"Greatly as all just and dispassionate men must abhor slavery, every one must admit the difficulties with which its immediate abolition is here surrounded. The negro does not possess the cordial sympathy of the white man. For while a small, and, politically speaking, uninfluential, party are prepared to make every sacrifice and run all risks in order to blot out slavery on the instant, the influential and acting leaders of the majority, whatever their occasional language of denunciation, and affectation of horror, are not disposed to brave the rebellion of the South, and the possible disruption of the Republic, for the sake of shortening the thraldom of the negro some fifty years. They profess to rely upon the natural progress of events, which, by quiet change, has already banished slavery from the majority of the States originally parties to the Union; and has, within the last few years, forbidden the future existence of slave States north of latitude 36 degrees 3o'--for the gradual extinction of the system; and in the meantime they are prepared to alleviate the lot of the slave; to refuse any extension of slavery; and, as far as concession can obtain it, to narrow the area which it now occupies. "Perhaps, should these cold political views still hold possession of the moving spirits of the country, the next practical step in advance may be to secure to the slave a personal right to some small portion of the day, and to the produce of his labour in that portion;--to say, in fact, that after a stipulated number of hours' labour for his master, the remainder of his time shall be his own. The effect of this would be to enable him legally to accumulate property. And if, in addition, a minimum price be fixed at which his master should be bound to allow him to redeem himself, and savings' banks were opened to receive the produce of his free earnings--some glimmering of daylight would dawn upon his lot, and his condition, as a 'chattel' to be bought and sold, would not be hopeless." Referring to what I hereafter relate of the incident at Saratoga, I may, at this point, remind the reader that, as late as 1862, President Lincoln, a sincere abolitionist, could not see his way to declare the freedom of the slave. He told a deputation from Chicago that "a Pope once issued a Bull against an eclipse, but the eclipse came along nevertheless." The moment I saw black soldiers in Northern uniform, carrying Northern muskets, at the end of 1863, I made up my mind that the North had won. In 1865 Dr. Mackay, registrar, showed me the registry of the passage of John Brown's, corpse through New York. I quote from memory; but if I recollect rightly, it was this:--