For, come what will, the North will never desert the people of the South. It will desert the slave power that now rages against our Union and Humanity, tie it up, and leave it to be dealt with by those who know it best. But the millions of white people, our friends and neighbors, our brothers, fathers, lovers and children, inhabiting these vast areas, cannot be torn out of our hearts, or spirited by any demoniac influence beyond our guardian care. The millions of bondmen, who now till those fields, cannot be sacrificed forever to please any clique of tyrants or make the corner stone to any temple of eternal Pagan barbarism. We shall care for both, and shall do our utmost to save the whole Southern people from the dreadful perils of the present and the more fearful danger of the future. No wall of separation can be raised so high that the growing civilization of the North will not overlook it, and, like the sun in mid-heaven, shine down with beneficent rays on the just and unjust, protecting the good, succoring the fallen, regenerating the evil. O! that God would give our brothers of the South the clearness and calmness to see that Northern civilization contemplates harm to no man; is beneficent like God’s love; in truth is, in its ideal, the Love of God applied to the life of a new world. The future is not clear, and he is a bold man who can prophecy a month ahead. It may be that we are at the end; that the slave power has conquered fifteen states and is about to lead them out into the desert of a barbaric experiment in despotic society. If so, let us not deluge our land with fraternal blood, but let them all go in peace; clinging together at home and girding ourselves up to the mighty task of finally saving them from the anarchy that surely lies across their path. Perhaps the margin of servility in the North will gain a temporary victory, and in concert with a united slave power, enact some infamous concession over our heads. Then we must only close up and move on, as in the past; for freedom repudiates all surrender to tyranny now and forever, and there must be a final victory for the right. Perchance the nobler civilization of the South will arise in its might, and, in concert with the real North, adopt some wise and conciliatory policy for the whole country which will sacrifice no right of the people and impair no hope of the Republic; and then hold in the few revolting states from secession. If so, the hour of freedom has indeed struck, and the knell of despotism in this Union is tolled. Let us pray for the wisdom, justice, love that shall regenerate us from our sins, and overrule our transgressions in the past, to the advancement of the kingdom of God on earth, and the uplifting of His best creature――man. * * * * * Transcriber’s Notes: ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.