of slavery’ with which the Liberator, with the kindest intentions, but most erroneously, credits us.  We should be glad enough to see it, were it possible; but, knowing that the immediate-action theory has been delaying the cause for thirty years, we have invariably suggested the firm but gradual method.  That method has at last been formally advanced by the President, in a manner which can reasonably give offense to no one.  The beginning has been made:  it is for the country to decide whether it—­the most important suggestion of the age—­shall be realized.

* * * * *

The news of the capture of Fort Donelson had barely reached us, the roar of the guns celebrating our rapid successes had not died away, ere that fragment of the Northern ultra pro-slavery party which had done so much towards deluding the South into secession, impudently raised its head and began most inopportunely and impertinently to talk of amnesty and the rights of the South.  There are things which, under certain limitations, may be right in themselves, but which, when urged at the wrong time, become wrongs and insults; and these premature cries to restore the enemy to his old social and political standing are of that nature.  They are insufferable, and would be ridiculous, were it not that in the present critical aspect of our politics they may become dangerous.  Since this war began, we have heard much of the want of true loyalty in the ultra abolitionists, who would make the object of the struggle simply emancipation, without regard to consequences; and we have not been sparing in our own condemnations of such a limited and narrow view,—­holding, as we do, that emancipation, if adopted, should be for the sake of the white man and the Union, and not of the negro.  But ‘Abolition’ of the most one-sided and suicidal description is less insulting to those who are lavishing blood and treasure on the great cause of freedom, than is the conduct, at this time, of those men who are now, through their traitorous organs, urging the cry that the hour is at hand when we must place slavery firmly on a constitutional basis; this being, as they assert, the only means whereby the Union can ever be harmoniously restored.

In view of the facts, it is preposterous to admit that this assumption is even plausible.  He must be ignorant indeed of our political history during the past twenty years, or strangely blind to its results, who has not learned that a belief that the North is ever anxious to concede for the sake of its ‘interests’ has been the great stimulus to the arrogance of the South.  While the principles of the abolitionists have been the shallow pretence, the craven cowardice of such men as BUCHANAN and CUSHING has been the real incitement to the South to pour insult and wrong on the North.  Concession has been our bane.  It was paltering and concession that palsied the strong will and ready act which should have prevented this war; for had it not been for such men as the traitors who are now crying out for Southern rights, the rebellion would have been far more limited in its area, and long since crushed out.  No cruelties on our part, no threats to carry all to the bitter end, would so encourage the South at present, as this offer to shake hands ere the fight be half over.