than
do those absolutely acting and suffering on the scene. Nor can I
resist the desire to prophesy any more than you can do, knowing that
I may prove utterly mistaken. I say, then, that one great danger
comes from the chance of foreign interference. What will prevent
that?

Our utterly defeating the Confederates in some great and conclusive
battle; or,

Our possession of the cotton ports and opening them to European
trade; or,

A most unequivocal policy of slave emancipation.

Any one of these three conditions would stave off recognition by
foreign powers, until we had ourselves abandoned the attempt to
reduce the South to obedience.

The last measure is to my mind the most important. The South has,
by going to war with the United States government, thrust into our
hands against our will the invincible weapon which constitutional
reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it
has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of
the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.
We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the
only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly
proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is
most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free
States as to the answer.

If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we
are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are
fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the
Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody
else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six
hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really
does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for
the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing
in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by
proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console
myself with thinking that the people--the American people, at least
--is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of
individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,
and is only puzzling how to carry it in