of the census,’ he says, ’would furnish a document, valuable politically and for military use, if he would anticipate the publication of this portion of his voluminous budget.’  If government, indeed, were to communicate to the public what information it now holds, and has long held, relative to the numbers and strength of the Union men of the South, an excitement of amazement would thrill through the North.  It was on the basis of this knowledge that our great campaign was planned,—­and it can not be denied that thousands of stanch Union men were greatly astonished at the revelations of sympathy which burst forth most unexpectedly in districts where the stars and stripes have been planted.  But the Cabinet ’knew what it knew’ on this subject.  Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that they had no intention of ‘abolitionizing the war,’ and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort Warren,—­so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united South, in the final hour of victory, might include them in its catalogue of the doomed.  What would they say if they knew the number and power of the ABOLITIONISTS OF THE SOUTH,—­a body of no trifling significance, whose fierce grasp will yet be felt on the throat of rebellion and of slavery?  It is grimly amusing to think of the aid which the South counted on receiving from these Northern dough-faces,—­little thinking that within itself it contained a counter-revolutionary party, far more dangerous than the Northern friends were helpful.

It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it.  The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of ’the institution,’ and make many believe that they speak for the whole,—­a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,—­but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech.  Such people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting influence of negroes on their children.  Let the reader recall Olmsted’s experiences,—­that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, ’from three to fifteen years of age.’