45 South shall be unable henceforth to dream of a new rebellion, or, should the opportunity offer, to serve as the point of support of a foreign attack. If you desire this, and you have proved better than any one that you desire it, put an end to the free negro question ; it is inseparable from the slave question, and it is not less important. XIII. Your parties in some sort disappeared in the greatness of your struggle, in the energy of your impulse. They will now reappear, and this is quite natural ; there is no reason to be grieved or surprised on this account. Only, it is important that these parties should no longer be formed on the ground on which the question of slavery has been settled. Nothing appeases men so much as the change of base of political strife. If the old ground remains standing—if the negro question is not definitively settled before the admission of the Southern representatives—a new democratic party, exactly like the old one, composed of the same elements, supported by the same alliances, professing the same principles, and urging the same policy, will provoke, sooner or later, the renewal of the same conflict. It is impossible not to remark the promptness with which the South rushes into the Union. I rejoice at it, for my part, and I believe that this movement is dictated in good part by motives, the sincerity of which we should do wrong to suspect. Nevertheless, it is quite permissible to suppose that other reasons, less worthy of respect, have determined the conduct adopted by the Southern statesmen. Have they not said to themselves that by hastening they would find the negro question unfinished, that they would succeed in preventing its completion, and that in this manner they would speedily take their revenge on the floor of Congress for their military defeats ? I am not suspicious, I willingly believe in goodness, and experience has taught me that one is less often mistaken in be
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