Franklin Repository

The leading conspirators of the South are about convinced that they have made war to preserve the dominion of Slavery only to reap its total annihilation. Nor are they of this kind who have eyes but see not, such as we have in our midst in the North. Seeing that Slavery is but a mighty suicide, they accept the truth and stand aside to allow the irresistible march of progress pass them by. Several of the rebel Governors have openly advised the freeing of their slaves with the hope of inducing them to accept military service in behalf of the tottering fortunes of treason. Jeff. Davis gravely discusses it in his late message, and the rebel congress is as much distracted by this ever disturbing question as our congress was in days of Southern domination in our National legislature. Even Gen. Lee, the careful, prudent, brave soldier, upon whom the last shadow of the fading confederacy depends, now asks, in despair, that the experiment of freeing and arming the slaves be made.

Thus have the leaders of crime determined to abandon Slavery, the author of this wicked, desolating war, and shall the North still cling to the dead body after it has drenched our fair land in blood and is now in the last violent throes of death. Union men will not do so; but many Democrats will, although the shrewder leaders are about to follow the rebel leaders and surrender Slavery to its inevitable fate. The New York World, confessedly the ablest Democratic organ in the country, thus exhorts its party to appreciate the duties of the present and not stand blindly in the way of enlightened progress. It tays [sic]:

"One reason why the thoughts of a party should be turned into this channel is that it involves questions which cannot grow obsolete with the lapse of time, while some of the issues in the late election may. Before another Presidential Election the Abolition question, for example, will probably be in such a state that past ideas will not apply. As the problem advances toward its predetermined solution, we shall see public opinion more and more disposed to acquiesce in the manifest tendency of events. Before the expiration of its new lease of power the Republican party will have secured a constitutional amendment for the entire extirpation of Slavery in the United States. If the South should, meanwhile, gain its independence, Slavery can no longer be a question of Federal politics; but if we disarm Southern resistance, the anti-Slavery amendment will have been put in force and have done its work before the Democratic party can be in power. Why should the party bind itself to a dead corpse?

"Unless the Democratic party is blind enough to run the hazard of disintegration, it must distinguish between questions virtually settled and questions that still remain open. It must so far keep pace with events as to accept their logic. Public opinion has no efficiency without political combination; but for masses large enough to form a majority to act in concert, thought must be left free on all questions save those which rank as living vital issues. The number who opposes the Abolition of Slavery (now a minority) is not likely to grow larger, but to grow less, with the progress of time. Every Democrat can, of course, hold whatever opinion he chooses on that subject. Such opinions are no longer of the slightest political consequence. Individual Democrats will think what they please; but the subject must be dismissed from the range of topics on which the party is expected to have distinctive views. There is no conceivable position on the Slavery question on which the Democratic party can plant itself and become a majority. Its antecedents and associations, as well as its respect for the Constitution as it stands, found it to become an Abolition party; the progress of events and the tendency of public opinion, as well as the Constitution in the form into which it is certain to be amended, forbid it to commit itself to the fortune of a moribund institution ."

Commenting on the foregoing extract from the World, the Tribune pertinently says:

"Whatever may be said of the morality or chivalry of the above extract, its sagacity is undeniable. Slavery is in the article of death; it would be rather a good joke if the rebels should get rid of it before we do; but they are very likely to do it. And, once fairly coffined, it will have a smaller and dryer-eyed following of mourners than any illustrious criminal who has preceded it on the way to the house appointed for all the living. Thousands shallowly presume that the South is a unit in fanatical devotion to its giant cause; when, to say nothing of the negroes, there never was a time when a very large proportion of the Southern whites, including their wisest and best, did not feel and know that Slavery was their bane and curse. But the slaveholders held the reins of power; they could and did smother expression but not thought; so the car of Juggernaut rolled on, over prostrate, crushed inwardly shuddering while volubly adoring multitudes. Slavery once admitted to be dead, the secrets of that giant prison-house will be revealed, and thousands will learn that those whom they have regarded as idolaters of the Southern Moloch, were at heart its deadly foes all along.

"No sane person ever can have believed Slavery in accord with the Golden Rule, but millions have fancied it personally advantageous. Some derived a pecuniary profit from their relation to it; others deemed it the ladder whereon they climbed to social eminence. It was on this ground that the Southern women became more fanatical in their devotion to it than their husbands and brothers; women being, as a class, more aristocratic--that is, placing a higher value on social distinction--than men. It is quite probable that the sincerest and most persistent contemners of Emancipation will be found among the white half-sisters of those whom it makes free. But, Slavery once dead, the great bulk of our native-born doughfaces will protest that they never believed in nor favored it--that they only stood up for the Union and the Constitution. And so that we have Freedom, Union and Peace, we shall not be inclined to controvert their assertions on a point which will have become wholly immaterial."