these four millions of people, many thousands of whom are already free and armed, will submit without a struggle to be again thrust down into the hell of slavery?  Hitherto there has been no insurrection among the negroes, and observers friendly and inimical to them have alike drawn from that fact conclusions unfavourable to their appreciation of the freedom apparently within their grasp; but they are waiting to see what the North will really achieve for them.  The liberty offered them is hitherto anomalous, and uncertain enough in its conditions; they probably trust it as little as they know it:  but slavery they do know—­and when once they find themselves again delivered over to that experience, there will not be ONE insurrection in the South; there will be an insurrection in every State, in every county, on every plantation—­a struggle as fierce as it will be futile—­a hopeless effort of hopeless men, which will baptise in blood the new American nation, and inaugurate its birth among the civilised societies of the earth, not by the manumission but the massacre of every slave within its borders.

Perhaps, however, Mr. Jefferson Davis means to free the negroes.  Whenever that consummation is attained, the root of bitterness will have perished from the land; and when a few years shall have passed blunting the hatred which has been excited by this fratricidal strife, the Americans of both the Northern and Southern States will perceive that the selfish policy of other nations would not have so rejoiced over their division, had it not seemed, to those who loved them not, the proof of past failure and the prophecy of future weakness.

Admonished by its terrible experiences, I believe the nation will reunite itself under one government, remodel its constitution, and again address itself to fulfill its glorious destiny.  I believe that the country sprung from ours—­of all our just subjects of national pride the greatest—­will resume its career of prosperity and power, and become the noblest as well as the mightiest that has existed among the nations of the earth.