They want civil power exercised, and
would gladly have even a breaking down of State lines and a
reconstruction of the Government itself, as the only effectual
means of destroying the institution of their special abhorrence.
'Now we, too, claim a good hearty hatred of slavery. We are as
anxious as any to see it under the sod, beyond resurrection. But we
don't believe in making any superfluous sacrifice to get it there.
Seeing that it is dying, we are quite content to let it die
quietly, without any attempt to pull the house down about its ears
and our own ears. This seems to us to be a very absurd sort of
impatience--prompted by giddy passion rather than sober reason.
'But how do we know slavery is dying? We know it from the unanimous
testimony of all personal observers of its condition. There is not
a man within the Union lines South, however friendly he may be to
the institution, who pretends that there is any chance whatever of
its being saved, _if present causes continue_. Two things are
killing it.
'_The first is the wear and tear of the war. Military operations
always tend to disjoint and break up, within their scope, all the
relations of society. They inevitably remit, to a greater or less
extent, the social man to a state of nature.
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