Were African slavery a permanent feature in our midst, the argument against our civilization would be unanswerable. But it has maintained its ground in spite of, rather than as the result of or in connection with the spirit of our institutions. It has hitherto been suffered to exist as an acknowledged evil, solely because the disastrous results attending its sudden abolition have been justly feared as greater than any which could at present arise from its continuance. Yet at no period has the American people ceased to look forward to some future time when it might safely be rooted out. Our faith has ever been strong, and our confidence in the ultimate triumph of the right unshaken. That time has come. The present war, from whose inauguration the question of slavery abolition was—on our part, at least—entirely absent, has given the opportunity which our people have not failed to seize. To crush out the rebellion without meddling with the institutions of the South was at first the main spring of the war; fiat justitia, ruat cœlum, is now the voice of the whole people; and the very fact that the nation has so earnestly taken hold of the work, so sternly determined to sacrifice everything but its existence to the demolition of this bloody god, is of itself an evidence of the purity of our civilization. We have not been dead to the principles of truth and justice involved in this question; we have been but biding our time, plainly seeing and carefully noting the direful effects of slavery upon our social organization, and 'heaping up wrath against the day of wrath.' And now, with the blessing of God upon our efforts, the present war will not cease until the death blow is given to the accursed institution with all its attendant evils. We, as a people, are fully aroused and sternly determined henceforth to let nothing stand in the way of our social advancement, however time-honored and cherished may have been the obstacle. And when these evils have all been swept away, as they assuredly will be, we shall stand forth among the nations in all the glory of a pure and enlightened civilization, and challenge the world to produce a nobler record, to point out a happier, more prosperous, more truly progressive people.

With the close of the present war will arise another important question, bearing not less strongly than that of slavery upon our ultimate civilization. The slaveholding States are to be, in a measure, repeopled. The tide of immigration which has so long and so steadily streamed toward the West will be for some time diverted to the fertile plantations of the South. Not only the soldiers of the North, to whom the war has opened what has hitherto been to them almost a terra incognita, will seek new homes within the sunny climes; but the flood of foreign immigration, which, upon the vindication of our national integrity and power, will quickly double itself in comparison with that of former years, and sweep toward this new and inviting field; and the distinctive feature of Southern society—of so-called 'Southern chivalry'—will soon be swallowed up in the torrent. And what then shall we have to fill its place? The crude ideas of foreign tyros in the school of freedom, the conflicting religious, social, and political theories of European revolutionists, the antagonistic policies of a hundred different nationalities. All this, in connection with the difficulties arising from the freeing of so large an African population, will prove a severe trial to our national civilization, and call for the exercise of the profoundest wisdom, the most careful discrimination, and the most patient forbearance on the part of our rulers and statesmen. And most assuredly the times will themselves produce the men most fitted for the care of such interests and the decision of such questions. Though there is need of the firm hand, the utmost watchfulness, and the strongest exertion on the part of every citizen as well as statesman, it is not to be feared that the result will in the end be disastrous to our progress. For the genius of the American people was never yet at fault. We have handled similar questions before; we are handling a more important one now, and our capabilities and our power of development are such that we need not fear but that we shall be enabled to cope with the exigencies of the future. That genius which has built up a powerful nation here in the wilderness, which has developed to such a degree the resources of the laud and the capacities of the people, which has conceived and executed in so short a time such a social and moral revolution, has in it too much of the godlike to suffer the work to fall through from any incapacity to deal with the legitimate consequences of its action. The power to inaugurate and carry through the work necessarily implies the capacity to establish and render permanent its results, to guide the ship when the storm is past. It will find the ways and means; the times themselves will develop new truths, which will make the task less difficult than it seems to us of to-day. Such is the feeling of the people; and this same noble faith and confidence in our own capacities, this turning a deaf ear to all the possibilities of failure, and looking with a never-failing trust, a soul-felt faith, to the triumph of our cause and of our civilization, is our greatest strength, while it is, at the same time, a conclusive evidence that we are on the high road of true progress, that our civilization is not a thing of yesterday, to-day, or to-morrow, but of the eternal ages.

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