Even if loyal
duty don't prompt it, interest will; for slavery, after having been
crippled, as it has been by the war, even if it could live, would only
be an encumbrance. But it can't live. It is already half dead. Let the
loyal men of the South finish it and bury it in their own way'._
Now it is precisely this simple-minded and easy credence that everything
will go right if it be at once handed over to the management of the men
who may have been whipped in the battle field--this overweening
confidence on the part of good men, and intelligent men, too, in the
ordinary sense of intelligence, at the North, which is the most
dangerous feature of the whole matter. We are just entering upon the
real crisis of the war, when the war, by many, will be thought finished.
It is exceedingly doubtful whether in any single Border State the
Anti-slavery Movement has received as yet any such impetus or gained any
such secure foothold that it could maintain the struggle for a six
months, if the influence growing out of the presence of the war in their
midst were withdrawn, and the political power were remanded in full to
the local authorities; and, in respect to the States farther South, and
wholly committed to the institution, it is certain that Slavery has
hardly received what would prove a serious scratch upon its epidermis,
if such changes were now to take place.
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