Have we rightly comprehended the fearful import of those words, _the Africanization of the South_? According to the present rate of increase, in fifty years the negroes of these States will amount to twenty millions. Suppose them to be restricted to their present arena. Suppose them in addition to be free. Imagine the misery, the crime, the poverty, the barbarism, the desolation of the country! The grass would grow in the streets of our cities, our ships would rot in their harbors, our plantations would become a wilderness of cane-brakes. The re-subjugation of the negro, or the extermination of one race or the other would be inevitable, and in any event our children would be beggared with an inheritance of woe. Let us swear upon the altar of God, that as Christians and citizens we will resist to the death the first step which might lead us towards this awful abyss! If the Republican party is permitted to get into power, the Africanization of the South may be gradual, but it will be sure. Their leaders already boast to applauding multitudes that the heel of the North is at last on our necks. When the power, the patronage, the prestige of the federal government are wielded against slavery; when Southern men take office under it, and first apologize and then approve; when a free-soil sentiment gradually percolates through the South itself; when the brightness of Southern honor is tarnished, and the integrity of Southern opinion destroyed, what will be, what must be the inevitable result? Nothing hasty or violent will be attempted. The iniquity will be accomplished under the forms of the present Constitution. Remember that the coins of Nero bore the image of the Goddess of Liberty, and that a perverted Constitution is the choicest instrument of tyranny. Lulled by pleasant narcotics, we will pass from dreams of security, into the sleep of death. Or if we rouse ourselves at last, and reach out for our fallen thunderbolts, we will be found, like Sampson, blind and helpless, and they will make sport of our misery. The silken cords with which they bind us now, will change to iron fetters in our moment of revolt.