Taking things as they now are, let us again try to penetrate the future,
or at least to sketch different alternatives of what may happen. Let us
then try to catch the spirit of each alternative, and so be prepared to
draw from the event such of good, and to guard against such of evil as
each may involve.
As a first alternative, we may now speedily conquer the South.
Insurrection may spring up in the South, against the insurrection there,
and in aid of our arms. New vigor and new fortune may attend our own
military operations; and our future military task may--somewhat contrary
to our expectations, we confess--prove easy, and its conclusion close at
hand. In that event, dangers of another kind, dangers already alluded to
as existing at the commencement of the war, and hardly less to be
apprehended now than then, hardly less, indeed, than the indefinite
continuance of war, threaten the future of our political horizon. We may
see in a few months' time the very men who are leading the armies and
the councils of the Southern confederacy again cracking the whip of
their sharp and arrogant logic about the ears of the men who had
conquered them in the field of battle; claiming to dictate every
political measure; forcing the mould of their thought upon every form of
opinion, and, by astute political combinations, wielding the destiny of
the nation in behalf of slavery and despotism, and against the principle
of freedom.
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