Two or three defeats in the field, breaking their military strength, though not followed by an invasion of their territory, may possibly teach it to them.  If so, there is no breach of charity in hoping that this severe schooling may promptly come.  When men set themselves up, in defiance of the rest of the world, to do the devil’s work, no good can come of them until the world has made them feel that this work cannot be suffered to be done any longer.  If this knowledge does not come to them for several years, the abolition question will by that time have settled itself.  For assuredly Congress will very soon make up its mind to declare all slaves free who belong to persons in arms against the Union.  When that is done, slavery, confined to a minority, will soon cure itself; and the pecuniary value of the negroes belonging to loyal masters will probably not exceed the amount of compensation which the United States will be willing and able to give.

The assumed difficulty of governing the Southern States as free and equal commonwealths, in case of their return to the Union, is purely imaginary.  If brought back by force, and not by voluntary compact, they will return without the Territories, and without a Fugitive Slave Law.  It may be assumed that in that event the victorious party would make the alterations in the Federal Constitution which are necessary to adapt it to the new circumstances, and which would not infringe, but strengthen, its democratic principles.  An article would have to be inserted prohibiting the extension of slavery to the Territories, or the admission into the Union of any new Slave State.  Without any other guarantee, the rapid formation of new Free States would ensure to freedom a decisive and constantly increasing majority in Congress.  It would also be right to abrogate that bad provision of the Constitution (a necessary compromise at the time of its first establishment) whereby the slaves, though reckoned as citizens in no other respect, are counted, to the extent of three fifths of their number, in the estimate of the population for fixing the number of representatives of each State in the Lower House of Congress.  Why should the masters have members in right of their human chattels, any more than of their oxen and pigs?  The President, in his Message, has already proposed that this salutary reform should be effected in the case of Maryland, additional territory, detached from Virginia, being given to that State as an equivalent:  thus clearly indicating the policy which he approves, and which he is probably willing to make universal.