66 after this, there will be the reviving prosperity of the South and the increasing prosperity of the North. Or rather, there will then no longer be a North and South, for there will no longer be a negro question under any form ; all that remained unsolved will have been decided. Your fellow-countrymen have sometimes told me that I had been a prophet, so far as you were concerned. This was not difficult; it was only requisite to have faith in principles. Well! by virtue of the same faith I predict to you that if you remain faithful to your cause, and if you seize to-day the occasion to finish what you have begun, you will insure to your country the most enviable of all greatness. Slavery will fall before it in all other countries ; in Spain, as in Brazil; before it all difficulties, within and without, will find their- own solution ; more united than ever, more influential than ever, it will also be freer than ever ; it will oppose its glorious and peaceful prosperity to whomsoever shall still doubt its “ uprising.” Please accept, Mr. President, the assurances of my respect. Agenor de Gasparin. Valleyres, November 6, 1865. Postscript, November 10. Your journals, Mr. President, have just brought us the report of your interview with Mr. Stearns of Massachusetts. I confess that if this document had reached my hands before I took up my pen, I should have hesitated to address you. The fears to which some of your previous declarations had given rise seem confirmed by those made by you to Mr. Stearns. You declare yourself at once opposed to the immediate termination of the negro question and in favor of abandoning this question to the hands of the South. You say, on this point, “ We should give them [the Southern states] time to become accustomed to it [the question of negro suffrage], for we cannot hope that so grave a question will be resolved in a moment.”
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=