We must not be blind to a great opportunity which may be lost, of forever quelling a foul nuisance which would, if neglected now, live forever.  Do we not see, feel, and understand what sort of white men are developed by slavery, and do we intend to keep up such a race among us? Do we want all this work to do over again every ten or five years or all the time?  For a quarter of a century, slavery and nothing else has kept us in a growing fever, and now that it has reached a crisis the question is whether we shall calm down the patient with cool rose-water.  In the crisis comes a physician who knows the constitution of his patient, and proposes searching remedies and a thorough cure,—­and, lo! the old nurse cries out that he is interfering and acting unwisely, though he is quite as willing to adopt her cooling present solace as she.

If we had walked over the war-course last spring without opposition,—­if we had conquered the South, would we have put an end to this trouble?  Does any one believe that we would?  This is not now a question of the right to hold slaves, or the wrong of so doing.  All of that old abolition jargon went out and died with the present aspect of the war.  So far as nine-tenths of the North ever cared, or do now care, slaves might have hoed away down in Dixie, until supplanted, as they have been in the North, by the irrepressible advance of manufactures and small farms, or by free labor.  ‘Keep your slaves and hold your tongues,’ was, and would be now, our utterance.  But they would not hold their tongues.  It was ‘rule or ruin’ with them.  And if, as it seems, a man can not hold slaves without being arrogant and unjust to others, we must take his slaves away.

And why is not this the proper time to urge emancipation?  Divested of all deceitful and evasive turns, the question reduces itself to this,—­are we to definitely conquer the enemy once and for all, the great enemy Oligarchy, by taking out its very heart? or are we to keep up this strife with slaveholders forever?  It is a great and hard thing to do, this crushing the difficulty, but we must either do it or be done for.  In a few months ‘the tax-gatherer will be around.’  If anybody has read the report of the Secretary of the Treasury without a grave sensation, he is very fortunate.  How would such reports please us annually for many years?  So long as there exists in the Union a body of men disowning allegiance to it, puffed up in pride, loathing and scorning the name of free labor, especially as the ally of capital, just so long will the tax-gatherer be around,—­and with a larger bill than ever.