The last measure is to my mind the most important.  The South has, by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ.  At the same time it has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.  We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the only means of national preservation.  The question is distinctly proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic?  It is most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free States as to the answer.

If we do fall, we deserve our fate.  At the beginning of the contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable.  But now we are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery.  We are fighting for nothing else that I know of.  We are fighting for the Union.  Who wishes to destroy the Union?  The slaveholder, nobody else.  Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six hundred thousand soldiers, 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