Senator Wilson's volume gives the history of twenty-three anti-slavery measures, in the order of their inception and discussion. Among these are the emancipation of slaves used for insurrectionary purposes,—the forbidding of persons in the army to return fugitive slaves,—the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia,—the President's proposition to aid States in the abolition of slavery,—the prohibition of slavery in the Territories,—the confiscation and emancipation bill of Senator Clark,—the appointment of diplomatic representatives to Hayti and Liberia,—the bill for the suppression of the African slave-trade,—the enrolment and pay of colored soldiers,—the anti-slavery Amendment to the Constitution,—the bill to aid the States to emancipate their slaves,—and the reconstruction of Rebel States. The account of the introduction of these and other measures, and the debates on them, are given by Mr. Wilson with brevity, fairness, and skill. A great deal of the animation of the discussion, and of the clash and conflict of individual opinions and passions, is preserved in the epitome, so that the book has the interest which clings to all accounts of verbal battles on whose issue great principles are staked. As the words as well as the arguments of the debates are given, and as the sentences chosen are those in which the characters of the speakers find expression, the effect is often dramatic. It cannot fail to be observed, in reading these reports, that there is a prevailing vulgarity of tone in the declarations of the champions of Slavery. They boldly avow the lowest and most selfish views in the coarsest languages and scout and deride all elevation of feeling and thought in matters affecting the rights of the poor and oppressed. Their opinions outrage civility as well as Christianity; and while they make a boast of being gentlemen, they hardly rise above the prejudices of boors. Principles which have become truisms, and which it is a disgrace for an educated man not to admit, they boldly denounce as pestilent paradoxes; and in reading Mr. Wilson's book an occasional shock of shame must be felt by the most imperturbable politician, at the spectacle of the legislature of "a model republic" experiencing a fierce resistance in the attempt to establish indisputable truths.
Most of the questions here vehemently discussed should, it might be supposed, be settled without discussion by the plain average sense and conscience of any body of men deserving to live in the nineteenth century; but so completely have the defenders of Slavery substituted will and passion for reason and morality, and so long have they been accustomed to have their insolent absurdities rule the politics of the nation, that the passage of the bills whose varying fortunes Mr. Wilson records must be considered the greatest triumph of liberty and justice which our legislative annals afford. And in that triumph the historian of the Anti-Slavery Measures may justly claim to have had a distinguished part. Honest, able, industrious, intelligent, indefatigable, zealous for his cause, yet flexible to events, gifted at once with practical sagacity and strong convictions, and with his whole heart and mind absorbed in the business of politics and legislation, he has proved himself an excellent workman in that difficult task by which facts are made to take the impress of ideas, and the principles of equity are embodied in the laws of the land.
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A National Currency. By Sidney George Fisher, Author of "The Trial of the Constitution," etc. Reprinted from the North American Review for July, 1864. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 16mo. paper, pp. 83. 25 cents.
Our World: or, First Lessons in Geography, for Children. By Mary L. Hall. Boston. Crosby & Nichols. 12mo. pp. 177. $1.00.
The Merchant Mechanic. A Tale of "New England Athens." By Mary A. Howe. New York. John Bradburn. 12mo. pp. 453. $2.00.
The American Boy's Book of Sports and Games: A Repository of In- and Out-Door Amusements for Boys and Youth. Illustrated with over Six Hundred Engravings, designed by White, Herrick, Wier, and Harvey, and engraved by N. Orr. New York. Dick & Fitzgerald. 12mo. pp. 600. $3.50.
Southern Slavery in its Present Aspects: Containing a Reply to a Late Work of the Bishop of Vermont on Slavery. By Daniel R. Goodwin. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 16mo. pp. 343. $1.50.