American Slavery, by the laws which control its existence, first rose from a local power, dominant in certain States, to a national power, assuming to dominate over the United States.  At the first faint fact which indicated the intention of the Free States to check its progress and overturn its insolent dominion, it rebelled.  The rebellion now promises to be a failure; but it will cost the Free States the arming of half a million of men and the spending of a thousand millions of dollars to make it a failure.  Can we afford to trifle with the cause which produced it?  We note that some of the representatives of the loyal Slave States in Congress are furious to hang individual Rebels, but at the same time are anxious to surround the system those Rebels represent with new guaranties.  When they speak of Jeff Davis and his crew, their feeling is as fierce as that of Tilly and Pappenheim towards the Protestants of Germany.  They would burn, destroy, confiscate, and kill without any mercy, and without any regard to the laws of civilized war; but when they come to speak of Slavery, their whole tone is changed.  They wish us to do everything barbarous and inhuman, provided we do not go to the last extent of barbarity and inhumanity, which, according to their notions, is, to inaugurate a system of freedom, equality, and justice.  Provided the negro is held in bondage and denied the rights of human nature, they are willing that any severity should be exercised towards his rebellious master.  Now we have no revengeful feeling towards the master at all.  We think that he is a victim as well as an oppressor.  We wish to emancipate the master as well as the slave, and we think that thousands of masters are persons who merely submit to the conditions of labor established in their respective localities.  Our opposition is directed, not against Jefferson Davis, but against the system whose cumulative corruptions and enormities Jefferson Davis very fairly represents.  As an individual, Jefferson Davis is not worse than many people whom a general amnesty would preserve in their persons and property.  To hang him, and at the same time guaranty Slavery, would be like destroying a plant by a vain attempt to kill its most poisonous blossom.  Our opposition is not to the blossom, but to the root.

We admit that to strike at the root is a very difficult operation.  In the present condition of the country it may present obstacles which will practically prove insuperable.  But it is plain that we can strike lower than the blossom; and it is also plain that we must, as practical men, devise some method by which the existence of the Slavocracy as a political power may be annihilated.  The President of the United States has lately recommended that Congress offer the cooperation and financial aid of the whole nation in a peaceful effort to abolish Slavery,—­with a significant hint, that, unless the loyal Slave States accept the proposition, the necessities of the war