than the march of armies, and it promulgates its laws amidst the thunders and lightnings of battle. Statesmanship and a crisis, have done in the South, what Necessity and Principle, have done in the North: There were irresolute men in the South. Statesmen took an advanced position, knowing that the logic of the situation, must drive the herd to follow. For it is nonsense and imbecility to hold property in man, without holding also the right and the power to maintain it. There were irresolute men in the North, as everywhere else, but the logic of the South soon became their necessity, for it demanded that the North itself should become a slave. And the logic of the Situation, which dominated both, was this 66 "If Slavery be allowed, the Declaration and "the free heritage of the People must be disallowed. "If Property in man be a Principle, then it is Property everywhere, by water as well as by "land,-in the Territories, as well as in the States. "What's right is right, and Felony can't be Property, or Property felony." 66 The North, therefore, had to accept the external Slave trade, as well as Slavery, to defy all nations on the "right of search",-to repress abolitionism, to swallow Dred Scott cases, to be the servant, soldier, and slave, the drudge and the tool, of the South, or gradually to unite against its aggressions, and ultimately to fight for the right, one and indivisible. This was the question. "Could the Nation be "committed to an Anti-Slavery War?" "The Puritans from Abraham's bosom" worked at it, and necessity and the South, worked also. Once solved, the rest was easy. The Situation once probed, the issue once understood and joined, there could be but one solution. The ultimate result, was from the first, to the Statesman or the believer, but a stark, staring, blank, palpable, insurmountable, truism,—but it has taken three years already, and may take more, to work it down and out to the level of all the fools and infidels in the North. That done, all is done, and now, two years after the South resorted to the most ruthless conscription that ever swept over a desolated country, taking striplings and patriarchs alike, now Lincoln has behind him, not a congerie of States, but a nation growing day by day, in Unity, determination, and power. Whether, then, we consider the material forces, the great Principles at issue, or the spiritual forces that are arising to inspire and lead the Battle, we can come to no other conclusion than that the South must submit, or that the parties must contend to the last. If one be more than three, if the national instinct of self preservation be replaced by an instinct of suicide, if a high heroic spirit of self sacrifice leads to national perdition, then the North will fail. If not, not. It is the South that denies and destroys itself. It began by asserting the right of Secession. It is evident that without nationality, secession must kill secession. It began by asserting the expediency and the principle of slave labour. It ends E by vainly wishing to turn the labourers into Soldiers to fight for their freedom. It began by denouncing all interference with the natural and Christian institution of Slavery. It ends by trying to persuade the Slaveholder to allow his nigger to fight for the right of destroying his "property." It has for three ages degraded the whole Southern White population by slavery. It now would elevate the whole Black population at one stroke to the dignity of preserving their tyrants by arms. It started to maintain Slavery, and in order not to be beaten, it must destroy that for which it exists. Thus Suicide, Individual, Political, and Moral, closes the scene over the South. Squatter Sovereignty, and free labour and opinion, are the likeliest weapons to decide the contest, but however that may be, it is a war of principle, a war of essential and irrepressible antagonism. The beginning of the war was abolition. The sides are Freedom or Slavery, the end cannot be compromise. It will be a Government by and for the all, or of the all, by and for the few. That is the logic of the Situation,—and it is absolute. GENERAL QUESTIONS INVOLVED IN THE AMERICAN QUESTION. DEMOCRACY AND CHRISTIANITY. LESSONS OF THE FOUR GREAT REVOLUTIONS. REPUBLICANISM, FEDERATION, AND AMERICAN FUTURE ENGLISH ALLIANCES. THE ANGLO-AMERICAN RACE, "The organisation and establishment of Democracy in Christendom is the great political problem of the time.”—De Tocqueville. "That Providence has given to every human being a degree of reason necessary to direct himself in the affairs which interest him exclusively, is the grand maxim upon which civil and political Society rests in the United States."-De Tocqueville. "And thus of necessity, by reason of the existence of some few really free states, will the empire of civilisation, freedom, and with it universal peace, gradually embrace the whole world."-Fichte. "In a word, free states, I think, must ever look with suspicion on an absolute monarchy."-Demosthenes. "The day will come when a single fibre left of this Institution will produce an hereditary aristocracy, which will change the form of our Government from the best to the worst in the world." Thos. Jefferson. "Between North and South, there is at this moment raging a controversy, which goes as deep as any controversy can, into the elementary principles of human nature, and the sympathies and antipathies which, in so many men, supply the place of reason and reflection. The North is for freedom; the South is for slavery. The North is for freedom of discussion; the South represses freedom of discussion with the tar brush and the pine faggot." "Times," January, 1861. The issue (of the war) is to them (the South) one of life and death, and whoever raises it hereafter, if it be not decided now, must expect to meet the deadly animosity which is now displayed towards the North. "The success of the South,-if it can succeed,-must lead to complications and results in other parts of the world, for which neither they nor Europe are prepared. Of one thing there can be no doubt, a Slave State cannot long exist without a SLAVE TRADE. The poor whites, who have now to fight, will demand their share of the spoil. The land is abundant, and all that is wanted to give them fortunes is a supply of slaves. They will have that in spite of their masters, unless a stronger power than the Slave States prevents the accomplishment of their wishes."-W. H. Russell. * Monarchy had no motive to emigrate. * * The Feudal Aristocracy could not gain new life among the equal hardships of the wilderness. * * * * Priestcraft did not emigrate.” The settlement of New England was the result of implacable differences between Protestant Dissenters and the Established * Anglican Church. * * Nothing but the wide ocean, and the savage deserts of America could hide and shelter them from the fury of the Bishops. * * * An entire separation was made between State and Church."-Bancroft. "The relations of the rising colonies, the representatives of Democratic Freedom, are chiefly with France and England, *** with the Parliament of England which was the representative of aristocratic liberties, and had ratified Royalty, Primogeniture, corporate charters, the Peerage, Tithes, Prelates, prescriptive Franchises, and every established immunity and privilege.”—– Bancroft. "Their Independence would agitate the globe, would assert the freedom of the Occans as commercial highways, vindicate power in the commonwealth for the united judgment of its People, and assure to them the right of a self-directing vitality."-Bancroft. England became not so much the possessor of the valley of the West, as the transient trustee, commissioned to transfer it from the France of the middle ages to the free People who were working for Humanity a new existence in America.”—Bancroft. "If Europe leaves America to Republicanism, well. If she interferes, we interfere, and the right hand of our resistance is clasped in brotherhood with the radicals of Europe, to upset every throne on the Continent."- Wendell Phillips. |