violent
have allowed them to give, for the common interest, this subdued tone to
the insurrectionary movement. The able party know too well what a
prolonged war would be to desire it. They prepare for it in the hope, if
not to avoid it entirely, at least to prevent its duration, and to
obtain at once, in behalf of Southern secession, that species of
security which is conferred in our times by the deed accomplished.
Perhaps the United States, yielding to a sentiment which certainly has
something honourable in it, will allow the Confederacy of the Gulf
States to subsist, rather than crush it, which would be but too easy, by
bringing upon it a war which would be accompanied by slave
insurrections. Let us not be in haste to blame such a course; let us
remember that the whole world is prompting in this direction, that all
the counsels given to Mr. Lincoln, in the Old World as in the New, begin
invariably with the words: "Strive to avoid civil war;" let us remember
also that, to solve the American problem, much more time will be needed
than we imagine in Europe; let us endeavor to put ourselves in the place
of those who see things as they are, and who find themselves in a
struggle with the difficulties.

Patience will doubtless have here its great inconveniencies; the
Confederacy of the cotton States, if combated without vigor, will seem
the living proof of the right of separation; it will be an asylum all
prepared, in which the discontented border States can take refuge at
need. Nevertheless the question is to tolerate this Confederacy, but by
no means to recognize the legitimacy of the act which gave it birth; the
question is to make use of a generous forbearance, to which new threats
of secession will necessarily put an end. Then, is it nothing to
manifest a spirit of peace fitted to touch the most prejudiced, to bind
the majority of the border States to the destinies of the Union, to give
evidence of the distinction which exists between them and the extreme
South, to force them, in fine, to declare themselves? If they surmount
the present temptation, (and they will never encounter a stronger one,)
if they consent to sacrifice their immediate interests, and to renounce
the traffic in slaves, which is in danger of ceasing from day to day in
case they do not join the "Confederate States;" is such a resolution
nothing? does it contain no guarantees for the future? We do not set
foot in the right path with impunity; honorable