ses, one fact
remains settled henceforth: the United States were tottering on their
base, they have regained their equilibrium; the deadly perils which they
lately incurred from the plans of conquest of the South and the
indefinite extension of slavery, are at length conjured down; they have
no longer to ask whether, some day, the South having grown beyond
measure, secession must not be effected by the North, leaving in the
hands of the slaveholders the glorious name and the starry banner of the
Union.

I think that I have gone over the whole series of hypotheses which offer
any probability. I have been careful to adopt none of them, for I make
no pretension, thank God, to read the future. It would be puerile to
prognosticate what will happen, and not less puerile, perhaps, to
describe it from what has happened. In the face of the accidents in
different directions which are attracting public attention and filling
the columns of newspapers, I have attempted to make a distinction
between what may happen and what must endure. The lasting consequences
of the present crisis are what I proposed to investigate faithfully. The
reader knows what are my conclusions. It may be that it will end in the
adoption of some blamable compromise; but whatever may be inscribed in
it, the election of Mr. Lincoln has just written in the margin a note
that will annul the text. The time for certain concessions is past, and
the South has no more doubts of it than the North. It may be that the
slave States will succeed in founding their deplorable Confederacy, but
it is impossible that they should succeed in making it live; they will
perceive that it is easier to adopt a compact or to elect a President,
than to create, in truth, in the face of the nineteenth century, the
nationality of slavery.

I have, therefore, the right to affirm that, whatever may be the
appearances and incidents of the moment, one fact has been accomplished
and will subsist: the United States were perishing, and are saved. Yes,
whatever may be the hypothesis on which we pause, three new and decisive
facts appear to our eyes: we know that the North henceforth has the
mastery; we know that the perils which threaten the Union came from the
South and not from the North; we know that the days of the "patriarchal
institution" are numbered. Beneath these three facts, it is not
difficult to perceive the uprising of a great people.

The victory of the North, the consciousness whi