sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull,
whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the
Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty
slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga,
in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr.
Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace
Congress,--that there would be no serious trouble, and that the
Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative"
sentiment of the North.

Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these
Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would
disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.

The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary
life of Slavery everywhere,--injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror,
degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great
political party--counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the
timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles,
the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and
the possession of power--has conspired to keep the nation blind and
deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience
wholly destroyed.

But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil
war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian
civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a
constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to
convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it,
and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection
of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government,
not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It
knows that the people are the Government,--that the spirit of the people
is progressive and intelligent,--and that there is no hope for permanent
and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and
decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this
meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a
letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth
in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social
scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal