se they would then hope
to conquer most of the Free States, and to confer upon them the
"blessings" of the servile system of labor.

It is sometimes said, that, if the Democratic party should resume the
rule of this nation, the Confederates, or Rebels, would signify their
readiness to return into the Union, on the simple condition that things
should be allowed to assume the forms they bore prior to Mr. Lincoln's
election. They rebelled against the men who came into power through the
political decision that was made in 1860; and, the American people
having reversed that decision by restoring the Democracy, the cause of
their rebellion having been removed, rebellion itself would cease as of
course. Were this view of the subject indisputably sound, it would ill
become the American to surrender to the men who assume that the decision
of an election, this way or that, affords sufficient reason for a resort
to arms. We should hold our existence as a nation by the basest of
tenures, were we to admit the monstrous doctrine that only one party is
competent to govern the Republic, and that there is an appeal from the
decision of the ballot to that of the bayonet. There never existed a
great people so craven as to make such an admission; and were we to set
the example of making it, we should justify all that has been said
adversely to us by domestic traitors and foreign foes. We should prove
that we were unfit to enjoy that greatest of all public blessings,
constitutional freedom, by surrendering it at the demand of a faction,
merely that we might live in security, and enjoy the property we had
accumulated. Ancient history mentions a people who were so fond of their
ease that they placed all power in the hands of their slaves, on
condition that the latter should not meddle with those pleasures to the
unbroken pursuit of which they purposed devoting all their means and
time. The slaves soon became masters, and the masters slaves. We should
fare as badly as the Volsinians, were we to place all power in the hands
of slaveholders, who then would own some millions of white bondmen, far
inferior in every manly quality to those dark-faced chattels from among
whom the Union has recruited some of its bravest and most unselfish
champions. But there is no ground, none whatever, for believing that the
Rebels would cease to be Rebels, if there should be a Democratic
restoration effected. Not even the election of Mr. Buchanan to a second
Presid