'The forest was returning over the fine old estates, and the wild creatures which had not been seen for generations were reäppearing, numbers and wealth were declining, and education and manners were degenerating. It would not have surprised him to be told that on that soil would the main battles be fought when the critical day should come which he foresaw.
'To Mr. Madison despair was not easy. He had a cheerful and sanguine temper, and if there was one thing rather than another which he had learned to consider secure, it was the Constitution which he had so large a share in making. Yet he told me that he was nearly in despair, and that he had been quite so till the Colonization Society arose.
'Rather than admit to himself that the South must be laid waste by a servile war, or the whole country by a civil war, he strove to believe that millions of negroes could be carried to Africa, and so got rid of. I need not speak of the weakness of such a hope. What concerns us now is that he saw and described to me, when I was his guest, the dangers and horrors of the state of society in which he was living.
'He talked more of slavery than of all other subjects together, returning to it morning, noon, and night. He said that the clergy perverted the Bible because it was altogether against slavery; that the colored population was increasing faster than the white; and that the state of morals was such as barely permitted society to exist.
'Of the issue of the conflict, whenever it should occur, there could, he said, be no doubt. A society burdened with a slave system could make no permanent resistance to an unencumbered enemy; and he was astonished at the fanaticism which blinded some Southern men to so clear a certainty.
'Such was Mr. Madison's opinion in 1855.'
But the trial has come at last, and it is for the country to decide whether the South is to be allowed to secede, or to remain strengthened by their slaves, planting and warring against us until our own resources becoming exhausted, Europe can at an opportune moment intervene. But will that be the end? Will not Russia revenge the Crimea by aiding us—will not Austria be dismembered, France on fire, Southern Europe in arms, and one storm of anarchy sweep over the world? It is all possible, should we persevere in fighting the enemy with one hand and feeding him with the other.
There is such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by the subjoined brace of anecdotes:
Dear Sir: I have had, in my time, not a little experience of jailer, warden, and, of late, camp life, and would like to say a word about silly, misplaced sympathy, of which I have witnessed enough in all conscience.