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twenty millions of people; on the other, twelve. On the one side was the puritan, believing God rules; on the other, the cavalier, affirming cotton is king. On the one side were the descendants of those, who at Concord and Lexington,

Their flag in April's breeze unfurled,

There fired the shot heard round the world;

on the other, the sons of those who ran away at Guilford Court House, and stood but feebly at Camden and Savannah. On the one side was a purse, which thus far has sustained unaided the most gigantic war of modern times; on the other, a shinplaster currency, "payable two years after the ratification of a treaty of peace with the United States." On the one side was a commerce, whose keels vex the waters of every ocean; on the other, no ships at all, except the few stolen or surrendered by renegade commanders.

But now, the trial by battle being once fairly joined, the two stern combatants grimly at work, suddenly there loomed up a dusky element, which the South in its hardihood had evidently not calculated for, if not forgotten. There is now no doubt, that the leaders of the rebellion in the beginning relied largely on aid from their northern sympathizers. They confidently believed that a northern peace party would at least so paralyze the friends of the Union, that no radical measures could be adopted, and that, no matter how the war might go, the insti⇒ tution of slavery would remain untouched. Had not all the parties denounced John Brown? Had not the black republicans disavowed abolitionism? Had not Fernando Wood proclaimed his New York should be a free city? Had not the democracy, in convention assembled, everywhere Resolved, that if the North undertook to "subjugate" the South, it would first have to fight northern democrats? But it happened these haughty cavaliers, who aforetime were wont to despise the north, mistaking its patience for pusillanimity, and to boast-proud souls-that they carried the nation in the palm of their hand, were now counting without their host. The first gun fired at Sumter ended all this disloyal palaver, and soon the war-cry of the people, flung from mountain to valley, was "Every weapon against the southern traitor!" From this hour henceforth the only substantial question was, as to which

side should secure the negro. Here, in truth, was the real turning point of the war. Sambo became the pivot about which the whole contest began to revolve, and the war passed simply into a question as to whether he should continue Cuffee or become soldier.

The progress of the public mind on this subject, since the outbreak of the rebellion, has been truly amazing. It furnishes another lively illustration of the rapid change in public opinion in times of civil commotions. It is not three years since the most notorious of our military leaders, then conducting a campaign in West Virginia, at the outset forbade all slaves from entering his lines, and warned them by proclamation that, if they presumed to rise against their masters, he would "crush them with an iron hand." History will not believe it. Who, before, ever heard of a general refusing the most valuable of allies against a common enemy? It is in accordance with the eternal fitness of things, that he has since lost all command and gravitated gradually into a New York Copperhead. Sixty days, however, if so long, had not elapsed from the date of McClellan's proclamation, before General Butler, at Fortress Monroe, by a funny fiction of law, (true on the southern claim that slaves are property,) discovered that all slaves belonging to disloyal masters were "contraband of war!" A broad laugh overspread the face of the nation; but the country was grateful for any means whereby we could rescue our friends and weaken our enemies. Soon the secretary of state found out that colored persons, if they wished to go abroad, were "American citizens of African desent," in so far as to be capable of receiving a passport. Then the attorney general decided, that, as such "qualified citizens," they could locate upon and pre-empt public lands. And now the President, made, by repeated defeats to our arms, at last fully awake to the magnitude of the contest, and to the necessity of employing all the national resources, by his immortal Proclamation of Emancipation declared all slaves within the insurrectionary districts "henceforth and forever free;" and then, in a spirit of lofty eloquence not surpassed in any age, invoked upon this sublime meausure "the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God!" Finally, Congress took the matter up, and by solemn

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legislation enacted, that all slaves should be heartily welcomed within the Union lines, should be guarantied the full protection of the national flag, and, if so they chose, should drill and fight as Union soldiers. From Cuffee to contraband, from contraband to citizens of African descent, from such qualified citizen to American soldier, our national prejudices have grown "small by degrees and beautifully less," until at last the hated children of the sun have come to be recognized as welcome allies in the great war now and here being waged so fiercely for humanity and God.

