The class of population which is recruiting in our
large cities, the regiments forming for service in
behalf of the Union, can never be permanently worsted.
They will pour down upon the villages and cities of
Virginia and Maryland, and leave a desolate track behind
them, and inspire terror in whatever vicinity they
approach.—Ibid, April 29.
It will be idle for Tennessee and Kentucky to attempt
to escape from the issue, and to remain at peace,
while the remainder of the country is at war.
Neutrality will be considered opposition, and the
result of a general frontier war will be, that slavery,
as a domestic institution of the United States; will
be utterly annihilated.—Ibid, April 30.
The rebellion must be put down by some means or another,
else it will put us down; and if nothing else will
do, even to proclaim the abolition of slavery would
be legitimate. All is fair in war...Gen. Fremont
and the other Generals must act according to circumstances,
and their own judgment, unless when otherwise ordered...If
he is acting on his own responsibility, he is only
carrying out the Confiscation Act, so far as the slaves
are concerned...We have no fear of the result.—N.
Y. Herald, Sept. 3.
To our apprehension, God is fast closing every avenue
to settled peace but by emancipation. And one
of the most encouraging facts is that the eyes of
the nation are becoming turned in that direction quite
as rapidly as could have been anticipated. Some
men of conservative antecedents, like Dickinson of
New York, saw this necessity from the first.
But it takes time to accustom a whole people to the
thought, and to make them see the necessity. It
was impossible for Northern men to fathom the spirit
and the desperate exigencies of the slave system and
its outbreak, and consequently to comprehend the desperate
nature of the struggle. We were like a policeman
endeavoring to arrest a boy-ruffian, and, for the sake
of his friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing
it with all possible tenderness for his person and
his feelings—till all of a sudden he feels
the grip on his throat and the dagger’s point
at his breast, and knows that it is a life-and-death
grapple.
Slaveholding is simply piracy continued. Our
people are beginning to spell out that short and easy
lesson in the light of perjury, robbery, assassination,
poisoning, and all the more than Algerine atrocities
of this rebellion. It cannot require many more
months of schooling like the last eight, to convince
the dullest of us what are its essence and spirit.
