le to anticipate
that they will eventually resume their former relations with the Federal
Government, as most conducive to these ends. There are some men, perhaps
one whole class, who can never escape the responsibility of all the
overwhelming evils and calamities which the war has brought upon the
South. The cordial acquiescence of these can hardly be anticipated; but
their power will be completely destroyed, and the people may well be
expected to disregard their murmurs and complaints. Indeed, it is not
altogether unlikely that an injured and exasperated people may turn on
the authors of their ruin, and wreak upon them a fearful vengeance, so
far, at least, as to ostracize and banish them forever from the land
they have blighted and destroyed. The masses of the people, holding few
or no slaves, though involved in the war by force of the general
delusion into which they have been artfully inveigled, will not consider
themselves responsible for its consequences; they will rather look on
themselves as the victims of designing men, who, for selfish purposes,
have partly seduced and partly impelled them into the perils and
disasters of a gigantic but fruitless rebellion. This state of feeling
will leave the minds of the Southern people in a condition to estimate
fairly their own relations to the rebellion, and their obligations to
the Union, which again calls them, with paternal tenderness, to its
generous confidence and magnanimous protection. They will have no cause
for apprehension that their restoration to good fellowship and perfect
equality will not be complete and free from all unfriendly reservations.

But this influence will not operate on those alone who have few or no
slaves, comprehending the great mass of whites: it will exert itself
more notably on the large body of slaves themselves. This is an element
in the calculation which, humble though it be, cannot be overlooked
without great error in the results. A fundamental change will take place
in the condition of the blacks. They will be emancipated, either
gradually and safely, or with violent precipitation, with all its evils
and disasters. Yet, however the decree may come, whether by the sudden
blow of military power, or by the free and cheerful cooperation of the
States and their people, the measure itself will be plainly the result
of the rebellion, as met by the firm and noble stand assumed by the
Federal Government, and maintained at so great a cost of tr