e the direct and logical consequence of our
forefathers having dealt with a question of man as they would with one
of trade or territory,--as if the rights of others were something
susceptible of compromise,--as if the laws that govern the moral, and,
through it, the material world, would stay their operation for our
convenience. It is well to keep this present in the mind, because in
the general joy and hurry of peace we shall be likely to forget it
again, and to make concessions, or to leave things at loose ends for
time to settle,--as time has settled the blunders of our ancestors. Let
us concede everything except what does not belong to us, but is only a
trust-property, namely, the principle of democracy and the prosperity
of the future involved in the normal development of that principle.

We take it for granted at the outset, that the mind of the country is
made up as to making no terms with slavery in any way, large or
limited, open or covert. Not a single good quality traceable to this
system has been brought to light in the white race at the South by the
searching test of war. In the black it may have engendered that
touching piety of which we have had so many proofs, and it has
certainly given them the unity of interest and the sympathy of
intelligence which make them everywhere our friends, and which have
saved them from compromising their advantage, and still further
complicating the difficulties of civil war by insurrection. But what
have been its effects upon the ruling class, which is, after all, the
supreme test of institutions? It has made them boastful, selfish,
cruel, and false, to a degree unparalleled in history. So far from
having given them any special fitness for rule, it has made them
incapable of any but violent methods of government, and unable to deal
with the simplest problems of political economy. An utter ignorance of
their own countrymen at the North led them to begin the war, and an
equal misconception of Europe encouraged them to continue it. That
they have shown courage is true, but that is no exclusive property of
theirs, and the military advantage they seemed to possess is due less
to any superiority of their own than to the extent of their territory
and the roadless wildernesses which are at once the reproach and the
fortification of their wasteful system of agriculture. Their advantages
in war have been in proportion to their disadvantages in peace, and it
is peace which most convi