The third fact remains: Is it true that, in all the hypotheses, the cause of the negroes has just realized such progress that the ultimate issue of the contention can no longer be doubtful? This is most obvious. Let there be separation or not, slavery has just entered upon the road which leads to abolition, more or less rapid, but infallible. If there be no separation, this immense progress will he effected with more wisdom and slowness; violent means will be averted, the benevolent influence of the Gospel will pave the way for progressive and peaceful transformation by preaching, to the slaves as to the masters, more of their duties than of their rights. If there be separation, emancipation will be accomplished much more quickly and more calamitously. Servile war will break out; ultra abolitionism, to which hitherto the prudence of the North has refused all real credit, will be no longer restrained by the prudence of a people desirous of shunning bloody catastrophes; sustained by the increasing animosity which will inflame the two Confederacies against each other, it will find means of introducing into the South appeals to revolt, and will multiply expeditions like that of John Brown.
But let us leave these generalities, and examine nearer by, from the stand-point of emancipation, the four or five hypotheses which we have signalled out most plainly, and between which seem to lie the chances of the future.
I shall examine first of all the one whose realization is evidently pursued by the able men of the extreme South. The question is, after having speedily gained over the North, thanks to Mr. Buchanan, to arrive as quickly as possible at something which shall have the appearance and authority of a fact accomplished. Audacity, and again audacity; upon this point, the politic and the violent meet in unison to-day. It has seceded, it has invaded the Federal property, it has trumped up a government, it has given itself a President, it is about to have an army, it is already attempting to represent itself officially at the courts of the great powers.
By the side of audacity, prudence has played its part. It has taken good care not to unfurl its flag, it has made itself small, modest, moderate, as much so, at least, as the passions of the mob would permit; it asked nothing, in truth, but to live honestly in a corner of the globe. Who speaks, then, of conquests? Who would wish to re-establish the African slave trade on a large scale? Far from being retrogrades, the men of the South are champions of progress; witness their programme of commercial freedom! Are there no honest men to be found in the North, to restrain Mr. Lincoln, and to prevent him from oppressing them? Are there no governments in Europe that can interpose, and recommend the maintenance of peace? Is not this peace, which prevents the insurrections of negroes, and the destruction of cotton, for the interest of all? Why should there not be two Confederacies, living side by side, as good friends?
It is evident that the able party tend to this, and that the violent have allowed them to give, for the common interest, this subdued tone to the insurrectionary movement. The able party know too well what a prolonged war would be to desire it. They prepare for it in the hope, if not to avoid it entirely, at least to prevent its duration, and to obtain at once, in behalf of Southern secession, that species of security which is conferred in our times by the deed accomplished. Perhaps the United States, yielding to a sentiment which certainly has something honourable in it, will allow the Confederacy of the Gulf States to subsist, rather than crush it, which would be but too easy, by bringing upon it a war which would be accompanied by slave insurrections. Let us not be in haste to blame such a course; let us remember that the whole world is prompting in this direction, that all the counsels given to Mr. Lincoln, in the Old World as in the New, begin invariably with the words: "Strive to avoid civil war;" let us remember also that, to solve the American problem, much more time will be needed than we imagine in Europe; let us endeavor to put ourselves in the place of those who see things as they are, and who find themselves in a struggle with the difficulties.
