It is refreshing to know that to this opinion of the victorious general, of exceedingly doubtful value, upon the specific point in question, he adds these memorable and patriotic words:
'I never was an Abolitionist, not even what would be called anti-slavery, but I try to judge fairly and honestly, and it became patent to my mind early in the rebellion that the North and South could never live at peace with each other except as one nation, and that without slavery. As anxious as I am to see peace established, I would not, therefore, be willing to see any settlement until this question is forever settled.'
Almost the only men in the nation who are really competent to judge when Slavery is really dead, in any region, are those Northern and Western anti-slavery men who have come into long and deadly collision with its spirit and power in Kansas and upon the western border of Missouri. Even Northern and Eastern Abolitionists, better versed perhaps in the theory of the subject, would prove very incompetent if matched in practical hostility with slaveholding opinion and might—slaveholding vindictiveness, cunning, treachery, and recklessness of every consideration, human or divine, but the gaining of their one end, the retention of their hold over the slave.
It is again refreshing, in the midst of the open or covert defence and protection among us of the surviving remnant of Slavery at the South, granting for the moment that it is now reduced to that, and in the midst of such easy and over-credulous and mistaken assumptions of its complete, virtual destruction already, by undoubted friends of freedom, as in the case of the Times editor, General Grant, and numerous others, to listen to such hearty utterances, in the keynote of the right policy, as were made by Secretary Chase in his recent speech at Cincinnati, and to be able to believe that they foreshadow the course of the Administration in this trying epoch of our country's history. We quote the following report:
'It was never intended to interfere with States that were loyal. This Proclamation comes up as a great feature in this war. In my judgment the Proclamation was the right thing in the right place, and without it I am just as sure as I am of my own existence that we could not have made the progress we have made. And I hold that the man who denounces the Proclamation either speaks ignorantly, speaks about that of which he knows little or nothing, or else he really desires that the rebellion should succeed.
'There are two classes of States in the South; there is the class of States that is affected by the Proclamation, and a class of States that is not. With this last class of States, which is not affected by the Proclamation, we have simply nothing to do, except to bid God speed to the unconditional Union men of those States, that they will do their own work in their own way and in their own time, and all we have to do is to stand by them.
'But in the States which are affected by the Proclamation the case is different. Either the Proclamation was a great, monstrous sham, and an imposition in the face of the world, or else that Proclamation was an effectual thing, and there are no slaves to-day in the rebel States. They are all enfranchised by the Proclamation, for what says it? All the slaves of these States are declared now and forever free, and the executive power is pledged to the maintenance of their freedom. If it were not so it would be a national imposture, and I would no more be guilty of that piece of infamy than I would steal into your house at night and rob your pantry. But what have we to do with this Proclamation in the rebellious Slave States? It is a very simple thing: just simply recognise the Union men who remain in those States. Such men as Mr. Flanders, and Mr. May, and a whole host of others, who were known as slaveowners, are now satisfied that the Union men of the South must see to it that slavery must never be permitted to be reëstablished in those States. Take such a man as the Hon. Charles Anderson. When he went home and stood up for the Union, what did the slave aristocracy do for him? They drove him from the State, and his wife and little ones were obliged to take shelter in the bush. And so with multitudes of Union men in Texas at the present day. But all of them wish to get back and establish a Free State in Texas; because, they say, no other than a Free State can ever protect them from the enemies of human freedom, and, I was going to say, of human nature. Again, in Florida there were many who were driven away who are now anxious to return. Is there a man here who wants these noble, generous Union men of the South to go back to be trampled under foot by restored rebels! Let them go back, but let them go back under the ægis of the American Union, and the protection of the Government pledged to them, and then they will take care to settle this question of slavery. They will amend the Constitution so as to put the slavery question where it ought to be. When that is done, who is going to talk about the Proclamation? You have here, my fellow citizens, an intelligent statement, as it seems to me, of the manner in which this thing can be settled: simply by standing by the unconditional Union men—who almost all of them have embraced the doctrine of emancipation in the Border States—and standing by the Union men in the rebellious States, and letting them protect themselves against the institution of slavery.'
