A death pang runs through one's body to see how rapidly the dial marks the disappearing hours, and how unrelentingly approaches March 4th, and the death-knell of this present patriotic, devoted Congress. For this terrible storm and clash of events, the people, perhaps, feel not the immensity of the loss. Paralyzed as Congress has been and now is, by the infernal machinations of Seward, Chase, and others, and by Mr. Lincoln's stubborn helplessness, the patriots in both Houses nevertheless, succeeded in redeeming the pledge which the name of America gives to the expansive progress of humanity. The patriots of both Houses, as the exponents of the noble and loftiest aspirations of the American people, whipped in--and this literally, not figuratively--whipped Mr. Lincoln into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The laws promulgated by this dying Congress initiated the Emancipation--generated the Proclamation of the 22d September, and of January 1st. History will not allow one to wear borrowed plumage.
--Congress ought not to have so easily abdicated its well established rights of more absolute and direct control of the deeds of the Administration and of its clerks, _alias_ Secretaries of Departments. It is to be eternally regretted that Congress has shown such unnecessary leniency; but in justice it must be said that the patriotic and high-minded members of Congress wished to avoid the degrading necessity of showing the nation the prurient administrative sores. Advised, directed, tutored and pushed by Seward, Blair and Chase, Mr. Lincoln is--innocently--as grasping for power, as are any of those despots not over respectfully recorded by history.
With all this, the presence of Congress keeps in awe the reckless and unscrupulous Administration, as, according to the pious belief of medieval times, holy water awed the devil. But Congress once out of the way, without having succeeded in rescuing Mr. Lincoln from the hands of those mean, ignorant, egotistic bunglers, all the time squinting towards the succession to the White House, and unable to surround the President with men and patriots, then all the plagues of Egypt may easily overrun this fated country. Such conjurors of evil as the Sewards, Hallecks, and others, will have no dread of any holy water before them, and they will be sure that the great party of the "Copperheads" in the future Congress will applaud them for all the mischief done, and lift them sky high, if they succeed in treading down in the gutter, or in any way palsying emancipation, tarnishing the people's noble creed, and endangering the country's holiest cause.