The only basis of peace with the North, as the South declares, is Disunion; and they do most certainly mean it. No giving up the slave question, no enforcing of fugitive slave laws; no, not the hanging of Messrs. Garrison and Phillips, or any other punishment of all Emancipationists—as clamored for by thousands of trembling cowards—would be of any avail. It is disunion or nothing—and disunion they can not have. There shall be no disunion, no settlement of any thing on any basis but the Union. Richmond papers, after the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, proposed peace and separation. They do not know us. The North was never so determined to push on as now; never so eager for battle or for sacrifices. If the South is in earnest, so are we; if they have deaths to avenge, so have we; if they cry for war to the knife, so surely as God lives they can have it in full measure. For thirty years the blazing straw of Southern insult has been heaped on the Northern steel; and now that the latter is red-hot, it shall scorch and sear ere it cools, and they who heated it shall feel it.
We may as well make up our minds to it first as last, that we must at every effort and at any cost, conquer this rebellion. There is no alternative. This done, the great question which remains to settle, is, how shall we manage the conquered provinces? There are fearful obstacles in the way; great difficulties, such as no one has as yet calmly realized; difficulties at home and abroad. We have a fierce and discontented population to keep under; increased expenses in every department of government; but it is needless to sum them up. The first and most apparent difficulty is that involved in the form of government to be adopted. As the rebellious States have, by the mere act of secession, forfeited all State rights, and thereby reduced themselves to territories, this question would seem to settle itself without difficulty, were it not that a vast body of the ever-mischief-making, ever-meddling, and never-contented politicians (who continue to believe that the millennium would at once arrive were Emancipation only extinguished) cry out against this measure as an infringement of those Southern rights which are so dear to them. They argue and hope in vain. Never more will the South come back to be served and toadied to by them as of old; never more will they receive contemptuous patronage and dishonorable honors. It is all passed. Those who look deepest into this battle, and into the future, see a resistance, grim and terrible, to the death; and one which will call for the strictest and sternest watch and ward. It will only be by putting fresh life and fresh blood into Secessia, that union can be practically realized. Out of the old Southern stock but little can be made. A great portion must be kept under by the strong hand; a part may be induced to consult its own interests, and reform. But the great future of the South, and the great hope of a revived and improved Union will be found in colonizing certain portions of the conquered territory with free white labor.
A more important topic, and one so deeply concerning the most vital prosperity of the United States, was never before submitted to the consideration of her citizens. If entertained by Government and the people on a great, enterprising, and vigorous scale, as such schemes were planned and executed by the giant minds of antiquity, it may be made productive of such vast benefits, that in a few years at most, the millions of Americans may look back to this war as one of the greatest blessings that ever befell humanity, and Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors be regarded as the blind implements by which God advanced human progress, as it had never before advanced at one stride. But to effect this, it should be planned and executed as a great, harmonious, and centrally powerful scheme, not be tinkered over and frittered away by all the petty doughfaces in every village. In great emergencies, great acts are required.
It is evident that the only certain road to Union-izing the South is, to plant in it colonies of Northern men. Thousands, hundreds of thousands now in the army, would gladly remain in the land of tobacco or of cotton, if Government would only provide them with the land whereon to live. Were they thus settled, and were every slave in the South emancipated by the chances of war, there would be no danger to apprehend as to the future of the latter. Give a Yankee a fat farm in Dixie, and we may rely upon it that although a Southern nabob may not know how to get work out of a 'free nigger', the Northerner will contrive to persuade Cuffy to become industrious. We have somewhere heard of a Vermonter, who taught ground-hogs or 'wood-chucks' to plant corn for him; the story has its application. Were Cuffy ten times as lazy as he is, the free farmer would contrive to get him to work. And in view of this, I am not sorry that the Legislatures of the border wheat States are passing laws to prevent slaves from entering their territories. The mission of the black is to labor as a free man in the South, under the farmer, until capable of being a farmer on his own account.
