o or three thousand millions
of dollars, and the market value of the slaves, which, estimating the
slaves at five hundred dollars each, is two thousand millions of dollars
more. The portion of the cost of suppressing Rebellion which the South
will have to pay can be approximately reached by taking a recent
calculation made in the Census Office of the Department of the Interior.

Estimating the national debt at twenty-five hundred millions of dollars,
and apportioning it according to the number of the white male adults
over twenty years of age in the different sections of the country, it
has been found that the proportion of the New England States is
$308,689,352.07; of the Middle States, $740,195,342.32; of the Western
States, $893,288,781.01; of the Southern States, $461,929,846.85; and of
the Pacific States, $95,896,677.75. This calculation makes the South
responsible for over four hundred and sixty millions of the debt. What
amount have the Southerners invested in it? Where both interest and
passion furiously impel men to repudiation, can they be trusted with the
care of the public credit? "But," the Northern people may exclaim, "in
case of such an execrable violation of justice, we would revolt,--we
would"----Ah! but in whose hands would then be "the war power"?

From every point of view, then, in which we can survey the subject,
negro suffrage is, unless we are destitute of the commonest practical
reason, the logical sequence of negro emancipation. It is not more
necessary for the protection of the freedmen than for the safety and
honor of the nation. Our interests are inextricably bound up with their
rights. The highest requirements of abstract justice coincide with the
lowest requirements of political prudence. And the largest justice to
the loyal blacks is the real condition of the widest clemency to the
Rebel whites. If the Southern communities are to be reorganized into
Federal States, it is of the first importance that they should be States
whose power rests on the proscription or degradation of no class of
their population. It would be a great evil, if they were absolutely
governed by a faction, even if that faction were a minority of the
"loyal" people, whose loyalty consisted in merely taking an oath which
the most unscrupulous would be the readiest to take, because the
readiest to break. We are bound either to give them a republican form of
government, or to hold them in the grasp of the military power of