Gold Hill Daily News

Coadjutor of a True Peace.

There are rumors flying about, but traceable, so far as we can learn, to no authentic or responsible source, that the President is about to make another offer of peace to the rebels: and some of Mr. Lincoln's friends and supporters feel uneasy lest, by his great and proper desire for peace, he may be led to offer such terms as would enable the authors of the rebellion to resume their old power in the Union, and to re-establish the influence and predominance which were so injurious to our healthy national progress.

"Don't let loose the tiger," cry these friends, "or at least if you do, be sure you draw his teeth and file down his claws."

We must acknowledge that we do not share in these alarms. Mr. Lincoln is liable to errors, like all other men; but we do not believe he is likely to err in this vital matter. He has proved himself a faithful friend of freedom; his policy, though cautious, and therefore slower than some more ardent spirits liked, has been steadily favorable to universal liberty and to the cause of free labor; no one who has read his messages and his occasional speeches can doubt that he comprehends thoroughly the great questions and interests which underlie the struggle in which we are engaged. He knows very well that this is a struggle between the friends of free labor and the owners of slave labor; he knows that the institution of slavery, as it necessarily refuses freedom of speech and of the press, and as it oppresses and keeps in poverty and ignorance the free laborer, is not consistent with the free institutions of the country, because it rejects the very conditions upon which alone popular liberty can be maintained.

Knowing and comprehending all this, Mr. Lincoln is not likely to make the mistake of offering terms to the bitter and defiant enemies of the Union—the slave-holders—by which they could save the system which gives them power and control in the Southern States. Mr. Lincoln is himself a Southern man, and the son of one of those numerous families of free workingmen who have emigrated to the free States in order to "give their children a better chance than they had," as we have heard them express it. His coadjutor, Andrew Johnson, is another of the same class, who by his own energies raised himself to competence and station in the freest part of the slave States, the mountain region of Tennessee, where slavery has but a slender hold. These two men cannot forget the traditional opposition of interests between the millions of free workingmen and the three hundred thousand slave-holders.

Nor do we expect Mr. Lincoln to be uninfluenced by the result of the recent election. In that election, the principal acts of his administration came before the people, and they approved them by so great a majority that his opponent carried but three of the smallest States. Not only that, but the people chose a Congress which will, by a constitutional majority, clinch the Emancipation Proclamation of the President, by adopting an amendment totally abolishing slavery within the Union. In the light of this decision of the people, there is, we conceive, no reason to believe that a President who has so scrupulously aimed to do the people's will will now set himself up against it, at the moment when the people have approved of his greatest acts and his own life-long convictions. To suppose such a thing, is to believe him weak and vascillating, while his administration has shown him to be possessed of a singular steadiness of purpose.

It is the most ardent desire of Mr. Lincoln's heart to see all workmen free; and it is, we are convinced, his most earnest hope and ambition to so wield the great power entrusted to him, to so influence the councils of the nation, and so administer its affairs, that, as quickly as possible, free speech, a free press, and free labor, may be secure in every State of the Union. He is aware that without free discussion there can be no free government; that without free labor there can be no lasting prosperity; that because free speech was denied, and because free labor was discouraged, therefore, and therefore alone, the slaveholders were able to raise a rebellion in the South, first deceiving and misleading the people, and then subjugating them, and making themselves masters of the slave States. He has long since discovered that the great conspiracy against the Union could not have ripened in the light of free discussion; and as he abhors war, he will do all in his power to abolish the conditions under which alone revolt becomes possible, or may be repeated.

If, then, it should be true that Mr. Lincoln is about to make another offer to those in rebellion, we find reason to believe that his offer will be to the working people of the South; that he will warn them of the error they make in adhering to the cause of the slaveholders; and urge them to return to their duty, assuring them of protection against the rebel chiefs, and of safety under the constitution and laws. To do this at the moment when it seems probable the military power of the rebellion is about to be broken, appears to us highly judicious; and it is certain that both Mr. Lincoln and the people of the loyal States have only the best will and the kindest feelings toward the unfortunate and down-trodden people of the Southern States.