The manner and method of colonizing free labor in the South deserves very serious consideration, and is, it may be presumed, receiving it at the hands of Government, in anticipation of further developments in this direction. We trust, however, that the Administration will lead, as rapidly as possible, in this matter, and that the President will soon make it the subject of a Message as significant and as noble as that wherein this country first stood committed by its chief officer to Emancipation, the noblest document which ever passed from president or potentate to the people; a paper which, in the eyes of future ages, will cast Magna Charta itself into the shade, and rank with the glorious manumission of the Emperor of Russia.
The primary question would be, whether it were more expedient to scatter free labor all over the South, or simply form large colonies at such points as might serve to effectually break up and surround the confederacy. Without venturing to decide on the final merit of either plan, we would suggest that the latter would be, for a beginning, probably most feasible. Should Virginia, certain points on the Atlantic coast, embracing the larger cities and vicinity of forts, and Texas, be largely or strongly occupied by free men, we should at once throw a chain around the vanquished foe, whose links would grow stronger every year. With slavery abolished—and it is at present abolishing itself with such rapidity that it is almost time lost to discuss the subject—immigration from Europe would stream in at an unprecedented rate, and in a few years, all the old Southern system become entirely a tradition of the past, like that of the feudal chivalry which the present chivalry so fondly ape.
The enormous internal resources of Eastern Virginia, her proximity to free soil, the arrogance and insubordination of her inhabitants, render her peculiarly fitted for colonization. Not less attractive is Texas—a State which, be it remembered, is capable of raising six times as much cotton as is now raised in the whole South, and which, if only settled and railroaded-ed, would, in a few years, become the wealthiest agricultural State in America. But let our army once settle in the South, there will be little danger of its not retaining its possessions. He who can win can wear.
The country has thus far treated very gingerly the question of confiscation, which is, however, destined to thrust itself very prominently forward among the great issues of the day, and which is closely allied to colonization. That the South, after forcing upon us such a war as this, with its enormous losses and expenses, should be subjected to no penalty, is preposterous. Confiscation there must be—not urged inhumanly on a wholesale scale, but in such a manner as to properly punish those who were forward in aiding rebellion. When this war broke out, the South was unanimous in crying for plunder, in speaking of wasting our commerce and our cities on a grand scale. But it is needless to point out that punishment of the most guilty alone would of itself half cover the expenses of the war.
It may be observed that already, since the decree of emancipation in the District of Columbia, a fresh spirit of enterprise has manifested itself there. Within a few days after the signature of the President to that act, Northern men began to prepare for renewed industry and action in the old slave field. The tide of free labor which will rush into Virginia, after the chances of war or other action shall have emancipated that State, will be incalculable. Its worn-out plantations will become thriving farms, its mines and inexhaustible water-powers will call into play the incessant demand and supply of vigorous industry and active capital. We may hasten the movement or we may not, by direct legislation. For the present, it seems advisable to await the rapidly developing chances of war and their results; but the great rush of free labor will come, and that rapidly, and Virginia, disenthralled, become, in all probability, once more the first among the States.
We have spoken of the desperation of the rebels, and of the idleness of expecting from them any peaceable compromise. Those who, in the South, will take the oath of allegiance, and who have probably acted only under compulsion, should be spared. But there is a vast number who are as yet under the dominion of a madness, for which nothing but the most vigorous measures can be of any avail. It is evident that at present, every where except in Halleck's department, government is too indulgent. Traitors flaunt and boast openly in the border States, and publicly scheme with their doughface allies, to defeat the Union cause in every possible way, too often with signal success. The more mercy they receive, the more insolent do they become, and yet every effort has been made, and is making, 'to conciliate.' Let Government be vigorous, and rely only on its strong hand, so far as the management of avowed traitors is concerned; such men hold to no faith, and keep no oaths. With such, a threat of confiscation will be found of more avail than all the lenity in the world.