That
disposition should not be needlessly embittered. It can't help
becoming so if, as some propose, their States are reduced to the
condition of mere territorial dependencies. Americans can never be
satisfied to be underlings. Whatever the fortunes of war
legitimately bring, they are sensible enough to submit to; but it
is not in their spirit to consent to any permanent degradation.
Undertake to deprive them permanently of their civil rights, and
you simply make them your permanent enemies. _Territorialize them
because you hate slavery, and the inevitable effect will be that
you will only make them love slavery the more, and hate you the
more. This could not always continue. State rights, sooner or
later, would have to be restored. We don't believe that three years
would elapse after the close of the war before the keeping those
States in a territorial condition would be abandoned as an
insufferable anomaly in our system of government. State rights once
restored, the people, maddened by the thrall that had been put upon
them, would be very likely to vindicate these rights by
rehabilitating slavery. Every incentive of high pride and every
impulse of low spite would combine to urge this; and the National
Government would have no legitimate way of preventing it_.
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