operation, with some circumstances
added, tending to give to them greater potency than ever before.

Undoubtedly, immense advantages were to be contemplated in the
restoration of the United States to their primitive boundaries and
united power. But it was not without deep apprehension of moral taint
and ulterior evil consequences, that a wise patriot could look even then
to any attempt of the old matrimonial partners to dwell again in a
common household, upon the old terms, and with no real settlement of the
dispute between them.

The latter of these suppositions, the remanding of a hostile and
rebellious tier of States, who had long and proudly enjoyed the dignity
of State sovereignty, to a subordinate condition, had also its
proportion of difficulty and danger. To carry out a _programme_ of this
kind would demand a great increase of the army and navy, and would give
to the military spirit and power a preponderance in the councils of the
nation which has always been deemed dangerous to the liberties of the
country. A constant drain of expenditure of the resources of the nation;
a continuous unrest and anxiety of the whole people; a succession of
outbreaks and partial renewals of the civil war; the installation of a
necessary system of proconsular or viceroyal commissions; the
appointment of men who, whether as provost-marshals, dictators, or what
not, would be in the stated exercise of authority unmeasured by the
theories of republican policy--all these were serious and threatening
considerations, which must give the thoughtful mind some pause ere it
entered upon their adoption.

There were other remaining possible suppositions in respect to the
termination of the war, of a middling character, or those lying between
the two opposite extremes. In case, without any positive conquest or
submission on either side, the general tenor of success throughout the
war should be with the South, so that it finally behooved the North to
secure the most favorable terms, but to submit, nevertheless, to great
deductions from its confident expectations, a theory then not wholly
impossible, we had to contemplate, as one evil of the war, a final
disruption of the original territory of the United States into two
nationalities, coincident, as to boundary, with the Free and the Slave
States. Except in the way of absolute conquest, the South would be
little inclined to insist upon the addition to itself of any territory
absolutely free. We