These Border slave States, none of which "would promise a single soldier at first, have now an aggregate of not less than forty thousand in the field for the Union; while of their citizens certainly not more than a third of that number, and they of doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms against it." Beyond these results the President had some "general accounts of popular movements in behalf of the Union in North Carolina and Tennessee," and he expressed his belief that "the cause of the Union is advancing steadily and certainly Southward." The one marked change in the popular opinion of the free States, now reflected in Congress, was in respect to the mode of dealing with Slavery.

Mr.Lincoln was conservative, and always desired to keep somewhat in the rear rather than too far in advance of the public judgment.

In his message he avoided all direct expression upon the Slavery question, but with the peculiar shrewdness which characterized his political discussion he announced a series of general truths respecting labor and capital which, in effect, were deadly hostile to the institution.

He directed attention to the fact the "the insurrection is largely if not exclusively a war upon the first principle of popular government--the rights of the people." Conclusive evidence of this appeared in "the maturely considered public documents as well as in the general tone of the insurgents." He discerned a disposition to abridge the right of suffrage and to deny to the people the "right to participate in the selection of public officers except those of the Legislature." He found indeed that "monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people." While he did not think it fitting to make "a general argument in favor of popular institutions," he felt that he should scarcely be justified were he "to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism." It was, he said, "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government," and it assumed "that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor." THE PRESIDENT'S ANTI-SLAVERY ARGUMENT.
Mr.Lincoln found that the next step in this line of argument raised the question, "whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent ?" thus leading to the conclusion that "all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves," and that "whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life." From all these theories Mr.Lincoln radically dissented, and maintained that "labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." "No men living," said he, "are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty--none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned.

Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which, if surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement, and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost." If Mr.Lincoln had directly attempted at that early stage of the contest to persuade the laboring men of the North that it was best for them to aid in abolishing Slavery, he would have seriously abridged the popularity of his administration.
He pursued the wiser course of showing that the spirit of the Southern insurrection was hostile to all free labor, and that in its triumph not merely the independence of the laborer but his right of self-defense, as conferred by suffrage, would be imperiled if not destroyed.