To our apprehension, God is fast closing every avenue to settled
peace but by emancipation. And one of the most encouraging facts is
that the eyes of the nation are becoming turned in that direction
quite as rapidly as could have been anticipated. Some men of
conservative antecedents, like Dickinson of New York, saw this
necessity from the first. But it takes time to accustom a whole
people to the thought, and to make them see the necessity. It was
impossible for Northern men to fathom the spirit and the desperate
exigencies of the slave system and its outbreak, and consequently to
comprehend the desperate nature of the struggle. We were like a
policeman endeavoring to arrest a boy-ruffian, and, for the sake of
his friends and for old acquaintance sake, doing it with all possible
tenderness for his person and his feelings--till all of a sudden he
feels the grip on his throat and the dagger's point at his breast,
and knows that it is a life-and-death grapple.
Slaveholding is simply piracy continued. Our people are beginning to
spell out that short and easy lesson in the light of perjury,
robbery, assassination, poisoning, and all the more than Algerine
atrocities of this rebellion. It cannot require many more months of
schooling like the last eight, to convince the dullest of us what are
its essence and spirit.
Our people also are rapidly finding out that no peaceful termination
of this war will be permitted now by the Slave Power, except by its
thorough overthrow. The robber has thrown off the mask, and says now
to the nation, "Your life or mine!" Even the compromising Everett
has boldly told the South, "To be let alone is not all you ask--but
you demand a great deal more." And in his late oration, he has most
powerfully portrayed the impossibility of a peaceful disunion. Many
men, some anti-slavery, were at first inclined to yield to the idea
of a separation. But every day's experience is scattering that notion
to the winds. The ferocious spirit exhibited from the first by the
Secessionists towards all dissentients, the invasion of Western
Virginia by Eastern, the threats to put down loyal Kentucky, the
foray in Missouri, the plan for capturing Washington, which was part
of the original scheme, are convincing proofs, that if by any
pacification whatever our troops were disbanded to-day, to-morrow a
Southern army would be on the march for Washington, Philadelphia, New
York, and perhaps Chicago.
The South has sufficiently declared the cause of this trouble to be
the irreconcilable conflict between their institutions and the
fundamental principles of this government. While the cause remains
in full strength, and after it has once burst forth in bloody and
final collision, nothing will ever check that strife, whether in or
out of the Union. The cause must be eradicated. Meanwhile, our own
position, both before the world and in our own struggle at home, is a
false one, so long as we blink the real issue.
Many indications are hopeful. Gen. Butler's letter to the Secretary
of War, and the Secretary's reply, look in the right direction. The
Confiscation Act is pregnant with great consequences, and may yet be
so used as to become an emancipation act in all the rebel States. It
is high time it were so used. We have serious doubts whether the
rebellion will ever be suppressed till that trenchant weapon is
wielded. We reverently doubt whether the Lord means it shall be. The
quiet passage of the Confiscation Act was an immense step of
governmental progress. Perhaps it was all that the nation as a whole
and the government were ready for. It may answer as a keen wedge. But
we trust that, in December, Congress will make clean work by the full
emancipation of all slaves in the rebel States, and by provision in
some way for the speedy and certain extinction of slavery in the
loyal States. To accomplish the latter event, we would ourselves
willingly submit to any proper amount of pecuniary burden, provided
it could be so arranged as not to recognize a right of property in
man.--Chicago Congregational Herald.