At this stage of the present writing, and having just transferred these manly, patriotic, and statesmanlike sentiments to our columns, hoping that they might foreshadow the fixed policy of the Administration, of which Mr. Chase is so able and distinguished a member, we are overtaken by more than a full fruition of the hope in the publication of the President's Message and Proclamation of Amnesty to the South, upon the sole condition of the perpetual maintenance of the Proclamation of Emancipation issued a year ago; in other words, upon the condition of the total and definitive extinction of Slavery in the South. The men of the South who are ready for this are to be recognized as the loyal citizens, the New South—precisely what ought to be done. The machinery of the old State Governments is to remain intact, but to be turned over to this regenerated Southern party for administration. The whole military and civil force of the Union is to retain its guardianship over the South, during the transition, and to remain pledged to the maintenance of the status of freedom united with loyalty, until, by the growth and stability of the new order of things, the conquered territory shall dispense with its continued intervention. The plan devised by the President is admirable, and symptoms already exist that, like so many other of his leading measures, it is destined to meet with unbounded acceptance and popularity, from even the most diverse and disharmonious quarters. Trusting, therefore, that the practical administration of the war is drifting into the right policy, based on the true theory of its causes and legitimate termination, we may leave these merely political and military questions, and revert, in conclusion, to the possible remaining eventualities of the war. These may be, for the time, (1.) Seemingly prosperous and fortunate, or, (2.) Seemingly accompanied with disaster, discouragement, and dismay—ulterior even to the eventual triumph of our arms over the open enemies of the existing order of things.
Firstly, then, it may happen, that from this time out we shall be more and more decisively triumphant over the 'rump' of the rebellion still extant in the South; that the new policy of emancipation now so favorably inaugurated may work like a magical charm, and that among the happy and startling surprises to which we are daily becoming addicted, may be that of an unexpected readiness in the exhausted and repentant South to acquiesce in the new order of things; that our new financial scheme may develop germs of commercial prosperity more than adequate to compensate for all the strain upon our national energy and resources imposed by the war; that an immense and unparalleled expansion of national prosperity, hardly marred by the ripple of our financial encumbrances, may be in waiting for the future United States of America, and lie spread out in the immediate future before us; that untold wealth may be unearthed from our mines, marvellous discoveries and inventions made to increase our manufactures and means of locomotion, and new sources of learning and art and practical action be opened.
Suppose even less brilliant and rapid results. Suppose that the war lingers; that numerous and desperate battles have yet to be fought, and some reverses to be endured; but that we continue to hold the heart of the South up to our present lines in Georgia and East Tennessee; that the new system of things is gradually established and becomes solidified within the States already possessed: even this state of things, if providentially enforced on us after our best exertions have been put forth to succeed, may, again, unexpectedly prove to have concealed under seeming failure a more fortunate termination of our herculean work. Perhaps there is even yet not enough national virtue among us to leaven the whole lump, and thus, by being delayed of our too greedy aspirations for success, we may only the more surely succeed. A halt at this period of the war was foreshadowed, it will be remembered by the reader, in the earlier portion of this series of papers, written more than two years ago. At any rate, if the remaining resistance of the rebel government should prove more obstinate and prolonged than is now generally anticipated, let there be no discouragement, and no serious disappointment. Remember again, in that event, that our supreme triumphs are moral and social, for which our military successes are merely a basis; and that moral and social changes demand time to be consolidated and secured. Immense changes are being rapidly effected in the public sentiment and the prospective action of the reconquered portions of the South; but such changes are not made in a day; and some retardation of the national aspiration for a speedy termination of the war may prove our providential security against evils which, our own precipitancy might possibly otherwise incur. The retention of our present hold, the gradual but slow progress to a complete final conquest, and the steady assimilation of the reintegrated portions of the South with our Northern and the truly American character and sentiment, would still, therefore, deserve to be reckoned upon the side of seeming or obvious success.