[4:  The statistics given above are correct.  That small number of slaveholders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion.  They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection unless we break down the power of that class.  Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves.  Free their negroes by an act of Emancipation, or Confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day.  Omit to do it, and it will last till doomsday.

The power of this dominant class once broken; with landed property at the South more equally divided, a new order of things will arise there.  Where now, with their large plantations, not one acre in ten is tilled, a system of small farms will spring into existence, and the whole country be covered with cultivation.  The six hundred thousand men who have gone there to fight our battles, will see the amazing fertility of the Southern soil—­into which the seed is thrown and springs up without labor into a bountiful harvest—­and many of them, if slavery is crushed out, will remain there.  Thus a new element will be introduced into the South, an element that will speedily make it a loyal, prosperous, and intelligent section of the Union.

I would interfere with no one’s rights, but a rebel in arms against his country has no rights; all that he has ‘is confiscate.’  Will the loyal people of the North submit to be ground to the earth with taxes to pay the expenditures of a war brought upon them by these Southern oligarchists, while the traitors are left in undisturbed possession of every thing, and even their slaves are exempted from taxation?  It were well that our legislators should ask this question now, and not wait till it is asked of them by THE PEOPLE.]

’Yes, I mean them, and the three or four millions of poor whites—­the ignorant, half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. They are the real basis of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it,’ continued the Colonel, still laughing.

‘I thought the negro was the serf, in your feudal system?’

’Both the negro and the poor whites are the serfs, but the white trash are its real support.  Their votes give the small minority of slave-owners all their power.  You say we control the Union.  We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men.  Who that reflects that this country has been controlled for fifty years by such scum, would give a d——­ for republican institutions?’

’It does speak very badly for your institutions.  A system that reduces one half of a white population to the level of slaves can not stand in this country.  The late election shows that the power of your ’white trash’ is broken.’