their friends abroad. But the army of the Union has not been content to remain permanently behind the navy. Even in the first year of the conflict, when it was only a crowd of seventy-five thousand undisciplined militia, contending against a solid body of well-disciplined and commanded forces, it wrested two States from the foe, and baffled his intentions for the capture of all our great border cities. But since the opening of the campaign of 1802, the real beginning of war by the North, we have conquered from the aristocracy and now hold fast in Slave States an area of two hundred thousand square miles, inhabited by four millions of people--a district larger than France. Three years ago, every Slave State was virtually in the grasp of the rebels, and the Union was really put upon the defensive to protect freedom in the Free States and the national capital. Now, by a masterly series of campaigns in the West and Southwest, ranging from the Alleghanies to the Gulf, in which we have never lost a decisive battle, we have saved all the Territories of the United States, cut the 'Confederacy' in two equal parts, holding the western division at our mercy, opened the Mississippi and all its tributaries, and crowded the rebellion into the five States nearest the Atlantic coast. In the east we have fought a score of battles with the most formidable army ever marshalled on this continent, composed of the flower of the rebel soldiery led by their best generalship, and, spite of frequent repulses, have forced it from the Potomac and below the Rappahannock to the James, away from the smell of salt water, holding firmly every seaport from Washington to Wilmington, North Carolina, and a belt of land and water commanding the approach to the interior of every Atlantic State. The military force of the rebellion is rapidly being crowded into one army, not exceeding two hundred and fifty thousand men, against which the mighty power of the Union can be marshalled in overwhelming array. I know well enough that the decisive moment will really come when we confront that desperate and veteran host, on which the fate of aristocratic government upon this continent depends. But we shall then have a great army of veterans, marshalled under commanders fit to lead them in the name of liberty and the people.