partake of the degradation which exists within it, and must be affected, by the very contact, in all its feelings, sentiments, and purposes, through the gross and ignorant passions which such an association cannot fail to arouse. The moral level of the whole society is lowered to the average condition of its constituent parts. To expect the controlling power of such a community to be accessible to reason and conciliation, would indeed argue an utter ignorance of the whole slave system and of its influence upon the minds and hearts of those who sustain it. War is the normal condition of those communities which cherish slavery; and although such an institution, misplaced in connection with the civilization of the nineteenth century, may seem to have changed its original nature in accordance with existing circumstances, yet, when its purposes are thwarted, it is ever ready for military violence. It is like a native barbarian, schooled and trained to apparent civilization, but ever inclined, at the first temptation, to fall into his natural habits of wild and savage life. The Southern organization has already proved itself to be peculiarly fitted for warlike operations; it has been correspondingly unsuited to modern industrial pursuits, except for the simplest and most primitive of all labors, those of agriculture. Indeed, these were always the principal occupations of slaves, even in those early stages of human progress when these classes were left at home to till the soil, while the masters followed their ordinary occupation of war. The same constitution of society at the present day leaves the masters free, it is true, to engage in more humane and elevated occupations, but not without an evident inclination or easy adaptation for those bold and bad pursuits from which slavery originally arose, and which it afterwards contributed so much to sustain and prolong.