States and the countries of which it lately meditated the acquisition.  The United States will have the advantage of being unable even to think of Cuba, or Central America, or Mexico; they will be delivered for a time from these baleful temptations, and from the States in which they met the warmest support.  And, during this time, the extreme South will be forced, in some sort, to look at the problem of slavery under an aspect before unknown to it.

Later will come the shock, the postponed but inevitable conflict.  Blockaded at the South, blockaded at the North, blockaded on the African side, undermined and torn by its intestine divisions, the extreme South will have to face, at one time or another, the irresistible power of the United States.  Does any one imagine by chance that the latter will forever relinquish New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico?  The more they become elevated and strengthened, the more they will be led, say rather, forced, to absorb again the portions of their former domain which have attempted to exist without them.

From this time, the discussion relative to slavery will assume in the United States a simple and decided bearing.  The extreme South, in quitting them, will have given them every facility; it will have endowed them with political homogeneousness and liberal majorities.  By the mere effect of the departure of the senators and representatives of the extreme South, the party opposed to slavery will have acquired, at the outset, the numerical majority which it lacked in Congress; it will be in a position to ensure the passage of its bills, to form its administration, to constitute by degrees courts in every respect favorable to its principles.  Next, the border States who shall not have followed the fortunes of the extreme South will find themselves bound to those of the North, associated with its interests, open to its ideas; and it is a fixed fact that several will not be long in completing the work of liberty already begun among them, and thus becoming, with their rich and extensive Territories, of the number of those fortunate States in which the suppression of slavery gives the signal for the fruitful invasion of immigrants, for agricultural progress, for wealth, and for credit.  In this manner the “patriarchal institution” will disappear peaceably from the intermediate region, while it will be threatened by more terrible shocks in the tropical region.

This is a chance which is common to limited and to total secession, but which is still more unavoidable in the last.  Face to face with the miserable Confederacy of the extreme South, the United States can afford to be patient; face to face with the Confederacy comprising all the slave States, (or, which means the same, face to face with two distinct Confederacies, comprising, the one the cotton States, the other the border States, yet united against the North through an old instinct of complicity,) the attitude of the United States, as every one foresees, will inevitably