Rome. The Empire of Charlemagne embraced the territory of Middle and
Western Europe, inhabited by barbarous peoples, isolated, warlike, and
speaking different languages; there were none of the civilized bonds of
union; only the genius of Charlemagne held them together; and upon his
death the huge fabric he had reared naturally fell to pieces. The
Spanish Empire is but another instance showing that geographical and
other elements of disconnection must not overbalance those which relate
remote sections to each other, and bind them together in a common
interest, else dissolution will be the result. In respect to the United
States, all these conditions are reversed. Every interest in the natural
course of development points to union--demands union, and, in the
triumph of justice, shall have union.

Is there anything in the way of this union? Is there a morbid growth--a
cause of irritation and disease tending to dissolution? Then, it must be
removed. Is ambitious and reckless demagoguism to be apprehended? Then
educate the people and diffuse science. But is there not still a worse
devil to be cast out? Where slavery is, you cannot educate the people,
you cannot diffuse science; and without enlightenment there can be no
political justice, since unprincipled demagogues will sway all political
destiny. Slavery cannot always exist side by side with freedom; it is
the natural enemy of union, the enemy of civilization. Prominent
secession leaders have admitted that slavery is the cause of this war,
boasting at the same time that the confederate constitution is founded
on a scientific distinction of races. Without slavery there could be no
sufficient motive for the independent national existence of the South.
Had there been no slavery, there had been no civil war. This is, at the
present time, the political significance of the institution. There is no
safety but in its extinction--so far at least as the border Slave States
are concerned, in order to overthrow its power in the United States
Senate, to enlarge the sympathies of freedom, and weaken and
circumscribe the chances for revolutionary movements which slavery will
be ready at any critical moment to precipitate against the Union.

If we have not misinterpreted the law of development, slavery, as it
exists in this country, is a morbid political condition, a social
disease, which stands in the way of the natural course of social
evolution. In this law, therefore, is written the