"Third. That the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement, by any military authority, or by the sentence of any court-martial or military commission."

This act-unquestionably called for by the growing danger of the spirit of discontent being excited by the friends of slavery in the North-strengthened the President's hands to a degree exceedingly distasteful to the peace Democracy. The disaffected were now at any moment liable to be grasped by the strong hand of military law. And the beneficial effects of this order were not long in manifesting themselves in the total and instant cessation of all interference with enlistments.

This was also the famous period which has since been termed the battle season of 1862. The summer had witnessed the discomfiture of the great army of General M'Clellan, which had proceeded to the capture of Richmond so confidently and slowly. It was driven before the Southern bayonets down the Peninsula, and consequent gloom pervaded the North. Small space is here accorded to treat of the controversy which arose, after this disaster, as to who was directly responsible for it: the friends of General M'Clellan defending their hero zealously, and heaping all the blame upon the President and his Secretary of War, and the lovers of the Government defending it against these assaults with equal energy, attributing the defeat solely to the incapacity and timidity of M'Clellan. It is difficult to foresee the verdict of the future and dispassionate historian. But, by few candid reviewers at the present time can blame be attached to the Executive.

General Pope was appointed to succeed M'Clellan in the immediate command of the army of the Potomac ; and on the 27th of August General Halleck, who had been called to Washington, ordered General M‘Clellan to take the entire direction of sending the troops from Alexandria to reinforce General Pope, who was being hard pressed by the powerful Southern army near Warrenton Junction.

President Lincoln, in all his correspondence with General M'Clellan, was patient and gentle to the last degree. He ever reproved with kindness; and though he may have occasionally been a little sarcastic in his replies to the commander's petulant complaints, those replies always were in a familiar suggestive vein, and usually in the form of private letters.

The North was filled with sorrow by this disastrous summer, but drooping spirits were revived by the glorious struggle of Hooker and Burnside at Antietam and Perryville, which, if not actual victories, at any rate relieved the soil of the invaders, east and west.

To the Congress, which convened in the ensuing December, Mr. Lincoln transmitted a message of characteristic good sense and moderation. The friends of secession, both at the North and in Europe, had strongly urged the injustice and impolicy of the war waged against the South, and had thrown upon it the imputa tion of being simply a struggle for dominion. In the following message, from which we present a few extracts, Mr. Lincoln with his customary homely but invincible logic, refutes at once the argument and imputation by showing the absurdity and impossibility of secession, and recommending the adoption of measures which would for ever silence those cavillers who

maintained that the North was as indifferent to the rights of the slave in the abstract, as the South, with whom it was alleged they but made it a pretext for quarrel :

"In the Inaugural Address I briefly pointed out the total inadequacy of disunion as a remedy for the differences between the people of the two sections. I did so in language which I cannot improve, and which, therefore, I beg to repeat

"One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse, in both cases, after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

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Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.'

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There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, upon which to divide. Trace through,

from east to west, upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary. The fact of separation, if it comes, gives up, on the part of the seceding section, the fugitive slave clause, along with all other constitutional obligations upon the section seceded from, while I should expect no treaty stipulation would ever be made to take its place.

"But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above ten millions of people, and will have fifty millions, within fifty years, if not prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than one-third of the country owned by the United States-certainly more than one million of square miles. One-half as populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than seventy-five millions of people. A glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of the Republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific being the deepest, and also the richest in undeveloped resources. In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed from them, this great interior region is naturally one of the most important in the world. Ascertain from the statistics the small proportion of the region which has as yet been brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount of its products, and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect presented. And yet this region has no seacoast-touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may for ever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common

country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

"And this is true, wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed. Place it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of Kentucky, or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none south of it can trade to any port or place north of it, and none north of it can trade to any port or place south of it, except upon terms dictated by a Government foreign to them. These outlets, east, west and south, are indispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting and to inhabit this vast interior region. Which of the three may be the best is no proper question. All are better than either, and all of right belong to that people and to their successors for ever. True to themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no such line. Nor are the marginal regions less interested in these communications to and through them to the great outside world. They too, and each of them, must have access to this Egypt of the West, without paying toll at the crossing of any national boundary.

"Our national strife springs not from our permanent part-not from the land we inhabit-not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.

"Our strife pertains to ourselves-to the passing generations of men, and it can, without convulsion, be hushed for ever with the passing of our generation.

"In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of both Houses concurring), That the following articles be proposed to the Legislatures (or Conventions) of the several States as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by threefourths of the said Legislatures (or Conventions), to be valid as part or parts of the said Constitution, viz. :

ARTICLE.-Every State, wherein Slavery now exists,