100 THE AIIMY OE THE POTOMAC. The new Union would be military and aggressive, a condition of things favorable to some Powers, but unfavorable to others: the first was liberal and pacific; the second would have no other spirit of progress, no other system of assimilation than the spirit of war and the system of conquest. Such, we think-, would be the results of a Southern triumph. If on the other hand the conflict is to be prolonged, if the solution of this great debate is still to be delayed, then we must look for mischief of another sort. Urged by the passions and the pressure of the contest, the federal government may perhaps decree the immediate abolition of slavery, and may even be driven to the terrible resort of arming the slaves against their masters; but this measure, independently of its barbarity and violence, would be of no use to those who should adopt it. It would bring on in the North itself formidable dissensions more likely to help than to harm the cause of the Secessionists. Need I add, that in the future seen under the aspect I have sketched, there is nothing which can meet the wishes of the friends of American liberty and greatness? When the blockade of the Southern coast had become complete, when the whole course of the Mississippi had fallen into the power of the federal navy, those friends longed for the triumph of the kriny of the Potomac before Richmond, because it would have facilitated a complete reconciliation on the basis of the old Union. This triumph was not achieved ; we have seen why ; and reconciliation such as then was desirable and possible, seems very different to-day. Yet I am not one of those who will thence infer that the federal cause is lost. Compared to those of the South, the resources of the North are far from being exhausted ; and who knows all that in a day of peril can be done by the energy of a lice people, battling for the tight and for humanity ?
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