But (it is said) the North will never succeed in conquering the South; and since the separation must in the end be recognized, it is better to do at first what must be done at last; moreover, if it did conquer them, it could not govern them when conquered, consistently with free institutions.  With no one of these propositions can I agree.

Whether or not the Northern Americans will succeed in reconquering the South, I do not affect to foresee.  That they can conquer it, if their present determination holds, I have never entertained a doubt; for they are twice as numerous, and ten or twelve times as rich.  Not by taking military possession of their country, or marching an army through it, but by wearing them out, exhausting their resources, depriving them of the comforts of life, encouraging their slaves to desert, and excluding them from communication with foreign countries.  All this, of course, depends on the supposition that the North does not give in first.  Whether they will persevere to this point, or whether their spirit, their patience, and the sacrifices they are willing to make, will be exhausted before reaching it, I cannot tell.  They may, in the end, be wearied into recognizing the separation.  But to those who say that because this may have to be done at last, it ought to have been done at first, I put the very serious question—­On what terms?  Have they ever considered what would have been the meaning of separation if it had been assented to by the Northern States when first demanded?  People talk as if separation meant nothing more than the independence of the seceding States.  To have accepted it under that limitation would have been, on the part of the South, to give up that which they have seceded expressly to preserve.  Separation, with them, means at least half the Territories; including the Mexican border, and the consequent power of invading and overrunning Spanish America for the purpose of planting there the “peculiar institution” which even Mexican civilization has found too bad to be endured.  There is no knowing to what point of degradation a country may be driven in a desperate state of its affairs; but if the North ever, unless on the brink of actual ruin, makes peace with the South, giving up the original cause of quarrel, the freedom of the Territories; if it resigns to them when out of the Union that power of evil which it would not grant to retain them in the Union—­it will incur the pity and disdain of posterity.  And no one can suppose that the South would have consented, or in their present temper ever will consent, to an accommodation on any other terms.  It will require a succession of humiliation to bring them to that.  The necessity of reconciling themselves to the confinement of slavery within its existing boundaries, with the natural consequence, immediate mitigation of slavery, and ultimate emancipation, is a lesson which they are in no mood to learn from anything but disaster.