ich they do not possess;--it
is simply a question of pillaging and enslaving, without let or
hindrance from moral or humanitary considerations, to any extent to
which they may find, by the experiment now inaugurated, their physical
power to extend. The North, let it be repeated, entered into this war
under a misapprehension of the whole state of the case. It is at the
present hour, to a fearful extent, under the same misapprehension. There
is still a belief prevailing that the South only needs to be coaxed or
treated kindly or magnanimously to be convinced that she has mistaken
the North; that she has not the grievances to complain of which she
supposes she has, and that she can yet obtain just and equitable
treatment from us. There is a tacit assumption in the minds of men that
she _must_ be content to receive the usage at our hands which we are
conscious that we are ready to bestow, and which has in it no touch of
aggressive and unjust intention. It is not realized that the spirit of
the South, in respect to the North, in respect to Mexico, in respect to
the islands of the sea, and--should their power prove proportionate to
their unscrupulous piratical aspirations--in respect to all the nations
of the earth, is that of the burglar and the highwayman. It is not
realized that the institution of slavery--itself essential robbery of
the rights of man; covering the area of half a continent, and the number
of four millions of subjects; planted in the midst of an intellectually
enlightened people, whose moral sense it has utterly sapped--is
essentially a great educational system, as all-pervading and influential
over the minds of the whole population as the common schools of New
England; and that this grand educational force tends toward and
culminates in this same tendency toward robbery and the suppression of
human rights or the individual and national rights of all other
people--expressed _in a collective and belligerent way_. It is not, as
said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast;
but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so,
and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically,
therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship
in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the
republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and
Huns, than they have with the England or New England of to-day.