They bear repeating:
"Editorial: The Recent Message of the President – 4"
- "Should no other action be taken by Congress in reference to the recent Message of the President than the adoption of the resolution recommended [Federally compensated emancipation], it must still constitute a most important era in our history.
It is the first instance in which Government has declared that its influence shall be exerted in favor of freedom, and that we should use the public revenues in weakening the political and military strength of one section, and elevating that of the other.
The opinions of Mr. Lincoln are in harmony with the fathers of the Government -- Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and their illustrious compeers.
They earnestly desired to see Slavery extinguished, and believed it must gradually disappear under the influence of those benign principles they embodied in the Constitution, as a chart to be observed in spirit as well as in letter.
But the result did not justify their expectations.
Although Slavery was for a generation everywhere admitted to be an evil, the owners of the chattels had not sufficient force or moral sense to carry their convictions into practice.
As is is not in nature for men to live forever in admitted wrong, the only alternative left was the ground finally assumed at the South, that Slavery in itself is good, instead of being bad; that it has God's blessing, instead of His curse.
The logic to such a conclusion was irresistible.
- "All institutions," said the slaveholders, "Are the concretes of public opinion.
If the opinion of the country be against Slavery, such opinion will, at some day, distant it may be, express itself in action, by virtue of which Slavery must disappear.
But Slavery is right.
The opinion against it is a prejudice, which can and must be made to give way to truth.
Our taks is to educate the North to a proper estimate of the institution.
Through the North we must regenerate the world, and in this way place ourselves rectus in curia in the moral as well as in the political forum of mankind."
The South accomplished no small portion of the task assumed.
It had at last come to be a dogma at Washington that Slavery and Freedom must proceed, pari passu, in political influence and in territorial extent.
But in securing so much the South really secured all.
Freedom, to be sure, had come to have more States, nominally, but Texas could at any day throw four additional States into the Southern scale, while party machinery had always contrived to secure from several of the Free States representatives thoroughly wedded to the Slave Power, so that while the balance between the two sections might be theoretically preserved, the South for the last thirty years held the power with an iron grasp, and administered the Government wholly in its own interests.
It could hardly be otherwise.
The South had an institution to conserve, upon which society there rested.
The North had none, except Freedom, in its more general sense.
The latter could oppose no adequate opposition or resistance to the well-matured policy of the former.
It is almost inevitable that the lowest civilization in society should exert a paramount influence on Government, as the efforts of men seeking to gain or retain place and power are nearly always in ratio to their lack of self-respect. [!!]
The Southern idea, which is one of abject despotism, rested like a pall upon the country, stifling, as far as possible, freedom of speech and action, fillin every office with the propagandists of Slavery, and representing us at foreign courts in persons, who had no more sympathy with Freedom at home, or with the struggles of the patriots and reformers in Europe, than the tools of Asiatic Absolutism.
No wonder that we had as a nation, become the scorn and bye-word among the suffering masses of Europe, with whom, long ago, the model Republic had not only ceased to be "the hope of mankind," but had become the standing argument for riveting more closely the chains of despotism.
But the South was not content with the progress it was making, but must overthrow a Government that appeared to stand in the way of its aims.
The results are before us, and one of the most remarkable is Mr. Lincoln's declaration -- that the Government should henceforth use its power to destroy the balance between Freedom and Slavery, which for a generation had been so sedulously maintained, and to render the North irresistible, by adding to it all debatable ground, by enfranchising the slaves upon it.
This is a tremendous step for the head of the nation to take.
It would have been worth the life of the President to have uttered such sentiments two years ago.
In fact, no President could have been brought up to the point, but for the events that have recently taken place.
Where two grand principles in a nation are struggling for mastery, it is a vast stretch of courage or power to say, before any outbreak has taken place, that the influence of Government shall be thrown against one or the other -- especially that the right shall be thrown against the wrong -- for in such a case the wrong must inevitably be destroyed; while the right, being in the keeping of Providence can always afford to take the humble or subordinate position.
But after long suffering, the right can now take its own ground.
From the outset, the contest has been for the Border States.
Their possession by the South would erect it into a first-class Power, and render, it was believed, its reduction by the North impossible.
But whatever may be thought of practical difficulties, the President has placed the Government on the side of Freedom.
They will recover us the respect once felt for us in the Old World.
In dealing with this vexed subject we think he has hit the happy mean, upon which all parties in the North and all loyalists in the South can unite.
The raidcal will wish he had gone further, but will be content with the National expression in favor of Freedom.
The conservative will see that no rash or ill-advised steps will be taken: while all will admit that government sould be conservative, and not accept every ebullition of passion or expression of immature sentiment as the sober sense of the nation.
Having taken one step we should see our way clear before taking another.
There can be no doubt of the correctness of that taken by Mr. Lincoln.
It looks to the end, however long the way to it.
He does not propose to subvert, but to advance -- not to destroy till something better is ready to take the place of the old.
In this he will carry the nation and the world, and achieve the greatest work possible for humanity, by acting in harmony with correct principles, guided by a common sense which, in all the mazes and entanglements of his official position, never deserts him."
"ebullition of passion"??