4 North, which has been happily purged from this evil. Let us put the heel on this adder, and bruise all treason out of its head. As to the compromise which they propose, we know of no compromise with crime that is not criminal itself, and senseless in addition to its being wicked. New guarantees, indeed, may be asked for at the proper time, but it is now our turn to ask for them. They will be guarantees of peace, of the undisturbed integrity of our country, of law, and liberty, and security, asked for and insisted upon by the Union men, who now pledge themselves not to listen to the words, compromise, new guarantees for the South, armistice, or convention of delegates from the South and North— as long as this war shall last, until the North is victorious, and shall have established again the national authority over the length and breadth of the country as it was, over the United States dominion as it was before the breaking out of the crime, which is now ruining our fair land—ruining it in point of wealth, but, with God’s help, elevating it in character, strength, and dignity. We believe that the question of the issue, which must attend the present contest, according to the character it has now acquired, is reduced to these simple words—Either the North conquers the South, or the South conquers the North. Make up your minds for this alternative. Either the North conquers the South and re-establishes law, freedom, and the integrity of our country, or the South conquer^ the North by arms, or by treason at home, and covers our portion of the country with disgrace and slavery. Let us not shrink from facts or mince the truth, but rather plainly present to our minds the essential character of the struggle in which hundreds of thousands, that ought to be brothers, are now engaged. What has brought us to these grave straits ? Are we two different races, as the new ethnologists of the South, with profound knowledge of history and of their own skins, names, and language, proclaim ? Have they produced the names which Europe mentions when American literature is spoken of? Have they produced our Crawfords? Have they advanced science ? Have they the great schools of the age ? Do they speak the choice idiom of the cultivated man ? Have the thinkers and inventors of the age their homes in that region ? Is their standard of comfort exalted above that of ours ? What has this wondrous race produced ? what new idea has it added to the great stock of civilization ? It has produced cotton, and added the idea that slavery is divine. Does this establish a superior race ? The French, ourselves, the English, the Germans, the Italians, none of whom are destitute of national self-gratulation, have ever made a preposterous claim of constituting a different race. Even the new idea of a Latin Race—a Bonaparte anachronism—is founded upon an error less revolting to common sense and common knowledge. There is no fact or movement of greater significance in all history of the human race, than the settlement of this great continent by European people at a period when, in their portion of the globe, great nations had been formed, and the national polity had finally become the normal type of government; and it is a fact equally pregnant with momentous results, that the northern portion of this hemisphere came to be colonized chiefly
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=