President Lincoln that these States should adopt some plan of gradual emancipation, and this desire was manifested by him repeatedly during the year 1862 and subsequently. On the sixth of March, 1862, he sent a message to Congress, recommending the passage of a joint resolution pledging the coöperation of the United States in the way of pecuniary aid to any State which should adopt a system of gradual and compensated emancipation. On the twelfth of July he solicited and held an interview with the members of Congress from the Border slave States, in which he urged upon them the importance of the measure, and recommended it in his message of December third, 1862. These recommendations have taken and are still taking effect.

The increasing proportions of the rebellion requiring a larger force in the field, Mr. Lincoln, on the first of July, 1862, in accordance with the advice of the Governors of the loyal States, called for three hundred thousand more volunteers for three years or the war; and on the third of August called for a draft of three hundred thousand more for nine months. In most of the States this second quota was raised by volunteering, and the draft was resorted to for but a few thousands. The time of service of these troops, however, proved too short, and the arrangements for drafting were defective and unequal. Accordingly, on the twenty-eighth of February, 1863, Congress passed a carefully considered conscription law, and in the spring of that year the President gave notice of a draft for three hundred thousand men to serve for three years. There was considerable opposition to the draft, the provisions of which were not well understood at first, and, in some instances, there were considerable riots, but the President wisely insisted on its enforcement, and, in a letter to Governor Seymour, of New-York, assigned satisfactory reasons for so doing. The draft not bringing in a sufficiency of recruits, he called, on the twentieth of October, 1863, for three hundred thousand more volunteers.

In a letter, bearing date June thirteenth, 1863, addressed to a committee of Albany Democrats, who had protested against the arrest of Mr. Vallandigham and demanded his release, President Lincoln clearly and satisfactorily defended the principle of military arrests in time of civil war; and in another, addressed to the Springfield, Illinois, and Syracuse, New-York, Union Conventions, he justified, with singular ability, the employment of the negro to aid in putting down the rebellion.

From the

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WINFIELD SCOTT.

INFIELD SCOTT was born near Petersburgh, Virginia, June thirteenth,

1786; was the youngest son of William Scott, Esq., and was left an orphan at an early age. He was educated at the high-school at Richmond, whence he went to William and Mary College, and attended law lectures. He was admitted to the bar of Virginia in 1806. The next year he went to South-Carolina with the intention to take up his residence there; but before he had acquired the right to practise in that State, Congress, in view of imminent hostilities with England, passed a bill to enlarge the army, and young Scott obtained a commission as Captain of light artillery.

General Wilkinson was then stationed in Louisiana, and Captain Scott was ordered to join the army at that point in 1809. In the next year Wilkinson was superseded, and the young Captain then expressed what was a very general opinion, namely, that his late commander was implicated in Burr's conspiracy. For this he was tried by court-martial, and sentenced to one year's suspension from rank and pay. Probably this suspension was a fortunate event; for the whole of that year was employed in the diligent study of works on military art.

War was declared against. Great Britain June eighteenth, 1812; and in July of the same year Captain Scott was made a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Second artillery, and was stationed at Black Rock with two companies of his regiment. With this force he covered Van Rensselaer's passage of the Niagara River on the expedition against Queenstown, October thirteenth. Later in the day, when Van Rensselaer was disabled, the command fell upon Scott, who, after a gallant fight, deserted by the New-York militia, and outnumbered very greatly by British reënforcements, surrendered his whole command, two hundred and ninety-three in all, prisoners of war.

While a prisoner, he saw the British officers select from the American soldiers taken with him such as appeared to be Irishmen; and these men, they declared, were to be sent to England as British subjects, there to be punished for treason. Scott then, in the presence of the British officers, assured the soldiers that the United States Government would not quietly see them suffer, and would certainly retaliate upon British prisoners the treatment they should receive. Exchanged in January, 1813, he immediately made a

report of this matter to the Secretary of War. Laid before Congress, this report originated the act by which the President of the United States was invested with "the power of retaliation;" and from prisoners subsequently taken by himself, Scott chose a number equal to the number sent to England to abide their fate. For this purpose he was careful to choose only Englishmen.

Immediately after the capture of York, Upper Canada, Scott rejoined the army on the frontier as Adjutant to General Dearborn, with the rank of Colonel. He took part in the expedition against Fort George, landed his men in good order, and scaled a steep height in the presence of the enemy, who was finally driven from his position at the point of the bayonet. Fort George was then no longer tenable, and the British abandoned it, having placed slow matches to all the magazines. Only one of them exploded, and from a piece of timber thrown by it, Colonel Scott received a severe wound in the left shoulder. Disaster and disgrace marked the close of this campaign, and for another it was necessary to form a new army.

In March, 1814, Colonel Scott was made a Brigadier-General, and immediately thereafter established a camp of instruction at Buffalo, where his own and Ripley's brigades, with a battalion of artillery, and some regiments of volunteers, were drilled into thorough and accurate discipline.

Brigadier-General Scott crossed the Niagara River with his brigade, July third, 1814; on the fourth skirmished for sixteen miles with a detachment under the Marquis of Tweedale, and that night encamped upon Street's Creek, two miles from the British camp at Chippewa. Between the two camps lay the plain upon which the battle was fought next day. East of this plain was the Niagara River, west was a heavy wood, and on the northern side from the wood to the Niagara ran the Chippewa River, while Street's Creek ran in a similar direction on the southern side. Behind the Chippewa was the British army under General Riall, well provided with artillery.

About noon of the fifth, a bright, hot summer's day, there occurred a skirmish of light troops in the wood. Some Indians and British militia were there engaged by General Porter, with volunteers, militia, and friendly Indians, and driven back until they came upon the main body of the British army, which was seen to be in motion, when Porter's irregulars broke and fled. Major-General Brown, in the wood with Porter, thus first learned of the British advance; and Brigadier-General Scott, also ignorant of it, was leading his brigade into the plain to drill. This was at four P.M. Brown hurried to the rear to bring up Ripley's brigade, and Scott's force passed the bridge over Street's Creek in perfect order under the British fire. The action soon became general. Major Jessup, with a battalion in the wood, for some time checked the enemy's right wing, whereupon the enemy left one battalion with