Monday, February 2, 2009

We have already published several expressions of opinion on . . .

. . . Mr. Lincoln’s emancipation message, from the leading English papers. Others have reached us. Some of Tory proclivities find fault with and endeavor to pick flaws in it, but most of them give it a more or less qualified approval. The Spectator, one of the ablest weeklies of London says:

It implies that the Union is henceforth to be free, that Slavery is to end, that no compromise involving extension will be so much as discussed. It is a mighty step in advance, one for which the American Government, surrounded as it is by almost insuperable difficulties, deserves and will, we believe, receive the utmost credit in England, a credit none the less cordial because the measure has been proposed, not as a war maneuver, not in a spirit of vengeance, but in the hour of victory, when statesmen ask moderation.

The Saturday Review, a vigorous but somewhat captious periodical, argues elaborately that the scheme proposed by the President is not impracticable, as some of its contemporaries affect to believe.

– Published in the Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 19, 1862

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