_March 5._--The _good_ press reduces the activity of the Thirty Seventh Congress to its own rather pigmy-like proportions.
Congress was powerless to purify the corrosive air prevailing in Washington, above all in the various official strata. Congress ardently wished to purify, but the third side of the Congressional triangle, the executive and administrative power, preferred to nurse the foul elements. Such doubtful, and some worse than doubtful officials, undoubtedly will become more bold, expecting the near-at-hand advent of the Copperhead Democratic Millennium.
_March 6._--The Copperhead members of both the Houses have been very prolific and _scientific_ about the inferiority of race. Pretty specimens of superiority are they, with their sham, superficial, at hap-hazard gathered, unvaluable small information, with their inveterate prejudices, with their opaque, heavy, unlofty minds! Give to any Africo-American equal chances with these props of darkness, and he very speedily will assert over them an unquestionable superiority. Are not the humble, suffering, orderly contrabands infinitely superior to the rowdy, unruly, ignorant, savage and bloody whites?
Southern papers are filled with accounts of the savage persecutions to which the Union men are exposed in the rebel region. It is the result of what Mr. Seward likes to call his forbearing policy and of the McClellan and Halleck warfare of 1861-62.
_March 7._--For the first time in the world's history, for the first time in the history of nations governed and administered by positive, well established, well organised, well defined laws--powers, such as those conferred by Congress on Mr. Lincoln, have been so conferred. Never have such powers been in advance, coolly, legally deliberated, and in advance granted, to any sovereign, as are forced upon Mr. Lincoln by Congress, and forced upon him with the assent of a considerable majority of the people.
Never has a nation or an honest political body whatever, shown to any mortal a confidence similar to that shown to Mr. Lincoln. Never in antiquity, in the days of Athens' and Rome's purest patriotism and civic virtue, has the people invested its best men with a trust so boundless as did the last Congress give to Mr. Lincoln.