25 slavery into the heaviest burden the rebellion has to bear. Forty thousand strong, the emancipated slaves have turned their arms against their masters, and hundreds of thousands strong, the unemancipated, have been driven into the corner States, where the diminished form of the rebellion now crouches, and there like a plague of locusts, they overwhelm the land with a hungry and non-producing population. Who can fail to foresee the issue of this great problem of slavery to the Confederacy itself? Who can help seeing that its corner-stone was laid on sand, that the noisy proclamation was a blatant falsehood, and the projected system a stupendous mistake ? We have now run through the catalogue of capital errors out of which the rebellion was engendered. Each one of them has been evaporated or exploded, till there remains not a tangible shred of any. It is not our skill or prowess that has produced this issue. It is the supremacy of that guiding power that holds the hearts of princes in his hand, that makes the diviners mad, and orders all things after the counsel of his own will. It is God moving in the earth, to foil the rebellion with its own weapons, and turn its strength to weakness. And although it is only a refusal of power, and not a positive conquest, that we have recited. Yet God’s refusal is a conquest. To baulk the rebel- 4
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