them as you like. Be all the glory yours, fairly and honestly
won. But you see the absurdity of such an idea. Away, then, with your
pretended "moral suasion." You know it is mere nonsense. The
abolitionists have no faith in it themselves. Those who expect to
accomplish any thing count on means altogether different. They aim,
first, to alarm us: that failing, to compel us by force to emancipate
our slaves, at our own risk and cost. To these purposes they obviously
direct all their energies. Our Northern liberty-men endeavored to
disseminate their destructive doctrine among our slaves, and excite them
to insurrection. But we have put an end to that, and stricken terror
into them. They dare not show their faces here. Then they declared they
would dissolve the Union. Let them do it. The North would repent it far
more than the South. We are not alarmed at the idea. We are well content
to give up the Union sooner than sacrifice two thousand millions of
dollars, and with them all the rights we prize. You may take it for
granted that it is impossible to persuade or alarm us into emancipation,
or to making the first step toward it. Nothing, then, is left to try,
but sheer force. If the abolitionists are prepared to expend their own
treasure and shed their own blood as freely as they ask us to do ours,
let them come. We do not court the conflict; but we will not and we
cannot shrink from it. If they are not ready to go so far; if, as I
expect, their philanthropy recoils from it; if they are looking only for
_cheap_ glory, let them turn their thoughts elsewhere, and leave us in
peace. Be the sin, the danger and the evils of slavery all our own. We
compel, we ask none to share them with us.

I am well aware that a notable scheme has been set on foot to achieve
abolition by making what is by courtesy called "free" labor so much
cheaper than slave labor as to force the abandonment of the latter.
Though we are beginning to _manufacture with slaves_, I do not think you
will attempt to pinch your operatives closer in Great Britain. You
cannot curtail the rags with which they vainly attempt to cover their
nakedness, nor reduce the porridge which barely, and not always, keeps
those who have employment from perishing of famine. When you can do
this, we will consider whether our slaves may not dispense with a pound
or two of bacon per week, or a few garments annually. Your aim, however,
is to cheapen labor in the tropics. The idea of doing t