It requires no prophet's eye now to see, that the battle, though still maintained with vigor in some parts of the field, is yet already clearly won. The elections of last fall, from Maine to California, possess this peculiar significance, that they utterly annihilate disaffection throughout the north. Any other result, especially in the great Middle States, would have been a national disaster. But, thank Heaven, Mr. Justice Woodward was left to contemplate the beauties of his native Wyoming; McClellan even could not save him; and the martyr of Ohio bids fair, for some time to come, "to watch and wait across the border !" Meanwhile, throughout the south, wholesale disintegration is inevitable. Jeffdom is already beaten, because it has lost Sambo. Its ebony platform has been knocked from under it. Its bond of union has been thoroughly and forever severed. Its vital cord has been effectually cut. At all points where the Union lines advance, its faithful chattels, converted suddenly into "American citizens of African descent," take unto themselves legs and run away. Nay, if we but look more closely, we may see the dusky freedmen, with bent brow, in serried ranks, beneath the good, the grand old flag, charging fiercely into the storm of battle, and indicating for their race a right royal manhood along the bloody ramparts of Port Hudson and Fort Wagner. We repeat, the battle, though its thunders still shake the air, is already won for the nation. It but remains for the Union to gather up its squadrons and charge once more, or so, along the whole line. For there is no clearer truth in this war than this, that exactly in the proportion that slavery disappears, the rebellion ceases. The accursed bond of union once cut, the malcontents everywhere drop speedily asunder. Thus Calhoun's chosen agent

for building up a southern Empire, by one of those sure revenges which time always brings about, has become to the disunionists an "architect of ruin." Hence, with the success of our arms, we behold following pari passu the loyalization of the South and the restoration of the Union. And thus once more we see it happen, in the strange "whirligig of time," that justice to the oppressed, however dear or difficult, becomes at last the only TRUE SAFETY of a nation.

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For our nation will be saved. The "signs of the times are unmistakable. The Lord, almost, hath spoken it. In the light of our shining victories, at both the ballot and the cartridge box, we may well believe, that

Behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.

How gratifying to the patriot! what matter of rejoicing to the Christian heart! With the war once over, we shall have no more squabbles about State Rights. Future malcontents will have been taught a lesson which they will wisely heed. Our local governments will know enough, at least, "to keep the peace." With the only stain upon our escutcheon blotted out, with justice and liberty established as the corner-stones of the Republic, with the reign of law and order made sure and absolute, with a population industrious, intelligent, and inured to arms, and with an undivided and indivisible empire from the lakes to the gulf, and from the blue Atlantic to the golden slopes of the Pacific, the future grandeur, and power, and glory of the American people, O, who shall estimate? Then at last become the true pride of mankind, and the just hope of the world, it is not too much to believe, that our career as a nation will be only just begun. Abraham Lincoln, the crowned hero of the century, will go to his tomb wept by the human race, and the American Republic, saved by his hand, will endure, let us hope,

Through long distant ages, when these war-cloud days are done,
Stretching like a golden evening forward to the setting sun.

But a word more and our task is done. There are those who say, that the war once over, the freedmen will be remanded

to their bonds. A cabinet officer, indeed, with a strange lack of dignity, most unbecoming to one of his station, has declared, that, in his judgment, they will perhaps be allowed to build our railroads, dig our canals, and ditch our swamps; but that, when these public works are completed, they will be shipped off to Africa or Central America. Faugh! The American people have not yet sunk so low. Let men remember, that no nation ever yet willingly abandoned the defenders of its life, and that the American Republic in the heyday of its triumph over anarchy and treason cannot afford to disgrace itself forever. And besides, at the close of the conflict, the dusky warriors, who with leveled bayonets charged across the ditch at Port Hudson and up the slopes of Wagner, by that time at least two hundred thousand strong, unless we greatly mistake, with the sympathies of the world at their back, will know well how to take care of themselves.

ART. X.-FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

PROTESTANTISM.

GREAT BRITAIN.

MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. THE TRIAL OF BISHOP COLENSO. -DECISION OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL IN THE CASE OF THE ESSAYISTS.-A new and highly important stage has been reached in the history of the Rationalistic Controversy in the Church of England. Bishop Colenso has been tried before an Episcopal synod in South Africa, which has found him guilty of heresy and deposed him from his see. On the other hand, the appeal of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, two of the writers of the Essays and Reviews, from the sentence of the Court of Arches, has come up before the highest judicial court of the country. The Privy Council and this highest authority has declared the holdings and publishing of the views contained in the essays of the above two writers not to be inconsistent with the rule of faith in the Church of England. Both decisions are events of far-reaching bearing.

The trial of Colenso commenced on November 17. The tribunal before which the Bishop of Natal was cited to appear was constituted in St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, and consisted of the most Rev. Dr. Gray, Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of South Africa, assisted by his suffragans, the Bishops of Graham's Town and of the Orange Free State. The Bishops of St. Helena and of Zambesi, also suffragans of Cape Town, were absent on account of the distance of the seats of their dioceses from the metropolitan city, in each case being no less than two thousand miles. The accusing clergy were present to support their accusation in the persons of the Dean of Cape Town, Dr. Douglas; the Archdeacon of Graham's Town, Dr. Merriman; and the Archdeacon of George, Dr. Badnall. On the part of the accused bishop, Dr. Bleek, curator of the Grey Library, attended to protest against the proceedings, or, to speak more correctly, against the jurisdiction of the

court.

After a brief explanation of the occa

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