in its grasp the power to repress the lawlessness which has for years disgraced these portions of our Union. Vigorous and high-handed measures, like those of General Pope in Missouri and Governor Johnson in Tennessee, will soon rid the land of them, and there will be quiet and freedom from rapine such as those States have never yet known. Despotic rule must do for all this extent of country what it is now accomplishing in New Orleans and Memphis. So far we need have no apprehension, but so far we have not got beyond despotism. Enforced order, constrained obedience, lawlessness checked by a well-administered absolutism, this is not the theory on which our institutions are based, nor the foundation on which a lasting union can be built. Perhaps even this would be better than the filibustering, slaveholding empire which Davis and Yancey dreamed of,- better for the South, but how for us? Can we be at the same time a democratic republic here, and a despotism there? Can we maintain such a rule without losing our own integrity? Can we succeed where Rome failed, Rome, whose freedom was all the dearer because it rested upon the subjection of other nations?

The only solution of this difficult problem, we firmly believe, is that given by President Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation, issued since our last. In what we have said hitherto, we have, it will be observed, avoided touching upon emancipation as a war measure. This has been with a design, because we did not wish to complicate the two problems, and because we think it quite possible (at all events it was possible six months ago) to settle the military question without touching slavery. Whether the emancipation policy at any previous stage of the war would have helped the cause or thrown it back, no one can say with certainty; in our judgment, the action of the Administration has been in the main as judicious in the treatment of slavery, as weak and disastrous in the conduct of the war. We think the President did wisely to abstain at the first from making it an antislavery war, because it was upon its face and in its essence a defence of the assaulted nationality, not a crusade to put down a hated institution. There was no power in the Constitution to interfere with slavery; such interference could only come from "military VOL. LXXIII. - 5TH S. VOL. XI. NO. III.

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necessity"; and for this reason it was well to wait until ordinary and constitutional measures had been fairly tested, before resorting to extra-constitutional acts. The President was sole judge of the satisfactoriness of the test: we are not disposed to quarrel with him for testing it a little more thoroughly than some thought advisable; on the other hand, it is a petty and carping kind of criticism that gives "necessity" any narrower interpretation than "necessary" has received where the Constitution defines the powers of Congress. The war is now, we believe, at a point where emancipation will be found a useful auxiliary, if not an indispensable one. But it is not from this point of view we wish to look at it. This greatest act of the Administration, although resting upon the war power for its authority, will have its chief efficiency when the war is over, and, we may add, when slavery is already abolished.

It is not so much slavery that is the immediate cause of the war as the slave aristocracy. Slavery—if it were possible to conceive of it as a mere domestic institution, and not as at the same time a great social and political power — could have been very well satisfied with the Union as it was. The cottonplanter and turpentine-maker, as such, were no otherwise affected by the rise and fall of parties, than the wheat-grower of Illinois or the fisherman of Cape Cod. The triumph of the Republican party threatened, to be sure, the limitation of slavery; but for the present, at least, it was safe enough where it already existed; and if limitation means ultimate extinction, the mass of men are not alive enough to a distant peril to have been seriously alarmed by it. But the slave power is another thing. This feudal aristocracy of the South looks down upon the commercial and manufacturing aristocracy of the North with a haughtier contempt than this latter does upon the laboring classes. And with reason, for our aristocracy is still founded on industry, while that of the South is, like the European, based on the idea that labor is disgraceful. The New York merchant works hard; the Carolina planter scorns work. It is a splendid effrontery of the leaders in the rebellion which dilates upon Norman blood and chivalry. Few families in this country can afford to look back many generations, least of all to such a population as settled Virginia.

But, race apart, a lordly position has cultivated lordly feelings, and contempt for everything industrial and democratic. It was this slave aristocracy, rather than slavery itself, that plunged the nation into this conflict. Finding their power in the Union gone, "resolved to ruin or to rule the state," the "Barons" of the South determined, rather than see their sceptre in the hands of the despised Northerner, to destroy the nation they could no longer rule, and establish a new slave empire. This is shown by the strength of the secession feeling wherever there was an aristocracy, even although slavery had but a weak foothold, as in Baltimore, St. Louis, and the Valley of Virginia. North Carolina, on the other hand, which has much more interest in slavery, but whose pursuits are of a comparatively plebeian character, entered into the movement late and reluctantly.

