s, as long as the struggle
raging all round their confines does not penetrate within them. Each of
the combatants is far too busily absorbed in the furious strife to afford
thought, leisure, or means, either effectually to free the slaves or
effectually to replace them in bondage; and in the meantime their
condition is the worst possible for the future success of either
operation. If the North succeeds in subjugating the South, its earliest
business will be to make the freedom of the slaves real as well as
nominal, and as little injurious to themselves as possible. If, on the
other hand, the South makes good its pretensions to a separate national
existence, no sooner will the disseverment of the Union be an established
fact than the slaveholders will have to consolidate once more the system
of their 'peculiar institution,' to reconstruct the prison which has half
crumbled to the ground, and rivet afresh the chains which have been all
but struck off. This will be difficult: the determination of the North to
restrict the area of slavery by forbidding its ingress into future
territories and States has been considered by the slaveholders a wrong,
and a danger justifying a bloody civil war; inasmuch as, if under those
circumstances they did not abolish slavery themselves in a given number of
years, it would infallibly abolish them by the increase of the negro
population, hemmed with them into a restricted space by this _cordon
sanitaire_ drawn round them. But, bad as this prospect has seemed to
slaveholders (determined to continue such), and justifying--as it may be
conceded that it does from their point of view--not a ferocious civil war,
but a peaceable separation from States whose interests were declared
absolutely irreconcileable with theirs, the position in which they will
find themselves if the contest terminates in favour of Secession will be
undoubtedly more difficult and terrible than the one the mere anticipation
of which has driven them to the dire resort of civil war. All round the
Southern coast, and all along the course of the great Mississippi, and all
across the northern frontier of the Slave States, the negroes have already
thrown off the trammels of slavery. Whatever their condition may be--and
doubtless in many respects it is miserable enough--they are to all intents
and purposes free. Vast numbers of them have joined the Northern invading
armies, and considerable bodies of them have become organised as soldi