nent Confederates whom we have recently defeated;
of men physically subdued, but morally rebellious; of men who have used
their education simply to destroy the prosperity created by the industry
of the ignorant and enslaved, and who, however skilful they may be as
"architects of ruin," have shown no capacity for the nobler art which
repairs and rebuilds. If, on the other hand, we make suffrage depend on
color, we disfranchise the only portion of the population on whose
allegiance we can thoroughly rely, and give the States over to white
ignorance and idleness led by white intrigue and disloyalty. We are
placed by events in that strange condition in which the safety of that
"republican form of government" we desire to insure the Southern States
has more safeguards in the instincts of the ignorant than in the
intelligence of the educated. The right of the freedmen, not merely to
the common privileges of citizens, but to _own themselves_, depends on
the connection of the States in which they live with the United States
being preserved. They must know that Secession and State Independence
mean their reenslavement. Saulsbury of Delaware, and Willey of West
Virginia, declared in the Senate, in 1862, that the Rebel States, when
they came back into the Union, would have the legal power to reenslave
any blacks whom the National government might emancipate; and it is only
the plighted faith of the United States to the freedmen, which such a
proceeding would violate, which can prevent the crime from being
perpetrated. It is as citizens of the United States, and not as
inhabitants of North Carolina or Mississippi, that their freedom is
secure. Their instincts, their interests, and their position will thus
be their teachers in the duties of citizenship. They are as sure to vote
in accordance with the most advanced ideas of the time as most of the
embittered aristocracy are to vote for the most retrograde. They will,
though at first ignorant, necessarily be in political sympathy with the
most educated voters of New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts; if they were
as low in the scale of being as their bitterest revilers assert, they
would still be forced by their instincts into intuitions of their
interests; and their interests are identical with those of civilization
and progress. We suppose that those who think them most degraded would
be willing to concede to them the possession of a little selfish
cunning; and a little selfish cunning is