Patience will doubtless have here its great inconveniencies; the Confederacy of the cotton States, if combated without vigor, will seem the living proof of the right of separation; it will be an asylum all prepared, in which the discontented border States can take refuge at need. Nevertheless the question is to tolerate this Confederacy, but by no means to recognize the legitimacy of the act which gave it birth; the question is to make use of a generous forbearance, to which new threats of secession will necessarily put an end. Then, is it nothing to manifest a spirit of peace fitted to touch the most prejudiced, to bind the majority of the border States to the destinies of the Union, to give evidence of the distinction which exists between them and the extreme South, to force them, in fine, to declare themselves? If they surmount the present temptation, (and they will never encounter a stronger one,) if they consent to sacrifice their immediate interests, and to renounce the traffic in slaves, which is in danger of ceasing from day to day in case they do not join the "Confederate States;" is such a resolution nothing? does it contain no guarantees for the future? We do not set foot in the right path with impunity; honorable resolves always carry us further, thank God! than we counted on going. Suppose even that the border States which refuse to unite with the South design to impose on the North certain vexatious conditions, they will be none the less turned from their former alliances, they will have none the less begun to move in a new direction. We should do wrong if we did not recognize how honorable is the conduct of several among them; in watching over their legislatures, in enacting that the vote of secession shall be submitted to the ratification of the whole people, certain frontier States seem to have already shown themselves resolved to foil the intrigues at Charleston.
The cause of emancipation takes, therefore, a very important step in advance, in the hypothesis of a Southern Confederacy reduced, or nearly so, to the Gulf States alone. Limited secession is perhaps of all combinations, the one most favorable to the suppression of slavery. Picture to yourself, in fact, what this Southern Confederacy will he. It will be an impossible, short-lived republic, the separation of which will one day cease, and which, meanwhile, will be incapable of realizing any of its favorite projects. From the first hour, the extreme South found itself brought to face a dilemma: either to draw in all the slave States, and then to await the moment favorable to the execution of its grandiloquent plans, to hasten towards its destiny, its ideal, to conquer territories, to people them with negroes, and to perish through the accomplishment of an impious work; or, to remain alone and undertake nothing, and still perish, but this time through impotence to exist. What is to be done when there is only the miserable Confederacy of some thousand whites, the owners and keepers of some hundred thousand blacks? Make conquests? They dare not. Open the slave trade? It would draw down destruction upon them.
Now, mark that, in the bosom of a Confederacy morally isolated from the entire world, receiving aid neither from immigrants nor capital, deprived, in a large part at least, of the fresh supply of negroes which it formerly drew from the North, unable even to incur the risk of imitating Spain, which buys free negroes from the slave-hunters of the African continent, not in a condition to stop the escapes which will take place on all her frontiers, the question of slavery will proceed necessarily towards its solution. The extreme South, strange to say, will find itself placed providentially as an obstacle between the United States and the countries of which it lately meditated the acquisition. The United States will have the advantage of being unable even to think of Cuba, or Central America, or Mexico; they will be delivered for a time from these baleful temptations, and from the States in which they met the warmest support. And, during this time, the extreme South will be forced, in some sort, to look at the problem of slavery under an aspect before unknown to it.
Later will come the shock, the postponed but inevitable conflict. Blockaded at the South, blockaded at the North, blockaded on the African side, undermined and torn by its intestine divisions, the extreme South will have to face, at one time or another, the irresistible power of the United States. Does any one imagine by chance that the latter will forever relinquish New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico? The more they become elevated and strengthened, the more they will be led, say rather, forced, to absorb again the portions of their former domain which have attempted to exist without them.
From this time, the discussion relative to slavery will assume in the United States a simple and decided bearing. The extreme South, in quitting them, will have given them every facility; it will have endowed them with political homogeneousness and liberal majorities. By the mere effect of the departure of the senators and representatives of the extreme South, the party opposed to slavery will have acquired, at the outset, the numerical majority which it lacked in Congress; it will be in a position to ensure the passage of its bills, to form its administration, to constitute by degrees courts in every respect favorable to its principles. Next, the border States who shall not have followed the fortunes of the extreme South will find themselves bound to those of the North, associated with its interests, open to its ideas; and it is a fixed fact that several will not be long in completing the work of liberty already begun among them, and thus becoming, with their rich and extensive Territories, of the number of those fortunate States in which the suppression of slavery gives the signal for the fruitful invasion of immigrants, for agricultural progress, for wealth, and for credit. In this manner the "patriarchal institution" will disappear peaceably from the intermediate region, while it will be threatened by more terrible shocks in the tropical region.