4 astray for a time, in the end they will not continue to act against their own. interest. Suffering and hardships make the minds of men wonderfully acute to avert them. Not one white man in ten in the South owns a slave. Those who are not slaveowners, must see that slave labor operates in competition against their labor, and that large slave-holders hire their negroes out at a cheaper rate than those negroes would hire themselves for were they free. Questions come up before their minds, even when, as conscripts, they are gathered around their camp-fires, which are fraught with danger to the politicians that have ensnared them. They ask themselves what they are called upon to fight for, and what interest they have in the issues that have been made for them. They inquire whether they want a stronger form of government than that adopted by their forefathers, who thought a republic preferable to a monarchy. Suggestions will arise like the following: Have we not a military despotism upon us ? Who have been, and are, save the politicians, and perhaps, some of the slaveholders, benefitted by it ? Are we in favor of perilling our lives, after leaving our families unprovided for, to maintain slave labor in the hands of capitalists (to many of whom it operates as an exemption), to be used in competition with our own ? Would we not get higher wages, even if the negroes were made free and hired in the country ? Are we in favor of an export duty on cotton in addition to a tariff, and a direct taxation more burdensome than ever known on this continent before ? How much greater is our funded debt than that of the United States ? Will not our leaders in any event repudiate it, and even the paper with which we are paid, before long ? Is cotton king ? Has it opened so much as one of our ports ? Does burning it damage us or the people of the North the most? Has the attempt at a government made by Jeff. Davis & Co. accomplished anything thus far that can be regarded as really advantageous either to it or to us, the people ? Has it got possession of either the states or the territories it covets ? Is it not a decided failure, and is it not rapidly tending from bad to worse ? If this is not so, why are the old rats, like Slidell, deserting the sinking ship, and why have he and so many of our contractors and leading politicians put their money on the
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