were represented to him as being engaged or about to engage in disloyal and treasonable practices to be arrested by special civil as well as military agencies, and detained in military custody, when necessary, to prevent them and deter others from such practices. Examinations of such cases were instituted, and some of the persons so arrested have been discharged from time to time, under circumstances or upon conditions compatible, as was thought, with the public safety.

Meantime a favorable change of public opinion has occurred. The line between loyalty and disloyalty is plainly defined; the whole structure of the Government is firm and stable; appreprehensions of public danger and facilities for treasonable practices have diminished with the passions which prompted heedless persons to adopt them. The insurrection is believed to have culminated and to be declining.

The President, in view of these facts, and anxious to favor a return to the normal course of the Administration, as far as regard for the public welfare will allow, directs that all political prisoners or State prisoners now held in military custody, be released, on their subscribing to a parole engaging them to render no aid or comfort to the enemies in hostility to the United States.

The Secretary of War will, however, at his discretion, except from the effect of this order any persons detained as spies in the service of the insurgents, or others whose release at the present moment may be deemed incompatible with the public safety.

To all persons who shall be so released, and who shall keep their parole, the President grants an amnesty for any past offences of treason or disloyalty which they may have committed.

Extraordinary arrests will hereafter be made under the direction of the military authorities alone.

By order of the President:

EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War.

THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY.

The public mind had now been brought to a point by the resistance and the spirit of the insurgents, at which

Mr. Lincoln thought it prudent to bring before Congress the question of the abolition of slavery. This he did in the following Message, whereby he proposed only, it will be seen, such a co-operation of Congress with the people of the Slave States, as might provide for the gradual extinction of the institution which in three years was to be utterly destroyed.

MESSAGE PROPOSING AID FOR THE GRADUAL ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

WASHINGTON, March 6, 1862.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives-I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your honorable body, which shall be, substantially, as follows:

Resolved, That the United States, in order to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolition of slavery, give to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate it for the inconvenience, public and private, produced by such change of system.

If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is an end of it. But if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the States and people immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject it.

The Federal Government would find its highest interest in such a measure as one of the most important means of selfpreservation. The leaders of the existing rebellion entertain the hope that this Government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the Slave States north of such part will then say, "The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion; and the initiation of emancipation deprives them of it, and of all the States initiating it.

The point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but while the offer is equally made to all, the more Northern shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the more Southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in their proposed Confederacy. I say initiation, because, in my judgment, gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all.

In the mere financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress with the census or an abstract of the Treasury report before him, can, readily see for himself how very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at a fair valuation, all the slaves in any named State.

Such a proposition on the part of the General Government sets up no claim of a right by the Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits-referring as it does the absolute control of the subject, in each case, to the State and the people immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice to them.

In the annual message, last December, I thought fit to say "the Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed." I said this, not hastily but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be an indispensable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. But resistance continues, and the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend, and all the ruin which may follow it. "Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle, must and will come.

The proposition now made (though an offer only) I hope it may be esteemed no offence to ask whether the pecuniary consideration tendered would not be of more value to the States and private persons concerned than would be the institution and property in it, in the present aspect of affairs. While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would lead to important practical results.

In full view of my great responsibility to my God and my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the people to the subject. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

GENERAL M'CLELLAN.

The McClellan trouble grew day by day. We see in this brief letter how tenderly Mr. Lincoln dealt with his touchy commander.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, }

WASHINGTON, March 31, 1862.

My Dear Sir-This morning I felt constrained to order Blenker's division to Fremont, and I write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the case I am confident that you would justify it, even beyond a mere acknowledgment that the Commander-in-Chief may order what he pleases.

Yours, very truly,

Major-General MCCLELLAN.

A. LINCOLN.

In this longer communication there is the same kindness, the same consideration; and although it is pervaded by a tone of authority, that authority seems almost paternal in its expression.

WASHINGTON, April 9, 1862.

My Dear Sir-Your dispatches, complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.

Blenker's division was withdrawn from you before you left here, and you know the pressure under which I did it, and, as I thought, acquiesced in it—certainly not without reluctance.

After you left, I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this even was to go to General Hooker's old position. General Banks's corps, once designed for Manassas

Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone, a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack Washington. My implicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.

I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Manassas Junction: but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And allow me to ask, do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Manassas Junction, to this city, to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops? This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade.

There is a curious mystery about the number of troops now with you. When I telegraphed you on the sixth, saying you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War a statement taken, as he said, from your own returns, making one hundred and eight thousand then with you and en route to you. You now say you will have but eighty five thousand when all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of twenty-three thousand be accounted for?

As to General Wool's command, I understand it is doing for you precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that command was away.

I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by this time. And if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay, the enemy will relatively gain upon you—that is, he will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the