Andy Johnson goes to Tennessee, and pleads with that people to see that the Old Union is reëstablished in that State, and his leading argument to them is that Slavery, now in a precarious condition, will thereby be secured more firmly than ever. In the present representative position of Mr. Johnson, we must conclude that our government would be only too happy to clasp the broken arch with the old keystone which has just crumbled. But there are two classes in this country, either of which holds the balance of power, which will take care that no such reunion takes place. One class resides in the Cotton States. The Cabinet need never hold any love feasts for Jeff and his companions. In Ireland, where the priests pray over the little fields of the peasantry to assist their fertility, a priest once came to a particularly barren and hard-looking patch of ground, and said, "Brethren, there's no use in praying here; this needs manure." I think when Father Abraham looks over the fence of the Cotton States, if he ever does, he will come to a similar conclusion about the efficacy of pardoning grace. The other class which, should the South submit to-morrow, would prevent any return to the old Union, is the class of honest freemen throughout the land. The battle of Armageddon is one that never ceases. Let the Cabinets at Washington and Richmond join again around the communion table, with the blood of the Christ crucified between them upon it, and the old siege of Liberty against the Union, which has been raised for a moment, begins again. Garrison, the old standard-bearer, will unfurl his banner of Disunion, which he keeps only tucked away in the "Liberator room, as Bennett of the "Herald" keeps the Confederate flag. The clear bugle of Phillips sounds the old martial call again. And all along the sky sleeping thunders will awaken, and ten thousand

trumpets proclaim that the siege against the ancient wrong is renewed, the siege whose arrows are thoughts, whose shells are fiery inspirations of truth, whose sword is the Spirit of a just God. All this will go on until the ballot-box is conquered again, and some such man as Wendell Phillips is elected President. Then another Sumter gun will be heard. Then will come the war of which the present is but a picket skirmish. John Brown will be commanding general of all our forces then; and all will not be quiet on the Potomac. His soul will go marching on; 't is a way it has.

For I fear that over the eye of this nation Slavery has gradually formed a hard cataract, so that it cannot see the peace and glory which are an arm's-length before it, a cataract which only the painful surgery of the sword can remove. If it be so, we can only say, Bleed, poor country! Let thy young men be choked with their blood; let the pale horse trample loving hearts and fairest homes; if only thus thou canst learn that God also has his government, and that all injustice is secession from that government, which his arm of might will be sure to crush out!

Those who oppose the method of emancipation allege that it would exasperate the South to the utmost, would alienate them forever from us, would unite the Border States with them, and unite them all against us as one

man.

The fear of exasperating the South reminds one of the toper, who said that when it got to be twelve o'clock of the night he did not care when he went home, for his wife was by that time as mad as she could be, and an hour or so made no difference. The South has about filled the

gamut of wrath. Nor have we seen much difference in its treatment of such Southern pro-slavery men as General Anderson and his brother Charles, and anti-slavery men. So far as our experience in this war goes, they had as lief a man should be a Garrisonian as a Lincolnite.

So far as the objection relates to the supposition that an edict of emancipation would turn the Border States against us, it, being military, may easily be met as such by the fact that, even if a million people became estranged from us (the very largest estimate), such an edict would at once bring four millions (the slaves) to our side. And mark the difference between those who would go and those who would come.

The million who went would prove by their going that they were pretended, or at least half-hearted friends; they would show that their loyalty was but a cover for the preservation of Slavery, that the Union meant for them nothing, if not human chattels. The four millions who would be riveted to our side by this one blow would be those upon whom we might depend, since their every possible interest would then be involved in our success. Now, it is the interest of the negro that the country should be divided, unless he is to be emancipated; for disunion would at least bring Freedom's southern line down to Mason and Dixon's.

The million who would abandon our cause would be chiefly on the border, within territory already under military occupation; their disaffection would only need a little more vigilance on our part, and that would be a wise thing in any case. The four millions who would be our determined co-labourers from that moment are chiefly in disloyal territory under rebel occupation; they are there where we are striving, by expensive and perilous expedi

tions, to carry Union men; and by being salable property they are protected as no other soldiers we could have there would be.

Thus, even so far as the two are of military importance, the emancipation method offers far more than the mere fighting method. But there is another force brought into the action by emancipation which would change this war of disunion into a putting forth of unifying energies, which would be as irresistible in establishing our social unity as are our mountains and valleys and rivers in establishing our geographical unity.

X

HOW TO HITCH OUR WAGON TO A STAR

It is one of the signs of the times that the revolution was strong enough to take up bodily the Sage of Concord and set him in the capital of this nation to instruct our rulers. The advice he gave them may be summed up in the one sentence, Hitch your wagon to a star!

Why not, Mr. President! You have some difficulty in making things go, possibly have some doubt as to whether they can be made to go; but if you could manage to hitch the Union to a star, that will be sure to move. If you can get the laws of nature to aid in the reunion of North and South, you need not fear any Confederate efforts at keeping them apart.

The very intensity and virulence of the hatred which the South has for the North suggest that the feeling is extremely morbid, and not very deep. It is not deliberate, nor based on any actual difference, and for that very reason must make up in violence what it lacks in the nature of things. This hatred also has sprung up too quickly to have

much depth or genuineness. It was within a comparatively recent period that the South was one with the North. We are of the same blood; our fathers were within our memory united. Section has intermarried with section.

There has been but one Satanic divider who has opened a chasm between us, -Slavery. The interests of Slavery cannot be made the interests of free society; and there cannot be one institution of free society-such as the free press, and free speech, and free school-which is not a bombshell for Slavery. Free society being necessarily a continual assault upon Slavery, Slavery hates the North. It is not the Southern man, it is the virus of Slavery in his veins, which hates the North; as the Indian plead before the court, that not he, but the whiskey, committed the murder. Take that virus away, my Northern friend, and he is a Saxon man, she a Saxon woman, like yourself.

The writer of these pages was reared in the midst of hatred and contempt of the Northern people, and did himself hate and despise them cordially during all his early youth; he held it to be his highest ambition to assist in severing that section from the North. But fortune led him to a year's residence in a little Quaker settlement where Slavery did not exist, and which consequently was an oasis upon a Slavery-wasted desert; and with this one step out of the atmosphere of Slavery, with the first glance of doubt toward that institution, a cloud of illusions cleared up, the antipathy to Northern men disappeared, and he experienced a revulsion in their favor which did them even more than justice.

He knows, moreover, the leaders of the Southern Rebellion, many of them personally, all of them by character, and knows them to be very earnest madmen; he knows