The Emancipation Proclamation gives this aristocracy its death-blow. However broad may be the amnesties, and however the rigors of the Confiscation Act may be softened, thus preserving to these families all their property except slaves, this feudal aristocracy is doomed. It no longer forms a class, no longer has anything to distinguish it from the aristocracies of the North. Society in the two sections will begin to assimilate. There will be there, as here, aristocracy in the abstract, as a feeling, a social power; but no longer an aristocracy, a privileged class, a political power. In a generation or two the slave aristocracy will become extinct, or exist only as the old landed aristocracy of New York does, wealthy, and influential through individual character, and with an honorable position in society, but wholly without influence as a political class.

Thus, supposing the success of our arms, the chief obstacle to the re-establishment of the Union has been already removed by this great act. But there is a second obstacle, the sectional feeling developed by the late political struggles, and raised to a bitter intensity by the war. This must be made to disappear, and the same ardent love for the Union excited in the South which now exists in the North. This awakening of the dying sentiment of nationality, this knitting together American, Irish, and German, East and West, New England and Middle States, in the bands of a common brotherhood, is one

of the grand results the war has already accomplished. How shall the Southerner be led to share the same feeling? We will not speak here of the four millions of born Unionists in the South, nor of the thousands of Northern colonists who will find homes under its genial sky, nor of the burning love of the old flag which still lingers here and there. It is not one class or another the work depends on; the whole South must be regenerated, and made a truly civilized and republican land.

We would by no means underrate the education and culture of the Southern aristocracy, which has a just reputation for courtliness of manners, elegance of tastes, and brilliant political ability. But after all this, and leaving the black population entirely out of view, it is no exaggeration to say that there is no Protestant community in the world so ignorant and degraded, on the average, as that of the Southern States. In reading the accounts, last spring, of the Fort Donelson prisoners who were brought to Chicago, travelling on regular and well-conducted railroad trains, through a rich and thrifty country, into a city the like of which they had never dreamed of, for wealth, beauty, and enterprise, one could not but be reminded of the British captives led in triumph through the streets of Rome, or the Mexicans in Spain. These poor creatures, many of whom begged not to be sent back to their kindred, now that they had learned what comfort and civilization were, are the heralds of our missionary enterprise. Every man of this class who goes home from the North, and, like Andy Jones in "Among the Pines," tells his neighbors that the Free States "send the pore man's children to schule free," is preparing the ground for us to till. Here is to be our first work. No lack of employment hereafter for as many school-mistresses as New England can rear in her normal schools,- here where thousands, perhaps millions, of white children grow up like savages, with little care but for whiskey and tobacco. If only we could hope to find as willing learners among the clay-eaters and sand-hillers as our missionaries at Port Royal have found among their black pupils! But the false pride of race is the chief curse of slavery. It is not the domineering master, nor the cringing slave, that is most to be pitied, but the miserable wretch who has nothing to be proud of but his color, and who knows no way

It

to show his superiority to the slave but by avoiding work.* has not been for the interest of the Southern barons to encourage these classes to learn. It would not do to help their vassals to a knowledge of their own degradation. Free schools, they knew well, would lead them to a consciousness of manhood, and the oligarchy would no longer be secure.

But education is not all the South needs. Its aristocracy is built not merely on ignorance, but on false economy. It is easy enough to prove that slavery is bad economy, — it has been done a hundred times. But still it flourishes, and why? Partly, of course, because, like many other institutions, although it ruins the community, it enriches the individual. South Carolina grows poorer every day, and could be bought up by a thrifty Northern county; but the cotton-planter all the time makes his millions, and cares little for this ruin. But this is not all. Even if he could make more money by free institutions, he would not have them. His aristocracy is not based on wealth, but on class power and dignity, and these he would not exchange for all the treasures of Wall Street. The Southern industrial system is one that could only endure under an oligarchy, and this oligarchy is wise enough to know that its chief strength is in the poverty of its State, and that it would perish if put side by side with the industry of the North. This false political economy, on which slave aristocracy largely rests, is the free-trade doctrine, so sedulously maintained in the South, and in accordance with which its whole strength is expended on one department of industry, agriculture, and here again on one or two great staples.

We cannot undertake to discuss this complicated question of free trade; we only desire, as a special inquiry, to point out how, in our view, departure from the principle of protec

Mr. Olmsted says: "To work industriously and steadily, especially under directions from another man, is, in the Southern tongue, to work like a nigger'; and, from childhood, the one thing in their condition which has made life valuable to the mass of whites has been that the niggers are yet their inferiors. It is this habit of considering themselves of a privileged class, and of disdaining something which they think beneath them, that is deemed to be the chief blessing of slavery. It is termed 'high tone,' high spirit,' and is supposed to give great military advantages to those who possess it. It should give advantages of some sort, for its disadvantages are inexpressibly great."