f, in the
extreme South, and that, consequently, all the Southern States should
have been again represented in Congress at an early day, and should
again have taken their places as equal partners under the Constitution
of our common country, it seemed just possible that the results of the
war should be confined, in their immediate action, to what may be called
its educational effects upon the Southern mind and its economical
bearings upon the wealth and industry of the nation.

As the other branch of the alternative, the South might have to be
conquered by the force of our arms, and might remain unanimously, or in
vast preponderance, disloyal and rebellious in spirit. In that event, it
would be requisite, if those States were to be retained at all as part
of the Union, that they should be reconsigned to the Territorial
condition, or otherwise governed still by the central authority.

In the former of these two latter suppositions: that of the
reestablishment of the old _status_, it was foreseen by some, as not
impossible, that the final result might prove disastrous to the freedom
of the North. With the advent of peace, the suspicions of the Northern
people with regard to the designs and real character of Southern men
would have been allayed. A certain appeal would even have been made, by
the suggestions of their own generosity, to the hearts of Northern men
to lay aside all hostile and adverse action as against the South, and to
welcome them with open arms to all the rights and privileges of the
common country. Meantime, a horde of unscrupulous machinators would have
been installed in the seats of power at Washington, and would have
recommenced operations, in the consciousness of the new strength
acquired in the field from which they had just retired, with all the
chicanery and craft with which heretofore they had blinded the North and
secretly controlled the destinies of our Government. Southern men and
Southern women would again have been feasted and feted at Northern
hotels and watering places, and again have given tone to Northern
opinion, while new and especial reasons would have seemed to exist for
opposing countervailing influences, as unnecessary agitation, and causes
of the retention of acrimonious feeling between the two sections, which
had now resolved to live in amity with each other. In a word, all the
sources of corruption of Northern sentiment, emanating from the South,
would have been renewed in their