The two civilizations, North and South, are wholly unlike. Without the slavery of four millions of men, to be kept in subjection by a conspiracy to that effect, on the part of the whole free population--the lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those regions--the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is _a remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization_; but, unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been stimulated into all the enterprising and audacious energy of this advanced and progressive age. It is an engine of ancient barbarism worked by the steam of modern intelligence. The character of the people which has been created under this rare and anomalous state of things is alike rare and anomalous. No other people ever so commingled in themselves the elements of barbarous and even savage life with traits of the highest civilization. No other community were ever so instinct with the life of the worst ages of the past, and so endowed with the physical and intellectual potencies of the present. The national character of the South is that of the gentlemanly blackleg, bully, and desperado. Courteous when polished, but always overbearing; pretentious of a conventional sense of honor--which consists solely in a readiness to fight in the duel, the brawl, or the regular campaign, and to take offence on every occasion; with no trace of that modesty or delicacy of sentiment which constitutes the soul of true honor; ambitious, unscrupulous, bold; dashing and expert; with absolutely no restrictions from conscience, routine, or the ordinary suggestions of prudence; false and, like all braggarts, cowardly when beaten; confident of their own strength until brought to the severest tests; capable of endurance and shifts of all kinds; awaiting none of the usual conditions of success--the Southern man and the Southern people are neither comfortable neighbors in a state of peace, nor enemies to be slightly considered or despised in war. The anomalous character of Southern society, it cannot be too often repeated, is not understood and cannot be understood by the people of the North, or of Europe, otherwise than through the sharp experience of hostile and actual contact; nor otherwise than in the light of the inherent tendency and necessary educational influences of the one institution of slavery. Of the whole South, in degree, and of the Southwestern States preeminently, it may be said as a whole description in a single form of expression: _They know no other virtue than brute physical courage, and no other crime than abolitionism or negro-stealing._