Southern brethren would submit to be governed by such a Chief Magistrate?"
The opinion we must form on the revolution that followed ought to be guided by the events which led to it, not by the motives of the leaders. In point of fact they were divided, like the Union, by the question of slavery. To one party it was the real object of the war; they believed it could not be safe against the assaults of Northern politicians, whatever might be the pledges of the federal government. Another party desired secession in order to establish a new Union on the old principles which the North had disavowed. The great issue between them was the arming of the slaves. Those who deemed it too dear a price to pay for independence succeeded in preventing it by narrow majorities until the eve of the fall of Richmond. When the Act was passed by which the negroes would have acquired the benefits without the dangers of emancipation, it was too late, and the end was at hand.
Slavery was not the cause of secession, but the reason of its failure. In almost every nation and every clime the time has come for the extinction of servitude. The same problem has sooner or later been forced on many governments, and all have bestowed on it their greatest legislative skill, lest in healing the evils of forced but certain labour, they should produce incurable evils of another kind. They attempted at least to moderate the effects of sudden unconditional change, to save those whom they despoiled from ruin, and those whom they liberated from destitution. But in the United States no such design seems to have presided over the work of emancipation. It has been an act of war, not of statesmanship or humanity. They have treated the slave-owner as an enemy, and have used the slave as an instrument for his destruction. They have not protected the white man from the vengeance of barbarians, nor the black from the pitiless cruelty of a selfish civilisation.
If, then, slavery is to be the criterion which shall determine the significance of the civil war, our verdict
