Undoubtedly, immense advantages were to be contemplated in the restoration of the United States to their primitive boundaries and united power. But it was not without deep apprehension of moral taint and ulterior evil consequences, that a wise patriot could look even then to any attempt of the old matrimonial partners to dwell again in a common household, upon the old terms, and with no real settlement of the dispute between them. The latter of these suppositions, the remanding of a hostile and rebellious tier of States, who had long and proudly enjoyed the dignity of State sovereignty, to a subordinate condition, had also its proportion of difficulty and danger. To carry out a _programme_ of this kind would demand a great increase of the army and navy, and would give to the military spirit and power a preponderance in the councils of the nation which has always been deemed dangerous to the liberties of the country. A constant drain of expenditure of the resources of the nation; a continuous unrest and anxiety of the whole people; a succession of outbreaks and partial renewals of the civil war; the installation of a necessary system of proconsular or viceroyal commissions; the appointment of men who, whether as provost-marshals, dictators, or what not, would be in the stated exercise of authority unmeasured by the theories of republican policy--all these were serious and threatening considerations, which must give the thoughtful mind some pause ere it entered upon their adoption. There were other remaining possible suppositions in respect to the termination of the war, of a middling character, or those lying between the two opposite extremes. In case, without any positive conquest or submission on either side, the general tenor of success throughout the war should be with the South, so that it finally behooved the North to secure the most favorable terms, but to submit, nevertheless, to great deductions from its confident expectations, a theory then not wholly impossible, we had to contemplate, as one evil of the war, a final disruption of the original territory of the United States into two nationalities, coincident, as to boundary, with the Free and the Slave States. Except in the way of absolute conquest, the South would be little inclined to insist upon the addition to itself of any territory absolutely free. We were not required, therefore, to make this supposition any less favorable to the North than the division just suggested; and unless, again, power had been acquired by the South to impose terms on the North little short of those which a conqueror imposes on a conquered people, the North, within its own limit of Free States, would be left in a condition boldly to announce and actively to defend its own legitimate policy in behalf of the extension of free institutions and their development to the supreme degree of beneficent truth.