[Footnote 6: "Il n'y a pas de plus dangereux exemple que celui de la violence exercee pour le bien et par les gens de bien."--"_L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution_," par Alexis de Tocqueville, Paris, 1856, p. 310.] To such considerations has it been, in a measure, due that the people of the United States, with as much unanimity as usually characterizes any national decision, have held back, until now, from following the example of the civilized nations of Europe in emancipating their slaves. Until the Secessionists levied war against the Union, not the Democratic party alone, but the mass of the Republican party also, assented to the declaration in Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural, that they had "no purpose to interfere, directly or indirectly, with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists." It had never been possible to obtain the votes of three-fourths of the States in favor of emancipation; and a large majority of those who held human servitude to be a moral wrong had looked upon its toleration among our neighbors of the South as an evil of less magnitude than the violation of the Constitution. Though the wisdom of the ablest statesmen of the Revolution, without distinction of sections, recognized negro slavery as an iniquity and as a political element fraught with inevitable danger in the future, yet the evils and the dangers which are inseparably connected with that element have never been so clearly seen, have never made themselves so terribly apparent, as in the course of this war. The conviction that Slavery is a standing menace to the integrity of the Union and the one great obstacle to peace gathers strength so rapidly from day to day, that many men are adopting the opinion, that it must needs be extirpated, if even at the cost of a revolutionary act. It would be a misfortune, if this were the alternative. It is easy to pass the limit of regulated authority, but impossible to estimate the dangers we may encounter when that guardian limit is once transgressed. We may resolve that we will go thus far and no farther. So thought the honest and earnest Girondists of revolutionary France; but the current to which they had first opened a passage swept them away. Though the experiment succeed at last, a long Reign of Terror may overwhelm us ere success is reached. And thus it is a matter of surpassing interest to determine whether the present stupendous insurrectionary convulsion has brought about a state of things under which, in strict accordance with the Constitution as it is, we may emancipate all negroes throughout the Union who are now held in involuntary servitude. This question I propose to discuss. * * * * *