The extreme of opinion in favor of immediate and unqualified emancipation, and of employment of colored troops, with impatience at all delay in adopting such a policy, was represented picturesquely, if not altogether justly, by Count Gurowski. Adam Gurowski was a Pole who had been exiled for participating in revolutionary demonstrations, and after a varied career had come to the United States, where he engaged in literary pursuits, and from 1861 to 1863 was employed as a translator in the state department at Washington. He was now between fifty and sixty years of age, and was a keen observer and merciless critic of what was going on around him. He had published several books in Europe, and his diary kept while he was in the state department has also been put into print. It is exceedingly outspoken in every direction; and though it is often unjust, and represents hardly more than his own exaggerated eccentricity, yet in many respects he struck at once into the heart of important truths which slower minds comprehended less readily or less willingly. The following extracts are suggestive and interesting. Their dates range from April, 1862, to April, 1863.

"Mr. Blair [Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General] worse and worse; is more hot in support of McClellan, more determined to upset Stanton; and I heard him demand the return of a poor fugitive slave woman to some of Blair's Maryland friends. Every day I am confirmed in my creed that whoever had slavery for mammy is never serious in the effort to destroy it. Whatever such men as Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Blair will do against slavery will never be radical by their own choice or conviction, but will be done reluctantly, and when under the unavoidable pressure of events.... Mr. Lincoln is forced out again from one of his pro-slavery intrenchments; he was obliged to yield, and to sign the hard-fought bill for emancipation in the District of Columbia. But how reluctantly, with what bad grace he signed it! Good boy; he wishes not to strike his mammy. And to think that the friends of humanity in Europe will credit this emancipation not where it is due, not to the noble pressure exercised by the high-minded Northern masses! Mr. Lincoln, his friends assert, does not wish to hurt the feelings of any one with whom he has to deal. Exceedingly amiable quality in a private individual, but at times turning almost to be a vice in a man intrusted with the destinies of a nation. So he never could decide to hurt the feelings of McClellan, and this after all the numerous proofs of his incapacity. But Mr. Lincoln hurts thereby, and in the most sensible manner, the interests, nay, the lives of the twenty millions of people.... The last draft could be averted from the North if the four millions of loyal Africo-Americans were called to arms. But Mr. Lincoln, with the Sewards, the Blairs, and others, will rather see every Northern man shot than to touch the palladium of the rebels.... Proclamation conditionally abolishing slavery from 1863. The conditional is the last desperate effort made by Mr. Lincoln and by Mr. Seward to save slavery. The two statesmen found out that it was dangerous longer to resist the decided, authoritative will of the masses. But if the rebellion is crushed before January 1st, 1863, what then? If the rebels turn loyal before that term? Then the people of the North will be cheated. The proclamation is written in the meanest and the most dry routine style; not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm and lofty comprehension and feelings of the immense majority of the people on this question of emancipation. Nothing for humanity, nothing to humanity. How differently Stanton would have spoken! General Wadsworth truly says that never a noble subject was more belittled by the form in which it was uttered.... The proclamation of September 22d may not produce in Europe the effect and the enthusiasm which it might have evoked if issued a year ago, as an act of justice and of self-conscientious force, as an utterance of the lofty, pure, and ardent aspirations and will of a high-minded people. Europe may see now in the proclamation an action of despair made in the duress of events.... Every time an Africo-American regiment is armed or created, Mr. Lincoln seems as though making an effort, or making a gracious concession in permitting the increase of our forces. It seems as if Mr. Lincoln were ready to exhaust all the resources of the country before he boldly strikes the Africo-American vein."

One hundred and seventy thousand negroes were enlisted, and many of them performed notable service, displaying, at Fort Wagner, Olustee, and elsewhere, quite as much steadiness and courage as any white troops. If the expressions of doubt as to the military value of the colored race were sincere, they argued inexcusable ignorance; for black soldiers had fought in the ranks of our Revolutionary armies, and Perry's victory on Lake Erie in 1813—which, with the battle of the Thames, secured us the great Northwest—was largely the work of colored sailors.

The President recognized the obligation of the Government to protect all its servants by every means in its power, and issued a proclamation directing that "for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works." But such retaliation was never resorted to.

COLONEL ROBERT G. SHAW.
(Commanding the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Regiment.)

Before the war it had been a constant complaint of the Southerners, that the discussion of schemes for the abolition of slavery, and the scattering of documents that argued the right of every man to liberty, were likely to excite bloody insurrection among the slaves. And many students of this piece of history have expressed surprise that when the war broke out the blacks did not at once become mutinous all over the South, and make it impossible to put Confederate armies in the field. But it must be remembered, that although the struggle resulted in their liberation, yet when it was begun no intention was expressed on the part of the Government except a determination to save the Union, and the war had been in progress a year and a half before the blacks had any reason to suppose it would benefit them whichever way it might turn. They were often possessed of more shrewdness than they were credited with. Their sentiments up to the time of the Emancipation Proclamation were perhaps fairly represented by one who was an officer's servant in an Illinois regiment, and was at the battle of Fort Donelson. A gentleman who afterward met him on the deck of a steamer, and was curious to know what he thought of the struggle that was going on, questioned him with the following result:

"Were you in the fight?"

"Had a little taste of it, sa."

"Stood your ground, did you?"