Only "if they suppose" -- read the article, "To our Southern Readers":
- "...But our Southern friends must be very blind indeed, and very ignorant of the impulses which sway human nature, if they suppose that when, in the progress of their attempt to destroy our Government, they begin to cut the throats of our brothers and our brave boys, we shall be so compliant in this.
We should be rendering them a very poor service if we allowed them to harbor such a delusion without endeavoring to dispel it.
It is better that they should understand the case clearly from the start.
The United States, as a nation, have no concern with slavery.
But from the hour that rebels shed the blood of citizens of the United States, war will be waged upon them by the most crushing and overwhelming methods; and among those methods the liberation of the slaves will naturally occur.
We say this, not in passion or from feeling, but simply as the calm statement of a fact as obvious as may be fixed in science.
Actual war between Salve and Free States ultimately involves abolition.
Tis for the Border States to reject or accept the issue."