by it, slave
soil.

To abasement at the footstool of this triumphant wickedness, everything
venal and sordid in the yet Free States would inevitably and intensely
gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets;
shipping greedy of cargoes and freights; but, above all, Democratic
politicians hungry for power and pelf, and having the strong instinct of
American unity and nationality as their fulcrum. They would gradually
but surely undermine the mutilated fabric of our once glorious Union,
and tear away its pillars to strengthen and extend the pile whereof
Slavery is the acknowledged corner-stone. The Union would gradually
crumble and disappear, and the slaveholders' Confederacy be built up
from its ruins; the Slave Power would resume its arrested march toward
the equator, dragging the Republic behind its triumphal chariot wheels;
Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Hayti, &c., would be gradually 'annexed'
by it; domestic opposition to its dictates would be summarily suppressed
as treason or 'abolition;' the masses of our people would become like
the Roman populace under the Caesars; the forms of a republic might for a
season be preserved, but the essence would speedily evaporate, leaving a
vast, powerful, rapacious Slave Empire, ruled by some master spirit of
the slaveholding oligarchy, and wielding all the power of the nation for
the gratification and aggrandizement of that grasping, unscrupulous
aristocracy. Having ceased to be the refuge of the hunted and the
cynosure of the oppressed, this country would thenceforth awe the
nations of the Old World by its military power, and shock them by its
profligacy, whereof the Ostend Circular and the murders and forgeries of
Kansas were but foretastes, until God in His righteous wrath should
bring upon it some visitation like the present, and hurl it from its
pinnacle in mercy to mankind.

My friend! we must fight on till we conquer. We have no alternative but
absolute ruin. Our triumph is far nearer than it seems, if we can but
animate the loyal States to put forth their whole strength for the
contest. Our armies are mustered; our leaders are chosen; our munitions
provided; and the Proclamation of Freedom is an immense make-weight
thrown into the right scale. We must and shall conquer, and save the
civilized world from a scourge more baleful than any Alaric or Attila.

Yours, truly,

HORACE GREELEY.

THANK GOD FOR ALL.

AIR--'They tell me t