radually softens the asperities
of prejudice, and may be expected ultimately to bring the noblest
harmony out of the present confusion and disorder.

Many good and humane men apprehend the most serious evils from the
sudden change of relations, now certain to be effected, between the two
races in the South. It will be a rude and violent shock to the interests
and feelings of the whites, and will undoubtedly produce that
inconvenience which always results from great social transformations.
But the anticipation is doubtless worse than the reality will prove to
be. There is a plastic capacity in human nature which enables it readily
to adjust itself in new situations when overruling necessity compels
submission. It remains to be seen what will be the results, immediate
and remote, of freedom in a society composed of so nearly equal
proportions of the two races. Whatever may be the mere temporary
difficulties at the outset, we do not doubt that, in the long run,
freedom will produce the best results to both. Nature is unerring in the
wisdom of her general purposes and in the selection of the means by
which she fulfils them, when left free to pursue her own laws. Whatever
oscillations may take place, the mean result is always good. The
experience of a single generation will dissipate all the delusions which
now blind and enrage the Southern people.

With the disappearance of the principle of arbitrary power now embodied
in Southern society, the last motive for a dissolution of the American
Union will have vanished forever. Should that principle only decline to
a subordinate authority, with the certainty of gradual extinction, the
interests of freedom will be in the ascendant, and their influence
secure the restoration of the Federal authority. Here lies the whole
problem: let despotism continue to prevail in the South, and the
separation, with all its terrible consequences, must inevitably be
accomplished; let freedom succeed, and from that moment, every hostile
sentiment at once subsides, and the sundered sections, 'like kindred
drops,' again 'mingle into one.' A free community will gravitate to the
central orb of liberty; one that is repellent to freedom will fly off on
its erratic course to the regions of outer darkness, and will never
return until, having completed the cycle of its destiny of ruin, it
shall be brought back to be regenerated at the fountain of light, and
truth, and liberty.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?