to strike.  These are my poor thoughts on this great subject.  Perhaps you will think them crude.  I was much struck with what you quote from Mr. Conway, that if emancipation was proclaimed on the Upper Mississippi it would be known to the negroes of Louisiana in advance of the telegraph.  And if once the blacks had leave to run, how many whites would have to stay at home to guard their dissolving property?

You have had enough of my maunderings.  But before I conclude them, may I ask you to give all our kindest regards to Lowell, and to express our admiration for the Yankee Idyl.  I am afraid of using too extravagant language if I say all I think about it.  Was there ever anything more stinging, more concentrated, more vigorous, more just?  He has condensed into those few pages the essence of a hundred diplomatic papers and historical disquisitions and Fourth of July orations.  I was dining a day or two since with his friend Lytton (Bulwer’s son, attache here) and Julian Fane (secretary of the embassy), both great admirers of him,—­and especially of the “Biglow Papers;” they begged me to send them the Mason and Slidell Idyl, but I wouldn’t,—­I don’t think it is in English nature (although theirs is very cosmopolitan and liberal) to take such