does its
duty, and uses its authority and strength wisely, crippling the rebel
faction in every possible way, thousands of liberated arms will spring
forth to seize the sword in its defence, and as many liberated voices
swell the _All hail!_ that will burst out for its welcome. For, so long
tutored to the repression of any independent ideas, any sentiments that
do not tally with the doctrines to full belief in which these leaders
have aimed to educate the men of the last generation, viz., the divine
origin and purpose of slavery, and the other mischievous and absurd
dogma of State sovereignty, which, but for slavery and its imperative
demands, would never have seen the light, but have perished
stillborn--they have no idea of the freedom of opinion and expression
permitted among us, and their minds and consciences have become
nerveless and supine to an astonishing degree; or, if thinking and
feeling, as very many do, they suffer in silence, not daring to resist
the oppressive faction that has ruled them so long. Moral force and
courage is not the fruit of subserviency to the principles and ideas
that have gradually filled the Southern mind. No wonder that the Union
sentiment that showed itself so plainly at the outbreak of the rebellion
became, ere long, like one of those streams that, starting impetuously
from its mountain source, flows on awhile clearly and rapidly, and then
begins to wander and slacken its pace, till finally it is lost in the
dreariness and desolation of some marshy wilderness, and so never
reaches its destination, the open sea. There is no people in the world
so abused and defrauded as the bulk of the Southern whites. If you pity
the oppressed of another race, then pity still more those of your own
blood who are suffering a worse slavery, and who yet do not know it, but
hug fondly the chains of their servitude. Then, too, consider the
thousands of Northern men and women scattered all over the South, and
say if you think _they_ are linked, heart and hand, with the destroyers
of the Government.

But with all this as an offset, still there is an undeniably strong and
unscrupulous faction there, composed of the leading minds of the South,
acute, imperious, sophistical, used to political and social rule, and
backed by a small but cunning minority here at the North, so vile and
contemptible that, in comparison with its adherents, they, these slave
oligarchs, are 'Hyperion to a satyr.' These, with the thou