There is no present purpose on the
part of the writer to conduct the discussion--far less to attempt the
decision--of so grave a question of national policy at this eventful and
critical epoch in the affairs of our national life. No doubt the subject
stands as yet complicated in the minds of statesmen with the
possibilities of the early and frank submission of the South, and the
consequent early reestablishment substantially of the _status quo ante
bellum_; with the dread of inflicting measureless calamity upon those
who are at heart faithful to our cause in the South; and, most of all,
with the interests and feelings of the population of the few
slaveholding States remaining faithful to the Union. The object of the
present article is simply to lay open the true state of the case; to
reveal to the Northern mind in a clearer light, if possible, the causes
emanating from the South, which have gone and which go still to the
formation of Northern opinion adversely to the spirit of our own
institutions, and begetting, unconsciously in ourselves, a secret
treasonable sympathy at the bottom of our own hearts; a sympathy which
is the parent of that otherwise unaccountable tenderness on our part in
respect to the patent weakness of the enemy's defences. It is not that
we counsel, for the present, a change in the tenor of the war, but that
we wish, as the logic of circumstances shall force this question upon
us, that we may come to the consideration of it, in the future,
disabused of any preconceived prejudices in favor of that which is the
vital source of all the trouble which exists, and fully armed by a
complete understanding of the subject.
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