than half of them were never regarded as people at home,—­that they had no more to do with the Rebellion than had the oxen with which they labored.  The nation knows that of the rest of the Southern people literally only a handful professed power in the State.  The nation knows, therefore, that what pretended to be a union of republics was, really, to take Gouverneur Morris’s phrase, a union of republics with oligarchies,—­seventeen republics united to fourteen oligarchies, when this thing began.  The nation knows that the fourteen will be happier, stronger, more prosperous than ever, when their people have the rights of which they are partly conscious,—­when they also become republics.  The nation means to carry out the constitutional guaranty, and give them the republican government which under the Constitution belongs to every State in the Union.  The nation looks forward to prosperous centuries, in which these States, with these people and the descendants of these people, shall be united in one nation with the republics which have been true to the nation.  For all these reasons the nation has no thought of insisting on its rights as against Rebel States.  It has no thunders of vengeance except for those who have led in these iniquities.  For the people who have been misled it has pardon, protection, encouragement, and hope.  It can afford to be generous.  And at the President’s hands it makes the offer which will be received.

* * * * *

We say this offer will be received.  We know very well the difficulty with which an opinion long branded with ignominy makes head in countries where there is no press, where there is no free speech, where there are no large cities.  Excepting Louisiana, the Southern States have none of these.  And the “peculiar institutions” throw the control of what is called opinion more completely into the hands of a very small class of men, we might almost say a very small knot of men, than in any other oligarchy which we remember in modern history.  It is in considering this very difficulty that we recognize the wisdom of the President’s Proclamation.  He is conscious of the difficulty, and has placed his minimum of loyal inhabitants at a very low point, that, even in the hardest cases, there may be a possibility of meeting his requisition.

It is not true, on the other hand, that he has placed his minimum so low as to involve the government in any difficulty in sustaining the State governments which will be framed at his call.  It must be remembered that this “tenth part” of righteous men will have very strong allies in every Southern State.  It is confessed, on all hands, that they will be supported by all the negroes in every State.  Just in proportion to what was the strength of the planting interest is its weakness in the new order of things.  Given such physical force, given the moral and physical strength which comes with national protection, and given the immense power which belongs to the wish for peace, and the “tenth part” will soon find its fraction becoming larger and more respectable by accretions at home and by emigration from other States.  We shall soon learn that there is next to nobody who really favored this thing in the beginning.  They will tell us that they all stood for their old State flag, and that they will be glad to stand for it in its new hands.