the question should be settled. Better they should go over to
the rebels at once, than prevent the extinction of the rebellion through
their conditional Unionism.

But it is with Northern out-criers for the Constitution and the Union
that the present inquiry is chiefly concerned. These men want the Union
'as it was.' What _was_ it? What was it, in the _only_ thing that is in
their thoughts and wishes when they raise the cry? It was a Union
controlled by the South through alliance with a Northern party styling
itself Democratic. It was the whole power of the Federal Government
wielded for the aggrandizement of slavery, its extension and perpetual
maintenance as an element of political domination. This is what the
Union _was_. This is what these Democrats want again--in order that they
may again enjoy such a share (never an equal one) in the honors and
emoluments of office as their oligarchic masters may allow them. This is
all they think of or desire when they cry for the Union as it was--a
chance for loaves and fishes again at the hands of those who for thirty
years have used them and despised them. They want to be used and
despised again. Hence, though they talk about putting an end to the
rebellion, they want it put an end to only in such a way as shall secure
the restoration of the slave power to its old position, and of
themselves to their old relations with it. This would set them up in
their business again. They are out of business now.

Hence, while Governor Stanly, in North-Carolina, is telling the people
there that the rebellion must be crushed though it involve the
destruction 'of every Southern institution,' and that the maintenance of
the supremacy of the National Government and the integrity of the
national domain is worth more than all the lives and all the property of
rebels of whatever sort; and while Andrew Johnson is declaring the same
thing in Tennessee, these Northern traitors are speaking tenderly of the
rebellion as an 'irregular opposition'--excited and almost justified by
Northern aggressions on Southern rights--which ought to be so met on our
part as not to preclude the South from a return to its ancient
domination. They insist that the struggle shall be conducted with the
least possible 'irritation' of rebel feelings and with a sacred regard
to their slave rights. They bewail the enormities perpetrated by
Congress and the President against the rebels, the abolition of slavery
in the District o