They know it and feel it. There is no
further appeal for them; the judgment of the court of last resort
has been rendered, and rendered against them. The cause is
finished, the controversy closed, never to be re-opened.
Henceforth the Union is invincible, and it is worse than idle to
attempt to renew the war against it. Henceforth their lot is
bound up with that of the nation, and all their hopes and
interests, for themselves and their children, and their
children's children, depend on their being permitted to demean
themselves henceforth as peaceable and loyal American citizens.
They must seek their freedom, greatness, and glory in the
freedom, greatness, and glory of the American republic, in which,
after all, they can be far freer, greater, more glorious than in
a separate and independent confederacy. All the arguments and
considerations urged by Union men against their secession, come
back to them now with redoubled force to keep them henceforth
loyal to the Union.
They cannot afford to lose the nation, and the nation cannot
afford to lose them. To hang or exile them, and depopulate and
suffer to run to waste the lands they had cultivated, were sad
thrift, sadder than that of deporting four millions of negroes
and colored men. To exchange only those excepted from amnesty
and pardon by President Johnson, embracing some two millions or
more, the very pars sanior of the Southern population, for what
would remain or flock in to supply their place, would be only the
exchange of Glaucus and Diomed, gold for brass; to disfranchise
them, confiscate their estates, and place them under the
political control of the freedmen, lately their slaves, and the
ignorant and miserable "white trash," would be simply to render
rebellion chronic, and to convert seven millions of Americans,
willing and anxious to be free, loyal American citizens,
eternal enemies.
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