t being
extravagant. Since we were a republic no one year has witnessed such
national and social progress among us as the past. We have had severe
struggles, and we have surmounted them; we have had hard lessons, and we
have learned them; we have had trials of pride, and we have profited by
them. And as we contend for principles based in reason and humanity and
confirmed by history, it follows that we must inevitably come forth
gloriously triumphant, if we but bravely persevere in enforcing those
principles.

The large amount of political information regarding the South and its
resources which has been of late widely disseminated in the North, is a
striking proof that, disguise the question as we will, the extension of
free labor is, from a politico-economical point of view (which is, in
fact, the only sound one), the real, or at least ultimate basis of this
struggle. The matter in hand is the restitution of the Union, laying
everything else aside; but the great fact, which will not step aside, is
the consideration whether ten white men or one negro are to occupy a
certain amount of soil. There is no evading this finality, there is no
impropriety in its discussion, and it SHALL be discussed, so long as
free speech or a free pen is left in the North. So far from interfering
with the war, it is a stimulus to the thousands of soldiers who hope
eventually to settle in the South in districts where their labor will
not be compared with that of 'slaves,' and it is right and fit that they
should anticipate the great and inevitable truth in all its relations to
their own welfare and that of the country.

We cheerfully agree with those who try with so much energy that
Emancipation is not the matter in hand, and quite as cheerfully assent
when they insist that the enemy, and not the negro, demands all our
present energy. But this has nothing to do with the great question,
whether slavery is or is not to ultimately remain as a great barrier to
free labor in regions where free labor is clamoring for admission. That
is all we ask, nothing more. The instant the North and West are assured
that at some time, though remote, and by any means or encouragements
whatever, which expediency may dictate, the great cause of secession and
sedition--will be removed from our land, then there will be witnessed an
enthusiasm compared to which that of the South will be but lukewarm.
That this will be done, no rational person now doubts, or that
gove