conditions. Such a secession would have been death, a shameful death.

And slavery itself, who imagines, then, that it can be immortal? It is
in vain to extend it; it will perish amidst its conquests and through
its conquests: one can predict this without being a prophet. But,
between the suppression of slavery such as we hope will some time take
place, and that which we should have been forced to fear, in case the
South had carried it still further, is the distance which separates a
hard crisis from a terrible catastrophe. The South knows not what
nameless misfortunes it has perhaps just escaped. If it had been so
unfortunate as to conquer, if it had been so unfortunate as to carry out
its plans, to create slave States, to recruit with negroes from Africa,
it would have certainly paved the way, with its own hands, for one of
those bloody disasters before which the imagination recoils: it would
have shut itself out from all chance of salvation.

It is not possible, in truth, to put an end to certain crimes, and
wholly avoid their chastisement; there will always be some suffering in
delivering the American Confederation from slavery, and it depends
to-day again upon the South to aggravate, in a fearful measure, the pain
of the transition. However, what would not have been possible with the
election of Mr. Douglas or Mr. Breckenridge, has become possible now
with the election of Mr. Lincoln; we are at liberty to hope henceforth
for the rising of a great people.




CHAPTER III.