r writer under review: '_When the South has been overcome
in fair fight, we must give its reason a chance to assert itself._' Very
true, if the mode of doing so be not foolishly misunderstood. The error
here is in speaking of the South as one, whereas from this time forward
and for some years to come, there will be an Old South, rebellious at
heart, malignant, defiant, cruel, and revengeful to the last
degree--bold, accustomed to rule with unquestioned authority--and, when
conquered, refusing to remain conquered, except as the grapple of the
conqueror is still at its throat; and a New South, loyal, loving, and
devoted to its deliverers, but timid, shrinking, and tentative of its
powers--liberty-loving, and truly American in sentiment, but unused to
the exercise of political supremacy, unorganized, and weak;--an old
South, refusing every appeal to reason, and only thirsting for
vengeance; and a new South, ready to reason and to be reasoned with, and
looking gratefully to the National Government as its guide and protector
in the unequal contest before it--more fearful to it than ever--at the
close of the war. How, then, shall we 'give the reason of the South a
chance to assert itself'? By withdrawing our support from our friends,
and the friends of America, and of man, in the South, and turning them
over, like sheep to the wolves, to their unreasoning and vindictive
enemies; or by standing by them in the weakness of their first essay to
depend on reason and justice in the place of force or fraud; by
developing, in fine, the reason of the South, which has been for a
century overridden and suppressed by the incubus of an organized
despotism, from which there is now, for the first time, the chance of a
redemption, if these _friends_ of Southern reason do not commit a
blunder in their understanding of the case?

'_Whenever_,' says the _Times_ writer, '_there is sound reason to
believe that a sound loyal majority of the State want it
(reconstruction), let them have it--and that, too, without imposing any
conditions concerning slavery_.' That is to say, abandon the
Proclamation of Emancipation, betray the colored man, who, trusting to
our faith, is now enrolling himself in our armies; betray the timid
friends of freedom, who, by our encouragement, have dared to proclaim
their love of liberty, and subject themselves to inevitable banishment
or extermination, unless the programme of a new free South be executed
triumphantly and t