74 North accepts this truth, and goes into the war understanding it, and prepared to carry it out, then disaster and disgrace will cease to attend our arms. Then, and not till then, shall we be successful. I have no special admiration for the negro, as all know who know me. But the negro is a great fact in this contest, and we cannot get rid of him if we would. Now, I would treat him in this connection as I would treat any other person or thing. Is he of use to the enemy ? Take him away ! Can he be made use of to our men ? Let them use him ! Why all this idle sensitiveness on account of the negro ? He can dig a ditch ; he can build an earthwork; he can do a thousand things which wear out the lives of your soldiers, better than they. Let him do them ! My doctrine is to put this whole subject under the control of the commanders of our armies. They understand it better than you or I. Do not hamper them with restrictions or conditions. Only let this fact be thundered into the ears of every disloyal man North or South. There is no law, there is no officer, civil or military, which will aid a rebel to recapture his slave. [Cries of good, and cheers.] The armies of the Union are not slave hunters, [Cheers,] and the slave of a rebel master who has performed one act in the service of the Government, and in putting down this rebellion, is from that moment a free man, and the strong arm of the nation shall crush the traitor who seeks again to enslave him. [Cheers.] We are told now that another element is to enter into this war. Rumors are rife of foreign intervention. [Cries of " Let them come."] So say I. It is by no grace or favor of European monarchies, and of England especially, that this nation lives. We expect England to strike us just when and where we are weakest. She would not be true to herself or her history if she did not. I do not undervalue the importance of foreign intervention. I do not know but some such event is needed to rouse the North, and make her put forth her strength. Let England and France now attack us, and the North would be electrified. That English or French regiment is not raised, nor ever will be, that can reach a point twenty miles inland in any Northern State. There is not a stone by the roadside that would not blush for itself, if it had not behind it a true man and a trusty rifle in such an event. [Loud cheering.] Mr Chittenden complimented our generals, but insisted that there was a defect somewhere in the management of this war. We were thirty millions of people against four, and yet upon every important battlefield the forces of the rebels had outnumbered ours in the last battles before Richmond, two to one. The North must go into the field with the same energy and numbers as the South. General Pope had announced the true theory of war. Adopt the policy his orders inaugurate. We have had too much of that style of war which is always looking for lines of defence and ways of retreat. Let us look only at what line of defence the rebels have, that we may march upon it. Let us observe their line of retreat for there lies our way. Subsist our armies on the enemy. Pay our troops from the gold of the enemy. Have done with permanent stores, with supply trains and baggage transportation. The views of such men as Pope must now control our armies ; then will the war be carried on in earnest, and then will it be successful. He concluded amid applause.
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