to exist a dozen nations where but one now exists,—­for we leave the Southern Confederacy aside in this consideration.  That Confederacy, however, would become the greatest power in North America.  Not only would it hold together, but it would at once acquire the Border States, where slavery would be more than restored, for there it would be made as powerful an interest as it was in South Carolina and Mississippi but four years ago.  War has welded the Southern Confederacy together, and in face of our breaking-up its rulers would have the strongest possible inducement to keep their Republic united, because they would then hope to conquer most of the Free States, and to confer upon them the “blessings” of the servile system of labor.

It is sometimes said, that, if the Democratic party should resume the rule of this nation, the Confederates, or Rebels, would signify their readiness to return into the Union, on the simple condition that things should be allowed to assume the forms they bore prior to Mr. Lincoln’s election.  They rebelled against the men who came into power through the political decision that was made in 1860; and, the American people having reversed that decision by restoring the Democracy, the cause of their rebellion having been removed, rebellion itself would cease as of course.  Were this view of the subject indisputably sound, it would ill become the American to surrender to the men who assume that the decision of an election, this way or that, affords sufficient reason for a resort to arms.  We should hold our existence as a nation by the basest of tenures, were we to admit the monstrous doctrine that only one party is competent to govern the Republic, and that there is an appeal from the decision of the ballot to that of the bayonet.  There never existed a great people so craven as to make such an admission; and were we to set the example of making it, we should justify all that has been said adversely to us by domestic traitors and foreign foes.  We should prove that we were unfit to enjoy that greatest of all public blessings, constitutional freedom, by surrendering it at the demand of a faction, merely that we might live in security, and enjoy the property we had accumulated.  Ancient history mentions a people who were so fond of their ease that they placed all power in the hands of their slaves, on condition that the latter should not meddle with those pleasures to the unbroken pursuit of which they purposed devoting all their means and time.  The slaves soon became masters, and the masters slaves.  We should fare as badly as the Volsinians, were we to place all power in the hands of slaveholders, who then would own some millions of white bondmen, far inferior in every manly quality to those dark-faced chattels from among whom the Union has recruited some of its bravest and most unselfish champions.  But there is no ground, none whatever, for believing that the Rebels would cease to be Rebels, if there should be a Democratic restoration effected.