We have received the Baltimore American, of the 3d inst. The following is a summary of the news which it contains:
Letter from Lincoln — how and when peace is to be obtained — the Enlistment of negro troops.
The following letter from Lincoln to the Springfield (Iii.) mass meeting is published. Copies of it were to be furnished the other Abolition meetings held in different parts of the United States on the same day. If anything coming from him may be dignified the term "official, " expressive of his views, then this paper may be taken in that sense:
--Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the Capitol of Illinois on the 3d day of September, has been received. It would be very agreeable to me to thus meet my old friends at my own home, but I cannot just now be absent from this city so long as a visit there would require.
The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union, and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those other noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life. They are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say: You desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we obtain it? There are but three conceivable ways. First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, we are not agreed.
A second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. If you are, you should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor yet for dissolution, there only remains some imaginary compromises. I do not believe that any compromises embracing the maintenance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn leads to directly the opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military — its army. That army dominates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army is simply nothing, for the present, because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side of the compromise, if one were made with them.
To illustrate: Suppose a refugee from the South and the peace men of the North get together and frame and proclaim a compromise embracing the restoration of the Union, in what way can that compromise be used to keep Gen. Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Gen. Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania, and I think can ultimately drive it out of existence, but no paper compromise to which the controllers of Gen. Lee's army are not agreed can at all affect that army. In an effort at such compromise we would waste time which the enemy would improve to our disadvantage, and that would be all.
A compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those who control the army or with the people first liberated from the domination of that army by the success of our army. Now, allow me to assure you that no word or intimation from the rebel army, or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise has ever come to my knowledge or belief. All charges or intimations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless, and I promise you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come it shall not be rejected and kept secret from you.
I freely acknowledge myself to be the servant of the people according to the bond of service — the United States Constitution--and that as such I am responsible to them. But, to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while you, I suppose, do not. Yet, I have neither adopted nor proposed any measure which is not consistent with even your views, provided you are for the Union. I suggested compensated emancipation, to which you replied that you wished not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such a way as to save you from greater taxation, to save the Union exclusively by other means. You dislike the emancipation proclamation, and, perhaps, you want to have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I think differently. I think that the Constitution invests its Commander-in- Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said — if so much — is that slaves are property. Is there, has there ever been, any question that by the law of war the property both of enemies and friends may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever taken it helps us or hurts the enemy? Armies, the world over, destroy the enemy's property when they cannot use it, and even destroy their own to keep it from the enemy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few things recorded as barbarous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre of vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female.
But the proclamation as a law is valid or is not valid. If it is not valid it needs no retraction. If it is valid it cannot be retracted any more than the dead can be brought to life. Some of you profess to think that its retraction would operate favorably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than before the issue? There was more than a year and a half for trial to suppress the rebellion before the proclamation was issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under explicit notice it was coming unless averted by those in revolt returning to their allegiance.
The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important victories, believe that the emancipation policy and the aid of the colored troops constitutes the heaviest blows yet dealt to the rebellion; and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of the black soldiers.
Among the commanders holding these views are some who have never had any affinity with what is called Abolitionism, or with Republican party polities, but who hold them purely as military opinions. I submit their opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections often urged that emancipation and the arming of the blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted as such in good faith.
You say that you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem to be willing to fight for you; but no matter, fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to declare that you will not fight to free negroes.
I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negro should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakens the enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union.
Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom; and the promise being made must be kept.
The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea; thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, the Empire, Keystone, and New Jersey showing their way right and left. The Sunny South, too, in more colors than our, also lent a hand on the spot. Their part of history was jotted down in black and white. The poet was a great national one, and let none be banned who bore an honest part in it; while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud.
Even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely and better done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note.
Nor must Uncle Sam's noble fleet be forgotten. At all the water's margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayon, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks.
Thanks to all, for the great Republic, for the principles by which it lives and keeps alive for man's vast future! Thanks to all!
Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such an appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost; and then there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongues, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear that there will be some white men unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have to hinder it.--Still, let us not be over sangume of a speedy and final triumph. Let us be quite sober, let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.
Inauguration of the New Governor of Kentucky--his Message.
Gov. Bramlette, elected Governor of Kentucky on the Union ticket, was inaugurated, at Frankfort, on the 1st inst.:In his inaugural he contends that the revolted States did not change their status by rebellion. All that is necessary is for them to return to their position as States; the rebellion did not remit them to a territorial condition.
He also says: ‘"We have now, and will have, when the rebellion closes, the identical Constitution which the extremists seek to destroy — the one by innovation and the other by force-- It is not a restored Union--not a re-constructed Union--that Kentucky desires, but a preserved Union or a restored peace upon a constitutional basis.’
The Governor strongly objects to the arming of negro regiments, and asks--"What is to be done with such soldiers at the close of the war?" He points to the result of the recent election as a proof that Kentucky will not fraternize with the rebellion, either openly or covertly, and declares that "the State has ever been, is now, and always will remain, loyal to the Government of our fathers,"
From the Rappahannock.
A dispatch from Washington; dated the 1st inst., has the following about expected movements by Gen. Lee on the Rappahannock:A report reached Washington to-day that a large number of the rebel army yesterday crossed the Rappahannock at Port Conway, for the purpose, it is supposed, of flanking Meade's forces.
Although such a movement is not improbable, the report needs confirmation.
Later.--The reported movement of Lee across the Rappahannock at Port Conway yesterday is not generally credited, but important movements in that quarter may be expected soon, now that the season for active military operations has opened.
Rumors are rife of various movements of rebel troops in our front, which a day or two will determine positively.
Reported defeat of Gen. Sterline Price.
A dispatch from St. Louis, dated the 2d inst., says:‘ Gen. Steele telegraphs Gen. Schofield from Duvall's Bluff, Arkansas, dated Aug. 26th, that our advance, under Gen. Davidson, has driven Marmaduke's cavalry, about 3,000 strong, out of Brownville, capturing Col. Burbridge and some privates.
’ At the latest accounts Gen. Glover's brigade was pushing the enemy towards Bayon Metaire.
A dispatch from Pilot Knob says that deserters from Burbridge's command report Price's rebel forces as driven across the Arkansas river on the 29th; that the rebels were in full retreat, and that Gens. Steele and Davidson were in hot pursuit. Marmaduke's command was completely routed and scattered.
Little Rock is now within the grasp of the Federal army.
[A telegraphic report, via Senatobia, of a victory by Gen. Price, and the Yankee accounts of a previous date admitted the defeat of Gen. Blount.--Eds.]
Miscellaneous.
About sixty heads of families have been ordered by Gen. Ewing to leave Kansas City, Mo., on account of secession sympathies.--Their houses will be taken for the families of Union refugees. A number of orders for the removal of leading sympathizers at Westport, Independence, are also being made out.The election in Vermont on the 1st for State officers and three members of Congress resulted in the choice of Smith, Abolitionist, Governor, by a large majority. The Legislature is almost entirely Abolition. Three Abolitionists were elected to Congress.
In Wilmington, Del., on the 1st, Gilpin, Abolitionist, was re-elected Mayor. All the Democratic candidates for city offices were defeated.
A Confederate cruiser boarded a British brig within twenty miles of New York on the 30th ult.
The bidding in Washington, on the 1st for flour supplies for the Government ranged from $6.10 to $7.05 for No. 2, and from $6 to $6.30 for No. 3. There were only two bids for furnishing No. 1 at from $6.93 to $7.25. Two hundred thousand barrels were offered. It was decided to take all the flour offered at $6.25 and under, amounting to about 38,000 barrels.
