“Sir,” said the Doctor, “I should think it a region of the earth to be avoided, so far as convenient.”

“But how,” persisted the patriot, “if you listened to what its natives say of it?”

“Then, Sir,” roared Old Obstinacy, “I should avoid it altogether.”

Take the seceded States upon their own showing, and it is absurd to suppose that they can ever resume their former standing in the nation.  Are there any stronger oaths than their generals have broken, any closer ties to honesty than their financiers have spurned, any deeds more damning than their legislatures have voted thanks for?  No one supposes that the individual traitors can be restored to confidence, that Twiggs can re-dye his reputation, or any deep-sea-soundings fish up Maury’s drowned honor.  But the influence of the States is gone with that of their representatives.  They may worship the graven image of President Lincoln in Mobile; they may do homage to the ample stuffed regimentals of General Butler in Charleston; but it will not make the nation forget.  Could their whole delegation resume its seat in Congress to-morrow, with the three-fifths representation intact, it would not help them.  Can we ever trust them to build a ship or construct a rifle again?  No time, no formal act can restore the past relations, so long as slavery shall live.  It is easy for the Executive to pardon some convict from the penitentiary; but who can pardon him out of that sterner prison of public distrust which closes its disembodied walls around him, moves with his motions, and never suffers him to walk unconscious of it again?  Henceforth he dwells as under the shadow of swords, and holds intercourse with men only by courtesy, not confidence.  And so will they.

Not that the United States Government is yet prepared to avow itself anti-slavery, in the sense in which the South is pro-slavery.  We conscientiously strain at gnats of Constitutional clauses, while they gulp down whole camels of treason.  We still look after their legal safeguards long after they have hoisted them with their own petards.  But both sides have trusted themselves to the logic of events, and there is no mistaking the direction in which that tends.  In times like these, men care more for facts than for phrases, and reason quite as rapidly as they act.  It is impossible to blink the fact that Slavery is the root of the rebellion; and so War is proving itself an Abolitionist, whoever else is.  Practically speaking, the verdict is already entered, and the doom of the destructive institution pronounced, in the popular mind.  Either the Secessionists will show fight handsomely, or they will fail to do so.  If they fail to do it, they are the derision of the world forever,—­since no one ever spares a beaten bully,—­and thenceforward their social system must go down of itself.  If, on the other hand, they make a resistance which proves formidable and costly, then the adoption of the John-Quincy-Adams