The
experience of a single generation will dissipate all the delusions which
now blind and enrage the Southern people.
With the disappearance of the principle of arbitrary power now embodied
in Southern society, the last motive for a dissolution of the American
Union will have vanished forever. Should that principle only decline to
a subordinate authority, with the certainty of gradual extinction, the
interests of freedom will be in the ascendant, and their influence
secure the restoration of the Federal authority. Here lies the whole
problem: let despotism continue to prevail in the South, and the
separation, with all its terrible consequences, must inevitably be
accomplished; let freedom succeed, and from that moment, every hostile
sentiment at once subsides, and the sundered sections, 'like kindred
drops,' again 'mingle into one.' A free community will gravitate to the
central orb of liberty; one that is repellent to freedom will fly off on
its erratic course to the regions of outer darkness, and will never
return until, having completed the cycle of its destiny of ruin, it
shall be brought back to be regenerated at the fountain of light, and
truth, and liberty.
WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?
_PART THE LAST._
'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one _lives_
it--to not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is
interesting.'--GOETHE.
'SUCCESSFUL.
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