Year: 1861

From the New York Off Iy lh.


What Is Peaceable Dissolution.


There is, no doubt a class of men among
us-there may be in the Government-who
have vague expectation of n final separa-
tich between the North and the South and
who begin to think peaceable dissolution
would be better than this waste of wealth,
this slow destruction of property and busi-
ness. We do not mean that these people are
numerous. They scarcely show themselves,
either in public or private Still they do exist,
and their unexpressed desires aud vague hopes
OF Il peace or truce, which should bring
separation, ought to be met. This grand
uprising of the free States has been IN part
based on An instnct-the instinct of nation
ality but as is often true Of popular in
stincts, it is really coincdent with the highest
interest. The vast country stretching from
the Atlantic and the Gulf to the Rocky noun
tains must be inhabited BY one people aud
governed by one Government.


There now no question of it. This is
not the Monroe doctrine. the Northern
doctrine-ft is the doctrine of nature.
Whatever population objects to this princ
pie must either be exterminated or be subject.
We call upon those timid people who may
be thinking of final separation as possible,
to make the supposition few moments OF
an Independent Southern Republic She
has gained her independence by her own
vaor and our pusillanimity. The masses of
her population will gnorantly despiSe, as
they have done before, the Northern hard
laboring and Industrious classes. She will
be of necessity military Republic, based on
the labor of slaves. A large standing army
will be supported by her to protect her ter
ritory and win new fields for the slaves The
lines of the Potomac and the Ohio would
bristle with enormous batteries the MissiS-
sipp would be guarded by tortresses which
defy attack. After few years of peace she
would have bought fleets of small iron
steamers, which, in case of war, could
iprivateer among onr commerce over every
sea. Her troops would become drilled and
equipped, and would soon be far more than
a match for a peaceful and agricultural pop
ulaton like the most of our own Then
comes the inevitable expansion which her
slave system demands. Mexico would be in
vaded Central America and the key of the
Pacific struggled for Cuba assaulted or
Southern California overrun. We are forced
to interfere or to lose our power on the
Westera continent, be cut off from our
Pacific possessions, and see a grand slave





Potomac to the Isthmus. Still more, she
would soon contest with us the Keys of the
Gulf at the Tortugas. Then all along the
Ohio, the Potomac the Mississippi, would be
incessant wranglngs and collisions over
duties and customs. Single townships, even
single States, would be carrying devastation
into each others territories. Added to all
this would be the everlasting dispute and
battle over the slaves. The slaves run away
and cannot be retaken, the masters in re-
venge make foray on free citizens. One
&C: of violence breeds another, and the
border land would become again, as it did in
Indian times, the land of blood Any one
OF these, and thousands of similar cases,
would breed a war within just sufficient
time for the South to recover its strength.


The next war, too would not be like the
present, where the advantage is all with the
Union. Then the South would be trained
military power, with fortresses aud sufficient
of n,ateriet, with a fleet of privateers, with
the prestige of previous success aud the hope
of boundless plunder, and the spur of AN
Unsuitable ambition. Our own people would
be discouraged by the i'll success of the
first struggle; commerce would plead for
peace business would deprecate any further
struggle; traitors would arise among us, and
not improbable result would be the snbju-
CATION and humiliation of the sturdy North
beneath the aris.ocratic, military Republic
of the South. Such results, or harrassing,
devastating civil wars, continued for half
century between the two combatants. until,
when utterly exhausted, some powerful
foreign conqueror should interfere to subdue
both, are some of the probable effects of a
beaceable disunion of the North and South.


No, timid friends and foreign advisers. this
is a war a coutrance. There is no peace or
truce possible. We of the North fight not
alone for honor, but for existense. We must
conquer or be conquered. War now uader
the Union is a thousand times easier and
more humane than war with foreign power.
The gage is thrown down-the weapons are
drawn-the lists are cleared and for a life
and-death struggle.