that the future of which it dreamed has no longer any chances of success, the South itself will become accustomed to consider its destiny under a wholly new aspect.  The border States, in which emancipation is easy, will range themselves one after another on the side of liberty.  Thus the extent of the evil will become reduced of itself, and instead of advancing, as during some years past, towards a colossal development of servitude, it will proceed in the direction of its gradual attenuation.

I reason on the hypothesis of a final maintenance of the Union, whatever may be the incidents of temporary secession.  I am not ignorant that there are other hypotheses, which may possibly be realized, and which I shall examine in the course of this treatise; but whatever may happen, I have a full right to call to mind the true scope of the vote which has just been taken.  It does not involve the slightest idea of present emancipation; it contents itself with checking the progress of slavery; and to check its progress is, doubtless, to diminish the perils of its future abolition.

It was important to present this observation, for nothing perverts our judgment of the American crisis more than the inexact definitions which are given of abolitionism.  We willingly picture abolitionists to ourselves as madmen, seeking to attain their end on the spot, regardless of all else, through blood and ruin!  That there may be such is possible, is even inevitable; but the men who exercise any political influence over the North have not for a moment adopted such theories.  This is so true, that the other day, at Boston, the people themselves (the people who nominated Mr. Lincoln) dispersed a meeting intended to discuss plans of immediate emancipation.

What if abolitionism, moreover, be a party? what if it make use of the means employed by parties? what if it have its journals, its publicists, its orators? what if it seek allies? what if it be based on interests which may be given it by the majority? what if it appeal to the passions of the North, as the slavery party appeals to those of the South?  I do not see, in truth, why this should astonish us.  I am far from believing that all the acts of abolitionism are worthy of approbation; I say only that it would be puerile to repudiate a great party for the sole reason that it has the bearing of a party.  The duty of citizens in a free country is to choose between parties, and to unite with that whose cause is just and holy.  Let them protest against wrong measures, let them refuse to participate in them—­nothing can be better; but to withdraw into a sort of political Thebais because the noblest parties have stains on their banner, is, in truth, to turn their back on the civil obligations of real life.