It will be only the first step that will cost.  Everybody sees this.  The President sees it.  Mr. Davis sees it.  He hopes nobody will take it.  We hope a good many people will.  The merit of the President’s plan is that this step can be promptly taken.  And so many are the openings by which national feeling now addresses the people of the States in revolt, and national men can call on them to express their real opinions and to act in their real interest, that we hope to see it taken in many places at the same time.

When Constantine made Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire, he supposed that one-thirteenth part of his people were Christians.  He was statesman enough to know that a minority of one-thirteenth, united together because they had one cause, would be omnipotent over a majority of twelve-thirteenths, without a cause and disunited.  So, if any one asks for an example in our history,—­the Territory of Kansas was thrown open to emigration with every facility given to the Southern emigrant, and every discouragement offered to the Northerner.  But forty men, organized together by a cause, settled Lawrence, and it was rumored that there was to be some organization of the other Northern settlers, and at that word the Northern hive emptied itself into Kansas, and the Atchisons and Bufords and Stringfellows abandoned their new territory, badly stung.  These are illustrations, one of them on the largest scale, and the other belonging wholly to our own time and country, of the worth even of a very small minority, in such an initiative as is demanded now.  What was done in Kansas can be done again in Florida, in Texas, if Texas do not take care for herself, in either Carolina, in any Southern State where the “righteous men” do not themselves appear to take this first step on which the President relies.

Take, for instance, this magnificent Florida, our own Italy,—­if one can conceive of an Italy where till now men have been content to live a half-civilized life, only because the oranges grew to their hands, and there was no necessity for toil.  The vote of Florida in 1860 was 14,347.  So soon as in Florida one-tenth part of this number, or 1,435 men, take the oath of allegiance to the National Government, so soon, if they have the qualifications of electors under Florida law, shall we have a loyal State in Florida.  It will be a Free State, offering the privileges of a Free State to the eager eyes of the North and of Europe.  That valley of the St. John’s, with its wealth of lumber,—­the even climate of the western shore,—­the navy-yard to be reestablished at Pensacola,—­the commerce to be resumed at Jacksonville,—­the Nice which we will build up for our invalids at St. Augustine,—­the orange-groves which are wasting their sweetness at this moment, on the plantations and the islands,—­will all be so many temptations to the emigrant, as soon as work is honorable in Florida.  If the people who gave 5,437 votes for Bell and 367 for Douglas cannot furnish 1,435 men to establish this new State government, we here know who can.