- tion, acquiescence in which it holds essential to its safety,
must then at length be distinctly refused. And when, ten or twenty years hence, if so be, this shall come to pass, what then is to happen to us?
Dissolution?
This is what many Southern politicians avow, whenever they contemplate such a contingency.
Why?
Because it is known that the people of the North are unwilling that the Union should be dissolved, whereas they have no indisposition to the only course which it will then be possible for the South to adopt, for the sake of increasing the security of its citizens, against insurrectionary movements of its slaves. This plainly would be to arrange a systematic opportunity and method for the slaves to labour, whenever they chose, and as much as they might choose, in an orderly, peaceable, and wise way, for their own release and improvement, each man for himself and those most dear to him; each man by himself, independently, openly, with no occasion for combination, secrecy, plots, or conspiracy. To prepare, for those disposed to avail themselves of it, a field, either here or elsewhere, in which their capability and Godlike reason, such as it may be, little or great, need not be forced by law to rust unused, or brighten only to the material advantage of a master. This I must think to be consciously, even now, the only final course of safety before every reflective Southern mind. This, ordissolution, and the chances of war.
[The above was written before Mr. Lincoln was spoken of as a candidate for the Presidency.]
