Year: 1861

tcrfere with its status therein. What
measures, affecting the condition of the
slaves may be rightfully adopted, fla
granite bcllo, in hostile operations in a
resisting State, is a very different ques-
ton, and on which he is nut called upon
to consider, but which will demand the
grave consideration of the insurrection-
ary States, before they abandoned the
safeguards of the constitution and en-
gagged in the unholy effort to break up
the best and freest government ever Civ
en- by Providence to man.


Some two months since, the condition
of our country was the subject of the
conversation referred to between the
President Fairfield and Gen. Cass, in
which the latter expressed his condemna-
ton of the course of the South in the
commencement and prosecution of hos
tilities against the Constitution, and his
conviction that it was the duty Of every
citizen to support the government in its
efforts to assert the authority of the laws,
and to defend and maintain the Union
in its integrity as it came from the hands
of our fathers. Gen. Cass fully concurs
in the views presented by the present
able Secretary of the Treasury, that the
war is 'not war for their subjugation,
but a war for national existence, and that
an auspicious result to the Union will
benefit as largely the States in insurrec-
ton, as the States which have remained
loyal" He believes, indeed, that though
this "auspicious result important for all
the States, it is still more important for
the South than for the North. No man
who regards the signs of tho times can
fail to anticipate, that should the rcbell-
ion against the Union prove successful,
which God forbid, the alienated sections
would be influenced by bitter animosity
towards each other; the feeling in favor
of abolition would be rendered more pow
erful by the course Of events and being
freed from restraints which now control
its action, would soon be in active opera
ton all along the extensive border every
where open to incursions, producing the
most fearful consequences, which it would
be equally painful and unnecessary to
describe. As to any conventional ar
rangement for the surrender of fugitive
slaves, the effort would be simply impossi-
bic. It was with reference to this state
of things that Gen. Cass, expressed the
doubt wheth9r permanent peace could
be maintained under such considerations,
and the impression that the result would
lead to emancipation. This was the view
he intended to present to President Fair
field.


If the various members of our confcd-
cracy cannot live in peace together under
a common government, empowered tc
regulate their mutual intercourse, and to
prevent collisions among them, it were
vain to try to live together with the caus'
es of difficulty in full operation, wher
force becomes the only arbiter. Look
ing especially to their relative gcograph'
ical position, by which they. are inter
locked, and to that unrestricteaaecess tc
the ocean vitality important to thea8 est
which the United States bought ana pale
for, it whould be about as rational to at
tempt to stop the Mississippi and it'
tributaries, as to attempt to stop the pco
pie lining upon those waters from going
freely to the ocean and returning by those
routes of communication. In all thu
history of human pretensions, there ha'
scarcely been one less justi6ablc than
this.