Terrible beyond description will be, in that event, the condition
of the Union and emancipationist party now incipiently developing itself
at the South;--abandoned and deserted by the withdrawal of the actual
presence and protection of Northern arms. No barbarism on earth, no
savagism extant, is so barbarous or so savage as the ruthless vengeance
with which this hybrid civilization of the South is ready at any time to
visit the crime of abolitionism; and seven times hotter than usual will
the furnace of their wrath be heated against Southern men who under the
aegis of Northern protection shall have exhibited some sympathy with
freedom.
That a powerful Northern party will immediately arise in behalf of the
simple readmission of the Southern States, upon precisely the old basis,
when the war shall end by the suppression of the rebellion, is certain.
The existence of such a party will rest, in part, upon a real sympathy
with the South and the rebellion; partly upon interested political
motives of a more ordinary and short-sighted character; and, in still
greater part than either of these, upon the easy credence and
insufficient information of the great mass of the Northern people;
somewhat, indeed, upon a magnanimity highly creditable to their
character as men, but unwise and dangerous in the extreme, in any
exercise of it which should surrender a vital advantage.
It does not require even that the complete reconquest of the South
should be awaited in order that the question of the return of subdued
States into the Union upon the old terms should be sprung upon the
nation, and perhaps decided, by a precedent, before the attention of
the country can be thoroughly directed to the momentous nature of the
step proposed.
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