The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary life of Slavery everywhere,—­injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror, degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great political party—­counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles, the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and the possession of power—­has conspired to keep the nation blind and deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience wholly destroyed.

But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil war.  Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian civilization.  The natural progress and development of men into a constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to convert men into things, must give way.  Its haughty instinct knows it, and therefore Slavery rebels.  This Rebellion is simply the insurrection of Barbarism against Civilization.  It would overthrow the Government, not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged.  It knows that the people are the Government,—­that the spirit of the people is progressive and intelligent,—­and that there is no hope for permanent and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and decide.  It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone.  In a letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth in the clearest light.  But whoever would comprehend the real social scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself.  It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are identical, not only in fact, but of necessity.  It will teach him that the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can end only in the destruction of one or the other.

This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a solemn sense of responsibility.  A sadder book the human hand never wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and conviction.  An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and saddest memories are forever associated.  It is a noble service nobly done.  The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.

* * * * *

An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers. Read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, August 14, 1862.  By GEORGE LIVERMORE.  Third Edition.  Boston:  A. Williams & Co.