Tenderness and deference
are sentiments which must soon give place to the stern struggle for life
between hostile and desperate men. Already the South has not hesitated,
in some instances, to muster her slaves into armed regiments, and in all
cases to avail herself of their brawny arms as equally valuable
assistants in the work of fortification, camp service, and all the other
incidents of war. Still further, as a great body of laborers,
undisturbed by the war, quietly conducting the general industry at home,
and providing the means of sustaining immense armies in the field, the
slaves are, in effect, an important auxiliary of the enemy's power.
Already the Congress of the United States has passed a law for the
confiscation of all property so used, so stringent in its terms that,
without much strain of legal ingenuity, it might be made to cover the
whole case. The threatened continuance of disaster to Northern arms may
at any moment force upon our generals the military necessity of
declaring emancipation within a given district or State, and finally, it
may be incumbent on the Government to resort to the same policy in
reference to the whole South. The contest is one of life and death for
the greatest human interests ever brought face to face in hostile array.
But a single step is wanting, and we may at any moment be forced over
the boundary which hitherto has prevented it from being a conflict
avowedly for the utter extinction of the institution of slavery on the
North American continent, on the one hand, and for the triumphant
establishment of the policy and power of that institution over the whole
land on the other.
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