We were not required, therefore, to make this
supposition any less favorable to the North than the division just
suggested; and unless, again, power had been acquired by the South to
impose terms on the North little short of those which a conqueror
imposes on a conquered people, the North, within its own limit of Free
States, would be left in a condition boldly to announce and actively to
defend its own legitimate policy in behalf of the extension of free
institutions and their development to the supreme degree of beneficent
truth.
But again, it might have been foreseen that in case the eagle of victory
should perch on the banners of the North; in case our arms should be
generally victorious after a few incipient disasters; in case our armies
should move in power southward, meeting, nevertheless, a steady and
resisting front on the part of the South, making the prospect of
ultimate conquest remote or hopeless; in case, in a single word, the
North should find herself in position to dictate terms short of absolute
submission and return to the common fold, but substantially in
accordance with her own wishes, the question of boundary and of the
future policy of the new North would have become one of immense
importance.
Had such considerations been forced on the attention of the country by
the course of the war, it may not be uninteresting to speculate upon
the nature of the possible boundary, which a drawn game in the
contest--a possibility at least, viewed from that early point of
observation--might have imposed upon the two future nationalities.
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