trate to him finally
that it is necessary to sign some disgraceful compromise, and submit
almost to the law of the rebels.

Once more, it is prudent to foresee every thing, and it is for this that
I mention such things. I count, moreover, on their not being realized.
In electing Mr. Lincoln, the United States decided thus: Slavery will
make no more conquests. What they have decided, they will ultimately
maintain, even though they should have the air of abandoning it. They
have respected and they will respect the sovereignty of the States; upon
this point they will give all the guarantees that may be desired, and
Congress, we have seen, has already voted an amendment to the
Constitution, designed to offer this basis of compromise. But they will
go no further than this; the North must feel that, of all ways of
terminating the present crisis, the most fatal would be the disavowal of
principles and the desertion of the flag.

The compromises that promise any thing more than respect for the
sovereignty of the States in the matter of slavery, promise more than
they could perform; every one feels this, in the South as in the North.
The policy of the South forms a whole of which nothing subsists if any
thing be retrenched, and above all if the complicity of the Government
ceases to be assured to it. On the day that the South accepts any
compromise whatever, it will have renounced, not the maintenance
doubtless, but the propagation of slavery; it will have renounced its
rule. Compromises, (there will be such, perhaps, let us swear to
nothing; before or after the war, with the entire South, or with a part
of it,) compromises will be signed henceforth without any delusion. The
South knows, marvellously well, that these compromises will bear little
resemblance to those signed in former times. Those marked, by their
constantly increasing pretension, the upward march of the South; these
will mark the phases of its decline. How many changes which can never be
retraced! No more conquests to promote slavery, no more reopening of the
African slave trade, no more impunity secured to those numerous
slave-ships which daily, to the knowledge and in the sight of all, for
years past, have quitted the ports of the Confederation; no more chance
of equalling, by the creation and population of new States, the rapid
development of the North; henceforth the question is ended, the South
must be resigned to it: the majority of the free States will be